Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists 1526161699, 9781526161697

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N i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u ry w o m e n i l l u s t r at o r s a n d c a rtoon i s t s

Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists E d i t e d by J o D e v e r e u x

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2023 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 1 5261 6169 7  hardback First published 2023 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Cover image by Pamela Colman Smith, Widdicombe Fair (1899). Collection of Lorraine Janzen Kooistra. Cover design by James Hutcheson. Typeset by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd

Contents

page vii

List of plates

List of figures ix List of contributors xv Preface xix Introduction 1 Jo Devereux Part I  Natural history illustration, 1855–90 1 Jemima Blackburn ‘believed in nothing’: horror, religion, and animal illustration Bethan Stevens 2 Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ and enchanted gardens Laurence Talairach 3 I ‘wander and wonder and paint’: the botanical illustrations of Marianne North Nancy V. Workman

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Part II  Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature, 1859–1901 4 The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon: new views on her manuscript ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ Margo L. Beggs

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5 ‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards Simon Cooke 6 From London Society to The British Workwoman: Edith Hume’s journey to religious domestic illustration via Katwijk and Scheveningen beaches Deborah Canavan

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7 ‘This woman who predominated in all things’: Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899 131 Nancy Marck Cantwell 8 Florence and Adelaide Claxton: frames, doorways, and domestic satire 151 Jo Devereux 9 Marie Duval: the methods and politics of attribution Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite

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Part III  Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 10 Romance fiction, folk tales, and poetry: Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement Kate Holterhoff 11 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale as a black-and-white artist Pamela Gerrish Nunn

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12 ‘The great within’: the illustrations of Jessie Marion King for Seven Happy Days 228 Carey Gibbons 13 Working against ‘that thunderous clamor of the steam press’: Pamela Colman Smith and the art of hand-coloured illustration Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and Marion Tempest Grant

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14 Olive Allen and the graphic nonchalance of the Modern Girl, illustrated 268 Jaleen Grove Index 292

Plates

1 Eleanor Vere Boyle, Scene from Beauty and the Beast, c. 1875, No. 3 (© Look and Learn History Picture Archive) 2 Eleanor Vere Boyle, Scene from Beauty and the Beast, c. 1875, No. 4 (© Look and Learn History Picture Archive) 3 Eleanor Vere Boyle, Scene from Beauty and the Beast, c. 1875, No. 6 (© Look and Learn History Picture Archive) 4 Marianne North, ‘59. A Brazilian Climbing Shrub and Humming Birds’ (© Kew Images) 5 Marianne North, ‘570. Other Species of Pitcher Plants from Sarawak, Borneo’ (© Kew Images) 6 Marianne North, ‘187. View of Both Falls of Niagara’ (© Kew Images) 7 Restored Marianne North Gallery interior (© Kew Images) 8 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859: ‘A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog’ (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Special Collections) 9 Edith Hume, Fisherwomen at Scheveningen, Holland, c. 1875 (Photograph reproduced with the kind permission of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth) 10 Amy Sawyer, ‘Poppy’, The Seasons (London: Sands & Co., 1905), n.p. (Courtesy of Michael Sprod, Astrolabe Booksellers) 11 Jessie Marion King, Love’s Golden Dream, plate 10 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913) (The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 84540. Gift: Frederick R. Koch; 10/1981) 12 Pamela Colman Smith, Widdicombe Fair (1899) (Author’s copy) vii

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List of plates 13 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Prince Siddartha’, The Green Sheaf, 4 (1903), p. 12 (Courtesy of Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press) 14 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘A Hymn in Praise of Neptune’, The Green Sheaf, 6 (1903), p. 13 (Courtesy of Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press) 15 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Eventide’, The Green Sheaf, 3 (1903), p. 5 (Courtesy of Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press) 16 Olive Allen, two of five designs for menu cards, c. 1908, presumed unpublished. The other designs depict a scarecrow dressed like a suffragist (two copies) and a homely-looking suffragette eating her boxed lunch while chained to No. 10 Downing St (a reference to actual protests in 1908). Ink and watercolour on illustration board (Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, The University of British Columbia, Box 2, items 2.43, 2.44)

Figures

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Jemima Blackburn, ‘Jemima Wedderburn and her brother Andrew disentangling a sheep caught in brambles’, watercolour, pencil and pen & ink on paper, 1839 (National Galleries of Scotland, D 5359.64) page 23 Jemima Blackburn, ‘Poultry Show at Townhead School’, watercolour over pencil on paper, 1844 (National Galleries of Scotland, D 5359.100)24 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proofs for Charlotte Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (Edinburgh: Constable, 1855). Dalziel Archive Volume 7 (1855), BM 1913,0415.169, nos. 521–22 (By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions 2016)28 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Hugh Blackburn (photographer), ‘And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering’, salted paper print for Illustrations from Scripture by an 29 Animal Painter (1854) (National Galleries of Scotland, PGP R 897.13) Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), ‘And he sent forth a Raven, which went to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the Earth’, platinotype photographic reproduction for Bible Beasts and Birds, new edition of Illustrations from Scripture by an Animal Painter (1886) (Author’s collection)30 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Hugh Blackburn (photographer), ‘In the portion of Jezreel shall Dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel’, salted paper print for Illustrations from Scripture by an Animal Painter (1854) (National Galleries of Scotland, PGP R 897.3) 32 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas ix

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List of figures Thumb (Dalziel Archive Volume 7 (1855), BM 1913,0415.169, no. 517. By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions 2016) 36 1.8 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (Dalziel Archive Volume 7 (1855), BM 1913,0415.169, no. 512. By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions 2016) 37 1.9 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (Dalziel Archive Volume 7 (1855), BM 1913,0415.169, no. 513. By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions 2016) 38 1.10 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (Dalziel Archive Volume 7 (1855), BM 1913,0415.169, no. 506. By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions 2016) 39 1.11 Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The Lances of Lynwood (London: Parker & Son, 1855) (Dalziel Archive Volume 7 (1855), BM 1913,0415.169, no. 214. By Permission of the Trustees of The British Museum. All Rights Reserved © Sylph Editions 2016) 41 3.1 Marianne North, ‘Marianne North at her easel, circa 1883’ (© Kew Images)64 4.1 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859, title page (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Special Collections) 76 4.2 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859, ‘D was a Drunkard, with a red Face’ (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Special Collections) 77 4.3 Jacky Goodchild, The New Year’s Gift: Being a Gilded Toy for Little Masters and Misses to Learn their A B C: Containing the History of the Apple-pye with Verses Adapted to Each Letter in the Alphabet Tow [i.e. two] Different Ways: and Adorned with a Great Variety of Cuts (London: Printed by J. Evans and Sons, Long-lane, [c. 1820]), pp. 4–5 (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Special Collections) 82 4.4 [William McConnell], ‘Tom Thumb’s Alphabet’, in The Boys’ and Girls’ Illustrated Gift Book (London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1864), pp. 10–11 (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Special Collections) 85 4.5 Grandpapa Easy, General Tom Thumb (London [Threadneedle-Street]: Thomas Dean and Co., [c. 1845]), p. 8 (Courtesy of Toronto Public Library, Special Collections) 87

List of figures 5.1

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6.4 6.5

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Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘The Arrival of a Great Man’, in Charles Lever’s The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, new edition (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), facing p. 40. 159 × 103 mm. Signed ‘MEE’. Wood engraving cut by Swain. 98 Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘A Tête-à-Tête’, in Charles Lever’s The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, new edition (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), facing 99 p. 326. 110 × 181 mm. Signed ‘MEE’. Wood engraving cut by Swain. Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘Diana Paget and Charlotte Halliday’, in M. E. Braddon’s ‘Birds of Prey’, Belgravia, 2 (1867), facing p. 192. 187 × 166 mm. Unsigned but identified as the artist on the caption. Wood engraving cut by Evans. 102 Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘A puir feckless thing, tottering along like’, in Trollope’s ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 13 (January–June 1866), facing p. 129. 160 × 104 mm. Unsigned. Wood engraving cut by Harral.105 Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘Children’s Hospital’, The Graphic (18 December 1869), p. 9. 240 × 183 mm. Unsigned and wood-engraved by an unidentified engraver. 108 Edith Hume, ‘For the Sake of Uniformity’, Once a Week (1 July 1865), p. 39 (© The British Library Board Document Supply 6256.770000) 115 Edith Hume, ‘A Night among the Herring’, The British Workwoman (April 1886) (© The British Library Board General Reference Collection P.P.1103.c)119 Edith Hume, ‘Aunt Barjohn’s Secret’, The British Workwoman (April 1889) (© The British Library Board General Reference Collection P.P.1103.c)121 Edith Hume, ‘Harvest Time’, The British Workwoman (August 1887) (© The British Library Board General Reference Collection P.P.1103.c) 124 Edith Hume, ‘Eggs. A Small Number of Poultry’, The British Workwoman (August 1888) (The British Library Board General Reference Collection P.P.1103.c) 126 Alice Barber Stephens, ‘Dorothea in the Vatican’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1899), frontispiece. 135 125 × 86 mm. Signed Alice Barber Stephens ’99. Alice Barber Stephens, ‘She Began to Work at Once and Her Hand Did Not Tremble’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (Boston: Thomas Y. 139 Crowell, 1899), facing p. 255. 130 × 90 mm. Unsigned. Alice Barber Stephens, ‘Dorothea Sat by in her Widow’s Dress’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1899), facing 141 p. 438. 130 × 90 mm. Signed Alice Barber Stephens. Alice Barber Stephens, ‘He Was Standing Two Yards from Her, with His Mind Full of Contradictory Desires and Resolves’, in George Eliot’s

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List of figures Middlemarch (Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1899), facing p. 488. 130 × 90 mm. Signed Alice Barber Stephens. 7.5 Alice Barber Stephens, ‘“You Are Thinking What Is Not True,” Said Rosamond’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch (Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1899), facing p. 716. 130 × 90 mm. Signed Alice Barber Stephens ’99. 8.1 Florence Claxton, ‘The Choice of Paris: An Idyll’, wood engraving, Illustrated London News, Vol. 36 (2 June 1860), p. 541 8.2 Florence Claxton, ‘Christmas in Leap-Year’, wood engraving, Illustrated London News, Vol. 37 (22 December 1860), p. 606 8.3 Florence Claxton, ‘Absent Friends’, wood engraving, London Society, Christmas Number (December 1865), p. 55 8.4 Florence Claxton, ‘Captain Bob’s Farewell to His Sword’, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. VII (April 1865), p. 379 8.5 Florence and Adelaide Claxton, ‘St. Valentine’s Day’, wood engraving, London Society, Vol. XI (February 1867), facing p. 115 8.6 Adelaide Claxton, ‘The Baboo’s Visit’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter IX, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVII (January 1870), facing p. 140 8.7 Adelaide Claxton, ‘Mrs. Manton Tells “All about It”’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter XVI, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVII (March 1870), p. 261 8.8 Adelaide Claxton, ‘May’s Triumph’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter XXIII, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVII (May 1870), p. 422 8.9 Adelaide Claxton, ‘After the Accident’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter LIX, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVIII (December 1870), facing p. 498 9.1 Marie Duval, ‘Merry Christmas!’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, Vol. 2, Almanac (1 January 1873), p. 7 9.2 Marie Duval, ‘Crimes and Disasters (From a Sloperian Point of View)’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, Vol. 18 (26 January 1876), p. 153 10.1 Amy Sawyer, ‘An Old-World Love Tale’, Illustrated London News, Vol. 99, No. 2747 (12 December 1891) 10.2 Amy Sawyer, ‘So beautiful was this bubble … that for some minutes Maya watched it’, Heart of the World by H. Rider Haggard (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), p. 170 10.3 Amy Sawyer, ‘Next came Maya herself’, Heart of the World by H. Rider Haggard (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), p. 294

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List of figures 11.1 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, headpiece for ‘Italian Despots of the Quattro Cento’, Pall Mall Magazine (November 1894), p. 519 211 11.2 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, illustration for Country Life (25 March 1899), p. 373 216 11.3 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, illustration for Country Life (23 September 1899), p. 359 217 11.4 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ‘Gurth and Wamba’, Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1900), p. 15 220 11.5 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ‘At the Sepulchre’, Pall Mall Magazine (December 1901), pp. 544–5 222 11.6 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, The Female Vagrant (1903) (whereabouts unknown)223 12.1 Jessie Marion King, The Woodlands, plate 1 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913) (The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 84540. Gift: Frederick R. Koch; 10/1981)233 12.2 Jessie Marion King, Sleep baby sleep…, plate 11 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913) (The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 84540. Gift: Frederick R. Koch; 10/1981) 236 12.3 Jessie Marion King, Not God in gardens…, plate 13 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913) (The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 84540. Gift: Frederick R. Koch; 10/1981) 241 12.4 Jessie Marion King, The air a harp of myriad chords…, plate 2 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913) (The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 84540. Gift: Frederick R. Koch; 10/1981) 243 12.5 Jessie Marion King, All day she said…, plate 6 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913) (The Morgan Library & Museum. PML 84540. Gift: Frederick R. Koch; 10/1981) 245 13.1 Pamela Colman Smith, frontispiece and title page for Annancy Stories (1899) (Courtesy of Toronto Metropolitan University Library Archives & Special Collections) 255 13.2 Pamela Colman Smith, double-page opening for ‘Why Toad Walk ’pon Four Legs’, Annancy Stories, pp. 14–15 (Courtesy of Toronto Metropolitan University Library Archives & Special Collections) 256

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List of figures 13.3 A Broad Sheet (No. 9), Jack Butler Yeats and Pamela Colman Smith (Walter and Martha Leuba Papers, 1735–1988, SC.1988.01, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh. Used with permission by Estate of Jack B Yeats/SOCAN) 261 13.4 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘The Hill of Heart’s Desire’, The Green Sheaf, 1 (1903), [p. iii] (Courtesy of Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press) 262 14.1 Olive Allen, comic self-portrait and verse, ‘Bad Anna, or, Give a Dog a Bad Name’. Ink and watercolour on paper. Trebarfoot journal volume 4, 1903, pp. 150–2 (Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, The University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.3)269 14.2 Olive Allen, illustration for story critiquing Victorian mores by Sidney Chawner, Too Good to Live (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1906) 274 14.3 Olive Allen, illustration for poem by William Morris, ‘The Hill of Venus’, printed and given an Honourable Mention in The Studio, Vol. 21, No. 91 (October 1900), p. 222 276 14.4 Olive Allen, illustration for story by Maria Edgeworth, The Birthday 278 Present (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1908) 14.5 Olive Allen, illustration for Humpty Dumpty and the Princess by Lilian Timpson (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1907) 280 14.6 Overdressed Priscilla Plume criticizes the athletic Modern Girl, Tom Tomkins. Olive Allen, illustration for the play ‘The Little Female Academy’, performed in Launceston, Cornwall, and published in The Girl’s Realm (Clipping mounted in ‘The Little Female Academy’ [manuscript book], Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, The University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.7) 284

List of contributors

Dr Margo L. Beggs is an art historian and independent scholar in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, specializing in nineteenth-century art and visual culture. In September 2019, her paper ‘(Un)Dress in Southworth & Hawes’s Daguerreotype Portraits: Clytie, Proserpine, and Antebellum Boston Women’ was published in Fashion Studies, an open-access academic journal. In October 2017 she gave an online guest lecture, Children’s Picture Book Illustration: An Art Historian’s Perspective, for a University of Washington graduate course in children’s literature for librarians. Deborah Canavan completed her PhD thesis at the University of Greenwich, London, in June 2020. Her research question explores the representations and reality of workingclass women’s lives in the Christian pro-temperance magazine The British Workwoman. Deborah has also worked as a research assistant on a University of Greenwich project, ‘Nineteenth Century Business, Labour, Temperance, and Trade Periodicals’. Simon Cooke is the Editor for Illustration and Book Design for the Victorian Web. He has taught at the University of Birmingham, Coventry University, and the University of Exeter. He is the author of The Moxon Tennyson: A Landmark in Victorian Illustration (2021) and Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s: Contexts and Collaborations (2010). He is also the co-editor, with Paul Goldman, of two books of essays: ReadingVictorian Illustration, 1855–1875 (2012) and George Du Maurier: Illustrator, Author, Critic (2016), contributing to both volumes a chapter and introduction. He has published chapters in Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities (2014), in a study of Le Fanu, Reflections in a Glass Darkly (2011), in a critical edition of Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (2013), and elsewhere, as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals on Victorian literature and culture. Jo Devereux is Assistant Professor of English at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. She is the author of The Making ofWomen Artists inVictorian England (2016) as well as articles on nineteenth-century women’s art education in Victorian Review and Victorian xv

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List of contributors Periodicals Review. She is president of the Victorian Studies Association of Ontario and Assistant Editor for Gender Matters for the Victorian Web. Professor Pamela Gerrish Nunn has specialized in the histories of female artists throughout her career as an art historian, beginning in the late 1970s. Firstly in Britain and then in New Zealand, she has taught the history of western art at tertiary level, concentrating on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her publications have included pioneering research such as Canvassing (1986), Victorian Women Artists (1987), Problem Pictures (1995), A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: The Art of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (2012), and Frances Hodgkins: People (2017); she has also been an active curator in her field of specialization. She is the author of the only modern account of Fortescue-Brickdale. Carey Gibbons received her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and her dissertation discusses the illustrations of Arthur Hughes and Frederick Sandys, exploring different approaches to identity and bodily representation in Victorian illustration from c. 1850 to 1915. She is also contributing the chapter ‘Grasping the Elusive: Victorian Weather Forecasting and Arthur Hughes’s Illustrations for George MacDonald’s At the Back of the NorthWind’ to Victorian Science and Imagery: Representation and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture, a collection of essays that is scheduled for publication in spring 2021 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She recently curated an exhibition at the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library on the illustrations of Arthur Rackham. Marion Tempest Grant is a Doctoral Student in the Communications and Culture Program at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her doctoral research focuses on women’s work and social networks in the British Arts and Crafts movement. She has published on Pamela Colman Smith and the Green Sheaf in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. She is the Communications Coordinator for the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP). Dr Simon Grennan is an awarded scholar of visual narrative and a graphic novelist. He is the author of A Theory of Narrative Drawing (2017), Drawing in Drag by Marie Duval (2018), and Dispossession (2015) – one of the Guardian Books of the Year 2015. He is co-author, with Roger Sabin and Julian Waite, of Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (2020), Marie Duval (2018), and the Marie Duval Archive (www.marieduval.org) and is co-author of Key Terms in Comics Studies (2020). Since 1990, he has been half of international artists team Grennan & Sperandio, producer of over forty comics and books. Dr Grennan is Leading Research Fellow at the University of Chester and Principal Investigator for the two-year research project ‘Marie Duval presents Ally Sloper: the female cartoonist and popular theatre in London 1869–85’, funded by an AHRC Research Grant: Early Career (2014). Jaleen Grove, PhD (Art History and Criticism, Stony Brook University, 2014) is Assistant Professor in Illustration at Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI, USA). Previously she held teaching and research positions at Ringling College of Art & Design (2019–20) and Washington University (2016–19). An Associate Editor of the 592-page History of

List of contributors Illustration (2018), Grove has also served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Illustration and has written monographs on illustrators Oscar Cahén and Walter Haskell Hinton. Her work has also appeared in several refereed journals and edited books. She maintains her permanent home in Ontario, Canada, and keeps up studio practice alongside research, writing, and teaching in the areas of illustration practice, history of illustration, illustration studies, periodical studies, and Canadian art. Kate Holterhoff is an affiliated researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has published widely on the subject of nineteenth-century British illustration in academic journals (The Journal of Victorian Culture; Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies), and edited collections including Imperial Middlebrow (2019) and Re-examining Arthur Conan Doyle (2021). Her manuscript Illustration in Fin-de-Siècle Transatlantic Romance Fiction is under contract with Routledge’s British Art: Histories and Interpretations since 1700 series. She also directs and edits the digital archive VisualHaggard.org, a literary and art historical resource indexed and peer-reviewed by NINES, which contextualizes and improves access to the illustrations of H. Rider Haggard. Lorraine Janzen Kooistra is Emerita Professor of English at Toronto Metropolitan University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her research focuses on late Victorian book and periodical illustrations, with a special interest in women and print culture. As the director of Yellow Nineties 2.0, a SSHRC-funded project, she has edited searchable editions of eight little magazines of the British fin de siècle, including Pamela Colman Smith’s The Green Sheaf. Recent publications include ‘Floating Worlds: Wood Engraving and Women’s Poetry’ in The Cambridge Companion toVictorianWomen’s Poetry (2019) and ‘Victorian Women Wood Engravers: The Case of Clemence Housman’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s–1900s (2019). She has published three monographs: Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: Illustrated Gift Books 1855–1875 (2011); Christina Rossetti and Illustration: A Publishing History (2003); and The Artist as Critic: Bitextuality in Fin-de-Siècle Illustrated Books (1995). Nancy Marck Cantwell is Professor of English at Daemen College in Amherst, New York, where she teaches English and Irish literature. Her recent articles appear in the Victorian Review, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Études Irlandaises, and Supernatural Studies; book chapters appear in Guilt Rules All: Mysteries, Detectives, and Crime in Irish Fiction; Jane Austen and Philosophy; Biographical Misrepresentations of British Women Writers of the Long Nineteenth Century; and The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel. She is currently writing about substance abuse in Middlemarch, and her current book project examines George Eliot and scandal. Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at the University of the Arts London. He has published several histories of comics, including Adult Comics (1993) and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (1996). He founded the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and is series editor for the booklist Palgrave Studies in Comics. He consults on curating (British Museum, British Library, Tate Gallery) and reviews for the media. The ‘Sabin Award’ is given annually at the International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference. He is part

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List of contributors of the team that put together the Marie Duval Archive (www.marieduval.org), and the subsequent books Marie Duval (2018), and Marie Duval: MaverickVictorian Cartoonist (2020). Bethan Stevens is a senior lecturer in English and Creative & Critical Writing at the University of Sussex. She is a visiting scholar at the British Museum and research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her monograph The Wood Engravers’ Self Portrait is published by Manchester University Press (2022). Her recent dataset of the Dalziel Archive is published on the British Museum’s Collection Online, where she previously catalogued the William Blake collection. She has published several essays and articles on print culture, illustration, and creative-critical practice, for example ‘News from the Thames (Blake!) There’s Something in the Water’ in Beastly Blake (2018, edited Bruder and Connolly), and ‘Wood Engraving as Ghostwriting: The Dalziel Brothers, Losing One’s Name, and Other Hazards of the Trade’, in Textual Practice. Laurence Talairach is Professor of English Literature at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and associate researcher at the Alexandre Koyré Center for the History of Science and Technology. Her research interests cover medicine, life sciences, and English literature in the long nineteenth century. Her most recent book is Gothic Remains: Corpses,Terror and Anatomical Culture, 1764–1897 (2019). She is also the author of Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (2014), Wilkie Collins, Medicine and the Gothic (2009), and Moulding the Female Body in Victorian Fairy Tales and Sensation Fiction (2007). Dr Julian Waite is a freelance academic, performer, and librarian currently working at the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. Since 2014, he has formed the third member of the Marie Duval projects research team. Nancy V. Workman is Professor Emerita from Lewis University. During her tenure there, she held many administrative positions and ended her career as the Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR) working on academic compliance, gender equity, and other issues related to sports. Her interest in Victorian botanical illustration was the result of research done on the early artwork of Charlotte Brontë whose education included drawings of plants, often based on printed copies of etchings and woodcuts. Working on Marianne North takes Workman’s research into the world of women artists who did actual fieldwork and who explored the settings of the botanical plants they depicted.Workman has published articles on another noteworthy woman, the travel writer and translator Gertrude Bell.

Preface Jo Devereux

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n 1858, an article on the second annual exhibition of the Society of Female Artists appeared in the English Woman’s Journal. Noting that some two hundred ‘lady artists’ had contributed to the exhibition, the anonymous reviewer comments that ‘this Society affords a new industrial opening to women. It brings a class together, gives them esprit de corps, and forcibly draws the attention of the public to the number of those who follow art as a profession’.1 Not only did large numbers of women follow art as a profession but many pursued illustration as a career. Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists came about as the result of discussions I had with Pamela Gerrish Nunn about such significant but neglected Victorian illustrators as Florence Claxton, Mary Ellen Edwards, and Eleanor Vere Boyle. As we talked, we saw a need for a book on nineteenth-century women illustrators that would ‘forcibly’ draw the attention of readers to an underrepresented area of art and book history, we felt that such a study had been a long time coming, and we decided that this book should be a collaborative undertaking. With Pamela’s encouragement, I sent out a call for essays on women illustrators of the long nineteenth century and was gratified to find that many accomplished scholars are currently working in this field and were keen to participate in the project. Once the proposals began to arrive, it became clear that we should divide up the field into areas of interest, including natural history illustration, periodical and book illustration, and cartoons and caricatures. In this way, we could show the range of women’s work in visual and print culture. It also became clear that women’s work in this field extended into the fin de siècle and the early years of the twentieth century, so we knew that the book would encompass Edwardian and some later illustrations which had been produced by women who were born in the nineteenth century but who worked mainly at the start of the twentieth. With the aim of following in the footsteps of the English Woman’s Journal, Nineteenthcentury women illustrators and cartoonists considers the important contribution that women xix

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Preface artists made to the various forms and genres of illustration that flourished during the nineteenth century. Cartoonists are represented by Marie Duval, Florence Claxton, and Olive Allen Biller, though I have placed the chapter on Biller in the final part of this book, ‘Illustration at the fin de siècle’, since her work appeared in the early twentieth century. We are fortunate to be able to include many illustrations, thus providing a glimpse into the extensive world of Victorian women’s illustration. Many of the images are engravings, and so primarily black and white, but a few are in colour. We hope that both the monochrome pictures and the colour plates will evoke the vivid life that went into the creation of these memorable works. Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists is divided into three sections, chronologically arranged and covering a specific branch of illustration in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each chapter presents a critical argument about an illustrator and her place in nineteenth-century print and visual culture. A common thread that runs through the book is a focus on each illustrator’s foundational or early work, which initiated her development as an artist. The aim of this book is to show, not simply their ubiquity, but the exceptionally high quality and cultural significance of women’s illustrations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When the English Woman’s Journal reported on the exhibition of the Society of Female Artists in 1858, they were striking a blow for the inclusion of women in the critical field of the fine arts. When women artists produced drawings and engravings for periodicals and books throughout the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, they were inscribing their perspective and creating a space in which women’s visual and print culture could grow and expand. We are the beneficiaries of these and so many other brave and diligent nineteenth-century women, and we offer this book in recognition of their esprit de corps, their struggles, and their lasting achievement.

Note 1 Anonymous, ‘XXVIII. – “The Society of Female Artists”’, The English Woman’s Journal, 1/3 (1858), pp. 205–8.

Introduction Jo Devereux

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n his 1902 memoir, The Confessions of a Caricaturist, cartoonist Harry Furniss says, ‘It is the ambition of every low comedian to play Hamlet, that of every caricaturist to be able to paint a picture which shall be worthy of a place on the walls of the National Gallery’.1 Despite this lowly position, by the turn of the nineteenth century illustration and caricature were beginning to receive some serious critical attention. Graham Everitt’s English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century (1893), for example, offers a detailed examination of numerous illustrators and cartoonists of the period.2 Similarly, in his influential 1897 study of the illustration of the 1860s, Joseph Gleeson White discusses the increased prominence of illustration as a field of art: Not long since the only method deemed worthy of an artist was to paint in oils. To these, perhaps, to be literally exact, you might add a few pedants who recognised the large aims of the worker in fresco, and a still more restricted number who believed in the maker of stained glass, mosaic, or enamel, if only his death were sufficiently remote. Now, however, the humble illustrator, the man who fashions his dreams into designs for commercial reproduction by wood-engraving or ‘process,’ has found an audience, and is acquiring rapidly a fame of his own.3 Both Everitt and Gleeson White celebrate the achievement of ‘the humble illustrator’. Notably, however, they barely mention an even humbler group of artists: female illustrators and caricaturists. The omission is a glaring one, given that many periodical and book illustrations of the decade – and indeed, throughout the century – were in fact created by women. They, too, had found an audience and were acquiring a fame of their own, even if that fame virtually disappeared over the course of the new century. Meanwhile, male illustrators and caricaturists, such as Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), Randolph Caldecott, George Cruikshank, Myles Birket Foster, John Leech, and John 1

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists Tenniel, were not only spoken of in surveys of the topic4 but also received dedicated book-length studies in the twentieth century.5 In the twenty-first century, Browne, Tenniel, Linley Sambourne, and Robert Seymour have been the subjects of recent biographicalcritical monographs.6 In addition, a number of studies of Victorian illustration in general (with an emphasis on male illustrators) have been published since the start of the 2000s: for example, Encounters in the Victorian Press: Editors, Authors, Readers (2005), edited by Laurel Brake and Julie Codell; Lorraine Janzen Kooistra’s Poetry, Pictures, and Popular Publishing: The Illustrated Gift Book andVictorianVisual Culture, 1855–1875 (2011); British Literature and Print Culture (2013), edited by Sandro Jung; ReadingVictorian Illustration, 1855–1875: Spoils of the Lumber Room (2016), edited by Paul Goldman and Simon Cooke; and Catherine Golden’s Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book (2017). But there has not yet been a book-length study devoted to women illustrators of the long nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists aims to fill that gap by providing critical examinations of fifteen artists: seven English, three Scottish, three transnational (English and American or Canadian), one French, and one American. In doing so, the book foregrounds the ways in which women illustrators challenged the predominance of male artists by expressing different, often subversive, perspectives, thereby profoundly altering the style and scope of illustration. Painting pictures that were worthy to be hung on the walls of the National Gallery was, of course, an ambition of many women artists throughout the century, although their artworks have not always been easy to find. Speaking about Victorian women’s paintings, Deborah Cherry notes, ‘Plentiful in the nineteenth century, women’s works have not always had the good fortune to survive, or even survive intact, into the twentieth century’.7 The fact that illustrations, reprographic works, are specifically made to be reproduced and distributed means that many published illustrations by women artists have survived.8 At the same time, perhaps because of fine art’s higher reputation – and in spite of the relative ephemerality of women’s paintings – since the 1980s scholars have been exploring the history of Victorian women artists. Pamela Gerrish Nunn has published extensively on the subject, for example, in VictorianWomen Artists (1987); Problem Pictures: Men and Women in Victorian Painting (1995); Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists (with Jan Marsh, 1999); and A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: The Art of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (2012). Deborah Cherry’s Painting Women (1993) – cited above – provides a history of women artists through the century, while Women in theVictorian ArtWorld (1995), edited by Clarissa Campbell Orr, presents scholarly essays on women artists and critics, such as Barbara Bodichon.9 More recently, Maria Quirk has explored the professionalization of Victorian women artists in Women, Art and Money in England, 1880–1914 (2019), noting that ‘middle-class women in the nineteenth century had access to art education, but they were not generally expected to fully participate in the “market economy” of art’.10 Yet, as Quirk demonstrates, women did engage in the market, and many were successful in their intervention into this male-dominated realm. In Women Art Workers and the Arts and Crafts Movement (2020), Zoë Thomas considers the ‘vast network of artistic women working in the capital and

Introduction across the country’ who helped develop the culture of the Arts and Crafts movement in the early twentieth century.11 Similarly, Lucy Ella Rose’s Suffragist Artists in Partnership (2018) explores the work of neglected female artists of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and shows ‘women – traditionally the “repressed of culture” (Cixous 1976: 878) – to have been active and assertive participants in the cultural production of art and literature as well as in progressive political movements that developed over the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing a rich female and early feminist culture of the time’.12 These books aim to redress the oversight of women artists from the mid to late nineteenth century on into the early decades of the twentieth and to situate women’s work in the wider political and aesthetic culture of this turbulent period. Women as exhibition organizers in the later nineteenth century have also recently been the subject of scholarly work. Specifically focused on women and exhibition culture, Meghan Clarke’s Fashionability, Exhibition Culture and Gender Politics: Fair Women (2021) examines the 1894 Fair Women exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, an exhibition that included representations of women as opposed to works by women only. Most of the women on the organizing committee were influential aristocrats, and the exhibition itself was a sensational success. More importantly, however, Clarke notes that middle-class women visitors to the exhibition exemplified the changing role of women from passive and commodified figures of the domestic sphere to active consumers and critics of the marketplace, including that of fine art.13 Periodical literature shows that by the early 1890s, women were ‘in the forefront’ of many exhibitions, as The Woman’s Herald put it in October 1893 in a review of the Exhibition of Arts and Crafts at the New Gallery that year, mentioning works by Mary Newill, Mary Sargant Florence, Esther Moore, and Margaret Giles.14 The year before that, their reviewer (signed ‘Bachelière’) described the Society of Portrait Painters’ Second Exhibition in August 1892 and praised the work of women artists there, including Mrs Canziani (Louisa Starr), Mrs (Louise) Jopling, and Anna Lee Merritt.15 In November that year, the journal reviewed the Autumn Exhibition at the New Gallery, and although Bachelière found the ‘[w]omen’s work’ to be ‘disappointing’, she still approved paintings by Anna Nordgren, Lady Lindsay, Flora (Macdonald) Reid, ‘Madame Canziani’, and ‘Mrs. [Evelyn De] Morgan’.16 There is an air of ennui in her comments on the ‘paintings signed Montalba’, which ‘are, of course, most beautifully executed, but one does get a little tired of exactly the same sort of thing year after year, even though representing foreign scenery’.17 The slightly jaded tone of Bachelière’s review suggests how far women had come by 1892 in terms of invading the traditionally patriarchal space of the art museum, after decades of fighting to be admitted to such exclusively masculine sanctified spaces as the Royal Academy (RA) Schools, life classes, anatomy classes, clubs, and printing houses. In the middle of the century, women had met with widespread resistance, forcing them to campaign – as in the case of the Langham Place Group’s 1859 petition for women to be admitted into the RA Schools – and to create their own spaces within galleries, artists’ societies, exhibitions, schools, evening life classes, and periodicals. The Society of Female Artists began holding their own exhibitions in 1857, and by 1860, despite the failure of

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists the petition, Laura Herford had succeeded in being admitted as a probationer to the RA Schools through the subterfuge of having submitted the required drawing signed with her initials only. That same year, the artist and caricaturist Florence Claxton exhibited The Choice of Paris: An Idyll at the Portland Gallery, London, and, like her sister Adelaide and Mary Ellen Edwards, another successful artist and illustrator, began illustrating for popular periodicals. Still in 1860, Emily Faithfull founded the Victoria Press, and the Female School of Art, established in 1842, moved to Queen’s Square. All this is to suggest that the 1860s was a decade of seismic change for women artists. As the century wore on, women continued to make their way into traditionally male places, transforming both themselves and the spaces in the process. As Tim Ingold suggests, ‘To inhabit place is to construct and establish roots, both material and metaphorical, within place.’ 18 From the mid decades to the late nineteenth century in Britain, women’s roots in art schools, galleries, and museums grew exponentially, driven primarily by Victorian feminism. But, if the nineteenth-century women’s movement allowed middle-class women to enter forbidden spaces, less laudably it also participated in Victorian empire building or at least was complicit in the invasion and exploitation of space in many regions of the world. In an essay on the Langham Place Group and their travels to Algeria in the 1850s, Deborah Cherry comments that ‘from the very moment of its emergence as an organized movement, feminism’s discourses on women were tangled with discourses on race’.19 She cites Gayatri Spivak’s argument that the feminist reconstitution of women in the West as autonomous human beings left out the ‘native female’ from this new social formation.20 By the 1890s, English women seem to have embraced the imperialist idea of Britain and its colonies to the extent that in October 1894, the Englishwoman’s Review was calling for an ‘imperial exhibition of women’s work’: When a young and rising nation wishes to take its place in the world of art and industry it is careful to secure adequate representation at an International Exhibition. Women are very much in the position of such a nation; they do not wish to enter into undue competition, or to range themselves as rivals with those who command the markets of this country, or of the world, but they do want recognition for their work on its merits, for they feel that the amount and excellence of the work done by women in England and her Colonies is absolutely unknown to the general public. An Imperial Exhibition of Women’s Work would clearly be very useful.21 The Victorian Era Exhibition, Earl’s Court, as it was called, opened on 24 May 1897, Queen Victoria’s birthday, forming part of the jubilee celebrations that year, and the Women’s Section was sited – perhaps appropriately – beside the Imperial Gardens.22 Susan Morgan has defined ‘the colonial enterprise as aggression and accumulation’, examining the ways in which ‘the European scientific gaze’ renders indigenous people and culture mere background to the project, displacing them from a position of ownership and autonomy.23 Space is transformed and controlled under imperialism, and the artists

Introduction in this book were frequently complicit in the colonial enterprise that shaped the nineteenth century. While control of the seas around the globe signified imperial power, as Laurence Talairach suggests in her chapter on Eleanor Vere Boyle, the imperialist impulse also appears in conservatories and botany in the period, notable, for instance, in the collecting of ‘exotic’ specimens of birds and plants for study and display. Boyle’s work includes ‘the transformation of space’ characteristic of Victorian imperialism. In this context, we should also note the position of another illustrator, the botanical artist Marianne North. As Nancy Workman’s chapter on North below notes, North expressed problematic views on race. For example, in her recollections of her life and travels, North went so far as to offer justifications for slavery in Brazil during the 1870s. After travelling and painting in the Americas, Africa, Borneo, and the Caribbean, in 1882 North opened her own space of a dedicated gallery at Kew Gardens in London. Morgan points out that this act was largely owing to North’s privileged position in the upper or ruling class of British society. The ability to go where one likes is inevitably linked to privilege. North had to resist the containment of gender ideology, but not that of class or race. Indeed, the space of Kew Gardens itself, where she established her gallery, has come under scrutiny by postcolonial authors for its part in exploiting imperial subjects.24 Of the illustrators included in this book, only one, Pamela Colman Smith, may have been biracial. Like the other artists considered here, Smith defied gender and class norms of the time: unlike them, she also challenged racial categorization and pushed against racist boundaries. This is a subject that demands more attention in a work on women artists of colour, whose experience was far different from that of the women in this book. Although this volume does not contain enough women of colour, it does include women from different regions of the United Kingdom and its colonies. Jemima Blackburn, Eleanor Vere Boyle, and Jessie Marion King were all born in Scotland; Pamela Colman Smith was from Jamaica; Florence and Adelaide Claxton lived in Australia; and Olive Allen Biller and Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon were Canadian. The women in this volume travelled and studied abroad, thereby widening their perspective on art, culture, and illustration. The one American illustrator in the collection, Alice Barber Stephens, studied at the Académie Julien in Paris, while Edith Hume was profoundly influenced by the Hague School in her paintings of Katwijk and Scheveningen beaches in Holland. The chapters on these artists examine the effects of regional identity, as well as their interpellation within the gendered economy of the mid to late nineteenth century. When we turn from the spaces embodied in world travel and in buildings such as art galleries to the reprographic space within texts, we can see that although the illustrations in books and periodicals are contained, they are at the same time widely available and thus more democratic in their reach than art in exhibitions and galleries. In his chapter on Mary Ellen Edwards, Simon Cooke notes that the reception of her important work in periodical illustration has become more sexist in our time than during her career. The respect that Edwards gained in her lifetime underlines the fact that women illustrators in the nineteenth century were able to inhabit the textual space of the periodical more readily than the physical space of the museum, gallery, or art school. Women could both

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists produce and consume the images within periodicals and books and could avail themselves of advances in reprographic technology, perhaps because their physical embodiment was not there to affront patriarchal protectionism. But there is still the critical erasure of their work. Possibly, the field of critical discourse was regarded as a masculine space, unlike the periodical serial or novel in volumes. So long as women’s illustration was confined to domestic fiction and children’s literature – areas regarded as quintessentially ‘female’ – then it would be sanctioned by male critics. Yet, even within this narrow scope, and within light society satire, women illustrators could and did offer subversive counter-readings of social mores and conservative ideology, as this book hopes to show. Perhaps these women illustrators were not so humble after all. A report on the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, titled ‘Women Illustrators’, notes that ‘As women increase in physical vigor and mental grasp – through the higher education – they eagerly seek an outlet for their energies. In art, perhaps, more than in any other profession, do they find the conditions which make for success.’ 25 The conditions which made for the success of women illustrators included a flourishing of print culture, an expanding periodical press, technological advances in printing and engraving, the increased opening of art schools to women students from the 1860s onwards, and above all, the growing women’s movement that tirelessly campaigned for women’s access to educational, social, economic, and political parity with men.

Beasts, birds, botany, and travel In the words of Barbara T. Gates, ‘Victorians were in love with natural history.’ 26 Throughout the nineteenth century, natural history inspired passion, enthusiasm, even obsession, and of course it was intertwined with Victorians’ love of taxonomies and their overwhelming drive to collect and label objects. Indeed, the term ‘natural history’ itself denotes the description and classification of natural organisms, as opposed to biology, which examines the processes and mechanisms of the organic world. Gates cites nineteenth-century books such as Louisa Anne Meredith’s The Romance of Nature; or the Flower Seasons Illustrated (1836) and Philip Henry Gosse’s The Romance of Natural History (1860) to underline the Victorian sense of the magic and fantastical aspects of natural history, its wonder in the precision and beauty of natural forms. Gosse, of course, illustrated many of his own books on marine aquatic life, and the narrative style of his writing – like that of Charles Kingsley on the same subject – connects moral and aesthetic considerations with appreciative and exact observation.27 As Paul L. Farber suggests, when biology and physiology began to take hold during the nineteenth century, the discipline of natural history underwent profound changes.28 One of the changes was a huge increase in the number of practitioners in the field. Information became more widely available, interest in nature grew, and imperial expansion led to more middle-class Europeans travelling, observing, and collecting exotic species of plants and animals from around the world. These developments primarily benefitted the privileged members of society and might even have contributed to growing inequities connected with social class, gender, and race. For the middle classes, Farber

Introduction notes that the flourishing trade in natural history literature allowed people ‘(including some women) to support themselves as naturalists’.29 The phrase ‘some women’ invokes the anomalousness of women in this field, even as late as the nineteenth century. When it comes to natural history illustration, however, women have had a much longer history. Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi notes that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, women turned to scientific illustration: Denied an active role in the theoretical and experimental sciences, many women with an inclination for such subjects turned instead to scientific illustration, an art form which provided an outlet for their innate curiosity and sensitivity to the myriad aspects of the natural world. With their attributes of patience and minute accuracy, women were acknowledged to excel in this art form.30 Just as the reviewer of the ‘Women Illustrators’ at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 commented on the need for educated women to find ‘an outlet for their energies’, so Tomasi describes the ways in which women used art as a means of ingress into the world of the natural sciences. She points to the connection between traditionally feminine embroidery subjects – ‘botanical, floral, and zoological’ – and says that women artists began to develop their own styles and approaches to these subjects at about the time that saw the emergence of the still life as a genre of painting.31 During the nineteenth century, floral paintings were a popular choice for women artists, both professional and amateur, many of whom specialized in this type of painting. Meanwhile, the most celebrated female artist of zoological subjects was almost certainly Rosa Bonheur, although other female artists such as Elizabeth Butler and Georgina Bowers also excelled at equestrian paintings. The first part of Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists, ‘Natural history illustration, 1855–1890’, examines the work of three artists whose illustrations reveal their scientific curiosity and acumen: Jemima Blackburn, Eleanor Vere Boyle, and Marianne North. These intrepid women contributed to the study of botany and zoology as well as to the arts. The artists here – as in the two subsequent parts of the book – have been arranged in chronological order by date of birth to provide a sense of their context and milieu. The first illustrator in Part I, Jemima Blackburn (née Wedderburn, 1823–1909), was born in Edinburgh in 1823, the youngest of six children. Her father, James Wedderburn, was the solicitor-general of Scotland. As a young child, Jemima was frequently unwell and was encouraged by a family friend, the distinguished physician John Abercrombie, to draw.32 Her childhood experience in drawing was complemented by an early and continuing interest in biology. According to Rob Fairley, in his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography essay on Blackburn, Jemima was an intellectually curious child, who ‘used to skin mice so as to find out how their muscles worked’.33 After her mother died in 1865, Jemima met John Ruskin through another family friend, the physician Henry Acland, and Ruskin was impressed with her drawings, as was the most famous Victorian animal painter, Edwin Landseer, who evidently said that ‘in the drawing of animals he had nothing

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists to teach her’.34 When Jemima Blackburn’s Birds Drawn from Nature was published in 1862 (reprinted 1868), she became one of the foremost ornithological illustrators of her time, rivalling male illustrators and ornithologists such as Thomas Bewick, Edward Lear, Henry Stacy Marks, and John James Audubon. So influential were Blackburn’s ornithological illustrations that her drawing of a fledgling cuckoo pushing a pipit out of its nest ‘prompted Charles Darwin to revise a paragraph in the 6th edition of the Origin of Species (1872)’.35 Like Blackburn, the second artist in this section of the book, Eleanor Vere Boyle (generally known as EVB, 1825–1916) was born in Scotland and was also the youngest, this time of nine children. Her father, Alexander Gordon, ‘was the illegitimate son of George Gordon, third earl of Aberdeen, and his mistress Penelope Dering’.36 Her mother’s family was equally exalted, her father being an army officer, Richard Cumberland, and her mother, Lady Albinia, the daughter of George Hobart, the third earl of Buckinghamshire. Unlike Blackburn, EVB did not show great interest in drawing until after her own children were born. Like her, however, she was influenced by John Ruskin. She was taught by Thomas Landseer, etcher, engraver, and brother of Edwin. Both Blackburn and EVB benefitted from being born into wealthy families with connections to the artistic and scientific worlds. That is not to say, however, that they simply drifted into art: both women worked hard to achieve recognition as serious artists. EVB was the first artist to illustrate nursery rhymes, and her Child’s Play (1852) ‘won praise from John Ruskin,Thomas Landseer, Tom Taylor, and Francis Turner Palgrave’.37 As a result, she was included in John Everett Millais’s sketching club in 1854. Both Blackburn and EVB produced meticulously accurate illustrations from nature, in an era when artistic renderings of plants and animals were necessary since photography, though evolving through the middle of the century, was not yet capable of showing biological structures clearly. The third artist, Marianne North (1830–90), had a similar experience of being born into a privileged echelon of society and early in her life meeting important scientists and artists of the time. She was born at Hastings in 1830; her father, Frederick North, was an MP with ancestors in the landed gentry. At the age of seventeen, Marianne travelled through Europe with her family for three years, and on their return to England in 1850, she became interested in music and painting, especially flower painting. Through her father, she met Sir William and Sir Joseph Hooker, directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. After her father’s death in 1868, she began travelling the world alone and painting. In the second chapter of her autobiography, she says, ‘I had long had the dream of going to some tropical country to paint its peculiar vegetation on the spot in natural abundant luxuriance’.38 From 1871 to 1879, she visited many countries, including Borneo, Brazil, Canada, Ceylon, India, Jamaica, Japan, Java, and the USA. Back in England, she exhibited her botanical paintings and later gave them to Kew to be exhibited in their own gallery, which she financed herself. In 1880, Darwin encouraged North to sail to Australia and New Zealand, after which she set up the gallery and the catalogue of her paintings, supplementing them with trips to South Africa and the Seychelles in 1882–3. Marianne North often evinced reprehensible colonialist views in her writings; however,

Introduction her work still deserves attention as a record of the travels and scientific observation of an independent woman of the mid-nineteenth century, credited with the discovery of several plant species. She is included in this book on women illustrators because her gallery at Kew, which now houses over 800 of her paintings, represents almost a large book into which readers can physically or virtually enter – or, at the very least, a rich archive of later nineteenth-century natural history illustration.

Caricature, children’s books, and wood engraving In the American Woman’s Journal for February 1894, Caroline A. Powell notes that ‘Of all kinds of art work, that which is most familiar to us is the illustrations in our popular magazines. Most people look at the pictures, even if they do not always take time to read the articles.’ 39 Moving from natural history to book and periodical illustration that encompassed numerous subjects, Nineteenth-century women illustrators parallels the development that took place through the century as women artists branched out from flower painting and still life to the more traditionally masculine genres of history, landscape, portraiture, and caricature. Yet we begin Part II with a traditionally feminine space, that of children’s literature. By the end of the century, many women were specializing in illustrating and writing children’s books, making them stiff competition for such ‘lords of the nursery’ as Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott. While Gleeson White omits to mention any women in English Illustration: ‘The Sixties’, he includes several women artists in his Children’s Books and Their Illustrators (1897). These include Eleanor Vere Boyle, Gertrude M. Bradley, Mrs Gaskin, Mrs R. Hallward, Alice Havers, Lucy Kemp-Welch, Mary J. Newill, Beatrix Potter, Winifred Smith, and Alice Woodward.40 It is, of course, virtually impossible to talk about children’s books and not mention Kate Greenaway, whose illustrations inspired an entire style of clothing and other cultural products in France, known as ‘Greenawayisme’, and who has a major annual children’s book award, the Kate Greenaway Medal, named for her, first awarded in 1957, two years after it was established in 1955.41 Part II of Nineteenth-century women illustrators examines the work of seven women illustrators who produced work ranging from children’s books to satires in periodicals. The first illustrator in Part II, like Kate Greenway, has a children’s picture book award named for her, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award, established in 1971 by the Canadian Library Association.42 Howard-Gibbon was born in Sussex in 1826 and in the 1850s emigrated to Canada, where she taught at schools in St Thomas and in Sarnia, Ontario until 1873, when she returned to England to take up an inheritance from an uncle. While living in Canada, she illustrated an alphabet book, which she then gave to a friend, who later donated the manuscript to the Toronto Children’s Library. It now resides in the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books there. This book, HowardGibbon’s Illustrated Alphabet (1859), is regarded as Canada’s first picture book even though it was not published until 1966, when Oxford University Press (Toronto) published it as An Illustrated Comic Alphabet. Unlike better-known illustrators such as Kate Greenaway

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists and Beatrix Potter,43 Howard-Gibbon has not received much critical attention, and therefore she is a welcome addition to this collection of essays. Whereas Howard-Gibbon’s Illustrated Alphabet was produced in 1859 but not published for over a hundred years, Mary Ellen Edwards’s accomplished illustrations appeared in many books and periodicals from 1859, the date of her first verified published drawing, to the end of her life in 1934. Edwards (or MEE as she often signed her work) earned as much for her illustrations as many male illustrators did, and she also exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Glasgow Institute, and the Society of Women Artists.44 Edwards was born in 1838 in Surbiton; her father was a farmer, engineer, and inventor. She received little formal art education, although she did briefly attend the South Kensington School of Art. In 1866, she married John Freer, who worked for the Peninsular and Oriental Company (which figures in the chapter on Florence and Adelaide Claxton below). After Freer’s death in 1869, MEE continued to exhibit and to produce illustrations for such periodicals as The Graphic. She collaborated with her second husband, John Charles Staples, as well as working independently. As Simon Cooke points out, although MEE was enormously successful as a professional illustrator in her lifetime, her work has been widely considered to be too domestic, sentimental, and ‘feminine’ to be taken seriously.45 His chapter here on MEE challenges this view and builds on his research into this important artist, whose career spanned both the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. Edith Hume (1843–1906) was born Edith Dunn in 1843, grew up in a Baptist temperance household in Cornwall, studied at Heatherley’s School of Art in London, and was deeply influenced by the Hague School in the Netherlands. As so little is known about Hume, the chapter on her by Deborah Canavan provides the first biographical study as well as a critical examination of her work in the periodicals London Society and The British Workwoman. Hume contributed to these magazines, as well as to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Belgravia and John Cassell’s Quiver. Thus, she illustrated for both temperance publications and sensation fiction: a provocatively diverse range of choices. As Canavan points out, Hume was interested in the collective nature of the fishing communities she depicts in her illustrations for The British Workwoman. Like many women illustrators, Hume was drawn to the idea of collectivity and used her art to portray scenes of women at work. A more overtly feminist artist who also depicted working women is the American illustrator Alice Barber Stephens (1858–1932). Born in 1858 in Salem, New Jersey, into a Quaker family, Alice Barber attended the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, studying wood engraving, and then went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1876, where she was in the first class of women at the Academy. She began her career as a professional illustrator in 1879, when her painting ‘The Women’s Life Class’ was published in Scribner’s Monthly. In 1880, she started working as an engraver for magazines, including Harper’s and The Century. In 1897, she published six full-page illustrations for a series entitled ‘The American Woman’ in The Ladies’ Home Journal. This series presented iconographic images of the newly emerging businesswoman of the late nineteenth century

Introduction in America. As well as periodicals, Barber Stephens also illustrated books by authors such as Louisa May Alcott, Sarah Orne Jewitt, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dinah Mulock Craik, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and George Eliot. She won several awards for her illustrations, including a gold medal at the Earl’s Court Exhibition in 1899 and a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900. Her career exemplifies the kind of success in illustration that Alice C. Morse celebrates in her report on the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, in 1893. At the end of Part II, we move on to caricature. In English Female Artists (1876), Ellen C. Clayton includes a brief discussion of the sisters Florence (1838–1920) and Adelaide Claxton (1841–1927). Clayton opens by saying ‘It is one of the most disappointing paradoxes of modern times, that the very people who create the poetry, the humour, the ideal reflections of the heart or outer world, lead generally the most prosaic lives of all the community, even when in their own persons beautiful and graceful, or odd and eccentric’.46 Yet, even in her prosaic life, Florence Claxton, says Clayton, ‘had done what no female artist in all the world had attempted before – made a drawing on wood for a weekly illustrated paper’:47 ‘The names of Isabel Thompson and Miss Kelly were familiar to wood-draughtsmen, but as yet no woman had thought of trying to solve the mysteries of preparing and executing a wood-block’.48 A daughter of the engraver John Thompson, Isabel Thompson, along with her sisters Eliza and Augusta, was a wood engraver, as were Mary Byfield and Mary Ann Williams.49 Although art schools for women, such as Fanny McIan’s Female School of Design, offered classes in wood engraving, and although as early as 1838 Henry Cole had recommended wood engraving as a suitable vocation for women to pursue, in fact the work was gruelling and unremunerative, as well as difficult to obtain, owing to the closed-shop nature of the employment that protected men from female incursions into their work force. Oddly enough, as we have seen, it was somewhat easier for women to break into the world of exhibitions. Even the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition was open to women, and occasionally, as with Elizabeth Thompson, Lady Butler’s Roll Call in 1874, was a place where their work could attract enormous attention and praise. Of course, such successes as Butler’s tended to be anomalies, emphasizing the gender gap in exhibition culture throughout the century. Florence Claxton’s satirical picture book The Adventures of a Woman in Search of Her Rights (first printed circa 1870 using the recently invented graphotype process)50 mocks the ambitions of young ladies who entered pictures into the exhibition. After attending university and then choosing among subjects to read, the young woman in the book ‘ultimately attains a high DEGREE! – of impudence’, is called to the bar, and after campaigning for women’s suffrage turns to art as a profession. She ‘[s]ends several pictures to the Exhibition’ but receives ‘The fatal R…’. However, ‘She studies in the galleries abroad, and soon arrives at the top of the Ladder’ – that is, literally atop a ladder at the RA, suggesting that her submission has been accepted but ‘skyed’. This page of illustrations of a young woman’s career as an artist ends with a drawing of the fashionable young lady painting a portrait and the caption ‘What Tomkins said to Jones – “BOTHER the old masters, look at the young Miss-esses.”’ 51

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists Although Claxton’s last book does not sound feminist at all, the chapter on the Claxtons nevertheless focuses on the subversion of patriarchal values in Florence’s and Adelaide’s work of the 1860s and early 1870s. In different ways, both Claxton sisters shifted the perspective of male illustrators and caricaturists, thereby unsettling the dominant culture of Punch and other periodicals of the time. Beginning with Florence, the chapter examines her subtle undermining of patriarchal privilege in mid-Victorian society. Her caricatures adapt and, I suggest, feminize the dominant male caricatures, such as those by George Cruikshank, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), and Kenny Meadows. In the section on Adelaide, I argue that her illustrations for London Society imply a subtle confrontation of imperialist values, as her sister’s illustrations mock gender norms, manners, fashions, and hobbies. Like the other illustrators in Part II, these artists develop subtle if often exaggerated representations of the body, showing the ways society constructs and confines the bodies of women especially, as they move through spaces, both at home and abroad. They also poke fun at masculine performativity in their images of military men and mid-century dandies or ‘swells’. Thus, both illustrators champion women even as they apparently acquiesce to the dominant gender ideology. The next chapter in this part of the book looks at the work of Marie Duval (1847–90), who, like Florence Claxton, frequently depicts contorted and grotesque bodies. Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite make a case for the rehabilitation of this important but nearly forgotten artist. Duval’s creation Ally Sloper is so recognizable that it is ‘a national institution’. Duval contributed a significant and memorable image to the popular consciousness of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. And yet, as Grennan, Sabin, and Waite suggest, the attribution of her cartoons has been very long in coming. Her work, they note, is connected both to the commercial world and to popular culture, thereby exemplifying the democratic nature of periodical illustration. Grennan, Sabin, and Waite argue that Duval challenged the entire traditional style of cartooning with her work for the periodical Judy. She also put paid to the notion that women could not be funny. Their chapter reinstates the attribution of her art and lays out very clearly their methodology behind the work of recovery. Like the other women illustrators in this part of the book, Duval suffered from a kind of critical erasure that was almost certainly due to the gender politics of the early to mid-twentieth century even more than to Victorian ideas of the proper feminine and the woman’s sphere.

Aestheticism, Art Nouveau, and the Arts and Crafts movement The fin de siècle is notable both for innovation in artistic form and style and for challenges to conventional morality. Thus, the chapters in the third and final part of Nineteenth-century women illustrators consider the work of five women artists who embraced the new style at the century’s end and pointed the way forward to modern illustration. All these illustrators were variously influenced by Aestheticism, Art Nouveau, the Arts and Crafts movement, and – in the case of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale – the Gothic Revival and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of earlier decades of the nineteenth century. They were also borne along

Introduction on the tide of feminism and influenced by the figure of the New Woman. Along with illustration, these artists also worked in design. Yet, once again, their contemporary success was obscured throughout the twentieth century, making their work ripe for revival and reconsideration today. In the first chapter of this final section of the book, Kate Holterhoff examines Amy Sawyer (1863–1945), an artist who worked in several different media, including painting, illustration, and textiles. Sawyer was among a number of women who studied at the Herkomer School of Art. She exhibited at the Society of Women Artists, the Royal Academy, and the Paris Salon and was an important practitioner of the Arts and Crafts movement. Like many fin de siècle artists, playwrights, and poets, she was deeply interested in the occult, as well as in folk and fairy tales. Kate Holterhoff’s chapter on Sawyer examines her depictions of medieval romance and notes the psychological complexity of her work and the ways in which it engages with issues of sex and gender. In the next chapter, Pamela Gerrish Nunn examines the black-and-white work of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (1872–1945). Nunn discusses the importance of black-andwhite illustration in the development of women’s art in the mid to late nineteenth century and shows how Brickdale’s art as a painter grew out of her early work as an illustrator. As she produced her illustrations, Brickdale helped to reshape the landscape of print culture and to show that commercial work, such as bookplate design, could be regarded as just as significant as fine art. Like most of the artists in this book, Brickdale was not rebellious but rather ambitious to make a name for herself as a successful artist. Her early career involved producing highly accomplished magazine illustrations, thereby raising her own value as an artist and improving the quality of illustration in the late nineteenth century. Brickdale was often referred to as the last of the Pre-Raphaelites, and her work shares many characteristics with the Gothic Revival. Brickdale was born nineteen years after John Ruskin’s and A. W. N. Pugin’s seminal works on the Gothic, in the same year that Charles Eastlake’s History of the Gothic Revival was published, 1872. Yet Ruskin may have influenced her early development as an artist: her older brother Charles studied with Ruskin at the Ruskin School of Drawing. She herself studied at the Crystal Palace School of Art before being admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in 1896.52 In 1897, she began exhibiting at the Royal Academy – a black-and-white drawing of Sir Lancelot du Lake – and at the Dowdeswell Gallery, where in the early 1900s she had three solo exhibitions.53 In 1902, she became the first female member of the Institute of Painters in Oils. She exhibited at Leighton House in 1902 and 1904, at which time G. F. Watts praised her work (Leighton himself had died in 1896).54 As well as illustrations and paintings, Brickdale also designed memorials and stained-glass windows. While studying at the Royal Academy Schools she met John Byam Shaw, who had been influenced by Waterhouse and Millais and was interested in ‘the spiritual qualities of medieval art’.55 When Shaw opened an art school in Kensington in 1911, he hired Brickdale as a tutor and teacher. Thus, she passed on the influence of her own interpretation of the PreRaphaelites in the early twentieth century. She also combined the fine arts with the

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists decorative, as many women illustrators did at the end of the century, connecting design and commercial commissions with more academic work. Design is also important to the next illustrator in this section on the fin de siècle. Like the first illustrator in this book, Jemima Blackburn, Jessie Marion King (1875–1949) was born in Scotland. She studied and later taught at the Glasgow School of Art, and her designs for fabrics, wallpapers, and costumes share her distinctive outline style of illustration. She also designed ‘ceramics and silver for Liberty’s of London’.56 In her chapter on King, Carey Gibbons explores the influence of the New Thought movement on her illustration work. Gibbons suggests that King’s illustrations reveal her confidence in her own vision of the world and her abilities to express that vision. In the penultimate chapter of the book, Marion Tempest Grant and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra consider the illustrations of Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951). Born in Pimlico, London, in 1878, Colman Smith spent some of her childhood in Manchester and in Kingston, Jamaica, when her family moved there in 1889. In 1893, they moved to Brooklyn, New York, where her father had grown up, and Smith studied at the Pratt Institute. After the deaths of both her parents, when she was just twenty-one years old, she moved to England, working as an illustrator and in theatre design, influenced by her association with the great actress Ellen Terry. Smith was persuaded by W. B.Yeats to join the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1901. She also wrote and illustrated books of stories based on Jamaican folklore, and she is perhaps best known for creating the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot card deck. Grant and Kooistra’s chapter explores Smith’s work on her avant-garde magazine, The Green Sheaf, which she launched in 1903. They argue that Smith used the process of hand colouring illustration to resist the numbing effects of commercial capitalism on the creative arts. Resistance also forms the motive for the final artist in the book, Olive Allen Biller (1879–1957). Jaleen Grove examines Biller’s work in terms of the shift from the New Woman to the Modern Girl, moving the book emphatically from the Victorian into the modern world of the early twentieth century. Like many illustrators in this book, Biller exemplifies the resistance of women illustrators to the confining dictates of nineteenthcentury print culture. Just as the women’s movement of the mid to late nineteenth century actively rewrote women into history and politics, so illustrators like Biller redrew women and their lives, thus giving them agency to shape their own futures in the world. Biller was another woman born into middle-class, white privilege, yet we must not forget that she, like the other illustrators in this book, needed to challenge the representation of women in print culture and to take on the powerful position of caricaturist and mocker of sacred values. In her chapter on Biller, Grove mentions the earlier women caricaturists such as Ellen Clayton, Marie Duval, and Florence and Adelaide Claxton, all of whom offered a vital and subversive depiction of patriarchal culture. By contrast, Biller was a more genteel illustrator, as Grove suggests. Nevertheless, her work, like that of all the artists in this book, carved out a space for women illustrators within and against the hegemony of patriarchal culture.

Introduction A common thread in the book is thus a simultaneous resistance to and accommodation of that culture. The women illustrators considered in the chapters below were not radical feminists; neither were they patriarchal apologists. Instead, they worked within the system to effect change. Although they have been virtually ignored for over a century, these women artists had a profound impact on the visual and print culture of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For some of these women, work in illustration, as many of these chapters will show, formed the foundation for their later exhibited paintings. For others, illustration remained the primary source of income and artistic achievement. As I have suggested in this introduction, these artists were for the most part middle class and therefore able to take advantage of the privilege accorded to that socio-economic position. They were all also, with the possible exception of Pamela Colman Smith, white. It would be a worthwhile future project to bring together chapters on the work of Victorian women artists and illustrators of colour. Shifting the perspective of the dominant culture must be a continuing process, adding to the sum of knowledge of and appreciation for women artists, illustrators, and cartoonists of the nineteenth century. Of the fifteen illustrators covered in Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists, only four have been accorded book-length studies: Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Marie Duval, Jessie Marion King, and Pamela Colman Smith. Two of these critical biographies were written by contributors: Pamela Gerrish Nunn’s A Pre-Raphaelite Journey:The Art of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (2012) (mentioned above) and Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite’s Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (2020). The other illustrators, many of whom were highly successful in their own lifetimes, have yet to see a full-length biography or book-length critical study. It is our hope that this volume will inspire more work on these artists and on others yet to be rediscovered and celebrated.

Notes 1 Harry Furniss, The Confessions of a Caricaturist, vol. 1 (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1902), p. 91. 2 Graham Everitt, English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1893), p. 427. By contrast, M. H. Spielmann’s The History of ‘Punch’ (1895) provides extensive treatment of male artists for Punch and refers briefly to one female writer (Miss M. Betham-Edwards) and three female illustrators: Miss ‘Georgina Bowers’ (1836–1912), ‘Mrs. [Louise] Jopling Rowe’ (1843–1933), and Miss Sambourne. 3 Joseph Gleeson White, English Illustration: ‘The Sixties’: 1855–70 (Westminster: A. Constable, 1903), p. 3. 4 Paul Goldman’s Victorian Illustration (1996), for example, like Gleeson White’s English Illustration, omits all mention of women illustrators. Victorian Illustration (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996). 5 See, for example, Frederick George Kitton, ‘Phiz’ (Hablot Knight Browne): A Memoir, Including a Selection from His Correspondence and Notes on His Principal Works (London: W. Satchell, 1882); Henry Blackburn, Randolph Caldecott: A Memoir of his Early Art Career (London: Low, Marston, Searle & Livingston, 1890); Rodney K. Engen, Randolph Caldecott: Lord of the Nursery (London: Bloomsbury, 1988); William Bates, George Cruikshank: The Artist, the Humourist, and the Man,

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7 8

9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

with Some Account of his Brother Robert. A Critico-bibliographical Essay (Amsterdam: Emmering, 1972); Hilary and Mary Evans, The Man Who Drew the Drunkard’s Daughter: Life and Art of George Cruikshank, 1792–1878 (London: Frederick Muller, 1978); Herbert Minton Cundall, Birket Foster, R.W. S. (London: A & C Black, 1906); Frank Lewis, Birket Foster (Leigh on Sea: Lewis, 1973); Jan Reynolds, Myles Birket Foster (London: Batsford, 1984); William Powell Frith, John Leech: His Life and Work (London: R. Bentley, 1891); Simon Houfe, John Leech and the Victorian scene (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1984); Frederick George Kitton, John Leech, Artist and Humorist: A Biographical Sketch (London: G. Redway, 1883); Rodney Engen, Sir John Tenniel: Alice’s White Knight (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1991); Michael Hancher, The Tenniel Illustrations to the Alice Books (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1985); William Cosmo Monkhouse, The Life and Works of Sir John Tenniel (London: Art Journal Easter Annual, 1901); Frances Sarzano, Sir John Tenniel (London: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1948); Roger Simpson, Sir John Tenniel: Aspects of His Work (Rutherford, NJ and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994). Valerie Lester, Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens (London: Chatto and Windus, 2011); Frankie Morris, Artist of Wonderland:The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005); Juliet McMaster, That Mighty Art of Black-And-White: Linley Sambourne, Punch, and the Royal Academy (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Ad Hoc Press, 2009); Leonee Ormond, Linley Sambourne: Illustrator and Punch Cartoonist (London: Paul Holberton, 2010); Brian Maidment, Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture: Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration (London: Routledge, 2021). Deborah Cherry, Painting Women:Victorian Women Artists (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 3. The one exception in the book is Marianne North, whose botanical paintings form the subject of Chapter 3 by Nancy Workman. North herself set up the gallery at Kew Gardens that houses and displays her paintings. Jo Devereux, The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016) examines the education and professional careers of six prominent nineteenth-century British artists: Kate Greenaway, Elizabeth Butler, Helen Allingham, Princess Louise, Evelyn De Morgan, and Henrietta Rae. However, except for Kate Greenaway – and Helen Paterson (Allingham) when she illustrated for the Cornhill Magazine before concentrating on painting – these artists were known primarily as painters and sculptors, so illustration was not a primary focus in that book. Maria Quirk, Women, Art and Money in Late Victorian and Edwardian England: The Hustle and the Scramble (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 2. Zoë Thomas, Women ArtWorkers and the Arts and Crafts Movement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), p. 1. Lucy Ella Rose, Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender, Word and Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), p. 243. Meghan Clarke, Fashionability, Exhibition Culture and Gender Politics: FairWomen (London: Routledge, 2021), p. 23. ‘At the Arts and Crafts Exhibition. Women in the Forefront’, The Woman’s Herald (October 19, 1893), p. 548. Bachelière, ‘The Society of Portrait Painters. Second Exhibition’, The Woman’s Herald (August 27, 1892), p. 5. Bachelière, ‘The New Gallery. Autumn Exhibition’, The Woman’s Herald (November 12, 1892), pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 13. Original emphasis. Quoted in Angharad Saunders, Place and the Scene of Literary Practice (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 42.

Introduction 19 Deborah Cherry, ‘Shuttling and Soul Making: Tracing the Links between Algeria and Egalitarian Feminism in the 1850s’, in TheVictorians and Race, ed. Shearer West (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1996), p. 156. 20 Ibid., p. 157. 21 F. M. Roberts Austen, ‘Art II. – The Proposed Imperial Exhibition of Women’s Work’, Englishwoman’s Review (15 October 1894), p. 230. 22 The women’s pictures were curated by the artist Henrietta Rae, the only non-titled lady on the women’s committee. See ‘Women’s Pictures at the Victorian Exhibition, Earl’s Court’, The Woman’s Signal, 8/184 (8 July 1897), p. 19. 23 Susan Morgan, Place Matters: Gendered Geography in Victorian Women’s Travel Books about Southeast Asia (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), p. 126. 24 For example, Jamaica Kincaid calls Kew Gardens ‘a clearinghouse for all the plants stolen from the various parts of the world’ (quoted in Morgan, Place Matters, p. 42). 25 Alice C. Morse, ‘Women Illustrators’, in Maud Howe Elliott, Art and Handicraft in the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 (Paris: Boussod, Valadon, 1893). 26 Barbara T. Gates, ‘Introduction: Why Natural History?’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 35/2 (2007), pp. 539–49 (p. 539). 27 See, for example, Philip Henry Gosse, A Year at the Shore (London: Alexander Strahan, 1865); Charles Kingsley, Glaucus; or, the Wonders of the Shore (London: Macmillan, 1873). 28 Paul L. Farber, ‘Discussion Paper: The Transformation of Natural History in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the History of Biology, 15/1 (Spring 1982), pp. 145–52. 29 Farber, ‘Discussion Paper’, p. 148. 30 Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, ‘“La femminil pazienza”: Women Painters and Natural History in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, Studies in the History of Art, 69: Symposium Papers XLVI: The Art of Natural History: Illustrated Treatises and Botanical Paintings, 1400–1850 (2008), p. 161. 31 Ibid. 32 Rob Fairley, ‘Blackburn [née Wedderburn], Jemima (1823–1909), painter and illustrator’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (23 September 2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/52010 (accessed 7 June 2021). 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Elizabeth Ewan, Rose Pipes, Jane Rendall, and Siân Reynolds (eds), The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), p. 42. 36 CharlotteYeldham, ‘Boyle [née Gordon], Eleanor Vere Crombie (1825–1916)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (23 September 2004), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/67551 (accessed 28 May 2022). 37 Ibid. 38 Marianne North, Recollections of a Happy Life: Being the Autobiography of Marianne North (London: Macmillan, 1892), p. 39. 39 Caroline A. Powell, ‘Methods of Magazine Illustration’, The American Woman’s Journal, 7/5 (February 1894), p. 189. 40 Children’s Books and Their Illustrators. Special Winter Number of the International Studio (1897–98). 41 For Kate Greenaway’s cultural influence, see Anne Lundin, ‘Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of Kate Greenaway’, in Literature and the Child: Romantic Continuations, Postmodern Contestations, ed. James Holt McGavran (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999), pp. 155–87. See also Devereux, The Making of Women Artists, pp. 48–80. 42 ‘This award was established to commemorate the illustrator of An Illustrated Alphabet, published in 1859 and considered Canada’s first picture book. The manuscript is in the Osborne Collection

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19th-century women illustrators & cartoonists in the Toronto Public Library. The [Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon] medal is awarded by the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians for outstanding illustrations of children’s books published in Canada. First given in 1971, the award is made only when an entry is judged to be worthy in quality’ (Olga S. Weber and Stephen J. Calvert, Literary and Library Prizes, 10th ed. (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1980)). 43 Here is a partial list of books about Potter: Anne Stevenson Hobbs, Beatrix Potter’s Art (London: F. Warne & Co., 1989) and Beatrix Potter: Artist and Illustrator (London: F. Warne & Co., 2005); Eileen Jay, Mary Noble, and Anne Stevenson Hobbs, AVictorian Naturalist: Beatrix Potter’s Drawings from the Armitt Collection (London: F. Warne & Co., 1992); Judy Taylor, Joyce Irene Whalley, Anne Stevenson Hobbs, and Elizabeth M. Battrick, Beatrix Potter, 1866–1943:The Artist and Her World (London: F. Warne & Co., 1987); Susan Denyer, At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit (New York: Harry Abrams, 2000); Sarah Gristwood, The Story of Beatrix Potter (London: Pavilion Books, 2016); Margaret Lane, The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biography (Revised ed.) (London: F. Warne & Co., 2001) and The Magic Years of Beatrix Potter (London: F. Warne & Co., 1978); Linda Lear, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007) and Beatrix Potter: The Extraordinary Life of a Victorian Genius (London: Penguin Books, 2008); Ruth K. MacDonald, Beatrix Potter (Boston, MA: Twayne, 1986); W. R. Mitchell, Beatrix Potter: Her Lakeland Years (Bradford: Great Northern Books, 2010); Judy Taylor, Beatrix Potter: Artist, Storyteller and Countrywoman (Revised ed.) (London: F. Warne & Co., 1996). 44 ‘Mary Ellen Edwards – A Victorian Woman Illustrator’, Aberystwyth University School of Art and Museums, 10 January 2019. https://aberystwythuniversitycollections.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/ mary-ellen-edwards-a-victorian-woman-illustrator/ (accessed 28 May 2022). 45 Simon Cooke, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards and Illustration of the 1860s’, The Victorian Web. https:// victorianweb.org/art/illustration/edwardsme/cooke.html (accessed 28 May 2022). 46 Ellen C. Clayton, English Female Artists, 2 vols. (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876), vol. 2, p. 41. 47 Ibid., p. 44. 48 Ibid., p. 45. 49 Paul Jobling and David Crowley, Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation since 1800 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 17. 50 See The Handbook of Graphotype: A Practical Guide for Artists and Amateurs (London: The Graphotyping Company, n.d.). 51 Florence Claxton, The Adventures of a Woman in Search of Her Rights (London: The Graphotyping Company, n.d.). 52 Barbara Tepa Lupack with Alan Lupack, Illustrating Camelot (London: D. S. Brewer, 2008), p. 126. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., p. 127. 56 ‘Jessie M. King’, National Galleries of Scotland, www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/ jessie-marion-king (accessed 28 May 2022).

Part I Natural history illustration, 1855–90

1 Jemima Blackburn ‘believed in nothing’: horror, religion, and animal illustration Bethan Stevens

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e m i m a Blackburn was a highly successful illustrator; her diverse publications between 1845 and 1899 ranged from experimental limited-edition art books to bestselling educational children’s books. She became best known as a natural history illustrator and particularly focused on ornithology, a field in which her work united artistic and scientific values. Her studies of the cuckoo directly shaped the findings of scientific writers including John Gould and Charles Darwin.1 This chapter examines Blackburn’s juvenile drawing practice, and then looks in detail at a pivotal moment of her early career, when her empirical studies of animals were combined with an intellectual fascination with Gothic imagery and religious horror. In 1854–55, in three distinct projects, her critical interests in questions of belief and affect were brought together with her talents as a scientific observer to produce haunting and original works. The chapter also assesses the roles of Thomas Bewick, John Ruskin, and Charlotte Yonge in shaping Blackburn’s approach to her art. Blackburn’s aesthetic ambition, commercial success, and prolific production ought to make her a significant figure in nineteenth-century art history, but there has been little scholarship of her work. A productive strand of feminist art history has been engaged with women artists’ professionalism;2 it may be that Blackburn’s relative obscurity in part stems from her status as part of a social elite, which has caused her to be ambivalently reified as an ‘amateur’ ever since Ellen Clayton’s early account in English Female Artists (1876). Clayton was quite aware that the label of ‘amateur’ did not do justice to the cultural achievements of Blackburn’s art (nor even to its substantial economic impact, as Rob Fairley’s biography reveals).3 In her ground-breaking PhD thesis in 1982, Pamela Gerrish Nunn drew attention to Blackburn’s importance in the field of animal painting, assessing her exhibits in the Royal Academy and the Society of Female Artists, as well as her greater success in the graphic arts, and discussing the extraordinary technical skill and experience that women needed to excel in the field of natural history.4 Following 21

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 this are two outstanding books by Rob Fairley: one is an edition of Blackburn’s ornithological work and the other an edition of Blackburn’s own memoirs, introduced by a substantial short biography; I am greatly indebted to these. Blackburn subsequently makes rich but brief appearances in surveys of women artists, Scottish artists, or artists of the natural world: Barbara T. Gates’s Kindred Nature is an example, including a brilliant three-page treatment of Blackburn.5 Despite this important scholarship we still lack substantial critical analysis of the truly astonishing body of work that this artist produced over five decades.

Developing viewpoint: early drawing practice Blackburn’s artist origin story is told by Clayton in English Female Artists: Mrs. Blackburn (née Jemima Wedderburn) was born May 1, 1823, in Edinburgh. She is unable to remember when she first began to draw. Her mother used to say that, at the age of four, she was a very delicate child, often confined to bed; and that the famous Dr. Abercrombie, who attended her, forbade education, but suggested drawing as an amusement, at the same time sketching a house for the little invalid to copy. On his next visit he found she had copied the house, surrounding it imaginatively with groups of animals. From that time drawing animals became Miss Wedderburn’s chief pleasure: the love of animals, especially horses and birds, amounting to a passion with her.6 It is important that, due to illness, drawing became primary in Blackburn’s education; it actually took the place of writing for her. In her own memoirs Blackburn narrates the story in a similar way: the doctor ‘said I was not to do any lessons and that drawing would be a good amusement for me […] [T]hat was the beginning of my drawing and I have gone on with it’.7 This informal curriculum began a conscious reversal of the usual word-image hierarchies within Blackburn’s development; consistently, the visual was prioritized over writing, and she remembers that even as a child she ‘wrote stories with illustrations or rather illustrations with stories.’ 8 Blackburn’s daily drawing practice consisted of quick but brilliant sketches recording her life events and experiences, usually finished in watercolour. These drawings were different from her more finished, published work, and they became a crucial part of her social life and intimate relationships. When, at nearly seventeen, Blackburn travelled alone to London for an extended visit with cousins, she ‘promised [her] mother that [she] would do sketches for her every day’.9 Such drawings amounted to a kind of visual journalling. They survive in large numbers in a stunning album in the National Galleries of Scotland, as well as in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and in private collections. Let’s examine one example: an 1839 drawing done in Scotland (see Figure 1.1). The main scene shows Jemima and her brother Andrew disentangling a sheep from brambles; on the right-hand side of the same sheet, there is a smaller, pencilled scene showing the

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals

Figure 1.1  Jemima Blackburn, ‘Jemima Wedderburn and her brother Andrew disentangling a sheep caught in brambles’, 1839

sheep once it’s been freed, bounding off towards its friends, a branch still stuck to its fleece. The punctuating figures of the umbrella and walking stick create a narrative connection between these two chronological moments. It is striking that the sheep was not a popular subject in the new Victorian fashion for sentimental animal art. (The sheep did have a venerable role in religious and pastoral art history – Raphael’s cartoons spring to mind – but that’s hardly the context here.) Harriet Ritvo comments that the sheep was viewed as ‘simply “inoffensive and harmless”’ – as Bewick had characterized it – or indeed as ‘mindless’ (more on mindlessness to come).10 Blackburn manages to make the stupid passivity of the sheep not just funny but an unexpected agent of sympathy. In her drawing, while the two humans and dog gaze towards it – their facial expressions either hidden or unreadable – the sheep is the only being that looks at and engages us as viewers. Economically drawn, its face nevertheless takes on odd qualities of portraiture; it appears to gaze at us in wry resignation and self-awareness. Concealed behind Blackburn’s appealing cartoon is a strong attachment to a conservative vision of landscape. In Figure 1.1, the sheep is clearly there to be used by its human superiors; it demands to be husbanded (kindly) by them, and this demand is fulfilled. The drawing idealizes patriarchal hierarchies, which are implicitly shown as a powerful and benign way of ordering society. This coheres with Ritvo’s insight that animals were caught up in ‘a central theme of domination and exploitation […] uniquely suitable subjects for a rhetoric that both celebrated human power and extended its sway’.11 Ritvo notes that ‘the best animals were those that displayed the qualities of an industrious, docile and willing human servant’; she shows how animals were used metaphorically to embody the ‘lower classes’ as well as ‘alien races’ in a way that ‘validated the authority

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Figure 1.2  Jemima Blackburn, ‘Poultry Show at Townhead School’, 1844

and responsibility exercised by their social superiors’.12 The sheep drawing is just one example; see also Figure 1.2, in which chickens are being weighed at a poultry show, again showcasing this kind of humane and communal husbandry. Indeed, most of Blackburn’s private drawings show human and non-human animals together, within a comparable hierarchy. The album at the National Galleries of Scotland includes scenes of hunting, ploughing, horse-riding, and cattle herding, as well as infants feeding poultry.13 Victorians were also fascinated by clever animals that could be trained in ‘the performance of human actions’, as Antonia Losano has shown; preferably such animal performers would be ‘trainable, but always fall short of the mark of perfect humanity’, in a way that would consolidate our own species’ superiority.14 Blackburn regularly engages with this tradition too, making drawings of performing circus animals and pet dogs posing on chairs or taking tea with humans.15 Formal qualities in Figure 1.1 help cement the Tory perspective through a particularly loving approach to hierarchy. Visual echoes emphasize an animal kinship and sympathy between Andrew, the sheep, and Jemima, despite their differences. The beautiful round curve of the sheep’s back generates much of the formal energy of the drawing (though this is a heavy curve that holds latent movement within it – it might at any moment topple back, rock, capsize). The shape of this curve is closely echoed in Jemima’s own back, from the bottom of her skirt to the nape of her neck, and in Andrew’s back, along the line of his coat. This trio of curves (a kind of perverse Three Graces) is what gives the drawing cohesion, allowing the little dog to step back and behold the scene, as an artwork or a spectacle.

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals Hang on – the little dog is a spectator? What is this? In comically positioning the dog as (privileged, thoughtful) onlooker, Blackburn goes further than usual within the genre of animals that perform human actions. She anticipates Jacques Derrida’s comments, in ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am’, on ‘something that philosophy perhaps forgets […] – [the animal] can look at me. It has its point of view regarding me’.16 As artist, Blackburn dramatizes the dog’s viewpoint and asks us to participate in it. She equally anticipates Derrida’s complex critique of questions about nudity and clothing in relation to human and non-human animals. Derrida explores philosophy’s assumptions that nudity does not belong to animals, who don’t know they are naked; nudity, clothing, superiority – all are thought of as ‘proper to man’.17 Blackburn’s sheep perhaps challenges this tradition; being exposed belly-up becomes a kind of nudity for the sheep, which has all the attitude of being caught out and rather silly that we associate with the blushing naked human. Conversely, it seems to me that in Blackburn’s early drawings of women, clothing becomes a kind of skin that shapes women as animals. It is clothing, not nudity, that is proper to woman. In Figure 1.1, while Andrew’s face and hands are clearly visible, the body of Jemima is clothed in a way that is ostentatiously complete. Her face is totally obscured by her bonnet; her hands gloved. At a time when the privileged genre of nude ‘life drawing’ tended to be institutionally limited to male artists,18 Blackburn, whose drawings of daily life were a large and prolific part of her practice, seems to be here re-thinking what it means to draw ‘life’. We can see so much from this entirely clothed figure (far more than merely the social and cultural messages of dress). We see the human animal here: the intensity of her hidden gaze, and the power of her body, her competent grip on the sheep’s horns, as she leans slightly back to safeguard her brother’s careful untangling. Her comical, solid boots proclaim her habitual connection with the land upon which she stands. In the majority of her juvenile drawings, Blackburn avoids portraying her own face; it is usually masked by the bonnets that so intrigued her, or occasionally by a prop such as a book. Her avoidance of the face is, I would suggest, a deliberate act that distances her work from the genre of self-portraiture – and from the self itself – seeking instead a different way to explore experience. Blackburn draws endless images of herself in which there is absolutely no fiction of the mirror and in which, importantly, her own body’s visual perspective is not the view being represented (taking us back to the little dog as spectator). Again and again, her drawings imaginatively project her gaze out of her body, seeing herself from a distance, at impossible angles. This becomes even more striking in many other of the ‘life’ drawings, social scenes with numerous figures, among whom Jemima is simply one figure among many (see for instance Figure 1.2).19 We might think of this more as a side-stepping of the self, or slipping behind the self, something that allows Blackburn more radically than many artists to divide herself dispassionately into subject and artist, each with their different points of view. Blackburn’s visual displacement of the self resonates with Barbara T. Gates’s commentary on the artist. Gates sees in Blackburn’s conventional self-deprecation in her publications’ prefaces, as well as in the scientific objectivity with which she observes birds in her ornithological works, a crucial type of self-effacement: ‘I believe that in its eradicating

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 of the subject-self and its foregrounding of the subject or object studied, women’s selfeffacement was akin to the objectivity sought after in mainstream scientific observation.’ 20 This important insight becomes all the more striking when we look at how Blackburn’s self-effacement went beyond her scientific work, shaping her approach to autobiography but also helping her to develop a way of seeing that was highly technical, since it involved the artist adopting a highly flexible, mobile viewpoint. Blackburn’s capacity for imagined projection of the gaze is technically described in her memoirs, which recount how she taught herself to draw animals: Lady Katherine and I used to ride to the farm houses and draw cattle. I sometimes sat close to their heads and drew them in strong perspective, the head large enough to hide most of the body and only show the hip bones. It taught me the shape of the animals, I learned all their shapes and had as it were a model of them in my head so that I could draw them as easily in one position as in another from recollection. I drew a great deal in that way and could do a portrait of any horse I looked at in three minutes, recognisable to its owner or groom.21 It is astonishing that Blackburn taught herself to know the shapes of her animal subjects well enough that she could rotate them in her head (the idea of a mental three-dimensional model is striking in this account) and draw them in imaginary positions. This saw her in good stead as an illustrator, when designing the animal fantasies we will consider later in this chapter. She later recalled how the animals in her Illustrations of Scripture were almost all ‘done out of my head without models’;22 this kind of working method was only possible because her mental imaging was disciplined, highly technical, and based on lifelong study of her animal subjects.

Learning from Thomas Bewick Clayton’s account of Blackburn’s development (quoted above) moves swiftly from the artist’s first experiences of childhood drawing to her early appreciation of Thomas Bewick’s ornithological wood engravings: ‘About the same period (in 1827), Mary, Lady Clerk, gave her a copy of Bewick’s “Land Birds.” […] The book was the first the child ever had, as youthful proprietors say, “Of my own-to keep,” and Bewick has ever since been regarded by Mrs. Blackburn as her master.’ 23 Later sections of this chapter will explore Blackburn’s combination of scientific observation with nihilistic horror. Before moving onto this, I want to suggest that in combining horror and science, Blackburn was drawing not only on earlier Gothic traditions more broadly but on the specific precedent of her ‘master’ Bewick. Victorian reception of Bewick as master of the Gothic had been canonized in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, which begins with Jane dreaming up terrifying fantasies from Bewick’s illustrations.24 As well as recalling that ‘the best book [she] had was […] a handsome copy of Bewick’s land birds’, Blackburn’s memoirs later recalled how her Uncle John ‘used to take [her] on his knee and tell her stories about the tailpieces’;25 in

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals many ways this is a more comfortable and less lonely version of the fictional Jane’s childhood fantasies. In its famous narrative tailpieces, Bewick’s Land Birds again and again juxtaposes haunting Gothic scenes with the main, scientific illustration of a bird. The tailpieces are only sometimes relevant to the bird being described and can introduce oblique connections and tangential themes. At times, these are silently pointed, as when the ghostly qualities of ‘The Little Owl’ are brought out by Bewick’s companion tailpiece, showing a romantic ruin.26 Or there’s the tailpiece to ‘The Alpine Vulture’, which brings out the grisly qualities of this bird, by showing riders fleeing in a storm, and a corpse hanging from a gallows in the distance;27 there are several gallows in the book. Bewick forges silent links between scientific observation and fantastical visual narratives in his engraved birds and tailpieces, links that feel almost accidental. This approach seems to have encouraged Blackburn not only to combine her love of animal observation with her love of the horrible but also to embrace an oblique, almost disconnected approach to illustration, one that was unafraid to distort or compete with her source texts. In 1854, when collaborating with Charlotte Yonge on The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (1855), Blackburn explicitly tried out Bewick’s tailpiece form. In response to untraced letters from Blackburn,Yonge commented, ‘I hope you will have the head and tail pieces, they give so much scope’, later reaffirming that ‘head and tail pieces would be very pretty’ for the illustrations.28 While Blackburn does not follow this model throughout, she does employ it. For example, the second page of chapter 5 is dominated by a closely observed representation of a cow (see Figure 1.3, top right: Tom’s legs are just visible, emerging from its mouth). Following Bewick’s familiar model, at the end of the chapter, a tailpiece presents a vignetted pastoral landscape, in which the same cow kicks over a milk pail, as the tiny Tom is rescued by his mother (see Figure 1.3 bottom left). Thomas Bewick’s anarchic approach to illustration, combining science and secular horror, was very different from the art historical models of the religious sublime that John Ruskin wished Blackburn to adhere to. We’ll see this now as we explore Blackburn’s most ambitious early illustration project, Illustrations of Scripture by an Animal Painter (1854).

The beastly Bible Illustrations of Scripture by an Animal Painter was an experimental and expensive book, published by Constable at two guineas. Blackburn’s series of twenty-two drawings, all illustrating animals in the Bible, were reproduced photographically, in salted paper prints produced by her husband, Hugh Blackburn; this was typical of the couple’s close intellectual collaboration. The prints in the first edition have faded over time, but they were successful enough to warrant republishing, firstly in wood-engraved versions, which were engraved by Dalziel Brothers and given a prominent position in the magazine Good Words in 1861. Later there was a new edition of the whole volume in 1886. For this, photography was again used to reproduce the drawings, this time using a platinotype process that has survived better.

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Figure 1.3  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proofs for Charlotte Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb, 1855

In one key illustration (the third in the book, and one of twelve selected for republication in Good Words) Blackburn revisits the earlier motif of a sheep caught in thorns, this time in a retelling of the story of Abraham and Isaac, which she titled ‘The Ram Caught in the Thicket’ (see Figure 1.4). Simply by retitling the text and concentrating on the ram that will be sacrificed in Isaac’s place, she shifts the whole focus of this Bible story, away from divine mercy and towards a confrontation of impending violence. This marks a distinct pattern in Blackburn’s work. The humorous ‘life’ sketches made for family and friends are often comforting in their presentation of apparently well-functioning social and species hierarchies. But in her more developed published work, this reassuring

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals

Figure 1.4  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Hugh Blackburn (photographer), ‘And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering’, salted paper print for Illustrations from Scripture by an Animal Painter, 1854

view of the world falls away, and Blackburn’s illustrations become more disturbing and harder to fathom. The trapped sheep was an ongoing theme; it was again revisited in a painting that Blackburn exhibited at the Society of Female Artists in 1858.29 ‘The Ram Caught in the Thicket’ may seem far flung from Bewick’s approach to book illustration but, in addition to the links made between natural history and horror, we can trace another nod to Bewick in Blackburn’s manipulation of the vignette, a form associated with the earlier artist. In the first salted paper print edition of Illustrations of Scripture, the photographs were carefully printed with a particularly high use of contrast. Central animal figures were heavily printed with dark lines, forming a brooding centre, while human figures were printed much more lightly, fading out towards the edges (Figure 1.4).30 This effect is less pronounced in the 1886 platinotype edition in which there is a far more even tone across most of the images and a more distinct rectangular frame (see Figure 1.5). The vignetted appearance of the first edition serves to emphasize the way Blackburn brings the animal into the centre of our vision, as well as alluding to her ‘master’, Bewick. We also see how, as a couple, Jemima and Hugh Blackburn were working together here to allow an interplay between techniques of drawing and photography (another example of this, which I don’t have space to explore here, is their selective use sharpness and focus in these illustrations).

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Figure 1.5  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), ‘And he sent forth a Raven, which went to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the Earth’, platinotype photographic reproduction for Bible Beasts and Birds, new edition of Illustrations from Scripture by an Animal Painter, 1886

Blackburn’s own religious beliefs help us to read her Illustrations of Scripture. In her memoirs, written at the end of her life, she had this to say about her childhood: I was not religious and believed in nothing. I thought religion to be all got up for women and children, as men did not go to church often unless taken there by women. At a country house I stayed at, we girls were kept in on Sunday afternoons for reading, while the men and the boys all went out for a walk with the dogs. I often wished I had been born a beast or a bird to roam about freely out of doors and have no responsibility and never have to think. I used to be much bothered by thinking, especially of impossible things such as infinite space, and time having no beginning and no end, till my head felt like bursting. […] My mother told me always to say my prayers at night and I did so in a perfunctory manner because I did not like to break my word.31 While these are the beliefs of a child, Blackburn never refutes or corrects them as she describes her adult life later in the memoir. She did become involved in religious culture,

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals but this seems to have been prompted by the pursuit of an active intellectual life, rather than by a strong belief. She encouraged her children to have a questioning approach to the Bible, as they speculated on Adam being ‘blown away’ if he ‘was made out of dust’; she also notes that she didn’t like her children to learn hymns.32 She records pleasure and amusement when religious figures deviate from rules (delighting in Norman Macleod’s ‘unsabbatarianism’).33 Blackburn enjoyed intellectual debates with people she met, arguing with a fellow steamer passenger, ‘a converted Jew’, whether a particular story about Babel came from the Bible or from Josephus.34 Keen to hear all the best preachers, she didn’t much care about their religious affiliations as long as their thinking was stimulating. For instance, she records going to hear a popular London-based preacher, Charles Spurgeon, with her brother Andrew; they had to walk several miles to attend, and much of fashionable London was present (including John Ruskin). Afterwards, Blackburn’s assessment was proudly patriotic: ‘fairly good but not equal to many of our Scotch preachers’. But she also records with some amused impatience the sectarian responses of friends and family: ‘We caught it next day from our Anglican cousins for going to a dissenting place of worship, and from our Presbyterian ones for travelling on a Sunday.’ 35 Blackburn’s sharp feminist insight as a child, that religion was ‘all got up for women and children’, trapping them indoors and in church while men could go freely about, is particularly striking. She clearly distinguishes between religion and ethics, speaking prayers without faith in order to repay a debt of truth she owes her mother (see quotation above). Her scepticism developed somewhat as she grew older, and religion clearly offered a public arena for critical thinking that was to some degree feminized (unlike, say, the university, where access to learning for women was even more highly restricted than in the church – Hugh Blackburn was Professor of Mathematics at Glasgow). Crucially, in the passage quoted above, Blackburn remembered her younger self linking up questions of religious belief, intellectual enquiry, and a fascination with animals; she also associated animals with a specific desire to avoid thinking. In the same breath that she declared her unbelief, she registered the weight of critical thought; she longed to be a freely roaming animal specifically so she would ‘never have to think’; deep thinking ‘of impossible things such as infinite space’ and time, made her ‘head fe[e]l like bursting’. This idea of the human thinker versus the free, animal unthinker recurs again and again in Blackburn’s work, often in fantastical, unsettling ways. In Illustrations of Scripture by an Animal Painter, she brings the anarchic, apparently unthinking animal into a specifically religious context, and the resulting illustrations often quietly undermine the biblical texts that she has chosen. Blackburn’s Illustrations of Scripture begin with two illustrations of birds from Noah’s ark (rejecting the more obvious opener of the satanic serpent). One, ‘The Dove’, is a comforting image of Noah’s capable and disembodied hands, which reach out of the ark to gently encompass the returning dove, which had ‘found no rest’ in the unabating waters. The other is called ‘The Raven’ (see Figure 1.5), and this one is different and disturbing. It illustrates Genesis 8:7: ‘And he sent forth a Raven, which went forth to and fro, until the Waters were dried up from off the Earth.’ Blackburn’s illustration considers all that remains unsaid in this extremely terse verse; she particularly responds

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Figure 1.6  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Hugh Blackburn (photographer), ‘In the portion of Jezreel shall Dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel’, salted paper print for Illustrations from Scripture by an Animal Painter, 1854

to what Bewick describes as the raven’s socially useful behaviour, in ‘devouring putrid flesh’.36 Blackburn avoids any suggestion of happy biodiversity on Noah’s ark; she is much more interested in the many animals that died in the flood. Her illustration of multiple non-human corpses (and one human) floating together in the water captures the brutal horror in this story and contrasts with earlier representations such as J. M. W. Turner’s The Deluge, which had focused on human suffering. As with the little dog in Figure 1.1, there is an animal spectator here; but the raven flying above the corpses is not there to bear witness to their deaths – rather, it is about to feed. In the background is nothing but the unabating waters and the forbidding shape of the ark on the horizon. Or let’s consider another illustration, ‘The Dogs and Jezebel’ (see Figure 1.6). Alongside it, Illustrations of Scripture presents a long extract of the biblical story (1 Kings 21:1–25 and 2 Kings 9:30–37). In selecting this text, Blackburn draws attention to the violent destruction of a biblical woman who intervened in property and politics (the text describes how Jezebel became involved in a land dispute on behalf of her husband Ahab). At the end of the passage, after Jezebel’s violent death, Jehu attempts to give her a burial. Despite being a ‘cursed woman’, she is after all ‘a King’s Daughter’.37 However, her

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals remains are missing: ‘they found no more of her than the scull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands’.38 In the final haunting verses, we are told how God had decreed the complete erasure of this woman and any memorial to her: ‘In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel: and the carcass of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel, so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.’ 39 Blackburn’s illustration does not shy away from this bald description. Her image is about violent unthinking and a gruesome erasure. Once more, there is a logic of the vignette in this image, not only in its shape but in the way it dramatizes the central animals and the fading, marginal human. The centre of Jezebel’s body is gone; she is reduced to her own extremities. Dogs chew the bare bones of a skull and limbs; an odd foot and hand are whole and unblemished. While these fragments of corpse remain, under Jezebel’s rich clothing, most of her body seems uncannily to have vanished. Again, but in a far more haunting way than Figure 1.1, the clothing is the woman.The hounds in the illustration recall another pack of dogs represented in two of Blackburn’s private juvenile sketches. One of these is captioned: ‘Lord Selkirk’s shooting dogs spent a night in the stables of 31 Heriot Row on the way north to the shooting lodge, They repaid the hospitality by killing the pet owls, and were found in the morning as drawn.’ 40 Despite the violence of this act, in the private drawing, a vision is presented that is comical and benign. The pack of dogs is very similar to those surrounding Jezebel, but they are depicted at a moment of contrition, meekly surrounding the owls’ corpses.When published in Illustrations of Scripture, Blackburn’s vision of hounds was dramatically transformed into a brutal attack on a woman.

John Ruskin’s public and private responses At its bravest and best, Blackburn’s work brought to her religious subjects a committed exploration of the wild freedom from human thought and motive that she saw in animals. Certainly, there were other illustrations in her book that presented softer sides of their animal subjects (and which readers such as William Thackeray and John Ruskin found ‘delightful’).41 But the impression of religious horror was lasting and strong. Ruskin responded to Blackburn’s art in several private letters to her, and publicly in an unsigned review of Illustrations of Scripture (the book itself was published anonymously too, though its paratexts gender the artist as an ‘accomplished lady’). Ruskin’s review in The Morning Chronicle praises Blackburn’s innovative approach to the Bible, her power in animal depiction, and the book’s likelihood to ‘occupy a … permanent place on the library shelves’. Following this endorsement, he explores problems with Blackburn’s work, chiefly its ‘peculiar tendency to conceptions of fearfulness, or horror, rather than of beauty’. The review specifically links this ‘disposition’ to the artist’s gender: ‘we would caution the fair artist against permitting it to appear too frequently’, since it renders the illustrations ‘in some degree repulsive’.42 As he goes on to explore the problem of religious horror in more detail, it becomes apparent that Ruskin is taking issue with Blackburn’s taste and judgement as a reader, as much as with her drawing style. His critique of Illustrations

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 of Scripture is largely presented as a problem with the selection of inappropriate passages for illustration. He gives two examples: The camel … might … as easily, and to many persons much more pleasingly, have illustrated the meeting of Rebekah with the servant of Abraham, as the desolation of Rabbah; and the dog might as gracefully have been brought forward to remind us of the words of the Syro-Phoenician woman, as to increase the horror of the death of Jezebel.43 In other words, the animals are well done, but if she had chosen different biblical passages, Blackburn could have shaped more pleasing scenes around them. Ruskin wishes that Jezebel be replaced by the Syro-Phoenician woman, who, in Mark 7:24–30, successfully challenges Christ in an argument and is rewarded by the healing of her daughter. In suggesting this change, Ruskin is looking for an easier and happier kind of feminine power.44 Ruskin’s public dislike of Blackburn’s horror echoes several private exhortations he made to the artist between 1849 and 1855. In 1849 he tells her: ‘I say your taste is morbid and must be changed’ (this time in reference to her choosing machinery as a subject – railroads in particular).45 It is a long letter, and towards the end of it he returns to Blackburn’s Gothic tastes; he links these to specific literary interests, with a view not to weaning Blackburn off horror but urging her to shape her approach to horror in a way that is Christian, sublime, and constructive. In suggesting this, he essentially fails to engage with her intellectual interests as an illustrator: You are capable of great things; do not affect the Byronic mélange. […] I think you might paint Dante if you chose; don’t paint Dickens. Cultivate your taste for the horrible and chasten it: I am not sure whether you have taste for the beautiful – I strongly doubt it – but you can always avoid what is paltry[.]46 In another longish letter from 1850, Ruskin repeatedly returns to his recommendation of Dante as a subject, telling Blackburn that with some effort she ‘might produce such a series of illustrations of Dante as would give the poem new life’.47 He is characteristically directive in suggesting how she should approach the project: ‘I should like you to try Chiron on the trot, dividing his beard with his arrow – or the black dog hunt in the wood, 13th Canto – by way of a beginning’.48 Ruskin proposes subjects that, while offering scope to Blackburn’s skill as an animal illustrator, could ‘chasten’ those purposeless animal energies which disturbed him but were precisely what interested had interested her since childhood (remember her fascination with animals that ‘have no responsibility and never have to think’).49 Ruskin’s criticism often becomes deeply personal: But I cannot understand the make of your mind. I think this love of horror generally, in us British people, rises out of distress of mind, mixed with (I pray your pardon)

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals some slight affectation […]. We have had one grand man of the same school – William Blake – whose ‘Book of Job’ fail not to possess yourself of – if it comes in your way; but there is a deep morality in his horror – as in Dante’s: in yours there is little but desperation.50 In recommending Blake’s Book of Job, Ruskin is perhaps recognizing Blackburn’s (outdated) interest in the Gothic and seeking to help her channel this within a deep tradition of the Christian sublime. However, to adopt such an approach would be to reject completely her underlying subject: the specifically unthinking, animal energy of beast and bird.

Illustrating Charlotte Yonge Blackburn resisted Ruskin’s suggestions for several years – and she would continue to capitalize on the success of Illustrations to Scripture in later editions in subsequent decades. However, after the mid-1850s, she did begin to veer away from religious horror, focusing her publications more firmly on scientific animal illustrations. Before this shift, two further illustration projects make useful points of comparison, likewise undertaken during 1854–55, and mixing empirical observation of animals with sensibilities of Gothic horror. Both projects illustrated texts by Charlotte Yonge: The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (1855) and The Lances of Lynwood (1855). In terms of status and readership, these couldn’t be more different to the expensive and experimental Illustrations of Scripture: both were popular works of children’s fiction by a bestselling writer. The illustrations to Thomas Thumb and The Lances of Lynwood were in the far cheaper medium of wood engraving and were engraved by the firm Dalziel Brothers. Blackburn and Yonge had a lot in common, as intellectual conservative women. They had first met as young women in the 1840s; Blackburn’s memoirs recall how they had been house guests with mutual friends in London, in a small house where they were ‘lodged in two little garrets next one another, and used to brush out [their] hair together before going to bed, and so soon became friends’.51 Blackburn’s first commission with Yonge was for a series of lithographic illustrations for the first edition of the historical novel The Little Duke (1854). The illustrations to The Lances of Lynwood were designed by Blackburn sometime before April 1855 (when Dalziels’ proofbooks suggest the engraving was completed).52 Yonge’s correspondence demonstrates that the two women were collaborating on text and illustration for Thomas Thumb early in 1854, at the same time that Blackburn was working on Illustrations from Scripture.53 The three books coincided at a key moment in her early career as an illustrator. Sir Thomas Thumb presents as a novel for young children, comprising a substantial fictional narrative arranged in chapters. But Yonge’s preface suggests that it was conceived and composed rather as a picture book, with the visual images driving and structuring the work. In the first sentence Yonge alludes to ‘the proposal to draw up a Life of Tom Thumb, to accompany the graceful Illustrations of this little book’ (emphasis mine); this

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Figure 1.7  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb, 1855

opening positions the writing as a secondary ‘accompaniment’ to the wood engravings. 54 Yonge emphasizes this hierarchy again in the preface’s conclusion; reflecting on her relative faithfulness to her sources, she asserts that ‘no more has been altered than was necessary to render the story in any way worthy of its Illustrations’; again, this implies a writer following a visual artist (and historical sources).55 As well as stunning visuals and novelistic prose, Thomas Thumb provides educational (illustrated) footnotes, presenting information from historical, literary, and folkloric sources. While Yonge modestly implies that her text is an afterthought, her letters to Blackburn make it clear that, unusually, the process of writing and illustration actually proceeded alongside one another. Letters comment on the decisions Yonge is pondering about the text, on decisions Blackburn has conveyed about the illustrations, on Blackburn’s suggestions, and Yonge’s own ideas, in a way that makes it clear the invention is synchronous.56 This was Blackburn’s first major illustrated work using wood engraving, though she had previously worked with other print and photographic media. Blackburn was an admirer of Dürer’s woodcuts (in later life she used to look at these in the British Museum in company of art critic Elizabeth Eastlake),57 and we can trace this interest in her designs for wood engravings. Many of the early designs are for sparse, pure black-line prints – difficult for the engraver to cut but with a strong graphic effect, making the most of the rich, sharp lines that characterize this medium. See, for example, the illustration that concludes the narrative, depicting Tom’s death as he encounters a spider while

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals

Figure 1.8  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb, 1855

trying to defend King Arthur’s forsaken throne (Figure 1.7). The web is a symbol of both graphic naturalism and print media; the new sharpness of line is equally emphasized by the spider’s pincers, its legs, and the hairs on its legs. As in Illustrations from Scripture, Blackburn brings the human subject into the immersive experience (violent, unfathomable) of an animal’s universe. In her research, Blackburn might well have seen some of the traditional chapbook illustrations that show Tom on his feet, fighting the spider with a sword;58 Figure 1.7 is strikingly different, as Tom swoons in the spider’s embrace, in a surprisingly eroticized death. Her vision was compatible with Yonge’s text, but it was also markedly different in tone. Yonge wrote to Blackburn proposing a focus on Tom’s sentimental burial: ‘I am very glad you hold to the spider, it seems to me immoral to alter the end of a recognised story. What do you think of burying him under an Eyebright [a wildflower], and rose-cutting bees might make his shroud, if that would not be too scientific’.59 A difference in tone between writing and illustration is apparent throughout the work, partly because of Blackburn’s prioritizing of animals from the start. In chapter 1, Yonge recounts a meeting between Tom’s parents and the wizard Merlin; the whole chapter focuses on Merlin, though it very briefly describes the barking of a ‘fierce housedog’, the only creature awake on the wizard’s arrival.60 Blackburn’s initial letter for this chapter (see Figure 1.8) offers a far stronger portrait of the dog than it does of Merlin (a nondescript figure). The pictured dog is not simply ‘fierce’, as in Yonge’s account; it simultaneously pulls forward on its chain and also back from the uncanny wizard, looking up at him anxiously; Blackburn conveys a believable mixture of fierceness and fear, which shows on the dog’s face (unlike the empty look on Merlin’s). Later, Yonge would write to her publisher, Alexander Macmillan, that Blackburn ‘is never really at home without animals as her subject’.61

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90

Figure 1.9  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb, 1855

Perhaps the most successful illustration in Sir Thomas Thumb is Figure 1.9. Tom, unconscious, is carried off to fairyland in Queen Mab’s carriage. Blackburn’s skill in natural history illustration is apparent throughout, for instance in the realistic detail of the bats and crane-fly. This time, instead of sparse black line, she appears to have provided a tonal drawing, ideal for the densely textured wood engravings at which the Dalziel firm excelled: for instance, brilliant varying networks of lines and flecks convey the fine, variegated surfaces of the bats’ wings and bodies. Again, the swooning Tom – this time in medievalizing armour – is a figure of desire. Here he is passive object of the desiring female gaze of Queen Mab. Ritvo tells us that bats were one of those ‘British wild animals that had stubbornly refused to adapt to human desires’.62 In picturing bats harnessed to a carriage, Blackburn at first appears to be indulging a fantasy of human domestication extending even to this wildest and least useful of creatures. However, further investigation complicates this. We are invited by Blackburn to make an implicit comparison between Figure 1.9 and another carriage scene, in the book’s frontispiece (see Figure 1.10). In the frontispiece, Tom drives his own vehicle, pulled by a team of mice, and the carriage is man-made (unlike the natural shell that Mab rides in Figure 1.9). Tom’s mice are harnessed to the teeth, covered in multiple rather cruel-looking straps and collars, their sight disciplined by blinkers, and unpleasant-looking bits in their mouths. Tom carries a whip and brandishes reins. Queen Mab’s carriage is markedly different. There is no visible harness on either bat, and we cannot discern how Fly Cranion the charioteer is directing

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals

Figure 1.10  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb, 1855

them. There is one black line that might seem to be a harness, but it turns out to be one of the crane-fly’s legs. The teeth of the right bat are defiantly bared; these are fierce, wild creatures, and not tamed. While the frontispiece shows us Tom’s relationship to the mice – structured around human society and its (masculine) control of animal populations

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 – Mab presents a different way of being, fairy not human, and also feminine. In Figure 1.9, she and Tom are magically incorporated into the wildness of the bats and the night itself. Again, Blackburn’s portrayal is rather different from Yonge’s. Throughout, Yonge describes Tom’s training of his mice as ‘the fairest feats of horsemanship, … a marvel to all beholders’.63 By Yonge, the child reader is directed to link Queen Mab’s power with fearful, anti-Christian temptation. She is associated with ‘making [folk] dream unquietly’, although actually, their disturbance is caused by having lain ‘down to rest without repenting of their sins’.64 Tom continually saves himself in the text by testifying to his Christian faith in the face of fairies’ seductive offers. But there is no such easy morality in Blackburn’s visualizations. When looking at her illustration of Mab’s capture of Tom, what child would not wish thus to ‘dream unquietly’? The collaboration between Blackburn and Yonge was less successful when it came to illustrations for Yonge’s historical novels for boys, The Little Duke and The Lances of Lynwood. Lances has seven full-page wood-engraved illustrations, most of them mediocre. The theme – chivalric battle and the Hundred Years War – didn’t suit Blackburn, although she liked the horses (for example, there is an image of a profiled knight on horseback, reminiscent of Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil). However, there is one exceptional illustration in which Blackburn’s skills in depicting animals came into their own. Figure 1.11 portrays Leonard, a rebellious squire whose meanness serves as a foil to the hero’s excellence. In the text, Leonard becomes ill and ends up in a ‘dog-hole’ in ‘the care of [an] old hag’.65 The woman seems to ‘mutter her prayers backwards’, and Leonard has a terrifying night vision of cats, blue flames, and witch’s spells.66 The narrator of Lances swiftly directs the child reader not to believe any of this, explaining that the supposed witch is simply a poor, Spanish-speaking woman, but that ‘such were the times’ that Leonard’s ‘delirious fancy’ was believed even by men of ‘cool sense’.67 This brief representation of femininity is important in a novel that is mostly about the battlefield and men’s homosocial relations (there is also marital trafficking in lovely female family members, mostly off-scene). Throughout the novel, a good education for boys is a masculine one, given by virtuous knights. Significant space is given to identifying and critiquing bad education, particularly that given to certain pageboys by noblewomen. This results in feminine vices, such as eavesdropping: ‘“You, young Page!” exclaimed Sir John. “Are you jesting? Ha! then you must have, page-like, been eaves-dropping! – I should scarce have thought it of you.”’ 68 Given the way Lances promotes a single-sex, masculine education and sets out to combat superstition in its progressive view of history, Yonge might have found it irritating that the only really successful illustration offers a magical, Gothic vision, dominated by a witch and her cats. Leonard’s passive horror, as the gigantic cat clambers onto him, is reminiscent of Sir Thomas Thumb. Formally, a superior position is given to the old woman, who contemplates the scene from above. Unlike the beleaguered peasant in the text, she resembles the impassive figure of Dürer’s Melancholia, gazing with grave, unknowable thoughts at the spectacle before her (and, following the logic of the reference to Dürer, at the spectacle of art itself). Yonge’s ambivalence about this interpretation of her novel shows in her letters. She sends a copy of Lances to friends in 1855, writing apologetically, ‘hoping the Black Cats

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals

Figure 1.11  Jemima Blackburn (draughtsperson), Dalziel Brothers (wood engravers), wood engraved proof for Yonge, The Lances of Lynwood, 1855

will not frighten Edward’.69 Later, contemplating new editions of her books, she registered doubts about the suitability of Blackburn, telling her publisher: ‘I think it is quite open to you to find some other designer’.70 She wrote a few weeks later: I am glad you decided against illustrations for the Little Duke. Mrs Blackburn’s were not very successful, though she had been so kind about them that I should hardly have liked to put out others by a different hand without first giving her the option. Those to the Lances of Lynwood are much better, but she is never really at home without animals as her subject.71

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 We might speculate how much of Yonge’s opinion was known or suspected by Blackburn, and howYonge’s responses to her work might have weighed on top of Ruskin’s, encouraging her to take a different path in future. After this point, Blackburn started to specialize more heavily in the natural history and ornithological illustrations for which she is known. There are brief returns to animal- and bird-based fantasies (her late lithographs The Crows of Shakespeare (1899) are particularly fine). But mostly, this way of working, so strong in 1854 and 1855, dies away. We are left with these spectacular fantasies of animals: Blackburn’s deeply intellectual vision that was unafraid of the unthinking otherness of animals and confronted the viewer with suffering and desire. It was an approach to literary illustration that harnessed Blackburn’s scientific observations to a different, more dreamy end.

Notes I am very grateful to Jo Devereux and Pamela Gerrish Nunn for their invaluable help and feedback; also to the AHRC for funding research that first introduced me to Blackburn’s work. 1 Rob Fairley and Jemima Blackburn, Jemima: The Paintings and Memoirs of a Victorian Lady, edited and with an introduction by Robert Fairley (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1988), pp. 54–5. 2 A particularly useful discussion is in Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski, ‘Introduction’, in Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry in Britain (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 1–22. Hadjiafxendi and Zakreski helpfully problematize the ‘overlapping yet dialectical relationships’ between ‘amateur and professional’ (p. 2) throughout their introduction. 3 Ellen Clayton, English Female Artists (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876), vol. 2, p. 394: Clayton acknowledges that ‘amateur’ is ‘almost a misnomer’ for Blackburn. Fairley shows how Blackburn used money from her illustrations to set up a not-for-profit shop in Moidart; likewise, after a disastrous hurricane, she bought new boats for fishermen along a twenty-mile stretch of coastline. See Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, pp. 66–7. When considering Blackburn’s economic impact, we should also factor in the hidden value of amateur transactions, such as Blackburn’s regular gifts of drawings and paintings to influential acquaintances, including watercolours presented to the Queen and pictures given to Disraeli at his request. While not directly monetary, such transactions had economic value in promoting influential relationships. 4 Pamela Nunn, ‘The Mid-Victorian Woman Artist: 1850–1879’ (PhD thesis, University College London, 1982), pp. 346–9. 5 Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature:Victorian and EdwardianWomen Embrace the LivingWorld (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 79–83. 6 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, pp. 395–6. 7 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, p. 100. 8 Ibid., p. 101. 9 Ibid., p. 119. 10 Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate:The English and Other Creatures in theVictorian Age (1987; London: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 19. 11 Ibid., p. 6. 12 Ibid., pp. 16–17. 13 National Galleries of Scotland (NGS), accession number D 5359. There are also numerous examples of drawings in this genre that are reproduced in Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima.

Jemima Blackburn: horror, religion, animals 14 Antonia Losano, ‘Performing Animals / Performing Humanity’, in Animals inVictorian Literature and Culture: Contexts for Criticism, ed. Laurence W. Mazzeno and Ronald D. Morrison (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 130–1. 15 NGS, accession number D 5359.15, D 5359.32, D 5359.49, D 5359.57. 16 Jacques Derrida, ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)’, translated by David Wills, Critical Inquiry, 28/2 (2002), p. 380. 17 Derrida reflects at length on the complex experience of being ‘caught naked […] by the gaze of an animal’. Ibid., pp. 372–3 and throughout. 18 See, for instance, Deborah Cherry, Painting Women:Victorian Women Artists (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 53–5; Jo Devereux, The Making of Women Artists in Victorian England: The Education and Careers of Six Professionals (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016), pp. 28–32. 19 There are examples throughout the album; see NGS, accession number D 5359. There are also numerous examples in Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima. The NGS drawings are all captioned and routinely record Jemima’s presence. The captions were written by Blackburn or a family member in 1903; I deduce this from internal evidence in the album at the NGS; one caption describes a young boy drawn in 1839 who is ‘now (1903) tenant of the Ross farm’ (NGS, accession number D 5359.59). Blackburn and her husband Hugh were both alive in 1903, and around this time they were working together on Jemima’s memoirs (see Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, pp. 87, 90). 20 Gates, Kindred Nature, p. 83. 21 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, p. 115. 22 Ibid., p. 141. 23 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, pp. 395–6. 24 [Charlotte Brontë], Jane Eyre: An Autobiography edited by Currer Bell (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1847), vol. 1, pp. 3–5. For Blackburn’s fascinated and slightly scandalized reception of Jane Eyre, see Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, pp. 119–22. 25 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, p. 107. 26 Thomas Bewick, A History of British Birds, vol. 1, Land Birds (1797; Newcastle and London: Bewick and Longman, 1832), pp. 69–70. 27 Ibid., pp. 51–3. 28 Charlotte Yonge, letters to Jemima Blackburn, 18 February and 13 May 1854, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901), ed. Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan, and Helen Schinske, https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/ (accessed 30 November 2021). 29 Nunn, ‘The Mid-Victorian Woman Artist’, p. 346. 30 This effect is not caused by the degradation of the salted paper prints, which would have produced a fade across the whole image rather than just the margins. Contrast continues to be legible in the faded prints, and if anything would have been more pronounced when they were first produced. 31 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, pp. 98–9. 32 Ibid., p. 160. 33 Ibid., p. 138. 34 Ibid., p. 163. 35 Ibid., p. 124. 36 Bewick, A History of British Birds, vol. 1, Land Birds, pp. 83–4. 37 [Jemima Blackburn and James Wilson], Illustrations of Scripture by an Animal Painter (Edinburgh: Constable, [1854]), unpaginated. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid. 40 NGS, accession number D 5359.43.

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 41 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, pp. 401–4. 42 [John Ruskin], ‘Twenty Photographs’, The Morning Chronicle, 20 January 1855, p. 7. 43 Ibid., p. 7. 44 This is of course familiar behaviour from Ruskin. For instance, Devereux comments that he seeks comfort and solace in the work of female artists; see The Making ofWomen Artists inVictorian England, p. 16. 45 John Ruskin, letter to Jemima Blackburn, 24 April 1849, in The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, vol. 36, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London: George Allen, 1909), pp. 96–100. 46 Ibid., p. 99. 47 Ruskin, letter to Blackburn, 27 May 1850, in ibid., p. 110. 48 Ibid., p. 110. 49 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, pp. 98–9. 50 Ruskin, letter to Blackburn, 27 May 1850, in The Complete Works of John Ruskin, vol. 36, ed. Cook and Wedderburn, pp. 109–10. 51 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, p. 128. 52 British Museum, Dalziel Archive volume 7 (1855), 1913.0415.169, nos. 212–19. The Lances of Lynwood proofs are undated, but the albums are roughly chronological; these prints can be reasonably securely dated by their position in the album and by the ‘April’ annotations in preceding and subsequent proofs. 53 Charlotte Yonge, letters to Jemima Blackburn, 18 February, 21 April, 13 May, and 26 May 1854, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske. 54 Charlotte Yonge, The History of Sir Thomas Thumb (Edinburgh: Constable, 1855), p. iii. 55 Ibid., p. iv. 56 Charlotte Yonge, letters to Jemima Blackburn, 18 February, 21 April, 13 May, and 26 May 1854, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske. 57 Fairley and Blackburn, Jemima, p. 125. 58 See, for example, The History of Tom Thumb (Banbury: Rusher, [1820]), p. 14. 59 Charlotte Yonge, letter to Jemima Blackburn, 18 February 1854, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske. 60 Yonge, Sir Thomas Thumb, pp. 9–10. 61 Charlotte Yonge, letter to Alexander Macmillan, 26 February 1864, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske. 62 Ritvo, The Animal Estate, p. 18. 63 Yonge, Sir Thomas Thumb, p. 52. 64 Ibid., p. 15. 65 Charlotte Yonge, The Lances of Lynwood (1855; London: Macmillan, 1864), p. 99. 66 Ibid., p. 99. 67 Ibid., pp. 100–1. 68 Ibid., pp. 258–9. There is a similar narrative rejecting feminine education for boys in Yonge, Sir Thomas Thumb, p. 50. 69 Charlotte Yonge, letter to Alice Arbuthnot Moberly, October 1855, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske. 70 Charlotte Yonge, letter to Alexander Macmillan, 1 February 1864, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske. 71 Charlotte Yonge, letter to Alexander Macmillan, 26 February 1864, in The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge, ed. Mitchell, Jordan, and Schinske.

2 Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ and enchanted gardens Laurence Talairach

I am afraid I can never be quite serious about a garden; I always am inclined to find delight in fancies, and reminiscences of a child’s garden, and the desire to get everything into it if I could. This ‘Fantaisie’ was a dream of delight during the past summer – from April, when a nightingale possessed in song the half-hidden entrance under low embowering Elm branches and Syringa – through all the fairy days and months, up to quite lately.1

‘E

. V. B.’, or Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825–1916), was a Victorian illustrator of children’s books, known for having illustrated Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in 1872 for Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, she also became a famous horticulturalist and garden writer. The many garden books she penned, such as Days and Hours in a Garden (1884), A Garden of Pleasure (1895), and Seven Gardens and a Palace (1900), highlighted her fascination for the natural world. The owner of Huntercombe Manor, Boyle carried out horticultural experiments in her ‘Fantaisie’ – ‘a lavishly entrancing realm, a dream of floral perfection, a fairy tale’, to borrow Sarah Bliston’s words.2 Bliston’s comparison of Boyle’s garden with a fairy tale is not coincidental. In all her garden books, Boyle’s rhetoric recalled that of ‘fin de siècle aesthetes who … used language to signal “that the story was adrift in time and space”’.3 For Bliston, indeed, whilst ‘the earlier garden texts tend[ed] to be pragmatic advice to the middle-class women’, later Victorian garden writing was ‘indebted to New Woman and aesthetic prose’, presenting ‘the garden as a varied scene of both energetic activity and dreamy, languorous contemplation’.4 Seeing late Victorian gardening texts as ‘politically radical’, Bliston contends, moreover, that Boyle’s Days and Hours in a Garden was ‘[o]ne of the first books to herald the change in style, form and function’.5 The archaic terms and fairy-tale tropes she used to write about gardens, often alluding to the suspension of time and space, aptly created ‘a sense of the garden’s timelessness’.6 Days and Hours in a Garden relates the ‘story’ of 45

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 the garden of Huntercombe Manor, complete with greenhouse, months after months.7 Gardens are defined as children’s ‘fairy-ground of sweet enchantment and innocent wonder’ 8; her ‘Fantaisie’ – a ‘wilderness of flower and seeding plants, somewhat damp and overgrown’ 9 – a marvellous realm where the reader’s knowledge of classical fairy tales is tested. The Japanese Iris is compared, for instance, to ‘the purple flower the Prince, in the German fairy tale, found in the mountains, and carried off to disenchant his love with, in the old witch’s cottage by the wood’ 10 – a reference to the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale ‘Jorinda and Jorindel’. Almost a decade before her first garden book, Boyle had engaged with both horticulture and fairy tales in her rewriting of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told was published in 1875 by Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle. Illustrated by Boyle herself, the book included ten white-bordered, 5 x 7 inches colour plates as well as black-and-white engravings, and appeared a year after the Arts and Crafts artist Walter Crane’s ‘Toy Book’ of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Published by Routledge, the latter represented Beauty and the Beast in flashy bourgeois surroundings, with hints at Japanese decoration, Greek and Renaissance art. Crane’s garden featured as ‘a Versailles castle garden setting’ and there was not any ‘wildness in either the setting or the Beast, a cloven-booted boar that wears a monocle’, dressed in an eighteenth-century French court costume. Boyle’s version emphasized, on the contrary, the natural world through ‘an almost pantheistic obsession in the landscapes and descriptions of nature’, as Betsy Hearne has argued.11 Her illustrations evoked the botanical accuracy of Pre-Raphaelite artists, known for featuring dangerous plants (as in many of Burne-Jones’s paintings) or linking flowers to sensual femmes fatales, as in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith (1866–68). As this chapter will show, Boyle’s fascination for the natural world in Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told highlighted her affinity with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Moreover, her hyper-realistic vegetation, reflecting as it did the era’s ‘aesthetic consciousness’,12 typified as well her interest in horticulture at a time when ‘the natures that materially mattered most to the British were those that existed at a distance from England’.13 As Danielle E. Price has noted, whilst the Victorians ‘planted roses, sold lilies, … exhibited pansies … adorned their buttonholes with carnations, their hair with camellias, their homes with chrysanthemums’ or ‘tramped through such places as the jungles of South America to collect the flower they worshipped – the orchid’,14 the art and literature of the period proposed adventures into magical gardens and wonderlands which reflected the mid-century botanical craze. Horticulture ‘gripped the imagination’ of the middle classes in the Victorian period, as Dustin Valen puts it, as the proliferation of ornamental and exotic plants in England ‘revolutionis[ed] the theory and practice of gardening and inspir[ed] many innovative practices’.15 Plant cultivation was, in fact, ‘a sign and symptom of modernity’,16 all the more so because horticulture became inextricably bound up with technological inventions, from ‘equipment for transplanting and transporting plants’ to the development of glasshouses designed to keep the exotic findings – many of them then exhibited at Kew Gardens (which opened to the public in 1840), proudly highlighting ‘the English imperial hand and its power to put the foreign on display’.17 The horticultural

Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ experiments carried out in glasshouses and conservatories inspired many Victorian writers and artists experimenting with the genre of the literary fairy tale. Like the foreign plants brought back from far-away lands, Victorian fairy tales played with the motifs of the genre, as so many exotic curios suddenly imported into the Victorian modern world. Although Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘Fantaisie’ contained mostly native plants, we will argue that in Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told the most significant motif of the classical fairy tale – the stolen rose – is caught up in a network of motifs and metaphors which hint at imperial theft. As we shall see, both text and illustrations play upon the Gothic to revisit ‘Beauty and the Beast’, reflecting in so doing the Victorian botanical craze whilst subverting contemporary gender and imperial ideologies. Together with Charles Perrault’s ‘Bluebeard’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is one of the classical fairy tales that deals most strikingly with the violence of male sexuality, which women must learn to tame – and accept. If ‘Bluebeard’ tackles the issue of women’s curiosity, however, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ foregrounds the female character’s desire for a rose, which eventually costs her dearly. Flowers, thus, lie at the heart of the fairy tale: the rose both drives the narrative and metaphorically stands for love, wilting when Beauty abandons the Beast. Yet because the rose is one of the flowers that are kept and tended to by the Beast in his garden, it also illustrates the creature’s horticultural pursuits and its capacity to keep it blooming throughout the year. ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was originally written by Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot de Gallon de Villeneuve in 1740, and published in La jeune amériquaine, et les contes marins. In 1756, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont published a dramatically shortened version of de Villeneuve’s fairy tale in London, and included it in an educational book, Magasin des Enfans, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction (translated into English in The Young Misses Magazine in 1759).18 As Betsy Hearne has shown, among many nineteenth-century rewritings of ‘Beauty and the Beast’, Walter Crane’s, Eleanor Vere Boyle’s, Andrew Lang’s, and Charles Lamb’s (Beauty and the Beast: or a Rough Outside with a Gentle Heart, A PoeticalVersion of an Ancient Tale [1811]) have proved enduring. But Boyle’s 1875 adaptation is most significant because of the way in which it plays with horticulture in both its text and illustrations, using nature literally and figuratively to encode the artist’s discourse on women, sexuality, and otherness. Although Hearne contends that Boyle’s plot ‘is very little altered from Beaumont’s’,19 I would argue, pace Hearne, that some of the most significant elements of Boyle’s version were borrowed, rather, from Mme de Villeneuve’s original fairy tale – most especially those which hint at horticultural imperialism. De Villeneuve’s fairy tale opens with a merchant whose ships are wrecked or stolen and whose foreign correspondents become bankrupt or unfaithful. Furthermore, the narrative evokes time and again the circulation of goods and the making of European empires, whilst the beast’s castle is mostly characterized by the rows of orange trees and myrtles blooming with fruits and flowers, as emblem of the creature’s economic – in fact, imperial – power: He walked down the garden where, despite the harshness of the winter, he saw, as if at mid-spring, the rarest flowers giving off charming scents. The air one

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 breathed there was mild & temperate. Birds of all species twittered harmoniously, their songs merging with the muffled waters.20 The spring-like atmosphere, where oranges grow throughout the year, align the Beast’s garden with an orangery – a symbol of prestige and wealth, but also a place which enabled the protection of fruit trees during the winter in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before the development of modern conservatories. The references to fruit trees which grew in warmer climates work in tandem with the rare birds, speaking parrots, and various types of monkeys which inhabit the castle, and which serve and entertain Beauty. As the owner of collections of exotic fauna and flora, having successfully purchased, transported, and kept botanical and zoological specimens from foreign countries, the Beast is therefore contrasted with Beauty’s father – an unsuccessful merchant whose foreign goods have been wrecked or stolen. The network of echoes between the Beast and Beauty’s father explains why the creature’s horticultural gifts, rather than feminizing the Beast, bind it, on the contrary, with ‘masculine scientific and imperial pursuits’.21 Mme de Villeneuve’s motifs, such as the orange and myrtle trees, as well as the aviary full of rare birds, speaking parrots, and cockatoos, suppressed from Leprince de Beaumont’s version, interestingly reappear in Eleanor Vere Boyle’s and Andrew Lang’s Victorian revisions.22 Boyle’s rewriting builds on Mme de Villeneuve’s version even more potently, capitalizing on the very same opposition between Beauty’s father and the Beast, both defined through maritime commerce. To do so, she proposes a narrative which pivots around a garden directly inspired by glasshouse technology and whose ominous Gothic atmosphere casts a significant shadow on the blooming plants and trees, much characteristic of late Victorian anxieties. Indeed, in Boyle’s version, both the text and its illustrations foreground non-native plants. The Beast’s garden metaphorizes in turn foreignness, bestiality, sexuality, and femininity. Whilst the original fairy tale emphasizes all kinds of exchanges – foreshadowing, or epitomized by, Beauty being exchanged for a rose, the barter symbolizing the deflowering of the heroine – in Boyle’s rewriting global exchanges are especially mapped out by the ostentatious presence of travelling plants – species, that is, imported to Europe and likely to have been kept in greenhouses to thrive. As if ‘forced’, the white roses blooming out of season thus allegorize Beauty’s forced marriage with the Beast and her sexual maturity. As Elizabeth Hope Chang has argued, in nineteenth-century books, plants were ‘a buttonhole between fiction and reality, simultaneously ‘mak[ing] the realist novel more real [and] the genre novel more fantastic’.23 As plants, transported from across the globe, could ‘change color, size, shape and lifespan at human command’,24 they hovered between the realm of reality and that of fairy tales. This explains why ‘the social activities of the conservatory were experienced as magical and fantastic’, as Margaret Flanders Darby puts it, defining the site as ‘a place where emotions tended to escape control’.25 In addition, the plants that surrounded Victorians were ‘often transported from foreign soil and almost always modified by human action to form a second, cultivated nature so omnipresent as to seem at times invisible’,26 most particularly, I would contend, in

Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ Victorian fairy tales which featured magical natural specimens, from pumpkins and beanstalks to enchanted gardens. As argued, Boyle’s Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told was richly illustrated, including ten colour plates and black-and-white engravings on almost every page. The latter represented birds, beasts, and flowers, which, according to Hearne, ‘echo not a literal aspect of the story but a figurative one’.27 This idea is patent, for instance, when a ‘moth emerges from its chrysalis on the page of the Beast’s transformation’ or when a ‘downcast monkey holds a bedraggled peacock feather on the page describing the sisters’ bitter disappointment at their father’s return without their requested finery’.28 The black-and-white engravings offer therefore a parallel narrative, creating an interesting dialogue with the text, likewise inhabited by birds, beasts, and flowers, and often blurring the boundary between the marvellous of the fairy tale and that of natural history. Boyle’s choice of (natural) subjects and her hyper-realism, recalling the Pre-Raphaelites’ attention to ‘truth to nature’, in both her text and illustrations, reveal her precise observation of nature whilst simultaneously presenting nature as a source of wonder. Throughout the tale, Beauty’s proximity with the natural world is contrasted with her sisters’ lack of interest for ‘all God’s suffering creatures, whether of bird or beast’. Beauty ‘succour[s] the most ill-favoured of earth’s children’, ‘tend[s] herbs’, ‘fetch[es] water for some poor neglected weed, fainting in the hot sun’, or ‘stay[s] to prop some weak climbing plant torn down by the rough wind’.29 She also ‘seek[s] flowers of rare bloom’ (5) so as to weave garlands which she places in her sisters’ hair.30 When the ruined merchant and his children have to leave their home, Beauty is the only one to see her new environment as a natural ‘wonderland’: The sun had arisen in the morning when Beauty opened the old brown door and looked out from under its low-browed arch. Far down, beyond the curving yellow sands, lay a great sea-plain, silver bright, glittering in the changeful lights and colour. Up the roots of the far-off white mountains, olive woods clothed all the land with mists of shimmering grey. Corn-fields lay anear, between long stretches of purple-shadowed forest. And the girl laughed for gladness of heart, called aloud to her sisters to come and behold with her this glorious new wonderland where Fate had led them.31 The black-and-white engravings similarly map out the family’s change of situation: an iris represents Beauty’s wanderings into the fields and woods to gather flowers, a stooping cherub sitting on a snail and holding daffodils could signal the family’s new beginning and a prickly thistle may symbolize Beauty’s ability to thrive despite the circumstances. Compared to the wild birds, Beauty keeps goats and looks after all domestic chores at home, fitting both the model of the Angel in the House and that of the female explorer, able to ‘climb […] the rugged paths among the rocks’.32 Moreover, her relationship with the natural world makes her ‘eyes shine with a diviner light’ 33 as she reads the book of nature:

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 But ever as she went, on the hills under the blue sky, or through the forest amid the green darkness of noonday, sea and sky, and sun and shadow, taught the maiden marvellous things. Many a secret did the wind whisper; many a strange tale her eyes read in the flowery grass; many a song, for her alone, sang the mountain stream, hurrying over the stones.34 The female character’s ability to reach divine knowledge through nature paves the way for her reading through the Beast’s monstrous appearance and anticipates the discourse on external beauty which informs the fairy tale. This idea may be likewise suggested by the haunting presence of the cherub in the black-and-white engravings. On the colour plates, on the other hand, natural elements borrowed from Mme de Villeneuve’s version may be traced, such as exotic birds and oranges when Beauty is dining with the Beast (the text referring, however, to more local birds, from thrushes and nightingales to wild doves). Similarly, the backgrounds of her illustrations, ‘distinctly Italian in landscape, costume, and architectural detail’,35 although in keeping with Pre-Raphaelite interest in Italian Renaissance, recall as well the many references to Italy and Italian art which pepper the original fairy tale. Boyle’s choice of vegetation throughout the work is, indeed, clearly Mediterranean, as shown by the cypresses and the dense bushes found on most of the colour plates, as well as the prickly pears (Opuntia ficus-indica) and the agave plants (Agava americana) which appear later in the Beast’s manor – many of these plants not native to Europe.36 This confirms that the ‘wonderland’ 37 where the merchant and his family settle once they have left their home, ‘leagues away, on a barren sandy ridge above the sea’,38 is meant to suggest some distant land. The case is identical for the Beast’s manor, since the merchant travels to ‘a distant sea-port’ (16) which he has heard his lost ship has eventually sailed into.39 The two places are thus defined as mirror-images of one another, and the Beast and the merchant are constantly compared and contrasted. Moreover, like Mme de Villeneuve, Boyle emphasizes the significance of seasons since the Beast’s garden seems forever locked in summer. In addition to their metaphorical function (it is, for instance, autumn and nature is therefore decaying when the Beast is dying), the seasons are closely associated with magic. The white rose Beauty has asked her father for (unlike her sisters who ask for gowns, gloves, and pearls) is a flower which only blooms in summer. Her impossible wish becomes true when the father discovers the Beast’s manor. In Leprince de Beaumont’s version, the merchant spends the night at the castle and only plucks a rose for Beauty as he leaves. In Boyle’s rewriting, on the other hand, the Beast’s manor is, significantly, introduced through its garden. The numerous references to the sea which percolate through the text and its illustrations connect the Beast and Beauty’s father: the father lives in a tower by the sea and is associated with maritime commerce; the Beast appears on the colour plates as a walrus-like creature and is hence constructed as a potential prey. However, on the third plate (see Plate 1) the wall of the Beast’s manor also exhibits shells, and in the text the flowers in the creature’s garden, which attract the merchant, are ‘foam-like’,40 as so many indicators of the Beast’s successful control over the sea and therefore, perhaps, of his imperial

Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ power. Furthermore, if the manor remains undescribed in the first part of the fairy tale, the garden is depicted at length. Flowers are blooming and fruits are ripe, like in summer, despite the winter snow which lies outside: The wall closed in upon the left; and above the mouldering weed-grown coping, from within, rose dark cypress spires against the sky. Arbutus trees, all a-flame with rich ripe fruit amidst gold-green leaves, tossed down their scarlet balls upon the wet stony way below. And withal, from the other side came a great sweetness as of summer roses upon the air; but a few paces farther on, white roses, like floods of surging foam, overtopped the high wall. Between the whiteness of uncounted roses scarce any green at all might show. Now as the merchant beheld these foam-white flowers, he thought on Beauty’s simple wish … Without more ado he dismounted, and pushing open the little door, passed through into a fairy garden. Within the greenness of that enchanted space there was not any more winter. Green paths overhung by pale-blossomed acacias, led to grassy lawns closed in by well-clipt hedges of box and rosemary, and broidered all over with little flowers, – blue, pink, and lilac, – mixt with the short thick grass. Long narrow terraces rising in green steps above the other, set with fruit-trees in full bloom, made lines of lovely colour. Wild violets crept fragrantly about their roots, or hung in purple draperies from step to step. Under the shadowy darkstemmed trees blood-red lilies burnt with a sultry glow. Here and there, in the blackness of some deeper gloom, pure star-like flowers poised on tall slender stalks, gleamed white and ghostly. But everywhere about that garden, roses grew and bloomed, scattering their delicate petals upon the grass. … The man scarce could tell if all the sweetness of that place were truth, or but woven magic.41 The Beast’s garden evokes real places visited by Boyle, such as the Villa d’Este of Tivoli, later mentioned in her garden books, with its dark and ‘lofty spires of ancient cypresses’, its fountains and ‘terraced heights’ and its air ‘faint with rich fragrance of the orangetrees’.42 It is also reminiscent of a secret garden hidden behind a locked door Boyle never saw, ‘whose image haunt[ed] [her] with a dim regret’, described through pale pink petals floating, a little sound of tinkling waters, and the scent of new-blown orange-flowers.43 In addition, the opposition between the Beast’s ‘fairy garden’ and the winter outside echoes the description of Boyle’s ‘Fantaisie’ at Huntercombe Manor where ‘the heavy gloom and damp of the whole place’ contrasted sharply with the greenhouse: ‘Small as ours is – only about fifteen paces long – it is large enough for as much pleasure as I desire, under glass.’ 44 In fact, Boyle’s rewriting typically shapes the enchanted garden as a conservatory – a site which epitomized the impact of technological developments on horticulture. The transformation of space – the elimination of ‘that distance between here and there’,45 as Deirdre Shauna Lynch puts it – that conservatories generated is patent when Beauty and her father mysteriously find themselves in the Beast’s garden without having passed any

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 threshold: ‘Yet it seemed he might never find the little door … And therewithal, as in a dream strange things do happen with great ease and likelihood, so whilst yet they sought the entrance, on a sudden they were within the garden of the Beast.’ 46 As the glazed roof in conservatories admitted more light and ensured the growth of ‘specimens unfit for the orangery’ in winter, as Isobel Armstrong explains, they enabled the transformation of space and time Beauty and her father experience ‘by producing “spring and summer in the midst of winter”’.47 For Margaret Darby, hothouse plants were ‘a fantasy of nature in England’s cold climate’,48 which explains, perhaps, why they found their way into Victorian fantasies. Moreover, the link between glasshouses and desire, which Boyle hints at when she mentions the greenhouse at Huntercombe, is significant: glasshouses were, indeed, associated with women’s unrestrained desires in Victorian culture, as exemplified by scenes of sexual seduction frequently set in conservatories. Rhoda Broughton’s sensation novel Not Wisely but Too Well (1867) is a case in point. Likewise, in Christina Rossetti’s narrative poem ‘Goblin Market’ (1862), the goblins’ orchard fruits – apples, quinces, lemons, oranges, cherries, melons, raspberries, peaches, mulberries, cranberries, and so on – are ‘All ripe together’.49 Luring Laura, a young girl who sells her golden hair in exchange for fruits, the magically grown fruits metaphorize the female character’s sexual maturation. Similarly, Isabella Thackeray Ritchie’s ‘Cinderella’ (1868) associates Cinderella’s fairy godmother’s magical powers with greenhouse cultivation, since a ‘forced’ pumpkin appears in her hamper, amongst the many flowers and vegetables she grows. These earlier Victorian examples also show that as the growth of plants was accelerated through technology, the conservatory became a place based ‘on experiments with the hybridity and cross-fertilization of flora’ which ‘could not but question the nature and control of our species being’.50 In addition, because its ‘function was to store under glass exotic botanical species culled from all over the world, juxtaposing indigenous and exotic varieties’, the conservatory could raise ‘questions about the colonizing role’.51 This idea informs Boyle’s revision of Mme de Villeneuve’s classical fairy tale. As argued, locked in summer, the Beast’s ‘spellbound’ garden52 is enchanted because always green and forever blooming – the magic spell mirroring the ‘independent ecology’ of Victorian conservatories and greenhouses.53 The combination of green and red – complementary colours – in the plates shapes the Beast’s garden as some Garden of Eden, soon to be destroyed or lost, however, by the merchant’s transgression. In the text, the Gothic atmosphere is ominous. Suggested by the ‘ruined wall’,54 the cypress spires, the ‘mouldering weed-grown coping’, the ‘shadowy dark-stemmed trees’, ‘the blackness of some deeper gloom’ and the ‘white and ghostly’ flowers,55 it contrasts with the profusion of colours (white, green, red, blue, pink, purple, and lilac) and blooming fruit trees. The vertical motifs similarly evoke Gothic architecture; plants grow ‘from step to step’, suggesting an upward movement. Behind the presentation of the fairy-like garden, therefore, chaos and disorder lie in wait. This is, for instance, hinted at by the many images of excess which characterize the garden’s fertility and profusion, which indicate that nature is, as a matter of fact, no longer under control. This idea permeates the description of the garden, framing it as a Gothic world where nature has full sway: creepers invade the premises (‘mouldering

Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ weed-grown coping’) and ‘[w]ild violets [creep]’, spreading farther and farther. Metaphors such as that of the flood (‘like floods’) give the same impression, as do the plants which have ‘over’-grown without any hindrance. Furthermore, the Beast’s garden seems an impossible mix of tropes of life and death, as much as of different botanical species densely packed together to the point of suffocation: images of excess and invasion (weeds are found in the garden and court) both reflect the Beast’s monstrosity and nature’s potential capacity to challenge (the Beast’s) imperial power. Ironically enough, however, Beauty does not seem to be aligned with the ‘slender’, ‘pale’, and ‘ghostly’ flowers of the garden: in plate 4 (see Plate 2), the Beast’s head – with walrus tusks, feline whiskers, and wolf-like claws – is lost amidst the green leaves of the succulents, on which Beauty’s name has been carved. The heroine, although ‘fairer than any rose’ 56 in the text, is thus paradoxically associated with the (magically grown) Mediterranean plants in the illustration more than with the white roses her father has just plucked. Beauty also has gardening skills since she manages to grow the Beast’s plucked rose into a ‘goodly plant’.57 The horticultural references hence connect Beauty and the Beast rather than oppose them, just as the white roses hang ‘amidst tangled weeds’,58 as so many images of chaos which inform the Beast’s garden and reflect the creature’s monstrosity. Furthermore, the ‘twisted roots crawl[ing] serpent-wise’ 59 define the Beast’s plants both as monstrous (‘twisted’) and as sexualized, the motif of the serpent reinforcing the reading of the garden as a doomed paradise. Obviously playing on ‘the lurid world of plant sexuality’,60 Boyle thus constructs the garden simultaneously as a female, or feminized, space where nature has been tamed, rendering what Chang sees as the ‘shared subjecthood of lady and plant in the cultivated garden’,61 and as a dangerous and chaotic place, not simply foreshadowing marriage but connoting sex, reproduction – and, hinting as well, perhaps, at miscegenation. This is especially suggested by the confusions and blurring of boundaries which typify Boyle’s Gothic revision. In plate 3, which shows Beauty’s father standing outside the Beast’s garden, seashells are positioned above the slightly opened door, as already mentioned. On both sides of the door, dense vegetation, notably creepers, is visible, at times even encroaching upon the pediment. A peacock feather on the father’s horse seems to be part of the manor’s decoration. The motif of the peacock feather, much used by the Pre-Raphaelites to suggest immortality, was found time and again in Boyle’s writings. In her preface to The Peacock’s Pleasaunce (1906), for instance, Boyle explained the mysteries surrounding ‘the marvellous bird’, and the impossibility of grasping the ‘peacock cult’. The terms she used interestingly evoked the Beast’s garden, as a version of the Garden of Eden hosting the secrets of life and death: ‘the unseen Door, which opening at last, will show the unknown springs of Life and Death: and show us the secret of the Beautiful in sea and land and leaf and flower, – the origin and growth of Nature’s infinite variety, and the hidden keys of her Paint-box’.62 The mixing of mineral, vegetal, and animal species is here meant to encapsulate nature and its wonders – most particularly the wonders of Creation. In her fairy tale, the combination of antagonistic natural elements is significant: the ‘white roses, like floods of surging foam’ and the ‘foam-white flowers’

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 blur boundaries between sea and land. In the illustrations, Boyle recurrently uses the very same animal and vegetal motifs in both her outdoor scenes and interior decoration: peacocks and walruses, flowers and leaves, decorate the Beast’s palace, confusing frontiers between outside and inside. The motifs recall, of course, the rise of the Arts and Crafts movement and William Morris’s wallpaper designs, which began in Britain in the 1880s. Beauty notices the ‘marvellous painted wall’,63 and in plate 6 (see Plate 3), which shows Beauty and the Beast at dinner, leaves appear on the walls, pillars, tablecloth as well as outside the window, as creepers threatening to invade the place. A pile of oranges, which cannot but evoke Mme de Villeneuve’s orangery, is placed at the centre of the image, in the middle of the table, facing the window, and appears again in the last colour plate, showing the union between Beauty and the prince. Connoting the Beast’s wealth, the oranges nonetheless suggest the conservatory, making the Beast, partly hidden by a pillar, an exotic creature confined behind glass panes, like the red parrots in the foreground. The same impression is conveyed in plate 5: in Beauty’s chamber, the drawing of a walrus appears on the wainscotting, painted in a seascape, together with representations of various birds, whilst a stuffed unknown creature is displayed on a shelf, as in a cabinet of curiosities. The Beast, as colonizer – of foreign territories and, potentially, of Beauty’s body – is as much colonized, presented as a curiosity exhibited in the young woman’s bedroom or an exotic creature confined in a glasshouse. This blurring of roles is furthered by the use of complementary colours in both text and illustrations, Boyle recurrently mixing the vegetal and the animal. By playing upon red and green, Boyle draws parallels between the red roses and the exotic birds’ green and red feathers in plate 6; she also plays with reds and blues around the table to connect Beauty and her host. Likewise, the live and painted birds in the Beast’s palace, echo those perching on the trees in the garden in plate 8, hardly noticeable among the leaves, collapsing once again all boundaries. In plate 4, which shows the merchant’s fall out of the Garden of Eden once he has plucked the roses and notices the beast behind him, the diagonal line which separates (and yet connects) the beast and the white roses is significant. The beast is cast in the top right-hand corner, lost among leaves and relegated to the darkness. The place thus metaphorizes the creature’s monstrosity by associating it with darkness and the forces of evil. However, the composition of the illustration, if it first looks Manichean, may in fact be more complex. The leading line of the diagonal makes the beholder’s gaze shift from the merchant, at the centre, to the Beast, in the top right corner, following the merchant’s gaze, and then back to the falling white roses in the foreground. The composition thus links the monstrous creature to the fragile roses which have triggered his anger, associating the world of darkness with the white roses, thereby also mixing monstrosity and purity, and male and female. Although the merchant is terrified by the creature, the latter is hence nonetheless feminized, whilst Beauty’s name merges, on the contrary, with the prickly pears and agave plants. Thus, although the Beast’s garden suggests both the realism and ‘fantasticality’ of plants64 and even if its symbolism is patent, the place nonetheless reflects the ‘alternative world’ offered by conservatories – a world where plants were cross-fertilized and where

Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ ‘the line between hybridity and miscegenation could not be fixed’.65 Like Bluebeard’s secret chamber, the Beast’s garden in Boyle’s rewriting conceals a sexual secret, which the Beast, as grotesque body, embodies. Boyle’s use of horticulture and botany in this late Victorian rewriting of the classical fairy tale interestingly confuses gender roles as much as it constantly reshuffles positions between colonizer and colonized: Beauty and the Beast are as much hybrids as Boyle’s fairy tale, onto which she has grafted her own knowledge of and passion for horticulture. Published a decade before her first garden books, Boyle’s rewriting proposed therefore a revision of the classical fairy tale informed by what Isobel Armstrong terms ‘horticultural imperialism’.66 As Daphne M. Kutzer contends,’[t]he story of empire is often presented as a kind of fairy tale, in which the valiant but unrecognized hero travels to strange realms … in order to reach the pot of gold (or ivory, or spices, or oil, or rubber, or diamond) at the end’.67 As shown throughout this chapter, the story of empire that exotic flora related was most patent in representations of glasshouses and conservatories, where plants both yielded to human power and connoted miscegenation, especially as more and more experiments were being carried out by gardeners. In Victorian fairy tales and fantasies, writers capitalized upon the complexity of glasshouses as both ‘nurser[ies] and … forcing house[s]’.68 Frequently mapping out the connections between human and horticultural development, the ‘wonders’ exhibited behind glass panels could, however, be threatening, from the Queen’s croquet-ground in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) to the Beast’s garden in E. V. B.’s Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told a decade later.

Notes 1 ‘E. V. B.’ [Eleanor Vere Boyle], Days and Hours in a Garden [1884], 9th ed. (London: Elliot Stock, 1896), p. 11. 2 Sarah Bliston, ‘Queens of the Garden: Victorian Women Gardeners and the Rise of the Gardening Advice Text’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 36/1 (2008), pp. 1–19 (p. 8). 3 Ibid., p. 8; Bliston cites Talia Schaffer, Literary Culture in Late Victorian England (London: University Press of Virginia, 2000), p. 50. 4 Ibid., pp. 1–2. 5 Ibid., pp. 3, 7. 6 Ibid., p. 7. 7 ‘E. V. B.’, Days and Hours in a Garden, p. 3. 8 ‘E. V. B.’ [Eleanor Vere Boyle], Seven Gardens and a Palace (London and New York: John Lane, 1900), p. 15. 9 ‘E. V. B.’, Days and Hours in a Garden, p. 206. 10 Ibid., p. 28. 11 Betsy Hearne, Beauty and the Beast:Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 43, 46. 12 Bliston, ‘Queens of the Garden’, p. 2. 13 Alan Bewell, Natures in Translation: Romanticism and Colonial Natural History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), pp. 8–9. 14 Danielle E. Price, ‘Cultivating Mary: The Victorian Secret Garden’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 26/1 (2001), pp. 4–14 (p. 4).

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 15 Dustin Valen, ‘On the Horticultural Origins of Victorian Glasshouse Culture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 75/4 (December 2016), pp. 403–23 (p. 404). 16 Elizabeth Hope Chang, Novel Cultivations: Plants in British Literature of the Global Nineteenth Century (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2019), p. 2. 17 Price, ‘Cultivating Mary’, p. 4. 18 Hearne, Beauty and the Beast, p. 26. 19 Ibid., p. 45. 20 ‘[I]l descendit dans le jardin, où malgré la rigueur de l’hiver, il vit comme au milieu du printemps, les fleurs les plus rares exhaler une odeur charmante. On y respiroit un air doux & tempéré. Des oiseaux de toute espèce mêlant leur ramage au bruit confus des eaux, formoient une aimable harmonie’; Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot de Gallon de Villeneuve, ‘Histoire de la Belle et la Bête’ [1740], in Nouveau Cabinet des fées (Genève: Slatkine, 1978), pp. 29–138 (p. 43); my translation. 21 Narin Hassan, ‘“A Perfect World of Wonders”: Marianne North and the Pleasures and Pursuits of Botany’, in Strange Science: Investigating the Limits of Knowledge in the Victorian Age, ed. Laura Pauline Karpenko and Shalyn Rae Claggett (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2016), pp. 62–80 (p. 63). 22 Andrew Lang’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was published in The Blue Fairy Book in 1889. It refers to Mme de Villeneuve’s version at the end of the tale, although it is much shortened and therefore more in the vein of Leprince de Beaumont’s rewriting. 23 Chang, Novel Cultivations, p. 2. 24 Ibid., p. 2. 25 Margaret Flanders Darby, ‘Joseph Paxton’s Water Lily’, in Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550–1850, ed. Michel Conan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002), pp. 255–83 (p. 277). 26 Chang, Novel Cultivations, p. 1. 27 Hearne, Beauty and the Beast, p. 47. 28 Ibid., p. 47. 29 ‘E. V. B.’, Beauty and the Beast. An Old Tale New-Told, with Pictures (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1875), p. 3. 30 Ibid., p. 5. 31 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 32 Ibid., p. 14. 33 Ibid., p. 15. 34 Ibid., pp. 14–15. 35 Hearne, Beauty and the Beast, p. 48. 36 Cactus pears had been introduced in Europe by the seventeenth century and often found in noblemen’s mansions; yet if the plant thrived in Mediterranean regions, its cultivation was often only possible in greenhouses. 37 ‘E. V. B.’, Beauty and the Beast, p. 11. 38 Ibid., p. 9. 39 Ibid., p. 16. 40 Ibid., p. 21. 41 Ibid., pp. 20–2. 42 ‘E. V. B.’, Seven Gardens and a Palace, p. 19. 43 Ibid., p. 21. 44 Ibid., p. 66. 45 Deirdre Shauna Lynch, ‘“Young Ladies are Delicate Plants”: Jane Austen and Greenhouse Romanticism’, ELH, 77/3 (Fall 2010), pp. 689–729 (p. 693).

Eleanor Vere Boyle’s ‘fantaisies’ 46 ‘E. V. B.’, Beauty and the Beast, pp. 32–3. 47 Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination, 1830–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 180–1; Armstrong quotes John Claudius Loudon’s The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion (1838), n.p. 48 Darby, ‘Joseph Paxton’s Water Lily’, p. 277. 49 Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market [1862] (London: Penguin Classics, 2015), pp. 162–76 (p. 162, l. 15). 50 Armstrong, Victorian Glassworlds, p. 167. 51 Ibid., p. 167. 52 ‘E. V. B.’, Beauty and the Beast, p. 39. 53 Armstrong, Victorian Glassworlds, p. 181. 54 ‘E. V. B.’, Beauty and the Beast, p. 32. 55 Ibid., pp. 20–2. 56 Ibid., p. 29. 57 Ibid., p. 30. 58 Ibid., p. 32. 59 Ibid., p. 32. 60 Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 242. 61 Chang, Novel Cultivations, p. 95. 62 ‘E. V. B.’, The Peacock’s Pleasaunce (London and New York: John Lane, 1908), p. xiv. 63 ‘E. V. B.’, Beauty and the Beast, p. 33. 64 Chang, Novel Cultivations, p. 2. 65 Armstrong, Victorian Glassworlds, pp. 152, 167. 66 Ibid., p. 167. 67 Daphne M. Kutzer, Empire’s Children: Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children’s Books (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2000), p. 1. 68 Armstrong, Victorian Glassworlds, p. 167.

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3 I ‘wander and wonder and paint’: the botanical illustrations of Marianne North Nancy V. Workman

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n yon e encountering the Victorian botanical artist Marianne North is immediately confronted by multiple contradictions about her life and work. North is both celebrated and obscure, even at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, where her images hang in one of the few galleries in the world devoted to a solo artist. During her lifetime, her botanical artwork was highly praised by no less than Charles Darwin, who regarded it as a significant contribution to the emerging field of botany for its accurate depiction of plant life.Years later, she was dismissed by the very same scientific community for her paintings, seen as too amateurish to be taken seriously. Wilfrid Blunt, who was compiling a list of notable illustrators, complained that her gallery, which had over 800 of her paintings on display, was ‘barely capable of showing fifty to advantage’. He insisted that her works were ‘lacking in sensibility’ and were ‘gaudy’ and ‘disagreeable’ to viewers.1 As her autobiography, Recollections of a Happy Life, attests, North travelled extensively throughout the world to produce her art, and she relied on wealth, rank, and family connections, as well as a network of colonial administrators who offered her lodging during her travels abroad and provided her letters of introduction so she could visit places of interest that contained the specimens she was seeking. Yet she often left the homes of her hosts to be alone, sneaking out of her bedroom in the early dawn to avoid people so she could paint, preferring her own company to the demands of socializing with strangers and engaging in ceremonial rituals she found empty of meaning.2 Today North is primarily celebrated by her biographers such as Laura Ponsonby for being ‘adventurous’ in undertaking voyages around the world on her own.3 Other biographers identify North as a ‘plant hunter’ or ‘intrepid traveler’ and far less frequently as an artist despite her enormous productivity in painting and sketching.4 Even recent film documentaries tend to emphasize the difficulty of the travels North undertook rather than analysing her paintings.5 Many scholars see her as critical of the Victorian gender roles of her era given her independence. However, most biographies also concede that 58

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North she was clearly a privileged white woman who benefitted from the colonial and imperialist enterprise, and they harshly critique her Eurocentrism and racist attitudes, especially towards servants.6 Despite these critiques, North has been reclaimed by contemporary feminist artists as an inspirational figure, one to be emulated. The London Drawing Group, for example, included North in a series of lectures and demonstrations during their 2020–21 online programming, in which they praised her bold use of colour and the careful details of her plant studies.7 Among recent scholars, Lynne Helen Gladston is one of the few critics who focus on a formalist analysis of the artwork, and she provides an engaging and thorough study of North’s paintings, as well as a lengthy discussion of the North Gallery, its construction, and installation. Gladston identifies the many artistic influences and artists that may have contributed to the practices North employed in her own work, even suggesting that North may have used some photographic and painterly references to assist her in completing paintings which she could not finish en plein air.8 Unlike Gladston, other scholars rarely treat her works as texts worthy of individual analysis, and when they do, their discussions often lack a comprehensive theoretical framework. Instead, scholars address her output in the context of colonialism or Darwinian influence.9 This chapter hopes to break that pattern by looking more closely at a few representative paintings rather than her work as a whole. This study also acknowledges the contradictions associated with North and it fully regards her as a problematic figure, albeit one whose many contributions to botanical illustration make her worthy of sustained study. It accepts that her work can sometimes be bold and assertive but is at other times quite conventional. In my chapter, the first section, ‘Introducing Marianne North’, presents a short biographical sketch of the artist, putting her life in the context of national interests. After that, ‘North as illustrator’ argues that her deliberate violations of the conventions of botanical illustration and nature art depict the multiple ways in which plant life can be understood as a network of interdependency and support rather than a random collection of isolated specimens. By closely examining one of her plant portraits done in Borneo, I hope to demonstrate that viewing nature was an emotional encounter for North, one associated with passion and subjective forms of knowing. and that engagement led to her reverence for the preservation of plants against the forces of economic botany and scientific inquiry. Looking at one of her landscape paintings, I will trace how her personalized approach to Niagara Falls allowed her to challenge the tradition of idyllic vistas associated with landscape art. Part three, ‘North as curator’, summarizes her plans for the gallery which she financed at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. North donated most of her paintings to Kew and her vision of gallery space was enlightened; her views anticipated many contemporary ideas about the use of public cultural space.

Introducing Marianne North Marianne North (1830–90) was born into an illustrious family. Her father, Frederick North, was a Member of Parliament from Hastings for many years and during her

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 formative years, her family travelled extensively throughout Europe and elsewhere. From those experiences she learned the skills to plan lengthy trips abroad, from how to manage her finances and exchange foreign currency to how to plan for receiving new supplies in lands that were thousands of miles away from her home. When her mother died, North agreed to care for her father, yet she regarded her filial loyalty as a blessing since she loved him dearly and regarded him as one of the most influential people in her life. In Recollections, she noted that he had been ‘my one friend and companion’.10 Following his death, when she was forty, her privilege and inherited wealth gave her the means to live an independent life and she decided to travel and pursue her interest in science, especially botany. Starting in 1871, North travelled extensively. She began her travels in Canada, the United States, and Jamaica, but eventually she went to places as remote as Sri Lanka and Burma, Java, and Japan. Encouraged by her friend Charles Darwin to visit places he had never seen, in 1880–81, she visited Australia and New Zealand. Everywhere she went, North documented the plants she saw by sketching and painting them, and in the course of her life, she produced thousands of images. According to Christopher Mills, 848 of her works are on permanent display at Kew, which also houses her archives including letters, sketches, and other memorabilia.11 North’s failing health required her to return home to England, where she died at age 59.12 North’s interest in science was not unusual for a woman of her generation. In ‘Why Victorian Natural History?’, Barbara T. Gates argues that the Victorians were ‘passionate’ about natural history and that this passion extended across genders and classes, making it an ‘egalitarian pursuit’.13 In fact, Gates associates this passion with a religious fervour. People of all ages and classes collected plants and flowers and sought to understand the natural world by direct observation. They built extensive gardens both private and public which incorporated indigenous plants alongside those from other nations, and they went walking on long rambles to the countryside so that they might see first-hand what marvels existed. They established many journals on the topic, most notably Curtis Botanical Magazine, which was established in 1787 and which is still in publication today. Victorians eagerly read entries in the daily newspapers which summarized exploratory voyages being taken to ‘exotic’ lands filled with new species of plant and animal life. Nothing escaped their attention; the Victorians wrote bestselling books on birds, on ferns, and on minerals. They started to build museums to display their many encyclopedic collections of natural objects and they started societies that would promote learning on topics related to science. The Geographical Society of London (now the Royal Geographical Society) was founded in 1830, and it began to sponsor and fund scientific exhibitions around the globe. The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew were opened to the public in 1840, and the Natural History Museum was established in 1881 as a separate institution, having originally been part of the British Museum. The passionate interest in flowers and plants was fuelled by natural curiosity but also by the demands of empire building. As Victorian Britain attempted to solidify its sovereignty over the many lands it had colonized, it needed to develop new forms of scientific understanding. In Flower Hunters, Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin maintain that ‘collecting,

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North cataloguing and classifying’ plant life was a key reason for Britain’s world domination, for it allowed the nation to identify and acquire medicinal plants, new food crops, and other valuable resources, such as timber and rubber that literally helped build roads and railroads and urban centres in the UK and its many colonies.14 In previous centuries, plant hunting had often been a leisure pursuit undertaken on sunny afternoons by professionals and amateurs, but by the nineteenth century, it had become a serious national pursuit across oceans and interior waterways teeming with wildlife; the ‘new discovery’ of a plant or flower became the focus of innumerable news accounts. Ships travelling the world carried natural scientists but also visual artists on board, who could capture the details of a live specimen since transport of such material took months and often resulted in loss or decay. Eventually of course, plant hunting contributed evidence for the emerging concept of evolution since plants were used to illustrate species adaptation, as well as competition for resources and other factors.

North as illustrator As Lys de Bray establishes in his seminal study, The Art of Botanical Illustration:The Classical Illustrators and Their Achievements from 1550 to 1900, botanical illustration has a long history dating from classical antiquity.15 The botanical artist strove for accuracy in representing the parts of a single plant and verisimilitude was the uppermost goal. Expressive renderings of plants, especially flowers, would come later, but initially the main purpose of botanical illustration was identification and classification, and to achieve these goals, botanical artists employed two approaches to the subject matter. In the first method, often called ‘one plant in space’, the artists would draw or paint a single specimen on a page or canvas and use a white background. It is meant to capture one moment in the life of a plant. The specimen is centred on the page and in most instances enlarged to emphasize the individual parts of a plant, showing leaves, the flowering plant itself, and its root system. The second method of botanical illustration presents the ‘life cycle of a plant’, and it includes depictions of plants in several stages: as seeds, as fully mature plants, and finally, as decayed specimens, withered and fragile, subject to being broken and no longer in one piece. To achieve the best results in coloration, artists used watercolour as the preferred medium because it could be carefully applied in layers, documenting the transparency of the elements. Overall, watercolour could render plant life realistically and objectively, and even today, botanical artists use watercolour even though technological advances in imaging allow for other forms of reproduction. In examining North’s individual paintings, viewers quickly see that she violated the conventions of botanical illustration that had been well established by the nineteenth century. In both her use of painting materials and composition, she established a signature style that is easily recognizable. To begin, she used oil paints rather than watercolour, and her images occupied the entire canvas and did not include any white background. She often included many plants in the same composition, sometimes adding insects and other species along with them. She included many frogs and birds, but also butterflies,

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 monkeys, and other animals that would have been less familiar to Europeans. Prominent among her works were ‘plant portraits’ that featured a single species of plant, usually a flower or fruit. Her compositions place the plant in the context of where it grows in its natural surroundings, whether in the many colonial gardens she saw or in wild forests or jungles. Occasionally, North adds features to the main plant, and these appear to have been imaginative props rather than actual sightings. As Plate 4 indicates, North often employs props to show how the plant serves as a source of nutrition. In ‘A Brazilian Climbing Shrub and Hummingbirds’, the birds are obtaining nectar from the plants, a common trope in North’s paintings. Given North’s immense output, it is difficult to generalize about her work or make statements that apply to every painting. However, recent forensic analysis has determined that she was consistent in her use of materials, composition, and overall aesthetic over the course of her career.16 North generally began a painting by doing a quick sketch in ink on paper with white ground, and she would often add colour and other details later. Researchers also have been surprised to discover that North wrote field notes on the backs of her work, sometimes about the species of plant and other times about the site. She relied on a limited palette of colours, mixing them directly from prepared oil tubes since travel with large numbers of materials would have been too difficult. Her workday was intense; she worked outdoors for hours at a time and then returned to her lodgings, where she continued to work well into the evening, often forgoing meals and time for rest. When a painting was done, she would add varnish and attach the paper to stronger backings. In the course of her travels, North produced an extraordinary amount of work, completing a painting every few days. North also often received specimens from friends and others which she used indoors as references, although she clearly preferred painting plants in their natural settings to guarantee their accuracy. North began her paintings outdoors, and forensic investigation has found fragments of insects, plant life, and even her hair in her paintings. Working outdoors is another way in which she differed from other botanical artists who did their work in studios where they could easily control lighting and use visual aids to help them carefully examine a specimen, even dissecting it to reveal its structure and reproductive elements. North was familiar with the American tradition of working en plein air which had started in the 1830s and was well established by the time North began her work. She had met Frederic Church, a member of the Hudson River School, while visiting New York state, and later she spent time visiting him in Jamaica, where she gave him one of her paintings. Most importantly for North, American painters had determined that painterly sketches were important contributions to nature studies. While artists disagreed about how ‘finished’ a work needed to be, they advanced the notion that seeing plants and landscapes in the wild was essential to accuracy.17 While first visiting Borneo and Java in 1876, North became fascinated by the scenery, calling it a ‘place of wonder’.18 Among the many plants that attracted her were the pitcher plants which grow there in abundance. Known by the scientific name Nepenthes, there are many varieties of this carnivorous plant, and North was credited for having ‘discovered’

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North at least one that was eventually named after her.19 These mostly grow in remote areas, often at high altitudes off trees growing on cliffs and in very humid conditions. Despite these unusual growing conditions, European gardeners were fascinated by the plants’ exotic appearance, and explorers highly valued their seeds, which were transported for cultivation. During the nineteenth century, the plants were already expensive and sought after despite the difficulty of finding them in the wild. Botanists were also fascinated by the plant’s ability to capture small insects which fell into the plant shell where the inside walls were slippery, having a waxy coating. The insects could not escape and digestive enzymes which the plant emitted could consume an insect or even some small animals like mice in a matter of hours. In ‘Other Species of Pitcher Plants from Sarawak, Borneo’ (see Plate 5), North groups twelve plants together, tilting several of them to show how they collect water.20 Had she painted the plant conventionally, the viewer would not have known that the basin was often filled. Animals often use the plants for rainwater and, as a result, the plants are also called ‘monkey cups’ by locals. As her painting shows, the plants grow in clusters of varying size. She paints these ‘pitcher plants’ with several types of green and yellow for the tubular bodies and includes brown splotches to show surface variations. She emphasizes the texture of the hairy sidebars which are used by insects, ants, and other smaller species to climb up into the basin. Overall, her painting reveals the functionality of the plant as well as the volume of the pitchers. More conventional botanical drawings would have presented the plant for dissection and viewers would not necessarily understand the plant is attractive to insects and carnivorous. In painting this image, North displays her profound curiosity over the relationship plants have to other species, and she approaches her work with emotional intensity, not scientific objectivity. Often in her autobiography, she tells readers that she would ‘squeal’ with delight at the sight of a new plant. For North, the wildness of nature was a source of wonder, and she clearly did not mean to paint species using the conventions of classification systems that were reductionist.21 To find the pitcher plants in the wilds of Borneo and Java, North travelled long distances, often in harsh conditions.22 In her autobiography, she describes travelling in wooden canoes and steamboats in rivers filled with crocodiles and shallow rapids which filled the boat with water. Around her she saw monkeys and many bird species. She even saw huge apes, and she mentions staring at them through her opera glasses while they stared back. She casually notes that poisonous snakes were in the underbrush and that at one point, they saw a snake measuring twelve feet. The temperatures in the jungle often hovered at one hundred degrees and local workers, including her guide, would ‘peel’ away their clothing as the heat intensified, sometimes becoming nearly naked in the process while she continued to wear her Chinese silk Victorian dresses even though they were ‘becoming very ragged’. Her style of dress while painting outdoors lingered no matter where she went; a photograph taken of her while she sat painting outdoors in South Africa shows that North maintained proper Victorian respectability regardless of the location (see Figure 3.1). In every respect, North embodied colonial power and

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90

Figure 3.1  Marianne North, ‘Marianne North at her easel, circa 1883’

privilege. She ate imported delicacies from Fortnum and Mason even while she was surrounded by arbours of fruit trees. During her visit to Borneo and Java, North discusses the effects that colonialization was having on the land. She mentions the many quicksilver mines she saw which polluted

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North the air by processing the ore on site. Debris from the mines littered the ground and she notes, ‘I felt sorry to think that fine old mountain was steadily being blown to pieces with gunpowder.’ 23 She also sees the destruction of human lives, remarking that ‘It was a cruel process too, sweeping out the flues; and though eleven of the twelve men employed twice a year on it lost their health or died, fresh hands were to be found for the work, being tempted by the high rate of pay.’ Later in her travels to New Zealand and Australia, North would intensify her criticisms of natural destruction. There she notes of the deforestation she sees, ‘Great piles of sawdust and chips, with some large logs, told the work of destruction had begun, and civilized man would soon drive out not only the aborigines but their food and shelter.’ North sees many instances of sport hunting and refers to it as ‘useless murder’.24 At another point, she refers to her countrymen as the ‘killing race from Europe’ because of their destruction of swans and emus for pleasure. 25 North’s concern for vanishing plant life is reflected in her paintings and was immediately recognized by her peers. In compiling the Descriptive Catalogue for her paintings, Hooker remarked in 1882 that she had captured ‘wonders of the vegetable kingdom’ which ‘are already disappearing or are doomed to disappear before the axe, forest fires, the plough and the flock, of the ever advancing settler or colonist. Such scenes can never be renewed by nature, nor when once effaced can they be pictured in the mind’s eye, except by means of such records as this Lady has presented to us, and to posterity’.26 North’s emotional relationship to nature encouraged her to see herself as a steward, not as a colonialist who defined nature in economic terms. In addition to painting plant portraits, North often painted landscapes, which allowed her to question perspective and the nature of creation. On her first visit to the United States and Canada in 1871, North completed several landscape paintings. Many were done in California, where she did a series focusing on the many trees she saw, including examples of the cypress and the ‘big trees’, the sequoia and redwood. Tree studies, especially of palms and fruit-bearing trees, would become a staple of her work in tropical locations, and she brought back many specimens that are now hung in her gallery. North was also attracted to painting bodies of water, and examples of lakes, oceans, and waterfalls are also numerous. Number 193, ‘The American Fall from Pearl Island, Niagara’ is a typical image (see Plate 6). At that time, Niagara Falls was already a famous tourist destination, and many painters used the scenic location for their plein air work, so it is easy to compare her treatment to others done by local artists and visitors around the same time. The foreground depicts a wooden staircase enclosed in brown and yellow ochre leaves which descends to an unseen viewing area that overlooks the water as it flows downwards and splashes into the basin. On one of the wooden railings, she has included a rare signature, painting ‘M. North’ on the wooden plank. On the left of the picture, she includes two traces of lingering rainbows with stripes of red, yellow, blue, and light purple. On the opposite side, jutting into the water, is a small section of land-mass with vegetation which includes a dead tree, some wild dark brown grasses, and bushes. The rapidly moving river water itself is a mixture of blue and green with whitecaps suggesting the moving currents. In the background, North presents the Canadian side of the Falls, and she

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 includes brushwork which suggests a suspension bridge, as well as the skyline of a far-away city as the indications of man’s habitation. A muted greyish-brown sky occupies the upper third of the painting and includes large clouds, but the colouration makes them rather indistinct. In completing this image, North would have been familiar with the long tradition of English landscape painting done in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that hung in England and other European museums and galleries. Works by Constable, Gainsborough, and Reynolds were monumental in size, suggesting the grandeur of natural phenomena and providing viewers with awe-inspiring opportunities to wonder at creation. The work invited intense emotional reactions and even tears. The painters were bold in their use of greens, and they painted lush scenery, especially of towering trees. Their works suggested Edenic vistas that extended well beyond the canvas and when people are included in the paintings, they are dwarfed by the size of nature around them, suggesting how nature possesses power and authority over humanity. While the artists did their work to suggest the power and glory of nature, critics have long recognized that their landscape paintings were also embodiments of ideology, especially about national interests, class, and race. While presented as though they were realistic, the works often obscured social inequalities and erased the effects of emerging industrialization. This was especially true in America, where the landscape paintings and other popular images encouraged expansion by settlers who claimed lands owned by indigenous peoples. For them, the abundance of nature invited ownership and exploitation of natural resources rather than meditative contemplation. In contrast, North’s landscape is subdued and its composition emphasizes human craft and making rather than the natural setting. More importantly, the painting’s compositional elements and use of colour invite interpretive questions about her role as a woman painter and illustrator. First, the vantage point of her painting invites viewers to ask about where she stood while she painted. Why had she remained on the top of the land rather than descend to the lookout for a better view? Why had she used browns and yellows for the leaves when most landscape art uses intense greens? Was the rainbow real or merely being used as a prop? If so, what was she trying to suggest by its hovering over the Falls? Most importantly, perhaps, is the large sky. Why had the artist used one-third of her canvas to show a darkened sky when the main subject matter of the painting is Niagara Falls, one of the most iconic of American natural wonders? It is possible that the answers to these questions have to do with North’s immaturity as a landscape painter. She was just getting started in her career at this point, and she certainly could have made artistic errors based on her unfamiliarity with the medium, its tools and general aesthetic. Yet her choices were deliberate ones, the result of her gendered role as a woman artist taking on the ‘grand themes’ of a male-dominated tradition. For North, choosing to stay above the stairs suggests she prefers her own vantage point to that of the ‘mediated lookout’ which forces viewers to take in a scene based on someone else’s notion of what to look at. North values her own individual expression, even if it is at odds with received tradition. For her, the Falls are less sublime than most painters

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North suggest. Is it possible, then, that ‘natural wonders’ are really less spectacular than they appear in most representations? What does that have to say about Creation and the divine? Many landscape artists saw nature as expressing divine providence and power over the cosmos. Whether intentionally or not, their art reflected Western sensibilities about how nature originated, and the landscapes suggested deeply held Christian understandings of man’s relationship to nature. Are those notions absolute and transcendent or are they constructions? What if nature is just another independent force of the cosmos? North was an avowed ‘heathen’, and she refused to participate in church services even when invited by missionaries she met and liked personally during her travels. Is her painting suggesting ‘a tree is a tree, a waterfall is a waterfall’ and, regardless of that, the sky covers the earth? Whatever the answers, North’s landscape paintings reflect her own perspective, and their failure to adhere to conventional expectations of genre painting is an indication of her own attitudes and mindset. Just as North’s plant portraits violate conventions of botanical art, her landscapes depict nature as a personal experience which viewers undertake in random and unpredictable ways. Nature does not represent anything other than itself. It invites wonder and awe but also scepticism and ambivalence.

North as curator Most of North’s paintings are on permanent display at Kew in the gallery bearing her name, and the North Gallery is filled with botanical images packed closely together in two small rooms (see Plate 7). The bottom section of each wall contains sections of wood taken from North’s many travels while the middle section of each wall contains her paintings, each simply framed. Unlike modern galleries, it leaves no space between images, and they appear as a connected stream of nature pictures. When North donated her many paintings, she stipulated that they not be removed from her gallery and that the arrangement she determined be permanently maintained. During the Victorian era, museums were starting to display encyclopedic collections rather than Cabinets of Curiosity in which random artefacts were grouped together. Following that trend, the North Gallery attempted to present a global vision of flora grouped according to geographic origin. Within each area, indigenous plants appear alongside colonial ones, demonstrating a moment in time that attempts to capture the realities of nineteenth-century life, and the collection clearly reflects centuries of European involvement in other countries. According to her biographers, North took an active role in the project, working closely with the architect James Fergusson, and her letters comment on virtually every aspect of the project, from the exterior building and its interior viewing space to the colour of the walls and ceiling, ornamentation, and other features. Fergusson adopted many of her suggestions; he altered some of the classical Greek and Roman architectural features and substituted an exterior building which resembles a colonial bungalow. He also included elements based on the many temples which North had seen since she felt these elements provided a meditative and sacred atmosphere.

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 In imagining a gallery devoted to her art, North asked that the project be large enough to include an adjacent area near the gallery that could house a ‘refreshment room’ serving tea and coffee which would also serve as a resting spot for visitors. North felt strongly that visitors should have ample time to view her paintings but that they should be comfortable in doing so. She imagined her friends coming to the gallery and spending many hours there. The Director of Kew, Sir Joseph Hooker, adamantly rejected her request, and he prevailed in controlling the final construction. Hooker strongly believed that the Royal Gardens should only be a ‘living museum’ for serious research and scientific study, not a park used for recreational rambles, especially by the lower classes. He feared that unruly crowds might overrun the building and litter the area with debris from their picnic lunches. In defending his position to Parliament, he referred to ‘a swarm of filthy children and women of the lowest classes’ who he felt would descend on Kew, ruining its reputation as a site of scientific inquiry.27 Hooker also feared that opening the park more to the public might promote its reputation as a site for illicit sex like other pleasure gardens in England, which were associated with prostitution and homosexual cruising. Thus, in his mind, the gallery space needed to reflect a seriousness of appearance and purpose. He demanded that the trustees follow his instructions and he prevailed despite public opposition to his leadership by more enlightened Members of Parliament who wanted museums to welcome individuals of all classes, extending their opportunities for cultural enrichment and learning. The second request North had was that her gallery should provide an adjacent room for a painting studio which she and fellow artists might use when they visited. She clearly imagined the gallery to be an active site that would showcase her previous work but which also would allow growth and opportunity for new pictures to stand beside the ones she had done on her travels. Again, the request was denied, and no additional space was included. As Michelle Payne has indicated in her study Marianne North: An Intrepid Painter, North never meant for her botanical paintings to be considered fine art. She imagined that the images she painted would serve as educational aids for viewers interested in botany and natural science who could never see the original plants in their native habitats. As a woman of privilege, North fully understood that she had opportunities unavailable to the majority of her fellow countrymen and women, yet she also felt she possessed more innate curiosity about botany, and she bemoaned the ‘ignorance’ she encountered when she met others who did not share her passions.28 Early in her career, North had noted that often when she showed her painting of a coconut to viewers, they confusedly associated it with cocoa, the source of chocolate. Evaluating North’s gallery may be best understood by using the language of twentiethcentury art critics, who often used the term ‘gaze’ as an element of the aesthetic. They argued that artists inevitably express individual subjectivity in their choices of subject matter, materials, and perspective even if their intent is to be objective and realistic. The artistic ‘gaze’ associated with botanical art assumes a scientific vantage point, and it assumes that the artist erases any sense of their own agency in their work and that they share the goals of accuracy and completeness in their representations of plant life. North, however, does not use this perspective in her gallery. Instead, she presents nature

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North subjectively, showing how she personally experienced it during her travels. According to Ponsonby, North’s intent for the gallery was to ‘make you feel that you are along with her, riding on a jampany or on the back of a mule, or walking – parasol and painting easel in hand – through the lush jungle or the dense rainforest, in search of new subjects for her canvas’.29 As her gallery shows, North regarded nature as lush; for her, it is neither tidy nor quiet. Instead, it can be loud and distracting. At times, it can also be perplexing and resist easy understanding. Individual paintings bleed into one another and lack clear focus until the viewer carefully studies an image and isolates it from the adjacent ones. As her works indicate, one day she experiences nature by noting the colour of a flower, while on another day it attracts her because one fruit has unusual features. Suddenly its shape is more interesting than its colour. For her, the wild coexists with the cultivated. The gallery also shows that plant life is never lonely. In her paintings, insects buzz next to flowers and small frogs nibble on dried leaves. They even defiantly hold up their feet, challenging viewers to catch them. Overall, viewers experience visual pleasure, not because each painting is accurate and conventional but because each is a surprise. Each painting invites viewers to ask profound questions about nature and about perception, about seeing and the notion that any one scientific system can contain nature. North’s gaze employs a visual grammar that reflects diversity. It resists an objective scientific and commercial view of nature and replaces it with the notion that nature is grander than humans’ feeble attempts at classification. Her gallery invites viewers to engage with looking and making their own responses, not to rely on mediated systems of classification that often actually obscure reality. Her field sketches comprise a sketchbook of multiple reds and greens, oranges and pinks, sometimes held by a monkey who stares back at the viewer. Despite her remarkable gaze, North was unable to control all the details of her ambitious plan for the gallery, and even from the start, it was regarded by some critics as ‘old fashioned’. Over the years, attendance dropped and funding for maintenance decreased, so both the exterior and interior became neglected and significant structural damage to the building resulted. Most importantly, however, the gallery never achieved the goals that North had imagined for it. She had wanted it to be a democratic cultural space where audiences of every type could visit and linger, and she had wanted artists to use her work as inspiration and continue the tradition of illustration to which she had devoted her entire career. I visited the Marianne North Gallery in March of 2020, and my experience confirmed that North and her gallery are riddled with multiple contradictions about Victorian sensibilities and achievements. She is much praised for her daring and curiosity, yet her blindness to social, racial, and economic oppression is often erased in standard biographies commissioned by Kew Gardens. Her gallery is often empty of visitors while the giftshop displays her many paintings on mugs, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, and tea tins, a sure indication of how Kew has capitalized on her work. Her paintings remain literally locked in place, obscuring her many contributions to nature studies and artwork that challenge conventional

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 expectations. I sincerely hope that future art historians and other scholars, both academic and amateur, will undertake a serious reassessment of her botanical illustrations. It is long overdue.

Notes 1 Wilfrid Blunt and William T. Stearn, The Art of Botanical Illustration: New Edition (London: Antique Collector’s Club, 1994), p. 277. 2 Marianne North, Recollections of a Happy Life: Volume One (1892; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Recollections of a Happy Life: Volume Two (London: Macmillan, 1892; Franklin Classics Reprint, n.d.). 3 Laura Ponsonby, ‘Introduction’, in Abundant Beauty: The Adventurous Travels of Marianne North – Botanical Artist (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2010). 4 There are too many biographies of North to name them all, but two recent studies are representative. Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Revealing New Worlds: Three Victorian Naturalists (London: Routledge, 2001) argues that North sought to maintain her feminine role of dutiful daughter and respectable patron of the arts despite her ‘vagabond spirit’. Sheffield places North’s art within the acceptable domain of Victorian female ‘accomplishments’ but sees North as trying to enlarge the idea that women could work professionally. Finally, Sheffield compares North with the botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian, who did many insect portraits. Susan Morgan, in Place Matters: Gendered Geography in Victorian Women’s Travel Books about Southeast Asia (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996) studies the writings and letters of North and only incidentally analyses the paintings. 5 The website maintained by the Royal Gardens at Kew has many links to recent documentaries on North. They frequently change the listings to reflect current exhibitions on North and they often include short video excerpts from YouTube and other social network sites. Recent documentaries have tried to follow North’s visits in search of pitcher plants in Borneo and some amateur productions done by educators who have encouraged their students to imitate North’s art. 6 One of the most explicit accusations of racism is by Ana Lucia Almeida Gazzola, ‘Marianne North: Memories of an English Traveler’, Feminist Studies, 16/3 (2008), pp. 27–8 (translated by Google docs). Gazzola notes that North is critical of the black individuals she encounters, often calling them ‘lazy’ and ‘spoiled’. When she visited Brazil, slavery was still legal, and North refers to it as a ‘mild form’ of the institution despite the fact that she witnessed young teenaged boys being auctioned off at the market. Gazzola argues that North praised her English friends repeatedly while criticizing local customs and beliefs. 7 London Drawing Group is an art and teaching collective of feminist artists who provide lectures and demonstrations at major museums in London and elsewhere. North was one of the botanical artists included in their online series on Women Botanical Illustrators. The programmes were repeated several times during the year and included lectures as well as painting and drawing demonstrations. 8 Lynne Helen Gladston, The Hybrid Work of Marianne North in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Visual Practice(s) (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2012). Despite her thorough study, I disagree with some of the theoretical frames which Gladston uses. She places North in modernist and post-modernist contexts of collage which erase the Victorian context of realism and she argues that North was very much influenced by Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics but fails to see how PRB painting used narratives and social commentary. Their use of nature was ornamental and often symbolic whereas North’s work uses nature as the primary focus.

The botanical illustrations of Marianne North Nonetheless, Gladston is an invaluable resource for the artwork. Gladston especially discusses North’s reliance on other sources when she describes North’s visit to see Julia Margaret Cameron in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). See pp. 196–8. 9 Philip Kerrigan, ‘Marianne North: Painting a Darwinian Vision’, Visual Culture in Britain, 11/1 (March 2010), pp. 1–24. 10 North’s autobiography is generally not personal, and she rarely reveals her innermost thoughts about other people. The one exception is her relationship with her father. The first chapter of Recollections reveals her intense connection to him and her isolation and grief at his passing. See ‘Early Days and Home Life’. 11 Christopher Mills, ‘Introduction’, in Marianne North:The Kew Collection (London: Kew Publishing, 2019), p. 9. This is the first publication to contain reproductions of all of North’s paintings. 12 In her autobiography, North frequently discusses her rheumatism and how it affected her ability to hold a paintbrush. She found cold temperatures difficult to manage and preferred working in tropical locations. Unfortunately, those same locations held many dangers for her as she was exposed to cholera, malaria, and even smallpox. She often had fevers that lingered for many days, and she used opium for medicinal purposes. At the end of her life, she suffered from profound deafness and what appears to have been mental illness. 13 Barbara Gates, ‘Why Victorian Natural History?’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 35/2 (2007), pp. 539–49. 14 Mary Gribbin and John Gribbin, Flower Hunters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 15 Lys de Bray, The Art of Botanical Illustration: The Classic Illustrators and Their Achievements from 1550–1900 (New York: Wellfleet Press, 1989). While regarded as one of the seminal texts on botanical art, de Bray’s discussion on North views her as a ‘prim spinster whose courage was as strong as the whalebone of her stays’ (pp. 146–52), and his remarks are seldom objective. 16 Tanya Millard, Emma Le Cornu, Rachael Smith, Eleanor Hasler, Helen Cowdy, Rebecca Chisholm, and Elanor King (2011), ‘The Conservation of 830 Oil Paintings on Paper by Marianne North’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 34/2, pp. 159–72. https://doi.org/10.108 0/19455224.2011.608341. 17 See Eleanor Jones Harvey, The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature: 1830 to 1880 (Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1998). 18 North, Recollections, Vol. 1, p. 246. 19 North, Recollections, Vol. 2, p. 100. Strictly speaking, the plant was not found by North. As she summarizes, a specimen was brought to her which she painted, and later its seeds were transmitted to England, where it was discovered that the plant differed from others in the collection. The attribution was an honorary one, and today many scientists object to the naming of plants by colonial explorers as it erases long histories of plant cultivation and history by indigenous peoples. 20 North, Recollections, Vol. 1, p. 246. 21 Jennifer Landin, Private Conversation, May 2021. Landin teaches and lectures about the relationship between art and science. She is an Associate Professor/Teaching Faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University. Landin admitted that North’s work often fails to achieve the standards needed for scientific illustration, but she still sees great value in North’s paintings, especially as they clearly show how her passion for plants served as the foundation for her attitudes on conservation. Landin maintains that contemporary artists often use nature for inspiration, and they also tend to ignore genre expectations; this is particularly true of artists who rely on newer forms of reproduction. 22 North actually visited Borneo and Java twice and she includes lengthy discussions of her experiences in both volumes of her autobiography. See Vol. 1, chapter 7 and Vol. 2, chapter 12.

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Natural history illustration, 1855–90 23 North, Recollections, Vol. 1, p. 247. 24 North, Recollections, Vol. 2, p. 116. 25 North, Recollections, Vol, 2, p. 127. 26 J. D. Hooker, ‘Preface’, in The Gallery of Marianne North’s Paintings of Plants and Their Homes Royal Gardens Kew: Descriptive Catalogue (London: Spottiswoode & Company, 1882), p. vi. 27 Gladston, Hybrid Work, pp. 57–8. 28 Michelle Payne, Marianne North: A Very Intrepid Painter (London: Kew Publishing, 2011), p. 15. 29 Ponsonby, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.

Part II Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature, 1859–1901

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4 The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon: new views on her manuscript ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ 1 Margo L. Beggs

A

m e l i a Frances Howard-Gibbon (1826–74) grew up on the fringes of an exceptionally privileged environment.2 Her grandfather was Charles Howard, the eleventh Duke of Norfolk. But as his marriage to her grandmother was not legal (he had a living wife who had been committed to a mental institution), their three children were not recognized as legitimate offspring. Nonetheless, the thirteenth Duke of Norfolk offered HowardGibbon’s father a number of important positions at Arundel Castle in West Sussex, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk, and a home nearby. Thus Howard-Gibbon was raised in close proximity to royalty and the aristocracy and lived a cultured life. She attended theatre performances and other events in London, took art classes, and studied in Paris and Germany, where she gained facility in French and German. However, upon the death of her father in 1849, when Howard-Gibbon was not quite twenty-three, her family was forced to vacate their home. Sometime over the next few years, she and other family members left England behind, moving to Canada West (present-day Ontario). By the late 1850s, Howard-Gibbon was living in Sarnia, a port town on the St Clair River. There, she ran a private school in her home with about a dozen pupils from Sarnia’s well-established settler families. One student later described Howard-Gibbon as a ‘highly educated lady’, who ‘was a good teacher and quite strict about our behaviour’.3 While in Sarnia, Howard-Gibbon also created an illustrated manuscript dating to 1859. She titled it ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’. It comprises twenty-five leaves, including a title page that she rendered in black, red, and ochre pen and ink (see Figure 4.1).4 With black pen and ink and rubricated initials, she lettered the traditional English rhyming alphabet ‘A was an Archer’ across the bottom of the leaves (see Plate 8). In her illustrations, also in black pen and ink, she depicted small children dressed in miniature adult clothing going about the occupations, trades, and activities dictated by the rhyme, which begins ‘A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog. / B was a Butcher who kept a great Dog. / C was a Captain, covered with Lace. / D was Drunkard, with a red Face’ (see 75

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Figure 4.1  Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859, title page

Figure 4.2). This cast of characters is joined by a farmer who ‘followed the Plough’, a king who ‘governed a Mouse’, a lady ‘with a white Hand’, an ‘oyster wench who could scold’, a robber ‘who wanted the Whip’, a vintner who was ‘a very great Sot’, and more, each personifying a letter of the alphabet.5 She set her illustrations apart from the script

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon

Figure 4.2  Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859, ‘D was a Drunkard, with a red Face’

in rustic frames composed of branches, sometimes embellishing them with attributes related to the text, such as the grapevines in the image for ‘D was a Drunkard’.6 Exactly one hundred years later, the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books in Toronto received an unexpected and intriguing donation – Howard-Gibbon’s ‘Illustrated

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Comic Alphabet’.7 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon was unknown to the librarian in charge of the Osborne Collection, Judith St John, prior to the donation of the manuscript. In time, however, St John learned more about Howard-Gibbon’s background. She and her staff also deemed the manuscript to be of great historical significance, for as St John later wrote, ‘We have claimed, without dispute, this manuscript … as the first Canadian picture book’.8 Over the ensuing years, Howard-Gibbon and her manuscript gained an ever-increasing public profile. In 1966, the Toronto branch of Oxford University Press published a facsimile edition of ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ in honour of Canada’s forthcoming centennial year.9 In 1971, the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians ensured that the manuscript’s creator would become more widely known when it established the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award to commemorate Howard-Gibbon and to recognize exemplary Canadian children’s book illustration.10 ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ continues to be valued in the realm of children’s book history, as evidenced by its inclusion in two recent Canadian exhibitions: one dating to 2015 and the other to 2017.11 Considering the recognition accorded to both Howard-Gibbon and ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ since its arrival at the Osborne Collection in 1959, remarkably little investigation of the manuscript has arisen. This is an unfortunate gap as nineteenth-century manuscripts produced by ‘amateur authors’, usually women, play an important and yet largely unacknowledged role in the history of children’s literature in English.12 What has been published about Howard-Gibbon’s ‘Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ breaks down into three main categories: bibliographical and related commentary provided by the Osborne Collection; reviews that appeared upon the publication of the facsimile edition; and critical and historical commentary in surveys of Canadian children’s books. Given HowardGibbon’s background as a teacher, some commentators have surmised that the schoolmistress created ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ for her students, perhaps to compensate for a shortage of proper children’s books in Sarnia at that time.13 The settings in her images have also sparked speculation about her intent, for they hark back to scenes from her homeland, including glimpses of Arundel Castle, historic village streets, and the bucolic West Sussex countryside. Thus, the manuscript has also been viewed as an act of longing for the home and way of life Howard-Gibbon left behind after the death of her father.14 Finally, rather than being analysed on its own terms, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ has been described simply as a precursor to the more accomplished work of Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott.15 All three perspectives on ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ are reasonable but do not shed enough light on the genesis of the manuscript. M. O. Grenby’s research into manuscripts and the origins of British children’s literature provides a way forward. Grenby has revealed that even after children’s books came to be published professionally in the mid-eighteenth century, adults produced ‘hand-written vernacular texts’ geared to children.16 Furthermore, he writes, ‘to an extent [these manuscripts] invert the standard idea of the manuscript-print relationship; it is not that manuscripts turn into books, but that books find their way into the manuscripts’.17 Grenby’s formulation suggests a profitable

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon method for shedding new light on ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’. What insights can be gained by viewing Howard-Gibbon’s manuscript as a repository of previous publications? In this chapter, I will present a number of books, dating back to c. 1702, which resonate in Howard-Gibbon’s manuscript. Accordingly, I will argue that ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ was a carefully constructed and innovative enterprise, in which Howard-Gibbon simultaneously embedded the history of the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme, aligned her work with leading British (male) illustrators of her era, and encapsulated the mid-Victorian fascination with ‘age incongruity’, in which adults appeared to be childlike, and children took on the guise of adults.

Textual templates The roots of the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme in print stretch back to the very beginning of the eighteenth century. F. J. Harvey Darton writes that ‘as soon as a child knows the alphabet, says Locke, he should be led to read for pleasure’.18 Darton is referring to the edicts of the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke and his 1693 treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Locke believed children should have access to books and toys that entertained and delighted them in order to enhance their capability to learn. A Little Book for Little Children by T. W. (c. 1702) was a very early move in that direction.19 English nursery rhymes arose in the oral tradition and T. W.’s book, which featured ‘A was an Archer’, was the first to put some of these rhymes into print.20 As Darton comments, ‘the “A was an Archer” rhyme is frankly meant to be (and is) enjoyable’. Thus, the Little Book offered a stark contrast with the dour books for children of the period, which emphasized moral and religious education. It is, for Darton, a ‘little volume of light in the gloom’.21 Nonetheless, the version of the rhyme presented by T. W. is rather gloomy, with lines such as ‘I was an ill Man, and hated by all’, ‘M was a Madman, and beat out his Eyes’, and ‘Q was a Quarreller, and broke both his Shins’. The threatening characters in the rhyme outnumber more reputable or conventional members of society, such as a sailor who was a ‘Man of Renown’ or a yeoman, who ‘work’d for his Bread’. The portrayal throughout the rhyme of frightening and deviant figures who are described, variously, as disgraceful, gluttonous, hated, and even dead may seem surprising in a ‘little book for little children’. Yet, consider the case of Orbis Sensualium Pictus, created by the educator Johann Amos Comenius in 1658. The Orbis Pictus includes one of the first illustrated alphabets, and Comenius encouraged its use by young children.22 Patricia Crain remarks ‘the Comenian child still lives in a Renaissance sensorium, to use Walter Ong’s term, and in this world it is proper to invite the child to scrutinize “Deformed and Monstrous People” and “The Tormenting of Malefactors”’.23 Echoes of the Renaissance sensorium reverberate in T. W.’s version of ‘A was an Archer’. After its rather unruly introduction into print culture, ‘A was an Archer’ did not appear in book form again until 1743, in The Child’s New Play-thing, published by Mary Cooper.24 The Mary Cooper text differs significantly from the T. W. text. Threatening

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature and fantastical characters are replaced with recognizable inhabitants of a child’s everyday world. For example, the hated ‘ill man’ becomes a ‘joiner,’ productively occupied in building a house – in direct opposition to T. W.’s ‘gyant’ who ‘pul’d down a house’. The knave becomes a king, the liar becomes a lady, the ‘madman’ becomes a merchant, and the ‘quarreller’ becomes a Quaker. What can account for the transformation of the ‘A was an Archer’ text from c. 1702 to 1743? In fact, it anticipates a shift in publishing for children that surfaced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: in lockstep with larger cultural and economic developments came the rise of the middle class and the concomitant modelling of social hierarchies through children’s literature.25 Grenby notes that ‘increasingly readers of children’s books were asked to identify themselves as … squarely in the middling class’, in order to distinguish themselves from both the poor and the elite.26 The 1743 Mary Cooper version of ‘A was an Archer’ eschews imaginary creatures for representations of real people, characters that Crain sorts into three categories: trades (B was a Butcher), states (D was a Drunkard), or stations (K was a King).27 Children would be able to see their future selves or their parents in many of the trades represented, learn how not to behave from the states, and recognize those above and below them through the representation of stations. The Child’s New Play-thing established the textual template for ‘A was an Archer’ through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although as this chapter will show variations on the text followed. However, in her ‘Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, Howard-Gibbon chose to replicate the Mary Cooper text almost word for word, just over a century after it was first published.28

Image origins John Locke also recommended that books for children should be illustrated.29 Thus, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries even tiny, inexpensive chapbooks featured rudimentary images. Created by anonymous artists, such images were repeated or modified from one publication to the next. In this section, I put forward three candidates for the first illustrated versions of ‘A was an Archer’, beginning with the latest chronologically but the least sophisticated stylistically. These publications are unlikely to comprise a complete list of illustrated forerunners in the form of chapbooks, in part because other candidates simply may not have survived.30 Nonetheless, they are surely paradigmatic of the birth of illustrations for ‘A was an Archer’. Following on the heels of The Child’s New Play-thing, the next eighteenth-century publication to feature ‘A was an Archer’ was Tom Thumb’s Play-book (1755).31 As in the Little Book and The Child’s New Play-thing, the rhyme is not illustrated. However, an 1824 edition of Tom Thumb’s Play-book provides an image for each line of the rhyme.32 The simple, emblematic figures either face the viewer or are shown in profile. Some stand immobile, such as the butcher and the esquire, but in others we can detect a hint of movement, for example, the tipsy drunkard. Settings, if provided at all, are sparse – a small bush, in the case of the archer, and a chair, table, and patterned floor, in the case

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon of the gamester. Although published in 1824, the rudimentary woodcuts in this chapbook were most certainly derived from much earlier publications. For example, the ‘oyster wench’ and the tinker clearly originated in depictions of ‘cries’, that is to say, images of peddlers in the city and countryside, which date back to the sixteenth century.33 Such recycling was endemic in early publishing practices. In his study of seventeenthcentury ballad broadsheets, Christopher Marsh argues that the repetition of woodcuts over years was a matter of economy but also a creative act on the part of printers, who re-cast figures into new roles, often with slight adaptations in the woodcut designs.34 Here, the images have reasonable correspondences with the text. For example, in the illustration for the rhyming couplet ‘B was a butcher, / and had a great Dog’, the butcher holds a large knife and a dog rests at his feet. Nonetheless, specifics are often lacking – the archer shoots his arrow straight ahead into the empty air and there is no frog in sight; the ‘sailor’ who ‘liv’d in a Ship’ is a free-standing figure nowhere near water or a sailing vessel. The 1824 edition of Tom Thumb’s Play-book offered its readers the pleasure of linking the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme with illustrations at the most fundamental level. Yet, the images are superseded by those found in a chapbook dating to between 1782 and 1787. It is entitled The New Year’s Gift, with woodcuts by ‘Jackey Goodchild’. (The supposed ‘artist’ is actually a figure from English folklore.)35 The NewYear’s Gift includes an expanded version of the Mary Cooper text. This variation emerged in the late eighteenth century, with rhyming couplets for each letter, for example, ‘A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog, / But missing his mark shot into a Bog’.36 In The NewYear’s Gift, precise attributes relating to the rhyme appear in accompanying illustrations: for example, the archer aims his arrow just above the head of an overly large frog that sits in front of a more fully rendered bush. This chapbook was followed by another version of The New Year’s Gift, which came into print in c. 1820. It carried a slightly different title, with woodcuts by ‘Jacky Goodchild’, a modification on the name’s spelling in the earlier edition.37 The details in the images have expanded to a rather remarkable degree, providing, in effect, suggestions of little sets for each letter (see Figure 4.3).With ‘A’, the simple bush has expanded into a convincing representation of a boggy area. A second frog cowers in the underbrush, as the archer aims down at his victim, perched helplessly on a rock. For the letter ‘D’, the well-dressed drunkard relaxes in a sturdy chair at a pub, beside a small, square table. A server enters the scene from the left, bearing a drink in a large vessel, as the drunkard waits expectantly, eager to continue imbibing. In the 1824 Tom Thumb’s Play-book and the two editions of The NewYear’s Gift, we find the origins of both iconography and settings for forthcoming illustrated editions of the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme. These elements were emulated by illustrators through the nineteenth century to a surprisingly accurate degree, including by Howard-Gibbon in her manuscript. Howard-Gibbon’s illustration for ‘A’ is a near mirror image of that in the c. 1820 New Year’s Gift: her archer also aims slightly downwards at a startled frog perched on a rock, while a second frog watches fearfully from below (see Plate 8). Her portrayal of the drunkard incorporates the essential elements of the illustration from the

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Figure 4.3  Jacky Goodchild, The New Year’s Gift: Being a Gilded Toy for Little Masters and Misses to Learn their A B C: Containing the History of the Apple-pye with Verses Adapted to Each Letter in the Alphabet Tow [i.e. two] Different Ways: and Adorned with a Great Variety of Cuts, c. 1820

c. 1820 New Year’s Gift – pub setting, prosperous drunkard, chair and table, and server coming from the left carrying a large drink (see Figure 4.3 and Figure 4.2). Through the combination of her text, which first arose in 1743, and her illustrations, harkening back to at least c. 1820, Howard-Gibbon reflected in her manuscript the very earliest incarnations of the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme.

‘Comic alphabet’ competition Around the time of Howard-Gibbon’s birth in 1826, two advancements occurred in publications featuring ‘A was an Archer’. First, in addition to its appearance in chapbooks, stand-alone illustrated versions of the rhyming alphabet began to develop, although still with anonymous illustrators.38 Concurrently, a new mode for illustrating ‘A was an Archer’ emerged. Known as the ‘men among’ or tableau format, it features uppercase letters into which human figures are incorporated.39 Both innovations were in the service of combining education with amusement. However, Eric Partridge has identified a curious publishing phenomenon from the 1830s. No longer were alphabet books produced exclusively for literacy instruction; rather, some were ‘non-instructive rhymed and illustrated

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon alphabet[s]’.40 Partridge’s aim in highlighting this shift is to identify the origins of later, witty ‘comic alphabets of the 19th century’, among which he would include, for example, A Nonsense Alphabet by Edward Lear.41 Partridge associates the earliest nineteenth-century comic alphabets, however, with ‘burlesques of, or satires on, the 16th–20th century children’s alphabets designed to smoothe [sic] the way for very young learners’.42 Significantly, for our purposes, a handful of these satirical publications incorporate the phrase ‘comic alphabet’ into their very titles. George Cruikshank’s A Comic Alphabet (1836) is most likely the best known of this type today.43 Created by ‘Great Britain’s leading graphic artist’, it is a little book with cardboard covers that closely resembles an instructional book for children. Pairing each letter of the alphabet with a full-colour etching and a brief one-line description, Cruikshank ‘offers his viewers/readers a visual pun, a satiric reference, or a comic tableau at each stop along the way’, writes A. Robin Hoffman.44 Thus, Cruikshank intended his publication to be not an alphabet book per se but a parody of an alphabet book, geared to adult readers. In her analysis of Cruikshank’s book, Hoffman explains that it owes its origins to a prior practice of political critiques, among them ‘satiric prints and radical propaganda, and ABC rhymes constituted a significant subtype’.45 Cruikshank’s aim, Hoffman argues, was not so pointedly political – rather, A Comic Alphabet ‘interrogates the character of literacy’.46 However, as I will show, this new ‘comic alphabet’ type also provided Cruikshank with a novel playing field wherein he could assert his artistic agency and engage in a game of professional one-upmanship. The title page of A Comic Alphabet states definitively that the book is ‘Designed Etched & Published by George Cruikshank’. Thus, Cruikshank staked his claim to the ‘comic alphabet’ form and also declared a willingness to associate himself with a genre that had largely been the province of anonymous illustrators. Moreover, he appears to have launched a competitive strike against a previous publication by his older brother Robert, also a graphic artist, an action perfectly in keeping with their fractious professional relationship.47 Some years earlier Robert provided the illustrations for W. R. Macdonald’s text in a book entitled The Comic Alphabet Containing Twenty-Six Illustrations by Cruikshank ([1830]).48 Each illustration is accompanied by a short humorous caption. And the competition carried on: following George’s 1836 book, R. Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet appeared in c. 1840. Here, Macdonald’s text has been excised. Rather, the book features only Robert’s illustrations and the captions from the earlier edition, thus drawing more attention to the older brother’s work.49 Howard-Gibbon’s mimicry of the Cruikshank brothers’ titles when she called her manuscript ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ is surely no coincidence. Nor is her emulation of their insistence on artistic agency when she declared on her title page that her manuscript was ‘Designed by Amelia Frances Howard Gibbon. 1859’ (see Figure 4.1). But how did Howard-Gibbon come to connect the concept of the ‘comic alphabet’ with the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme? Another member of the Cruikshank family provides the answer – Percy, Robert’s son. Percy was a prolific illustrator of ‘toy books’, forerunners of today’s children’s picture books, although their content seemed at times more suitable for adults.50 Among

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature these was his publication The Comic Alphabet Containing 26 Illustrations by P. Cruikshank, wherein Percy entered his family’s ‘comic alphabet’ rivalry. The front cover reveals that Percy’s contribution features ‘A was an Archer’.51 Percy paired unflattering caricatures with his own adaptation of the Mary Cooper version of the rhyme. The publication date of Percy’s Comic Alphabet is uncertain, but Howard-Gibbon’s own association of ‘A was an Archer’ with the notion of the ‘comic alphabet’ indicates she most certainly knew of Percy’s book. Through her title and title page, Howard-Gibbon confidently inserted her manuscript into the Cruikshank family’s ‘comic alphabet’ competition.

Tom Thumb(s) As this chapter has shown, in her ‘Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ Howard-Gibbon incorporated many elements from previously published versions of ‘A was an Archer’. But she also made a putatively perplexing and, to my knowledge, unprecedented choice in her manuscript.52 Why did she ‘cast’ small children in the leading roles dictated by ‘A was an Archer’, especially when many of these characters, such as ‘D was a Drunkard’, engage in behaviours wildly inappropriate for their age (see Figure 4.2)?53 We can find a hint in an alternative title for ‘A was an Archer’ – ‘Tom Thumb’s Alphabet’. The tale of Tom Thumb, an adventurous boy no bigger than his father’s thumb, was first committed to print in 1621 and was likely the earliest English folk tale to be published.54 The publication of the aforementioned Tom Thumb’s Play-book in 1755 instigated the association between the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme and the tiny figure from folklore, and eventually led to a ‘re-branding’ of the rhyme through its alternative title.55 Tom Thumb’s Picture Alphabet (c. 1834) is one example.56 The woodcut illustrations take the form of the aforementioned tableau format. Adult figures stand within, or beside, the uppercase letters of the alphabet. As a result, the letters seem monumental. 57 At the same time, however, the physiques of the adult figures become unstable, appearing to be miniaturized and more like children than adults. Howard-Gibbon no doubt encountered Tom Thumb’s Picture Alphabet or similar publications in her childhood featuring the newly popular tableau format. This play with scale also appears in what seems to have been a fourth entry in the ‘comic alphabet’ competition discussed above. In c. 1855, the British illustrator William McConnell, like Percy Cruikshank, matched caricatures with yet another modification on the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme through which he skewered contemporary British society. Most of the figures he illustrated are adults, to be sure; however, McConnell manipulated human scale. Oversized heads with exaggerated features sit atop enlarged bodies, resulting in figures that loom over other smaller, more delicately rendered characters. See, for example, the shopper at the butcher’s stall, who resembles a child fulfilling an adult role (see Figure 4.4). The title of this book is not, however, a variation on the ‘comic alphabet’ theme – rather it is called Tom Thumb’s Alphabet.58 Did Howard-Gibbon know of McConnell’s book? There is a high probability she did, for her page design and layout are distinctly reminiscent of McConnell’s. A full page is

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon

Figure 4.4  [William McConnell], ‘Tom Thumb’s Alphabet’, in The Boys’ and Girls’ Illustrated Gift Book, 1864

devoted to each line of the rhyme. Each illustration takes up the majority of the page and is surrounded by a narrow frame of rustic branches. The text is set off from the illustrations in an area demarcated by its own rustic branch frame. Taken together, Tom Thumb’s Picture Alphabet (or something similar) and McConnell’s Tom Thumb’s Alphabet may

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature have planted a seed in Howard-Gibbon’s mind to portray her characters in ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ as miniature adults. However, a children’s book from c. 1845 suggests what, or rather who, I believe to be the most compelling model for Howard-Gibbon’s choice. The book is entitled General Tom Thumb, written by ‘Grandpapa Easy’ and featuring the performer Charles Sherwood Stratton.59 When American impresario P. T. Barnum met Stratton in 1842, the four-year-old boy stood only twenty-five inches tall and was a perfectly proportionate human ‘miniature’.60 Shortly thereafter, Barnum launched Stratton’s career as an entertainer in New York at the American Museum. In 1844, Stratton travelled with Barnum to London, England, where he entertained aristocrats in their homes and made appearances at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly and Buckingham Palace, the latter at Queen Victoria’s request. To his audiences’ delight, the talented Stratton sang, danced, and impersonated such varied figures as Napoleon and Hercules.61 With his London success, Stratton became an international celebrity.62 The book by ‘Grandpapa Easy’ humorously commemorates Stratton’s London visit and subsequent world travels. Hand-coloured wood engravings represent Stratton posing in a variety of costumes and settings that emphasize his diminutive stature as he portrays adult figures.63 Lynne Vallone explains that General Tom Thumb was an object of adulation precisely because of the ‘incongruities’ he represented, especially around the issue of age: ‘In his performances, the actor General Tom Thumb displayed a multitude of talents and attitudes that delighted his audiences and won him many fans. He was both man and boy, serious and comic, professional and plaything’. Audiences enjoyed it when Stratton was ‘performing as an adult through smoking, mimicking adult heroes and villains, kissing female members of the audience, etc.’ 64 These lines from the rhyming text in the ‘Grandpapa Easy’ book demonstrate how Stratton’s ‘inappropriate’ behaviour was a source of merriment for young and old: ‘Though still like a baby to look at, no doubt, / He will talk and will sing, and he dances about, / And he kisses his hand to the ladies around, / And receives their applause with a bow to ground; / Just the same he would if quite big he had been; / Such a wonderful creature there never was seen.’ 65 General Tom Thumb’s admirers were also fascinated by the miniature wardrobe and props Barnum had tailor-made for his star performer. Among these, according to Stratton’s biographer Eric Lehman, were ‘an embroidered brown silk-velvet coat and short breeches, a white satin vest, white silk stocking and shoes, a wig, and his tiny ceremonial sword barely ten inches long’.66 Barnum even commissioned an attention-grabbing, scaled-down coach ‘colored ultramarine with crimson and white trimmings and reportedly measuring only twelve inches wide’, complete with a child coachman and footman and pulled by ponies, in which Stratton rode majestically through the streets of London.67 The coach is illustrated in its full (but tiny) splendour in the ‘Grandpapa Easy’ book (see Figure 4.5). Whether or not Howard-Gibbon was familiar with the General Tom Thumb book, she most certainly knew of General Tom Thumb the performer. Indeed, with her advantageous social and cultural connections, it is possible that as a young woman she saw Stratton perform in London. As the ‘Grandpapa Easy’ book makes clear, General Tom Thumb’s

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon

Figure 4.5  Grandpapa Easy, General Tom Thumb, c. 1845

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature tiny size, ornate costumes, humorous props, and mischievous ‘adult’ activities made an unforgettable impression on mid-nineteenth-century Victorians. Howard-Gibbon captured her era’s fascination with age incongruity, epitomized by General Tom Thumb, when she created the ‘comic’ world of miniature adults who populate her manuscript.68 Nonetheless, without the print legacy of ‘A was an Archer’/ ‘Tom Thumb’s Alphabet’ and HowardGibbon’s astute engagement with her manuscript’s published forerunners, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’ could have never come to fruition.

Notes 1 I conducted most of my research for this chapter at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto Public Library. My sincere gratitude goes to the staff, in particular Martha Scott, for generously sharing their expertise and for their unfailingly kind help. 2 The two key sources for biographical information about Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon in this chapter are as follows: Judith St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon and Her Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, in Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, An Illustrated Comic Alphabet (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. [27–8]; Howard-Gibbon Schreiber, Sharry Reynolds, and Janet Smythe, The Last of the Greystokes: The Howard-Gibbon Family (Exeter, Ontario: Exeter Printing and Publishing Company, 1976). In addition, the following transcript, graciously provided to me by Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman, contains invaluable information about Howard-Gibbon’s childhood: ‘Canadian Children’s Illustrated Book Project Fonds, 1–122 Watson, Yvonne transcript. Independent scholar. Interview by Judith Saltman. Victoria, 6 May 2003’, University of British Columbia Archives. 3 Quoted in St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [28], from an article written for the Sarnia Observer, 2 November 1946, by Charlotte Vidal Nisbet. 4 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859. Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto Public Library, NR HOW (ART), [25] leaves. Comparable to a twenty-first-century children’s picture book in size, the leaves measure 24.6 x 18.7 cm; Judith St John, The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, 1476–1910: A Catalogue, vol. 2 (Toronto: Toronto Public Library, 1975), p. 682. Unlike alphabet books of today, however, the alphabet consists of only twenty-four letters. As St John explains, ‘Until the seventeenth century I and J, and U and V, were not considered separate letters and for some time after were used interchangeably’; Judith St. John, ‘A Gift for Christmas, 1865’, Canadian Antique Collector (December 1966), pp. 28–9 (p. 29). Note that Howard-Gibbon spelled her surname in various configurations, sometimes deleting the hyphen as she did on her title page. 5 Note that the characters Howard-Gibbon depicted for ‘Y was a Youth who did not love School’ and ‘Z was a Zany, and looked like a Fool’ are exceptions, as they are represented as actual children. 6 For a discussion of Howard-Gibbon’s use of frames and hand-lettering, see Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman, Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), p. 22; p. 231, n. 28. 7 For details about the donation, see St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [27]; St John, ‘A Gift for Christmas, 1865’, pp. 28–9. 8 Judith St John, ‘Early Canadiana in the Osborne Collection’, Canadian Children’s Literature, 1/4 (1976), pp. 7–13 (p. 12). The manuscript’s identification as ‘Canada’s first picture book’ has been challenged by some commentators, the issue arising from the fact Howard-Gibbon was a British citizen who did not remain permanently in Canada, and that the images in her book

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon do not depict Canada. (Howard-Gibbon returned to her homeland in 1873 when she received an inheritance from her father’s brother. She died in England in 1874, following an illness.) See, for example, Sheila Egoff, The Republic of Childhood: A Critical Guide to Canadian Children’s Literature in English (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 223–4. 9 Howard-Gibbon, An Illustrated Comic Alphabet. 10 The award was suspended in 2016 when the parent organization of the Canadian Association for Children’s Libraries, the Canadian Library Association, disbanded, https://learn.library.ryerson.ca/ claawards (accessed 4 May 2021). 11 Martha Scott (ed.), Half for You and Half for Me: Nursery Rhymes and Poems We Love: Catalogue of an Exhibit Held at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, December 13, 2014–March 7, 2015 (Toronto: Friends of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections, 2015), p. 31; From Apple Pies to Astronauts: A Chronology of Alphabet books with Aphorisms, Amusements, and Anecdotes. February 27–April 30, UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, curated by Sarah Bagshaw and Laura Quintana (Vancouver: The University of British Columbia Library, 2017), pp. 4–5, https://rbsc-25jan2017.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2017/02/ ABC-Book-Project-Catalogue.pdf (accessed 5 May 2021). 12 M. O. Grenby, ‘Before the Book? Manuscript, Household Reading and the Origins of Children’s Literature’, in Beyond the Book: Transforming Children’s Literature, ed. Bridget Carrington and Jennifer Harding (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp. 5–13 (pp. 10–12); Carole Gerson, ‘Women and Children First? Some Observations from the Field’, Canadian Children’s Literature/Littérature Canadienne pour la jeunesse, 62 (1991), pp. 6–13 (p. 11). 13 St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [28]; Egoff, The Republic of Childhood, p. 223; MaryAgnes Taylor, ‘Notes from a Dark Side of the Nursery: Negative Images in Alphabet Books’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 1991 Proceedings, pp. 287–92 (p. 290). 14 St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [28]; Edwards and Saltman, Picturing Canada, p. 22. 15 St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [28]. 16 Grenby, ‘Before the Book?’, p. 5. 17 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 18 F. J. Harvey Darton, Children’s Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life (London: Cambridge University Press, 1932), p. 18. 19 T[homas] W[hite], A Little Book for Little Children: Wherein are Set Down, in a Plain and Pleasant Way, Directions for Spelling, and Other Remarkable Matters (London: [1702]), p. [11], https:// bit.ly/3gL2CCS (accessed 14 June 2021). 20 Scott, Half for You, pp. 8–9. 21 Darton, Children’s Books in England, p. 60. 22 Patricia Crain, Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England Primer to The Scarlet Letter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 27–8. 23 Ibid., p. 30. 24 The Mary Cooper version of ‘A was an Archer’ from The Child’s New Play-thing: being a SpellingBook Intended to Make the Learning to Read, a Diversion Instead of a Task is partially quoted in Iona and Peter Opie (eds), The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University, 1997), p. 56. The publication date they provide is 1742, but the following sources give the date of the second edition, in which ‘A was an Archer’ first appeared, as 1743: St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [27]; Scott, Half for You, p. 31. The UCLA library holds a later edition of Mary Cooper’s The Child’s New Play-thing (1763). For a portion of the ‘A was an Archer’ text in reproduction, see https://hob.gseis.ucla.edu/HoB_ABCs_Exhibit/ HoB_ABCs_The_Childs_New_Plaything.html (accessed 6 May 2021). 25 Andrew O’Malley, The Making of the Modern Child: Children’s Literature and Childhood in the Late Eighteenth Century (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 1–3.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 26 M. O. Grenby, The Child Reader, 1700–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 74. 27 Crain, Story of A, p. 68. 28 St John, ‘About Miss Howard-Gibbon’, p. [27]; Scott, Half forYou, p. 31. For an overview of the history of the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme and a partial list of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editions, see Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, pp. 54–7. 29 Andrea Immel and Brian Alderson, Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song-book:The First Collection of English Nursery Rhymes: A Facsimile Edition with a History and Annotations (Los Angles: Cotsen Occasional Press, 2013), p. 5. 30 As Percy Muir points out, ‘It is, in fact, reasonable to assume that, within the eighteenth century at any rate, progress was more general and more dispersed than the few books that have survived would suggest’; Percy Muir, English Children’s Books, 1600–1900 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1954), p. 77. 31 Tom Thumb’s Play-book, to Teach Children their Letters as Soon as They Can Speak. Being a New and Pleasant Method, to Allure Little Ones into the First Principles of Learning (Birmingham: Printed for T. Warren, Bookseller, in Dale-End, 1755). The Osborne Collection holds a photographic reproduction of this edition. Note Iona and Peter Opie date the earliest edition of the Play-book to 1747, but do not specify that ‘A was an Archer’ appears there. See Iona and Peter Opie, Three Centuries of Nursery Rhymes and Poetry for Children (Oxford and London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 41. 32 Tom Thumb’s Play-book, to Teach Children their Letters as Soon as They Can Speak: or, Easy Lessons for Little Children and Beginners. Being a New and Pleasant Method to Allure Little Ones into the First Principles of Learning (Newcastle [Union Street]: Printed for T. Bell, bookseller, by G. Angus, 1824), pp. 6–7, https://static.torontopubliclibrary.ca/da/pdfs/37131009545872d.pdf (accessed 12 May 2021). To my knowledge, the 1824 edition of Tom Thumb’s Play-book is the only one with illustrations accompanying ‘A was an Archer’. Although the Toronto Public Library catalogue identifies Thomas Bewick as an illustrator for this publication, this does not apply to the rudimentary cuts accompanying ‘A was an Archer’; Opie, Three Centuries, p. 41. 33 Crain, Story of A, p. 80. For a comprehensive study of ‘London cries’, see Sean Shesgreen, Images of the Outcast: The Urban Poor in the Cries of London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002). 34 Christopher Marsh, ‘A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England’, Huntington Library Quarterly 79/2 (2016), pp. 245–62 (pp. 245–6). 35 Jackey Goodchild, The NewYear’s Gift: Being a Gilded Toy for Little Miss and Master to Learn their A, B, C: Adorned with Forty-Nine Cuts by Jackey Goodchild (London: John Marshall, [between 1782–87]). The Morgan Library holds a copy of this book. My thanks go to John McQuillen for sharing information with me through email correspondence about the illustrations. 36 Opie, Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, p. 56. 37 Jacky Goodchild, The New Year’s Gift: Being a Gilded Toy for Little Masters and Misses to Learn their A B C: Containing the History of the Apple-pye with Verses Adapted to Each Letter in the Alphabet Tow [i.e. two] Different Ways: and Adorned with a Great Variety of Cuts (London: Printed by J. Evans and Sons, Long-lane [c. 1820]), pp. 4–15, https://static.torontopubliclibrary.ca/da/ pdfs/37131039919618d.pdf (accessed 12 May 2021). 38 For example, The Hobby Horse, or the High Road to Learning (London: J. Harris and Son, 1820). For reproductions from this publication and related commentary, see Iona and Peter Opie, A Nursery Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 10–15; p. 123. 39 Crain, The Story of A, pp. 111–12. 40 Eric Partridge, Comic Alphabets: Their Origin, Development, Nature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 35.

The ABCs of Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon 41 Ibid., p. 25; p. 46. 42 Ibid., p. 25. 43 George Cruikshank, A Comic Alphabet (Pentonville: No. 23 Myddelton Terrace, 1836). 44 A. Robin Hoffman, ‘George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet (1836) and the Audience “Á la Mode”’, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 36/2 (2014), pp. 135–63 (p. 135). 45 Ibid., p. 137. 46 Ibid., p. 138. 47 For a discussion of the Cruikshank family rivalry, see Robert L. Patten, George Cruikshank’s Life, Times, and Art,Volume 1: 1792–1835 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 15–16. 48 W. R. Macdonald, The Comic Alphabet Containing Twenty-Six Illustrations by Cruikshank (London: D. Martin, [1830]). 49 Robert Cruikshank, R. Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet (London: Darton and Clark [Holborn Hill], [c. 1840]). 50 Hoffman, ‘George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet’, p. 139; p. 160, n. 9. 51 Percy Cruikshank, The Comic Alphabet Containing 26 Illustrations by P. Cruikshank (London [10, Johnson’s Court, Fleet St.]: Read & Co., [between 1847 and 1867]), https://static.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ da/pdfs/37131039919600d.pdf (accessed 3 June 2021). See the outside back cover for a list of toy books illustrated by Percy Cruikshank. 52 In my research for this chapter, I identified more than a dozen uniquely illustrated versions of the ‘A was an Archer’ rhyme, published between the late eighteenth century and 1859, and none featured children in the guise of adults. 53 Mary-Agnes Taylor concedes that Howard-Gibbon aimed for ‘comic incongruity’ in ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, but she offers a particularly negative assessment of Howard-Gibbon’s portrayal of small children as adults. (She also, rightly, excoriates racist illustrations in nineteenth-century alphabet books. Unfortunately, Robert and Percy Cruikshank’s ‘comic alphabets’, discussed above, provide evidence of this occurrence.) See Taylor, ‘Notes from a Dark Side’, pp. 287–90. 54 Iona and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 30. See pp. 33–46 for the text of the 1621 publication, entitled The History of Tom Thumbe. 55 Crain, The Story of A, pp. 68–71. 56 For a reproduction of the illustrations and text from Tom Thumb’s Picture Alphabet and related commentary, see Iona and Peter Opie, The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 106–7; p. 214. They note that the woodcuts, with the exception of the letter ‘R’, are ‘probably’ by Orlando Jewitt. 57 Crain, The Story of A, pp. 111–12. 58 Iona and Peter Opie provide the c. 1855 date for the original edition of McConnell’s book; Opie, Three Centuries, p. 42. The reproduction I include with this chapter is from an 1864 publication. See [William McConnell], ‘Tom Thumb’s Alphabet’, in The Boys’ and Girls’ Illustrated Gift Book (London: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1864), pp. 9–35. 59 Grandpapa Easy, General Tom Thumb (London [Threadneedle-Street]:Thomas Dean and Co., [c. 1845]), https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDMDC-37131039912969D&R=DC37131039912969D (accessed 20 May 2021). 60 Barnum exaggerated Stratton’s age, however, to make his minute height even more remarkable. See Lynne Vallone, Big and Small: A Cultural History of Extraordinary Bodies (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 141–2. 61 For an account of Stratton’s 1844 travels to London, and characters he played, see Eric D. Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb: Charles Stratton, P. T. Barnum, and the Dawn of American Celebrity (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013), pp. 1–9; p. 30; p. 35. 62 Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. ix.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 63 Lehman notes that nineteenth-century books about General Tom Thumb ‘often draw on the extensive photographic record, and repeat the information in Barnum’s autobiography and other accessible sources. One of the first to do so was “Grandpapa Pease’s Tom Thumb”’, which was an American variation on Grandpapa Easy’s General Tom Thumb; Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. xviii. 64 Vallone, Big and Small, p. 144. 65 Grandpapa Easy, General Tom Thumb, pp. 2–3. 66 Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 6; Vallone, Big and Small, p. 143. 67 Lehman, Becoming Tom Thumb, p. 7. 68 Several publications examine the issue of age incongruity in the Victorian period weighing both lighter and darker aspects of this phenomenon. See, for example, Caroline Arscott, ‘Childhood in Victorian Art’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 9/1 (January 2004), pp. 96–107; Marah Gubar, ‘The Drama of Precocity: Child Performers on the Victorian Stage’, in The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture, ed. Dennis Denisoff, (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), pp. 63–78; Claudia Nelson, Precocious Children and Childish Adults: Age Inversion in Victorian Literature (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).

5 ‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards Simon Cooke

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a ry Ellen Edwards (1838–1934)1 was a prolific artist who worked as a painter and illustrator, producing some thousands of images in colour and black and white. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and at other venues such as the British Institution,2 but is best known as a graphic artist, working firstly as a ‘draughts [wo]man on wood’ in the period between 1860 and 1880, and later as an illustrator for children using the livid palette of chromolithography. Signing her engravings as ‘MEE’, in contrast to the more formal monikers she attached to her paintings in her married names as ‘Mrs. John Staples’ and ‘Mrs Freer’, Edwards was an important voice in the complex milieu of Victorian illustration, offering a detailed representation of bourgeois domesticity, families, and the lives of middle-class women, while sometimes engaging with her own version of social realism. A ubiquitous presence in the books and magazines of the time and always listed as a selling point in publishers’ advertisements, her work reached a wide audience and was probably viewed by more readers than any other female illustrator of the Victorian age. Fuelled by a ‘prodigious’ 3 productivity, her popularity is impressive, especially given the patriarchal society in which she operated and bearing in mind that she presented her images within a male-dominated milieu and was forced, like them, to supplement her earnings from painting with the hard graft of working for the illustrated press. In the words of Julia Thomas, whose comments on Eleanor Vere Boyle also apply to Edwards, she ‘invades’ the masculine ‘sphere of illustration’;4 like Boyle, she had to create a professional space for herself. Employed, initially, in a series of magazines in the style of ‘poetic realism’ known as ‘the Sixties’, and later as a contributor to The Graphic, she competed on equal terms with her talented male counterparts, notably Millais, Houghton, Sandys, Walker, Watson, Leighton, Hughes, Herkomer, Small, and Holl. In an age when book and magazine illustration was entirely market driven, Edwards was engaged in what many regarded as a masculine mode of production, ‘men’s work’ involving the 93

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature application of technical skill and the meeting of strict deadlines; she was also bound by the system of piecemeal wages, being paid – in all probability – at the same rate as her male competitors, in a range between £10 and £15 per illustration. 5 Edwards was in this sense a jobbing professional who helped to define the parity of male and female artists. More importantly, she managed to create this situation by offering a gendered imagery in competition with the work of men, developing a new slant on an established idiom which could not be patronized or dismissed as trivial or inferior. At a time when women painters were limited, as Pamela Gerrish Nunn observes, to anodyne subjects such as ‘flower painting’ and ‘pretty landscapes’ 6 and were only praised by male reviewers for their paintings’ ‘graceful taste and refined thought’,7 her illustrations defy the usual, limiting formulations. That position of professional and artistic equality was staked out, somewhat surprisingly, in her own time. Her earliest critics comment on her productivity and refusal to act as a purveyor of stereotypical imagery. Writing in 1876 in her influential account of women artists, Ellen Creathorne Clayton notes her capacity to draw deeply felt illustrations, extolling her toughness and freedom from ‘affectation’ or the ‘namby-pampyism’ 8 conventionally associated with women’s art; and another female commentator, Hélène Postlethwaite (1898), tellingly remarks on her ‘independence’ and production of ‘sound work’.9 Yet Edwards’s reputation did not persist into the modern age. Gleeson White (1897) describes her as ‘popular’ but is otherwise silent,10 while Forrest Reid (1928) writes faint praise, conceding that although she had a ‘small’ amount of ‘genuine talent’,11 her work was in his view monotonous, insipid and sentimental. Other commentaries follow the same trajectory. N. John Hall (1980) offers a lukewarm and sometimes patronizing assessment in his analysis of her response to Trollope, only managing to call her ‘quite good’;12 for Rodney Engen she is ‘competent if uninspired’ (1986);13 and the same judgement is echoed by Paul Goldman (1994).14 Described by Reid as one of the ‘rank and file’ 15 of Sixties designers and usually identified as a minor practitioner, Edwards has lost her status and is now regarded, somewhat paradoxically, in a more dismissive, and perhaps sexist, way than she was in her own time. Nevertheless, some recent commentators have suggested the need for a reassessment that asserts her position as a significant contributor. Paul Tabor and Pamela M. Fletcher make sensitive interpretations of the power of individual designs in The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print (1995)16 and Bethan Stevens (2020) has provocatively remarked on Edwards’s ‘striking critical gaze’ at her ‘contemporary subjects of modern life and middle-class luxury’, illustrating her claim with an image suggestive of a sexualized female scrutiny.17 I too have written at length of Edwards’s qualities, notably her abilities as an insightful reader of text,18 and in Women,Work and the Victorian Periodical (2015) Marianne Van Remoortel has considered her place within the complicated domain of the ‘ideologically difficult’ 19 world of the periodical. Clearly, there is much more to ‘MEE’ than some critics have allowed. Although she modestly identifies herself in her book art in a combination of acronym, pronoun and homonym as just ‘ME [E]’,20 Edwards was anything but timid or unafraid to assert her

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards identity and her body of interests: her original assessors struck the right note. The aim of this chapter, then, is to explore the ways in which she gained her position as an important female artist at work within the limits of what has sometime been called the ‘patriarchal press’. This involves a close consideration of her professional challenges as she carved out a respected place in the discourse of Victorian illustration. More to the point, I want to show how she achieved her position by examining the character of her art: what she represented, how she was influenced by contemporary practitioners, and how she used a combination of visual languages and original motifs to present her subjects in terms of an imagery that is highly nuanced and resonant. What I particularly want to explain is how she developed a type of work that is far from an imitation of her male counterparts’ designs, a matter of a woman imitating men, but, on the contrary, embodies a tough-minded representation of social mores, psychology, and deep feelings that are seen from a female point of view and privilege the power and importance of women.

Edwards and the art of the 1860s Like most women artists of her generation, Edwards’s initial engagement with the art world was problematic. Her background, though middle class, was relatively unstable: her father, Downes Edwards, was an entrepreneur whose fortunes varied, but the bourgeois expectation was that she would confine herself to the traditional pathways of respectability and would not engage with paid employment. Her interest in pursuing a professional career was met, Clayton reports, ‘with serious discouragement’,21 although her parents’ strategy seems to have been one of deflection rather than denial, encouraging her to become a hobbyist rather than aiming higher; as Van Remoortel observes, when she was in her teens her father provided her with materials and equipment in order to ‘practise art’.22 Limited by having to teach herself, her only training came in the form of about a year’s tutoring by the history painter Edward Armitage at Queen’s College, followed by a stint for two terms at the South Kensington School of Art. These learning experiences allowed Edwards to develop basic skills in composition, colour, and figure drawing, although it was always the case, Clayton reports, that she felt under-trained, creating an anxiety that ‘never ceased’ to ‘be a subject of deepest regret’.23 Revealingly, her occasional gaucheries or slips in style have always attracted a patronizing response, with modern critics such as Claire Brock making a point of noticing how her work is ‘surprisingly … accomplished, considering her lack of training’.24 Nonetheless, the skills she acquired in painterly composition were entirely adequate for the task of illustration: working in a period when fine art and book art deployed the same academic conventions and images in black and white were essentially conceived as small paintings for the page, 25 Edwards’s limited preparations, especially the emphasis on figure drawing, were more than enough to set her up for the rigours of Victorian graphic design. Whether or not she set out to become an illustrator is unknown.The likeliest determiner is that she showed an aptitude for ‘drawing on wood’. Having already decided to enter the male domain of art, she demonstrated from the beginning of her career what at the

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature time was probably regarded as an unfeminine ability with the technicalities. There is no evidence that she received any training, and she seems to have been self-taught in the discipline of transferring her designs to the block, a process that involved tracing a drawing in reverse onto the surface of the wood (prepared with a coat of Chinese white), using hard pencils. Edwards was comfortable with this technique and her ability to master it was a huge professional advantage: working in the period before photography was used to transfer the image to the block – a development of the end of the 1860s – she set herself up as a competent artist and technician who could service the ever-expanding demand for wood-engraved illustrations. This practical ability placed her on the same terms as the many other designers working in the field and took her beyond the practical abilities of celebrated artists such as Rossetti and Keene, both of whom were uneasy with the process.26 Gifted with the essential skills that were needed to produce images quickly and to order, she became what Van Remoortel has described as one of the pioneering ‘women of the press’,27 and was immediately recognized as a safe pair of hands by editors and publishers. Her earliest work was a cover for the Illustrated Times (1859), but she found her most profitable niche as a literary illustrator. Her commissions included both fiction and poetry, and she became one of many artists whose work appeared in the magazines and popular gift books. The quality of her designs was recognized by publication in the foremost literary journals, The Cornhill Magazine, Good Words, and Once a Week; each of these championed the ‘box-wood revolution’, and she supplemented this high-status work with contributions to the second tier represented by M. E. Braddon’s Belgravia and Ellen Wood’s Argosy, along with illustrations for The Quiver and London Society. She also published in luxurious Christmas cadeaux such as the magazine reprint Idyllic Pictures (1867) and in numerous other anthologies.28 For each of these she provided intelligent visual responses: illustrating authors as diverse as Trollope, Lever, and Braddon and, for most part, offering designs of a high aesthetic quality, she made a significant contribution to the rise of bitextuality and the intermedial text, contributing to binary composites which convert the reader into a reader/viewer. Working in these publications in the idiom of Sixties naturalism, Edwards developed a distinctive style and corpus of interests. Her primary focus is on domestic scenes, which are divided into three main types: one represents groups of characters organized into a naturalistic tableau, usually made up of adults but sometimes including children; a second takes the form of a pairing between men and women or two women; and the third a single figure, almost always a woman. For many critics these compositions are no more than stereotypical fare, representing ‘women [and] girls and children in idyllic … settings’,29 or just another version of a female artist’s mapping of a domestic space occupied by the dealings of a bourgeois family. However, Edwards’s arrangements are anything but bland or trivial: rather, she focuses on her characters’ psychology, exploring their thoughts as they are expressed within the social constraints of ‘respectable’ behaviour. In particular, she externalizes inner feelings by representing a nexus of interactions in which the figures’ personalities and emotions are teased out in a series of significant gestures, movements,

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards facial expressions, and the workings of the gaze. Sometimes appearing to be little more than journalism reporting the details of costumes and settings, her illustrations are essentially material transcripts of deep feelings as the personae engage with social situations. Edwards is particularly adept at representing the close textures of unsettling encounters, or at least encounters that challenge or subvert the narrow proprieties of bourgeois codes. Typically, she is drawn to the slightly impolite, and in these situations gesture, expression, and gaze are loaded with subtle significance. She uses these devices to map the family’s unease at the late arrival of Lord Culduff (see Figure 5.1) in ‘The Arrival of a Great Man’, an illustration for Lever’s The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly (1872). Having just entered, the character is depicted smiling a ‘bland smile’,30 with one hand diverging in a gesture of uncertainty; Augustus, his head slightly dipped, has just whispered in his father’s ear, and looks downward disapprovingly; Colonel Bramleigh advances towards his guest, bowing slightly in deference; while the two women, placed in profile at the left of the composition, look on with still, disdainful expressions on their faces. In each case, Edwards depicts the characters’ feelings – from embarrassment to annoyance – in telling detail. Lever’s writing of the scene is primarily presented in dialogue, with special emphasis on the unsettling repetition of questions as the family members contemplate the disruption of their routine, but the illustrator intensifies the scene’s psychological impact, enshrining a trivial but awkward moment in a compact tableau. Her depiction of the scene is practically illegible for modern viewers, but the novel’s original, middle-class audience would have recognized and been able to interpret her small signs of discontent. Edwards’s illustrations for Lever exemplify her use of expression and gesture, and she applies this approach throughout her responses to fiction – notably in her work for Trollope, Braddon, and the lesser-known novelist William Gilbert.31 As in her work for Lever, her illustrations materialize the emotional lives of characters leading small lives, providing a visual text which complements and expands the letterpress: nothing much happens, and her illustrations stress the writers’ emphasis on interiority. In this respect her work closely reflects the influence of Millais, who, like Edwards, charts the emotional minutiae of bourgeois life. She clearly responds to Millais’s designs for ‘Framley Parsonage’ (The Cornhill Magazine, 1860–61) and Orley Farm (1862):32 figured as intense domestic scenes with a strong emphasis on gestural devices, these illustrations bear direct comparison with those of Edwards and may have helped her to formulate her version of home-life. At the same time, her work is set apart from his by its particular emphases. Viewing her subjects from a female perspective, she adds other types of insight as a woman with a keen eye for behaviour and a sensitive understanding of ways to register emotion. Edwards provides a distinctive perspective in her analysis of the relationships between men and women. In addition to the group-compositions, she created a huge number of designs in which she explores the dynamics of romance and marriage, figuring an intense interchange between partners. Edwards charts these relationships in detail, focusing on contented love, awkward love-making, and discord, in every case revealing a female sensitivity to fine nuance. In addition to gesture and gaze, she characteristically suggests the nature of these exchanges by manipulating the characters’ relative size and gesture,

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Figure 5.1  Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘The Arrival of a Great Man’, in Charles Lever’s The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, new edition, 1872

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards

Figure 5.2  Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘A Tête-à-Tête’, in Charles Lever’s The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, new edition, 1872

while also playing with effects of black and white. She sometimes uses these techniques to suggest the harmonies of a satisfying relationship. In her illustration for Longfellow’s ‘The Day is Done’ in Cassell’s Illustrated Readings [1870],33 for example, a compatible couple are physically linked: their postures complement each other as the husband looks out of the window and the wife reads to him; their costumes are a balance of black and white; their faces are unperturbed, absorbed in the moment, while the free movement between the lines of their clothes suggests unanimity. This overall effect is one of synergy and contentment, an image of the bourgeois idyll in which the two partners are in physical and psychological equilibrium. It is more often the case, however, that the illustrator focuses on conflict, using her visual language to offer a series of portraits which (unlike those of the patriarchal imagery of Millais) suggest female strength and assert women’s power over men. She creates her representation of dominant women by literally making her characters into overlarge figures, wrapped in expansive dresses, that crowd the domestic space and physically overpower their male counterparts, often squeezing them into a corner. Thomas has shown how Punch cartoonists satirized the ever-expanding volume of contemporary dress,34 viewing it as evidence of female vanity, but in Edwards’s hands the size symbolizes much more. A prime example of her approach is the illustration for ‘A Tête-à-Tête’, another scene in Lever’s Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly (1872). This design responds to dialogue with Augusta dominating the conversation, but symbolizes her assertiveness in a visual form: lying languidly in a ‘small drawing room’,35 she occupies most of the space, physically

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature pushing Count Pracontal to one side as she pushes him to one side in their spoken exchange (see Figure 5.2). The dominance of Mrs Stockfish in ‘A Story of Waterleigh Mill’ (Once a Week, 1865) is similarly emphasized by exaggerating her scale. Described as ‘buxom … tall and well-shaped’,36 she is placed in the foreground, costumed in a large and impressive dress, with the two men confined to the background. Indeed, many other examples of the physicality of women are used as a metaphor for their importance and Edwards goes out of her way to deny the patriarchal notion of femininity as a matter of diminutive or toy-like feebleness. Far from being weak-bodied and weak-minded, her women are tough and assertive, Amazons rather than dolls or ‘angels in the house’. This is a significant move, marking Edwards out as a woman artist whose emphasis on ‘bold’ 37 women refigures the usual situation, shifting the emphasis from the male to the female characters, and re-presenting the women as a centre of interest even when the narrative is driven by male protagonists. In some illustrations she makes the females into dangerous, unpredictable types. For example, in the anonymous poem ‘The Dance of Death’ (Once a Week, 1865), the suicide is mutually shared by the frustrated lovers, Ida and Herman; but Edwards privileges the notion of Ida’s ‘wild’ determination, and it is she, rather than he, who topples them off the cliff.38 This dynamic approach represents a variant of her use of the static figure. Another field in her vocabulary is the use of female costume as an emotional sign: not only a means of materializing the characters’ importance, female dress is reimagined by Edwards as a visual metaphor of the mind. Although physically contained by their billowing crinolines and radiating dresses of the 1860s, her women are not constrained psychologically but show what they feel in how they look. This is an important move, contradicting the view, as reported by Thomas in her analysis of the implications of the ‘crinolineomania’, that elaborate crinolines and the like were for many ‘just another mechanism of control’ in a ‘strict patriarchal regime’.39 Rather, in Edwards’s hand the surfaces of silk and linen become a site of expression, a release from social constraints in the form of what is essentially a screen of complex emotions and shows them in the abstract forms of rhythmic line, pattern, and shading. No longer decorative or a mode of oppression, her dresses are significant transcripts of mood. Again, Edwards may have been influenced by Millais, who manipulates Lucy’s outrageous crinoline in a cut for Trollope’s ‘Framley Parsonage’ (The Cornhill, 1860), making it – to Trollope’s amazement and disapproval – into a psychological signifier of her broken heart.40 Yet, once again, Edwards takes a device and moves it well beyond Millais’s treatment, develops it, and explores its range of expressive possibilities. Her manipulation of the ‘significant dress’ can be traced in numerous examples. In her work for Trollope’s ‘The Claverings’ (The Cornhill, 1866–67), she employs a series of turbulent and convoluted clothes to suggest the female characters’ anguish. In the dramatic embrace between Hermione and her unloving husband41 the agitated striations of her outfit are made up of white disturbed by scratchy black lines, a physical concomitant of the character’s unsettled feelings of rejection; she tries to make him feel affection for her, while he regards her as a ‘poor fool’.42 Edwards also captures anxious feelings in the patterns of

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards Lady Clare’s attire in the illustration for ‘A Lost Lover’ (Pictures of Society Grave and Gay, 1866).43 The anonymous poet sentimentally speaks of her ‘troubled air’ and ‘tear drops’ as she contemplates a romantic disappointment,44 but Edwards amplifies the effect by inscribing her vexed state of mind in a turbulent arabesque. The agitated dress further acts to suggest anger in ‘A Quarrel’ (also in Pictures of Society),45 with the radiating outlines of a woman’s costume acting as a dramatic sign of her frustration, and it is on numerous occasions a signifier of distress. However, the dress-motif can act as an image of harmony too, and Edwards develops this focus in her work for Braddon. In ‘Diana Paget and Charlotte Halliday’, for the sensational ‘Birds of Prey’ (Belgravia, 1867), she suggests the two girls’ unanimity in the configuration of their costumes (see Figure 5.3). Diana places her hand on Charlotte’s, but their friendship is more convincingly portrayed by the way in which their luxuriant dresses flow together, capturing in a single moment their emotional indivisibility before it is destroyed by a quarrel. Braddon does not describe how the characters are sitting, and Edwards devises the scene as a means of representing the emotional tone. Indeed, the free movement and overlapping of dresses as a metaphor for harmonious sharing feature many times in Edwards’s art. She especially deploys this as a means of suggesting reconciliation; unlike the tension between women who wear overpoweringly large crinolines and the cramped and contained men, the pairing of women is typically symmetrical and organically fused. The rapprochement between Julia and Lady Ongar (‘The Claverings’) typifies this approach; choosing not to emphasize their difficulties, Edwards shows the two characters as they seem to meld and fuse into each other, with their costumes linking and overlapping into a fluid whole.46 Edwards also explores the social implications of costume. Having experimented with the meaning of women’s garments within the close quarters of bourgeois society, she occasionally deploys it as a signifier of class and social difference, using it to express the material and emotional condition of women from the upper and lower orders. ‘A Life of Flowers’ (Pictures Grave and Gay) exemplifies this approach, drawing a sharp, ironic contrast between the mellow lifestyle of a wealthy lady, whose finery is embellished with a floral design, and the turbulent patterns of a dress worn by an exhausted flower-seller.47 Edwards markedly points to the huge difference between them, drawing the two sets of outfits in sharp opposition of black and white and with a clear line between them, but she especially uses them to symbolize different states of mind. The bourgeois woman’s regalia is ornamental, hung in lyrical, elaborate swags as a sign of her triviality, while the street-vendor’s dress is a mass of angular folds, the materialization of suffering. We can see, in short, that Edwards manipulates the realistic style of the Sixties to present her insights into female psychology, the dynamics of relationships, and social mores. Creating a space within a pre-existing idiom, she articulates a distinctly female voice, embodying her themes in gestures and crinolines. In so doing she expands the naturalistic boundaries of the art of the Sixties, demonstrating how realistic scenes of domestic interiors and bourgeois characters could be stretched for expressive ends. Many contemporaries regarded the ‘poetic realism’ of the period as aesthetically pleasing but

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Figure 5.3  Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘Diana Paget and Charlotte Halliday’, in M. E. Braddon’s ‘Birds of Prey’, Belgravia, 2, 1867

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards lacking in value as illustration; later in the century Gleeson White encouraged collectors to remove the illustrations from the magazines and treat them as prints rather than interpretive designs.48 Edwards defies this view, adopting an experimental, developmental approach in line with the best of the male proponents of the style.

Illustrating Trollope Edwards’s skill at illustrating in the ‘modern’ domesticated style of the period enabled her to gain several commissions to visualize high-profile fiction. Foremost among these was her work as the illustrator of Trollope’s ‘The Claverings’, which first appeared in serial form in The Cornhill Magazine (February 1866–May 1867). The Cornhill was the primary bimodal literary journal of its time; under the leadership of its proprietor, George Smith, it attracted not only the best writers of the period but every outstanding artist. Edwards’s commission was therefore an appointment of considerable cachet; always looking for the most accomplished talent, Smith must have considered her suitability at some length. He would have been especially mindful of two complicating factors: one was the fact that Millais had earlier illustrated ‘Framley Parsonage’ (1860–61), Orley Farm (1862), and ‘The Small House at Allington’ (1863–64), which meant that Edwards had a high standard to match; and the other was the failure of the illustrations in Can You Forgive Her? (1864–65), published by Chapman and Hall and embellished by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz) and an amateur female artist, E. Taylor. Not wanting to diminish the Cornhill’s reputation, or to repeat the mistakes made by the other publisher, Smith must have been sure that Edwards was a capable illustrator and one worth appointing despite the competition offered by many other male artists in line to take over from Millais. Smith appointed Edwards without consulting Trollope, and it does not seem likely that the artist or author collaborated directly. There are no records of their ever having met or negotiated in a period when authors such as Thackeray and Eliot still tried to direct and manipulate their illustrators; Edwards, though, seems to have been free to interpret as she wished.49 Her approach, predictably, was to play to her strengths: as an interpreter of bourgeois manners in domestic settings, her interests were broadly in line with Trollope’s, and her version of modern society, focusing on the psyche of strong women and weak men, was well matched to Trollope’s critique of male power and the struggles of their female property. Trollope explains his focus in ‘The Claverings’ in his Autobiography: The chief character is that of a young woman who has married manifestly for money and rank, – so manifestly that she does not herself pretend, even while she is making the marriage, that she has any other reason. The man is old, disreputable, and a worn-out debauchee. Then comes the punishment natural to the offence. When she is free, the man whom she had loved, and who had loved her, is engaged to another woman, He vacillates and is weak … But she is strong – strong in her purpose, strong in her desires, and strong in her consciousness that the punishment which comes upon her has been deserved.50

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Edwards approaches this situation using all of her characteristic devices. First of all, she amplifies her registration of the inequality of men and women, with the female characters being physically and psychologically more prominent than Trollope’s weak and/or unappealing males. The women are materially larger with their expansive dresses, and spatially dominate the men (who are pressed into the backgrounds or moved to the margins); their facial expressions are uniformly more carefully handled than the men’s faces (which are blandly treated to express their shallowness); and their poses constantly overpower their male counterparts. The contrast is marked, and N. John Hall notes how several of the illustrations depict Ongar, Harry, Hugh, and the minor comical menfolk as ‘completely two dimensional’, looking ‘like black cardboard cut-outs’,51 a comment that is intended to disparage the artist’s drawing; what he misunderstands is that the disparity between the (literally) flat men and the rounded women, embodied by Julia, Lady Ongar, and Florence, is central to Edwards’s intention to promote a gender bias in favour of the females, using a visual device to suggest the heroines’ psychological depth and the men’s superficiality. She is centrally concerned with the women’s suffering and emotional turmoil, while probing the limits of resilience and self-esteem. Her focus is Julia Brabazon, Lady Ongar, who marries for money and rank. Edwards could condemn the character as reckless and greedy, but instead concentrates on her strength and guilty self-awareness of her ‘desires’ and errors. This inflection is graphically conveyed in the opening design of Julia and Lord Ongar’s wedding (see Figure 5.4). The power should be with Ongar, who has essentially purchased his bride, and we might expect him to be the most prominent figure; however, Edwards emphasizes his status as a ‘worn-out debauchee’,52 making him look weedy and feeble, while highlighting Julia’s monumental figure and striking white dress. The faces, likewise, point to the real centre of power: his Lordship, a decrepit man of just thirty-six, is reduced to a stereotype, his face a mask of leering anticipation of the conjugal bed; while Julia is endowed with an expression positioned between anger and disdain, petulantly turned away but with her eyes closed in grim determination to proceed. Caught in a trap of her own making, it is she who is given the psychological advantage. In the comical but telling words of one of the countrymen at the wedding, she is a ‘stout lass’, well able to ‘blow … away’ her husband with ‘a puff of her mouth’.53 That sentiment informs the illustration, making the reader/viewer commit their allegiance to Julia, whatever her moral ambivalence. Sympathy for Julia and the other woman character, Florence, is more generally solicited throughout the series of sixteen full-page designs by showing them at key moments. In so doing, the artist visualizes their psychological progress, illustrating how they change over time in response to changing circumstances. Julia’s development is conveyed in her interview with Harry following the death of Lord Ongar. Embracing widowhood, Julia has matured and gained self-awareness. Harry describes her as having a new dignity and Edwards presents her as a self-confident figure, dominating the space around her as she leans towards him, as Hall remarks, in an ‘earnest, intimate attitude’.54 Willing to confide her marital indignities to her former lover, she is no longer the sour-faced and disdainful

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards

Figure 5.4  Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘A puir feckless thing, tottering along like’, in Trollope’s ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 13, 1866

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature character of the marriage scene.55 As the intimidated Harry explains, she has become a ‘woman fitter for womanhood than for girlhood’.56 In the case of Florence, on the other hand, the visual emphasis is placed on her inner turmoil. The most effective design is ‘Florence Burton makes up a packet.’ 57 Edwards shows her consumed by misery as she considers whether she should denounce Harry as he prevaricates between her and Julia; accepting that the relationship is over, she packs his letters and gifts into a box to return to him. Her anguish is overwhelming and the illustration highlights the physical signs of misery: her pose is angular and her face is downcast; her hands are placed in a gesture of despair and her dress, the emblem of power, is reduced to a sharply defined outline against a blank background, itself a metaphor of emotional emptiness, as if she had retreated into herself. The image is an effective transcript of a dramatic scene, and Edwards intensifies the crisis by capturing Florence’s state of mind in a desolate image of grief. Trollope remarks that no man would experience this situation as a woman would,58 and the illustration points to a depth of emotion which movingly differentiates the genders and celebrates Florence’s womanly sensitivity. Edwards’s focus on female psychology and suffering is resolved, however, in the picturing of Julia and Florence’s reconciliation, as Lady Ongar gives way to her rival. Julia remains the dominant personality (being physically much taller), but (as noted earlier) their meeting, with overlapping costumes and accepting faces, is a genuine coming together.59 Once again, Edwards adds additional information, dramatizing the scene as a near-embrace to extend the textual detail of the characters shaking hands. Here, as throughout her illustrations, she provides a highly nuanced approach to Trollope’s writing, enhancing its effects, materializing its conversation in a physical form while mooring the male writer’s tale in female experience. Her illustrations for ‘The Claverings’ significantly add to its effects while claiming it as if not a feminist text then at least one that can be read from a female perspective as she probes the interplay between women’s power and powerlessness within a patriarchal society operated by weak men. Sensitive to suffering as much as to resilience, it is a radical and enduring interpretation of a novel which is otherwise of limited interest. Trollope himself was dubious as to its qualities, claiming it was a story well told but (bizarrely) of interest mainly because of its humour.60 Nevertheless, Edwards’s version of the text is significant and represents her best and most characteristic work.

Social realism and children’s books At the end of the 1860s Edwards’s career became more complicated. Though painting and exhibiting, she continued with her commissions in black and white while moving from the mainstream periodicals to Braddon’s Belgravia and Ellen Wood’s Argosy.61 Engaged by other female professionals in print, she illustrated several of each of the authors’ serialized novels, this time in symmetry with her literary equivalents rather than servicing the work of a male author. All of her work for these writers is characteristically closetextured and sensitive to the nuances of female experience within the dynamics of the

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards home, as well as depicting her signature interest in social interaction. Influenced by Millais’s domestic realism, in many ways she superseded him. She was granted another male role on the staff of The Graphic. Recognized by the editor William Luson Thomas as a valuable talent, she joined the magazine when it was established in 1869. She worked alongside the other female artist, Helen Allingham, only departing, after a decade’s employment, in 1880. In this role she produced large cuts in conjunction with William Small, Frank Holl, and Hubert Herkomer; indeed, Edwards contributed to the development of the social realism of the 1870s just as she contributed to the style of the 1860s. Thereafter, from the 1880s into the 1890s, she focused on chromolithographic children’s books in collaboration with her husband, John Staples, publishing imprints under the auspices of Hildescheimer and Faulkner – a firm specializing in colour printing and best known for its advertisements and Christmas cards.62 Edwards’s output for this organization was prolific, although many of her designs were repeated as crowd-pleasers and shared in several of the books. Edwards’s work as a nursery artist has never been examined, and to some extent her move into this field represents a step backward, conforming to the expectation that female artists should confine themselves to these subjects because their maternal instincts made them into ‘natural’ interpreters of juvenile experience. The very fact that most of her work was for adults was unusual, and it could be argued that Edwards adds little to a tradition that was already practised by her contemporaries Kate Greenaway, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Florence Rudland, and Celia Levetus. Sharing a common language with these practitioners, her treatment of children is usually sentimental: her girls are stereotypically beautiful, assembled out of clothes and with overlarge eyes and heads that make them look more like dolls than living infants. This imagery evokes the notion of childhood as paradise, a zone of perfect well-dressed toddlers enmeshed in the imagery of innocent play and lush Arcadian landscapes. Yet, as in her earlier work, Edwards traces another strand which does not conform to gender-based assumptions and occupies a small subversive space within the bland conventions of Victorian representations of the child. Most of her imagery evokes the bourgeois idyll, but she sometimes focuses on the privations of the working classes. The Graphic, set up by Thomas with the aim of confronting contemporary social evils,63 provides the vehicle for this approach, and Edwards matches her less challenging images of the young with several pieces of journalistic honesty. In ‘Children’s Hospital’ (The Graphic, 1869), she depicts middle-class women helping the poor as they deliver Christmas presents to sick children in a charity institution (see Figure 5.5). The sentiment is Dickensian, with Plenty in the form of a brimming basket full of toys. What is most striking, however, is the contrast between the children and the adults: the ladies are large well-fed characters in elaborate robes while the recipients of their gifts are uncompromisingly sickly. The boy in the foreground has an angular jaw, bespeaking undernourishment, while the second child raises her hands in feeble supplication. Figured as a juxtaposition of wealth and health with poverty and illness, it is impossible to miss the image’s social message. Edwards generally critiques the manners of the middle classes, but here she displays her capacity as a social commentator by exploring the

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Figure 5.5  Mary Ellen Edwards, ‘Children’s Hospital’, The Graphic, 18 December 1869

‘problem’ of the relationship between the ranks as it is operated in a deeply unequal society. Inspired, perhaps, by her liberating work at The Graphic, she goes even further in her designs for Mary Sewell’s Mother’s Last Words [1893]. First published without illustrations

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards in 1862, Edwards’s edition is one of considerable visual impact as the artist depicts the sufferings of two orphaned boys, focusing especially on the squalor of their home, their grinding work on the public street, and the raggedness of their clothes. In most of her work the artist deploys a style of careful finishing and near-Pre-Raphaelite detail, but here she uses a sketchier line, combining it with greys and blank passages to suggest the grim uneasiness of the boys’ predicament. Assisted by this technique, her depiction has genuine emotional depth; so often dismissed as a chronicler of manners, Edwards’s illustrations for Mother’s Last Words add another dimension to her art, and it is interesting to compare her image of the mother’s death64 with her many interiors of well-dressed people engaged in social and romantic conversations. Edwards thus provides a documentary portrait of poverty in the manner of Fildes, Small, and Herkomer. Though best known as a chronicler of the bourgeois experience, her shift of gear embodies The Graphic’s social conscience and her own sympathetic response to the sufferings of those who lived outside the protections of privilege. This imagery stands in grotesque juxtaposition to the experience of middle-class children, and forms a curious partnership with Edwards’s treatment of innocents in work for Frank Weatherly’s and L. T. Meade’s series of books, such as Little Pussy Cat (1886), Polly, an Old-Fashioned Girl (1895), and Holly Boughs [1886]. Yet the emotionalism of her social realism recurs in her children’s books. Although idyllic in tone, Edwards includes some startling images of children’s sufferings within the middle-class home. In her response to Weatherly’s ‘Sorrows’ (Holly Boughs), she visualizes grieving for ‘little ones in heaven’.65 We might expect this scene to be depicted piously, but Edwards offers a dramatic image of the father’s anguish, his face concealed by his hand and his pose distorted by grief. His wife and children try to comfort him, but the illustration could have featured in any of her earlier designs, deploying her characteristic language of gesture to materialize the character’s state of mind. Children’s fearfulness as they encounter the uncertainties of the world is similarly registered in numerous illustrations of loss, isolation, and forebodings of mortality. For example, ‘The Dead Rabbit’ 66 and ‘The Cat’s Soliloquy’ 67 in Told in the Twilight [1883] are both laments over a dead animal and could be purely sentimental but are invested with an authentic pathos. ‘Selina’s Destiny’ 68 and ‘The End’ 69 are likewise curious designs in which the chocolate-box palette and idealized settings are at odds with the characters’ troubled introspection as they contemplate the future and its ultimate end. In short, there is a clear continuity between Edwards’s juveniles and the imagery of her previous designs in the 1860s and 1870s, completing a consistent corpus of work. Mary Ellen Edwards might thus be described, finally, as an accomplished female artist of multiple significance. Working on equal terms with her male rivals and establishing a niche as a female professional, she created a highly nuanced art of social and psychological observation which refigures contemporary, gender-based expectations, reorientates male-authored texts, sympathetically interprets the novels of men and women, and provides a detailed portrait of the female experience within a patriarchal culture. Though always troubled by her lack of training, she applied her understanding of gesture and facial

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature expression to great effect, allowing her to represent psychological drama without disturbing the realistic surfaces of contemporary styles; her subtle manipulation of female costume to externalize the workings of the mind might also be cited as an important development in expressiveness. These signature devices are the attributes of a versatile and creative designer who sloughed off at least some of the limitations of her sex within mid-Victorian culture. Of course, some critics have described her as insipid, failing to detect her considerable acuity. But more telling is the fact that Vincent van Gogh, the most honest and hard-hitting of artists, admired and collected her work for The Graphic.70 No better endorsement could be given to an illustrator of such ‘genuine talent’.71

Notes 1 Mary Ellen Edwards’s dates of birth and death are usually incorrectly given as 1838–1909. However, she lived well into the twentieth century, dying in her nineties in 1934. There is no monograph tracing her life and work, although the Meadows family website, http:// meadowsfamilytree.net/Mary-Ellen-Edwards-MEE-and-her-family, provides a significant amount of information about her background. 2 Christopher Wood, The Dictionary of Victorian Painters, rev. ed. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors’ Club, 1978), p. 448; see also Sara Gray, The Dictionary of British Women Artists (Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2009), pp. 100–1. 3 Claire Brock, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards’, in Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Laurel Brake (Ghent: Academia Press, 2009), p. 194. 4 Julia Thomas, ‘“The Hand-Glass of a Nation”: Victorian Illustration in its Cultural Context’, Victorian Book Illustration: Proceedings of an IBIS Full Day Seminar at the Artworkers’ Guild, Saturday 27th April 2002 (London: Imaginative Book Illustration Society, [2002?]), p. 28. 5 Simon Cooke, Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s: Contexts and Collaborations (Pinner: The Private Libraries Association; London: The British Library; Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2010), p. 54. 6 Pamela Gerrish Nunn, ‘The Mid-Victorian Woman Artist, 1850–1879’ (PhD dissertation, University College London, 1982), p. 321. 7 ‘The Society of Lady Artists’, Art Journal, 36 (1874), p. 146. 8 Ellen C. Clayton, English Female Artists, 2 vols. (London: Tinsley, 1876), vol. 2, p. 89. 9 Helene Postlethwaite, ‘More Noted Women Painters’, The Magazine of Art (1898), p. 483. 10 Gleeson White, English Illustration,‘The Sixties’: 1855–70 (1897; reprint, Bath: Kingsmead, 1970), p. 32. 11 Forrest Reid, Illustrators of the Eighteen Sixties (1928; reprint, New York: Dover, 1975), p. 261. 12 N. John Hall, Trollope and His Illustrators (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1980), p. 113. 13 Rodney Engen, Exhibition of Proof Wood Engravings (Slad: Ian Hodgkins, 1986), n.p. 14 Paul Goldman, Victorian Illustrated Books, 1850–1870:The Heyday ofWood Engraving (London: The British Museum, 1994), p. 92. 15 Reid, Illustrators, p. 247. 16 Paul Tabor and Pamela M. Fletcher, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards’, in The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print (New York: Columbia University, 1995), pp. 54–6. 17 Bethan Stevens, ‘On Draughtsp’onship and Women Artists’, Woodpeckings: The Dalziel Archive, Victorian Print Culture, andWood Engravings (online resource and blog). www.sussex.ac.uk/english/ dalziel/2019/03/08/on-draughtsponship-and-women-artists-by-bethan-stevens/ (accessed 24 April 2022).

‘A genuine talent’: Mary Ellen Edwards 18 Simon Cooke, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards’, The Victorian Web (online journal and resource), www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/edwardsme/index.html (accessed 24 April 2022). 19 Marianne Van Remoortel, Women, Work and the Victorian Periodical (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), ebook, n.p. 20 Stevens, ‘On Draughtsp’onship’ and Van Remoortel, Women,Work make interesting comments on MEE’s varying ‘artistic voices’. 21 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, p. 76. 22 Van Remoortel, Women,Work, n.p. 23 Clayton, English Female Artists, p. 76. 24 Brock, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards’, p. 194. 25 Simon Cooke, The Moxon Tennyson: A Landmark inVictorian Illustration (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2021), pp. 44–50. 26 For discussion of the technical processes and relationships between artists and engravers, see Cooke, Illustrated Periodicals, pp. 163–91; Cooke, The Moxon Tennyson, pp. 39–41. 27 Van Remoortel, Women,Work, n.p. 28 There is currently no modern bibliography of Edwards’s works. Many, though probably not all, of her publications can be traced in White’s English Illustration, which has numerous entries where she is mentioned as a contributor. 29 Brock, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards’, p. 194. 30 Charles Lever, The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly (London: Chapman & Hall, 1872), p. 40. 31 Gilbert’s ‘Ruth Thornbury’ appeared in Good Words (1866); some of these designs are featured in Cooke, ‘Mary Ellen Edwards’. 32 ‘Framley Parsonage’ was first published in The Cornhill Magazine (1860–61) and reissued in book form in 1861; Orley Farm was issued in serial parts and published in book form in 1862. 33 H. W. Longfellow, ‘The Day is Done’, in Cassell’s Illustrated Readings (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin [1870]), p. 96. 34 Thomas, ‘“The Hand-Glass of a Nation”’, pp. 24–6. 35 Lever, The Bramleighs of Bishop’s Folly, p. 325. 36 [Anon.], ‘A Story of Waterleigh Mill’, Once a Week, 8 (July–December 1865), p. 309. 37 Catherine Delafield, Serialization and the Novel in Mid-Victorian Magazines (London: Routledge, 2019), p. 156. 38 [Anon.], ‘The Dance of Death’, Once a Week 7 (January–June 1865), p. 267. 39 Julia Thomas, Pictorial Victorians: The Inscription of Values in Word and Image (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004), p. 80. 40 John Hall, Trollope and His Illustrators, pp. 14–15. 41 Anthony Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 15 (January–June 1867), facing p. 1. 42 Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, p. 17. 43 Pictures of Society, Grave and Gay (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1866), facing p. 108. 44 Pictures of Society, p. 108. 45 Pictures of Society, facing p. 203. 46 Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 15, facing p. 513. 47 Pictures of Society, facing p. 203, facing p. 211. 48 Gleeson White, English Illustration, p. 7. 49 For discussion of the relationships between artists and illustrators, see Cooke, Illustrated Periodicals, pp. 119–62. 50 Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, 1883), vol. 2, p. 2.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

John Hall, Trollope and His Illustrators, p. 105. Trollope, An Autobiography, p. 2. Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 13 (January–June 1866), p. 152. John Hall, Trollope and His Illustrators, p. 105. Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 13, facing p. 385. Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 13, p. 388. Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 14 (July –December 1866), facing p. 702. Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 14, p. 705. Trollope, ‘The Claverings’, The Cornhill Magazine, 15, facing p. 513. Trollope, An Autobiography, pp. 2–3. Edwards’s response to Wood’s fiction constitutes an area of inquiry that has never been explored in detail and deserves to be examined at length. 62 Brief details of this company can be found at www.scrapalbum.com/xmasp10a.htm (online resource). 63 The Graphic’s deployment of artists is examined in: E. D. H. Johnson, ‘Victorian Artists and the Victorian Milieu’, in The Victorian City: Images and Realities, ed. H. J. Dyson and Michael Wolff, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), vol. 2, pp. 449–74. 64 Mary Sewell, Mother’s Last Words (London: Jarrold and Sons, [1893]), p. 4. 65 F. W. Weatherly, Holly Boughs (New York: Dutton, [1886]), n.p. 66 F. W. Weatherly, Told in the Twilight (London: Hildescheimer and Faulkner, [1883]), p. 36. 67 Weatherly, Told in the Twilight, p. 43. 68 Weatherly, Told in the Twilight, p. 47. 69 Weatherly, Told in the Twilight, p. 62. 70 Van Gogh mentions her work in several letters and had eight of her cuts from The Graphic. http://vangoghletters.org/ (online resource). 71 Reid, Illustrators of the Eighteen Sixties, p. 261.

6 From London Society to The British Workwoman: Edith Hume’s journey to religious domestic illustration via Katwijk and Scheveningen beaches Deborah Canavan

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d i t h Hume’s (née Dunn) (1841–1913) striking illustrations regularly embellished the front pages of the Christian pro-temperance magazine The British Workwoman (1863–1913) between 1886 and 1913. The magazine sought to provide women with moral and religious guidance as well as emotional support to shepherd them through the difficulties of their working lives, whether unpaid in the home, voluntary in the community, or as a paid domestic worker or factory hand. The religious instructions were abundantly evident in the letterpress, woven into the fiction and the poetry, in addition to the ubiquitous biblical stories and religious iconography. As well as providing aesthetic pleasure, Hume’s illustrations served to convey moral messages and Christian values to its readers. This chapter explores Hume’s work and shows how her many contributions perfectly complemented the magazine’s Christian ethos and moral intentions. The chapter will also explore Hume’s work and position it within the context of the mid to late nineteenth-century European art movement to identify the major influences on her artistic style. Though three of Hume’s paintings are in public ownership and her work was exhibited 130 times at significant galleries over thirty years, she remains a little-known artist in the UK. Whilst this is partly due to Hume’s gender, it is also because of the low status enjoyed, both in the nineteenth century and today, by the kind of painting she produced: mainly ‘domestic genre’. That low status itself reveals what we and the Victorians valued, but rediscovering and illuminating Hume’s work is important for a variety of other reasons. Firstly, it reveals Hume’s significant contribution to nineteenth-century periodicals, The British Workwoman in particular, and allows us to understand and analyse her illustrations within the context of her oeuvre. An overview of her work enables coded gender and religious messaging patterns to be identified and interpreted. Hume’s experience as an artist during the second half of the nineteenth century exemplifies how women were not forbidden to engage professionally with art but were 113

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature instead contained and limited in their creative output,1 thereby allowing men to sustain their dominance in the sphere of cultural production. Similarly, the all-male publishing team at The British Workwoman facilitated women’s contribution to the magazine but incorporated women’s cultural production into their power structure. Hume’s artistic containment is further amplified when compared with the experience of her older brother, Henry Treffry Dunn, who for over twenty years was an art assistant to the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Dunn went on to become a highly regarded artist in his own right.2 However, following Rossetti’s death in 1882, Dunn spiralled into an alcoholic decline. This impacted on his strict abstemious family and was, most probably, a contributory influence on Hume’s outlook and her decision to contribute to the pro-temperance British Workwoman. Hume was born and raised into a Baptist and temperance home in Truro, Cornwall. Her father, Henry Dunn, a tea importer and grocer, was an ‘upright God-fearing and sober citizen’ 3 and a strong temperance advocate.4 Hume studied at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art in London in the 1860s, where her brother Henry Dunn had also attended. The school was the first to allow women to attend life classes on equal terms to men.5 Kate Heatherley ran the art school with her husband and was instrumental to the school’s progressive direction. A feminist, a supporter of birth control and women’s suffrage, she was secretary of the Women’s Club and Institute in Newman Street, set up to support working women, and was also involved in the Langham Club for women.6 Other notable alumni of Heatherley’s include Kate Greenaway, Henrietta Rae, and Punch contributor Louise Jopling. Hume’s artwork was first exhibited at the British Institute and Royal Academy (RA) in London in 1864.7 The public exposure from these two exhibitions likely secured her first magazine commission in the July 1865 issue of Once a Week (1859–80).8 This famous illustrated weekly, published by Bradbury and Evans, drew on an extensive number of renowned artists, such as John Leech, George Du Maurier, and John Everett Millais. Hume’s illustration for a story entitled ‘For the Sake of Uniformity’ by Margaret Swayne (Figure 6.1) demonstrates a Pre-Raphaelite influence on her work possibly gained at Heatherley’s, where key figures of the brotherhood had attended and taught.9 Although Hume’s attributed work in Once a Week was a single illustration, many unacknowledged ‘miscellaneous diagrams’ in the magazine may have included more of her drawings. Hume’s contribution to the magazine was a significant achievement; as Marianne Van Remoortel observes, few female artists before this could access the illustrated periodical market.With a few notable exceptions, the first major wave of female illustrators began to acquire commissions in the early 1860s, and Van Remoortel lists Dunn as a member of this pioneering group.10 Following her drawings for Once a Week, Hume secured a commission for a batch of illustrations for London Society. The monthly magazine cost a shilling and promised its readers ‘An Illustrated Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation.’ 11 Hume’s London Society pieces accompanied works by renowned artists such as George Du Maurier and Harrison Weir. In addition, writers such as Wilkie Collins,

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration

Figure 6.1  Edith Hume, ‘For the Sake of Uniformity’, Once a Week, 1 July 1865

Ouida, and G. A. Sala ensured the magazine achieved a healthy monthly circulation. Hume’s first drawings for the magazine appeared in the October 1865 issue. One, entitled A Sketch in the Garden of England, accompanied a short story, ‘Among the Hop Gardens’ signed by the anonymous ‘J.R.M.’ The romantic tale contains a heavy moral message about the virtues of work. Hume’s second drawing in the October issue of London Society accompanied a poem entitled ‘Cupid at a Boating-Party’ signed by another unknown, ‘A.H.G.’ The style and the coastal setting are familiar from what Hume was later known for, although the subject matter appears more frivolous than her core body of work. Hume had also taken note of contemporary style, as the women are fashionably dressed, which would have appealed to the magazine’s middle-class readership. London Society continued to engage Hume; in February 1866, three of her drawings illustrated ‘The Two Valentines’, another story signed by ‘J.R.M.’ 12 In September 1866 a Hume drawing accompanied a poem by ‘A.K.’ entitled ‘Evenings on the Balcony’. Hume’s successful run in popular middle-class periodicals culminated with an illustration in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s newly launched Belgravia. The monthly magazine cost a shilling and, in addition to Braddon’s serialized stories, it offered its middle-class audience a mixture of topical and satirical essays, poetry, and illustrations. Braddon was confident

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature enough in Hume’s artistic appeal to engage her for the magazine’s second issue in December 1866. Hume’s single drawing accompanied a poem entitled ‘Ten and Twenty’ by the writer and poet J. Ashby Sterry. The poem, subtitled ‘A Drawing Room Reverie’, recalled a man’s fond childhood memories of a female playmate he recognized at a party when she had matured into a beautiful, cultured woman. Hume’s illustration portrayed the couple’s meeting. Hume received stinging criticism from the Morning Advertiser and the Clare Journal and Ennis Advertisers for the sketch. The newspaper critics considered her figures out of proportion and not up to standard. However, the Coventry Herald was more complimentary, describing ‘the talent of the editor and chief contributor, Miss Braddon … [as] … well seconded by the talent of the two female artists, M. Ellen Edwards and Edith Dunn’.13 No other Hume drawings appeared in the Belgravia. This was possibly the result of the negative reviews, or due to Hume’s decision to move away entirely from commercial illustration at this period. Her next periodical illustration can be found in the Christian temperance magazine The Quiver in 1867. Hume’s career as a professional painter was also gaining traction at this time, with three works exhibited in 1867 following less successful years. Events also took place in 1867 which may have strengthened her religious perspective. That year Hume was engaged to be married to her brother’s friend James Shepherd, described as a veteran of the ‘Russo-Turkish’ war.14 Shepherd, who had been decorated for his bravery, subsequently held a post in the volunteer department of the War Office. Two weeks before their wedding, set for August 1867, Shepherd died. Henry Treffry Dunn’s biographer, Gale Pedrick, informs us that: Edith was grieved beyond measure by the tragically sudden death of James Shepherd … But she was a woman of courage and some independence of mind. It would have been easy for her to remain at home in prolonged mourning; to abandon her ambition to become a professional artist, content to help her mother in the sleeping, sedative atmosphere of a provincial town. Such a life was not for her. After a few months, Edith Dunn set her lips, resumed her career and earned a considerable reputation.15 Pedrick notes that following Shepherd’s death, Hume ‘travelled much on the continent, and in Holland especially, her trim figure, clad in a long black dress and black straw hat became familiar’.16 In January 1867, Hume’s Adeline and Wild Fruit were shown at the Society of Female Artists (SoFA) exhibition in London. The society, set up in 1857, was a response to women’s exclusion from and the restrictive membership of art societies and exhibitions at that time.17 Many exhibition reviews exposed the artistic prejudice in operation, with the Illustrated Times declaring that ‘ladies, as a body, fail in oil painting’.18 To support the Women’s Club and Institute on Newman Street, Hume donated paintings for decoration in 1869.19 The club was intended for working women who

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration needed a place of comfort and support, which their lodging-rooms rarely provided. The club’s emergence was seen as an important symbolic milestone by the early feminist Englishwoman’s Review: a significant step in women’s ‘Three Decades of Progress’ towards social and political equality, which the periodical celebrated in its August 1878 issue.20 Hume’s show of support for the club is significant. She was openly displaying her solidarity with other professional women in the hostile environment they often encountered.

The Quiver magazine and its significance The first indication of Hume’s moral and religious leanings can be gleaned from her contributions to The Quiver magazine in 1867. It was an evangelical temperance publication established by John Cassell in 1861, in which several of Hume’s illustrations were published between 1867 and 1869. Her second illustration in March 1867 accompanied a short sentimental poem by the poet and playwright Clement W. Scott entitled ‘Early Sorrow’.21 The mournful poem suggests that we should experience grief when young, in preparation for the hardships of life. The illustration portrays two young children bereft at the death of a rabbit.22 The title of Hume’s illustration is a line from the poem ‘Tis best in early life to have defeated Grief’s sharpest sting!’ The poem was, of course, to foreshadow the grief that Hume experienced only months later. Hume’s final illustration for The Quiver in November 1869 accompanied a poem entitled ‘Tranquillity’ by A. Hume Butler,23 a deeply religious piece that spoke of the solace to be gained from the holy book. Again the title of Hume’s illustration was taken from two lines from the poem ‘While fold fingers mutely lead / The spirit forth in prayer’. Hume’s drawing depicts an elderly woman deep in thought as her prayer-poised hands rest on the Bible.24 To understand the significance of Hume’s contributions to The Quiver, we need to consider the context of art in relation to religion and morality during the mid-nineteenth century. Illustration at this time was considered to be imbued with the ability to influence the moral and intellectual profile of its viewers. The use of art in periodicals to elevate and edify had long been promoted by the publisher and author Charles Knight, who had launched the weekly Penny Magazine with that intention. Knight was the official publisher of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which supported self-education for the working classes. The society arose from concerns about workers’ unrest and the potential threat to social stability from the radical press. The magazine was seen as an antidote to social disruption and a way of disseminating art and knowledge to the people. Knight believed art would elevate the moral and intellectual profile of the general public. The magazine was seen as an effective vehicle for popularizing high culture and ‘civilizing’ the reader.25 Art’s ability to convey ‘noble ideas’ was also a central theme of the influential writer and art critic John Ruskin. Core to Ruskin’s aesthetic theories was the pursuit of truth in art and the belief that art had a moral function. Ruskin believed the artist had the ‘responsibility of a preacher, and to kindle in the general mind that regard which such an office must demand’.26

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Although we cannot be sure, Hume’s turn towards didactic, pensive, domestic genre painting and away from Pre-Raphaelite-influenced illustration in sensational magazines seems to have been motivated by ideological commitment. We also know that Hume was greatly affected by her brother Henry’s struggle with alcohol addiction. Hume wrote to Dante Rossetti’s brother William in 1903 about the publication of Dunn’s memoirs, stating that ‘you once wrote to me the kindest of letters in connection with one of his deplorable illnesses, which I shall never forget’.27 The emotional impact of her brother’s alcoholism may have influenced Hume’s decision to regularly contribute artwork to the temperance-supporting British Workwoman.

Working for The British Workwoman Hume’s wood-engraved illustrations started to appear on the front pages of The British Workwoman from April 1886. Infrequent at first, their presence reached a peak in 1890 when seven of the monthly issues presented her work. Hume’s illustrations for the magazine waned over the following years until 1895, when four of the year’s issues included her drawings on the front page. In total, The BritishWorkwoman presented fifty-four front covers featuring Hume illustrations between 1886 and 1896, and a further twentyseven in the post-1905 to 1913 issues; of these latter illustrations however, only three were original images, with the remaining twenty-four recycled from earlier issues.28 There are no records to confirm Hume’s contractual or informal relationship with The BritishWorkwoman. It is unlikely that Hume gained much financially from her contributions, but she would have gained a much greater audience as the magazine disseminated her artwork amongst thousands of households and workplaces throughout Britain. In this respect, The British Workwoman indirectly supported Hume and other women artists by providing another platform through which to exhibit their work. Hume’s ‘A Night among the Herring’ was her first front-cover illustration for The British Workwoman, which appeared in April 1886 (see Figure 6.2). Hume was not acknowledged in the caption, although her signature is clearly evident. The accompanying story by the unknown J. Sutherland was situated on the back page of the issue. It was a tale of faith and perseverance, of fishing men working together to haul the catch, as well as a statement about the consequences of greed. The loose connection between the image and the story suggests that Hume’s image was not commissioned to illustrate it specifically; rather, the images of the fishing nets, the three generations of the old man, the young woman, and the child tied together present a powerful, if generic, notion of a strong moral influence passed on through Christian families working together towards salvation. It is probable that some of Hume’s exhibited paintings, or at least the preparatory work for them, were used for British Workwoman illustrations. However, there is little descriptive detail recorded about her works in contemporary exhibition catalogues and matching Hume’s British Workwoman illustrations to her exhibited works is problematic. Occasionally an image of her exhibited work has been recorded. For instance, for the RA exhibition in 1885, Hume helpfully sketched an image of her oil painting An Old Fisherman Preparing the Tackle for Henry Blackburn’s 1885 Academy Notes.29 While a copy

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration

Figure 6.2  Edith Hume, ‘A Night among the Herring’, The British Workwoman, April 1886

of Hume’s final 1885 exhibition piece has not been reproduced or recorded to compare (and cannot be traced), the sketch suggests that the figure of the fisherman was used for the magazine. Hume’s works are dominated by figures, mostly mothers and daughters, in domestic, rural, and coastal settings. A high proportion of Hume’s women are involved in domestic activities, dairy farming, cottage industries (such as basket-weaving), or work related to the fishing industry. Hume’s images are fully aligned to the magazine’s ethos, not simply

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature portraying women involved in collective physical labour but offering suggestions of spiritual and moral guidance too. Analysing the relationship between Hume’s British Workwoman illustrations and their associated stories suggests that Hume’s drawings were prioritized over the text, as most stories appear to have been written or adapted to link them to her illustrations. There are numerous examples where a reference to the image seemed to be deliberately and awkwardly stitched into the story. From August 1890 onwards, most illustrations could stand alone as narrative pieces without the need for the prop of a textual story to justify their presence. This indicates that Hume provided a series of images to The BritishWorkwoman depicting women in various working roles and a few images of women at leisure. The magazine accompanied Hume’s illustrations with stories adapted to suit the images, or sometimes factual articles were specially written to complement them. In April and July 1895, Hume herself provided the text to accompany two of her illustrations. In April, she commented on the significance of her illustration ‘A Country Van. Only the Old-Fashioned Van to Do the Journey’. Hume’s short personal story of the shared experience of travelling by an old-fashioned van down to the remote country seaside villages suggests reminiscences of her time in Cornwall. In the van, strangers share gossip and personal stories: when the van stops for the last time in the middle of the long street leading down to the sea, the stranger is one no longer, for he seems to know the Christian names and family histories of the entire population, and can greet one as an old friend.30 The tale contains a strong religious metaphor, the rough and rocky journey of life. Hume’s reference to ‘Christian’ names reminds readers of where that journey led. Hume’s humanity comes across strongly in the story; she had rubbed shoulders with ordinary people and listened to their stories and experiences. Hume’s introductory illustration for The British Workwoman, ‘A Night among the Herring’, is typical of the work most valued by her contemporaries. At least a third of the titles of her exhibited paintings had an obvious fishing or coastal-related caption. Hume’s interest in fishing and coastal scenes may have stemmed from her formative years amongst the fishing communities in Truro, Cornwall. Several pieces of her early work recorded by the RA, such as Fishing on the Old Pier Head (1874), The Shrimpers’ Pool (1876), and The Departure of the Herring Boats (1883), indicate that she may have returned to the Cornwall coast to capture these images. The Cornish art historian David Tovey proposes that Hume visited St Ives, Cornwall, on several occasions during the 1870s and 1880s and refers to Hume’s St Ives Sandwoman exhibited at the Society of British Artists in 1872 and A St Ives Fishgirl exhibited at the Royal Society of Arts in 1874. Tovey has also established that Preparing the Tackle places the art piece at St Ives and suggests that Hume would have had to carry out detailed portrait studies of her fishing models in St Ives, even if her major works were executed in her studio.31

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration

Figure 6.3  Edith Hume, ‘Aunt Barjohn’s Secret’, The British Workwoman, April 1889

Dutch and Cornish influences Hume was not alone with her interest in fishing and coastal scenes during the late nineteenth century. Interest in Dutch art had swept across Europe at this time, in part due to exhibitions held in Paris and London of seventeenth-century Dutch art, following the release of private collections into public ownership.32 A new wave of Dutch painters, the Hague School, attracted artists across Europe, America, and Canada, who travelled

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature to the Netherlands to experience the melancholic atmosphere of the land and seascapes.33 In her examination of how Dutch art shaped American culture, Annette Stott observes that the Hague School consciously set out to ‘restore Dutch art to its former glory by painting the common Dutch people and landscape around them’.34Alongside teams of Dutch and international artists, Hume regularly visited the continent in the 1870s35 as evidenced by her Fisherwomen at Scheveningen, Holland,36 dating from around 1875 (Plate 9), and Watching for the Return of the Ships on the Beach at Katwijk. Both Scheveningen and Katwijk were seaside resorts popular with the Hague School artists, such as Joseph Israëls, Bernardus Johannes Blommers, and Evert Pieters. The Netherland Institute for Art History acknowledges Hume’s work in the coastal regions.37 Her artist husband exhibited works which suggest that he too spent time in the Netherlands.38 The titles of many artists’ work exhibited at the RA during the last quarter of the nineteenth century also confirms the interest of the British artist community in the region.39 According to Hans Kraan’s study of nineteenth-century Dutch artists, Hume’s work was considered to be heavily influenced by the Hague School, particularly Blommers. Kraan observed that ‘the beach scenes with fishermen’s wives by the English artist Edith Hume … would have been unthinkable without Blommers’ paintings’.40 The fishing families immortalized on the beaches of Scheveningen and Katwijk had gradually acquired a mythologized status since the 1850s. A romanticized view of the fishing communities had spread through popular Dutch culture, and a literary genre had developed around it. Concerns about industrialization, urbanized living, and the moral decay that they appeared to be inextricably linked with meant that these fishing communities came to embody the good moral attributes thought to be fast disappearing in towns and cities. Jeroen Dekker’s study of family values represented in genre paintings on Scheveningen beach considers that the key message of this genre was to learn from the fisher communities’ moral behaviour, namely ‘piety, domesticity, maternal love, conjugal fidelity, work ethic, and contentment with one’s way of life’.41 Anchors were essential for the fishing communities at Katwijk as there were no harbours on this section of the coast, and schooners were hauled and anchored onto the sands.42 The anchor was therefore closely linked with the perilous life of the fishing families. Not only did the anchor secure the fishermen physically back to shore and their waiting families but it also symbolized how they were secured spiritually with God. There is little surprise, therefore, that one of Hume’s Katwijk oil paintings should also feature an anchor. Watching for the Return of the Ships on the Beach at Katwijk depicts a group of women and children waiting on the beach. A formidable anchor is firmly bedded in the sand. Its exposed spike points towards the sea, where the wives’ eyes are also drawn towards a fleet of shipping vessels. Hume also appeared to be attracted to the concept of the collective nature of the fishing communities’ work. The trawl of the herring fishermen could only be achieved through the combined efforts of the villagers. This democratic concept is embodied in all of Hume’s coastal fishing paintings; there is no sense of hierarchy amongst the figures, continuing the priority of collective behaviour and equality. The sea, unlike the land,

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration defies ownership and is a powerful symbol of democracy. It is also a metaphor for Hume’s Christian belief in humankind’s struggle through life, her fishing scenes embodying the communities’ considerable depth of faith that the fishermen would return. The women’s livelihood depended on the men returning; portrayals of ‘waiting’, ‘watching’, and ‘returning’ feature heavily in Hume’s coastal scenes. However, the women are not characterized as idle or incapacitated by worry about the men’s return; most used the time diligently by sorting fish, knitting, darning, mending nets, and looking after the children. As the fishing communities in the Netherlands gained a symbolic status, so too did the fishing people of Cornwall. Tovey refers to the work of F. G. Stephens, who published a biography of the artist James Clarke Hook in 1888. Stephens referred to the Cornish fisherfolk as ‘proud of their uprightness and their honesty … They are sober, brave and industrious. They have built their own harbours with their own money. Being British, they have never insulted the flat that shelters them’.43 There were clear parallels between the lives and experiences of the Dutch fishing communities and those in Hume’s native Cornwall. Bebbington’s research on Victorian evangelicalism established a link between the early to mid-nineteenth-century Christian revivals amongst those who had experienced fishing boat disasters in Penzance, Cornwall.44 Faith and the associated Christian values appeared to be strengthened in these communities, and Hume would most likely have known and prayed alongside many of the Christian fishing families in her hometown of Penzance. When we consider Hume’s British Workwoman contributions in the context of the Dutch and Cornish fishing community paintings, we can identify how Hume’s messages operated on a simultaneously personal, local, and international level. The illustrations may be specific representations but they are also typical, and it is through this typicity that Hume’s universal Christian messages connected and resonated with the reader. The vast majority of Hume pictures provided working-class readers with romanticized images of a rural or coastal existence.45 Like the Dutch fishing families, Hume’s images idealized the notion of hard-working, pious fishing folk. The images served to connect readers to a notion of a simpler life, to commonly shared Christian values: offering care and guidance where needed, as well as support through the sharing of literal and symbolic skills, and that the reward of hard work is salvation, as Hume reminds the reader with ‘Harvest Time – The Reapers Come Forth to the Harvest’ (Figure 6.4). The illustration shows a happy mother holding a sickle in a wheat field, two young children playing, and a church spire in the background. Hume’s rural and coastal domestic scenes were undoubtedly imbued with religious significance. Yet as Deborah Cherry’s study of Victorian women artists reveals, from the mid-nineteenth century, the countryside and coastal landscapes were extremely popular subject matter with artists for other reasons. In an increasingly urbanized society in which poverty, poor health, and intemperance were associated with town or city living, many began to look to the countryside as representing ‘health, purity and happiness in contrast’. In towns and cities ‘the countryside was remote – glimpsed through train windows,

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Figure 6.4  Edith Hume, ‘Harvest Time’, The British Workwoman, August 1887

enjoyed on holidays, pictured in illustrated magazines or on gallery walls’.46 Moreover, artists rarely portrayed the industrial workers of the city. Cherry’s analysis of the artist Helen Allingham’s rural watercolours, often including cottage scenes from around the same period, can also be usefully applied to Hume’s work. Arguing that at the heart of Allingham’s rural idyll was the working-class woman as mother, Cherry identifies both gendered and class signifiers in operation in her artwork: ‘In these images working-class

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration femininity is codified as respectable, and ordered around cleanliness, domesticity, responsible motherhood, small-sized families, and correct distribution into dwellings (that is, without overcrowding which would signify an unregulated sexuality).’ 47 Cherry notes that in Allingham’s images of country cottages, women were not engaged in paid labour; the focus instead was on their role as mothers, which coincided with concerns about responsible motherhood, children’s health, and the fitness of the population. ‘It was this powerful combination of the rural idyll and domestic femininity that enabled the working-class woman at the cottage gate to signify social order.’ 48 The signifiers identified by Cherry also offer another way of interpreting Hume’s illustrations. Of the fifty-seven images contributed by Hume, twenty-three include a mother and child or children, usually a daughter. None of the images show a woman with more than two children, corresponding with Cherry’s suggestion of the expression of middle-class anxieties around the containment and control of working-class families. In Hume’s BritishWorkwoman illustrations, women were also often situated by the cottage door or the cottage gate. For instance, in ‘The Chair Menders’ (August 1890), a smiling mother perches safely on a cottage garden wall holding onto a child. They watch two men repairing chairs on the side of the road. The mother and child are contained and protected by the wall, as the mother oversees the working men, suggesting her guidance and influence but not her direct involvement. The image connotes social harmony and that all is well with the world. In parallel with conveying religious and moral guidance, The BritishWorkwoman magazine aimed to encourage social cooperation and social order. Through its support for biographies of pioneering Victorian figures aligned to parliamentary reform, it promoted cooperation while discouraging a collective working-class response to foster change. Individual responsibility and personal salvation took precedence over any suggestion of alignment through class or gender issues. The magazine’s approach was to appeal to people’s better Christian nature to ensure good labour relations. In this respect, the magazine endorsed the social order and the status quo. Like Cherry, Deborah Mutch refers to how The British Workwoman provided written and visual advice about the benefits of temperance, work, and thrift and how it aimed to maintain the working classes as ‘compliant and peaceful’.49 Some of Hume’s images of women show them in paid employment, such as basketmakers, lace-makers, net-makers, and strawberry-pickers. However, these were typically the employment options proffered by the magazine, which could fit around domestic responsibilities and childcare priorities. Yet despite this, Hume does deviate on occasion from the gender-restraining signifiers. There are a handful of Hume’s images in The British Workwoman where women are captured engaging in physical labour related to rural life. For example, the August 1888 issue shows a young mother sitting confidently on the steps of a farmhouse building (see Figure 6.5). She proudly stares directly at the viewer, her sleeves rolled up to expose strong forearms suggestive of hard work. Her shoes are sturdy, and her dress is plain and practical. Alongside her, a young child stands watching the chickens feed. Hume portrayed women’s physical labour in these pictures positively

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Figure 6.5  Edith Hume, ‘Eggs. A Small Number of Poultry’, The British Workwoman, August 1888

and respectfully, suggesting she was unperturbed by and supportive of these deviations from the feminine norm. Most of Hume’s illustrations for The British Workwoman depicted rural scenes, and her exhibited work mainly comprised observations from the coast or countryside that signified a simpler way of life, showing working people in harmony with the land and the sea. By the late nineteenth century, most British Workwoman readers – and certainly

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration the women the magazine was aimed at – were working and living in industrialized towns or cities. Women probably used the magazine’s rural and seascape illustrations to decorate the walls of their homes. As well as providing aesthetic pleasure the images would have provided a constant reminder of the Christian moral values they encapsulated. Hume married a fellow artist, Thomas Oliver Hume, in 1870. A landscape painter who regularly exhibited at the major galleries in Britain, he was a widower who joined her with two young sons from his previous marriage.This immediate thrust into a mothering role may have been a difficult adjustment for an independent professional artist. However, Hume’s exhibited works significantly increased during the 1870s, suggesting that she was able to distance herself from The British Workwoman’s insistence that motherhood should be prioritized over work.

Celebrity status in The Queen and ‘Lady Artist No. 16’ in the Lady’s Pictorial In December 1880, The Queen, a weekly journal aimed at wealthy upper-middle-class women, featured an article on ‘Eminent English Lady Artists’ which included a profile and sketch drawing of Hume. Margaret Beetham notes how the magazine, launched originally by Samuel Beeton in 1861, was a pioneering example of a new type of journal for women, bringing the concept of the lady, the techniques of illustration, and the category of news into a dynamic relationship with each other.50 By the 1880s, the magazine introduced a catch-all title, ‘What Women Are Doing’, and began to offer reports on education, literature, and debates about political and social rights.51An article on eminent women artists fitted into the journal’s commentary on the expansion of women’s entry into formerly male domains. The articles accompanying the sketches included a short résumé for each, in turn, altering in size depending on their noteworthiness or fame. Hume’s résumé was by far the shortest; a section of it is reproduced here: Since her marriage she has been an indefatigable worker, travelling studies, with figures. These generally had good places on the walls of the Academy, and met with ready sale.52 The Queen made the accurate observation that Hume was indeed an ‘indefatigable worker’ given the dozens of artworks she exhibited between 1870 and 1885.53 This impressive output decreased from 1886, the year coincidentally that her illustrations started to appear on the front pages of The British Workwoman. Hume was featured in the Lady’s Pictorial, a rival to The Queen, in July 1889, under the title ‘Lady Artists No. 16’. The short article gave an account of Hume’s career and reminded readers that the magazine had reproduced Hume’s pictures in pen and ink. The anonymous reviewer remarked that her work had ‘great charm’, a ‘conscientious truth to nature’, and treated her subjects with a ‘tender sympathy’.54

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Conclusion Edith Hume was a pioneering artist and one of the first women to access the illustrated periodical market. She was an early supporter and possible beneficiary of the Women’s Club and Institute in Newman Street, its establishment regarded as an important and symbolic milestone towards social and political equality by the nascent feminist Englishwoman’s Review. Hume’s artistic progression exemplifies how women continued to be channelled into the narrow space permitted for professional female artists in the midnineteenth century. Excluded from artistic institutions, they also experienced a much subtler form of containment as subject matter, artistic styles, and even artistic mediums were heavily gendered; to cross the divide exposed them to criticism and ridicule. In contrast with her brother, Henry Dunn, Hume’s artistic journey could not have been more distinct. Dunn joined the bohemian Pre-Raphaelite circle orbiting Dante Rossetti, giving him immediate access to some of the most influential artists, writers, and poets of the day, which, no doubt, greatly enhanced his artistic profile. Meanwhile, the ‘indefatigable worker’ Hume abandoned popular middle-class periodicals and instead sought the desolate and melancholic seascapes of the Netherlands to capture the deep Christian ethos of the fishing communities at Katwijk and Scheveningen beaches. The Dutch and Cornish influences on Hume’s work are evident in the distinctive and powerful images she contributed to The British Workwoman. Here Hume reached her largest group of spectators, an audience of working-class women, many of whom would never set foot inside an art gallery. The magazine presented them with a personal collection of Hume’s work to paste onto dull walls. The illustrations not only served as decoration but conveyed the Christian messages and moral values that Hume intended.

Notes 1 R. Parker and G. Pollock, Old Mistresses:Women, Art, and Ideology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), p. 44. 2 According to Gale Pedrick, Dunn’s painting of Rossetti was on display at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy, and his picture of Rossetti and Theodore Watt-Dunton was on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London. G. Pedrick, Life with Rossetti; Or, No Peacocks Allowed (London: Macdonald, 1964), p. 1. 3 Pedrick, Life with Rossetti, p. 17. 4 Ibid., p. 11. 5 This was of considerable significance as drawing from the figure was considered by artists at this time to be one of the highest forms of art. When women artists campaigned for the RA to allow them access to ‘study from the figure’ in 1878, the petition referred to how the female artists could not ‘hope to rise above mediocrity at any rate in the highest branch of our art’; Amy Bluett, ‘“Striving after excellence”: Victorian Women and the Fight for Arts Training’, Royal Academy, 2 March 2021, www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/striving-after-excellence-victorian (accessed 23 March 2021). 6 University College London (UCL), ‘The Berners Estate: Berners and Newman Streets’, www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/chapter30_the_berners_estate.pdf (accessed 23 March 2021), p. 21.

Edith Hume’s religious domestic illustration 7 Royal Cornwall Gazette (5 February 1864), p. 5. 8 Once a Week (1 July 1865), p. 39. 9 Pedrick, Life with Rossetti, p. 31. 10 Marianne Van Remoortel, Women, Work, and the Victorian Periodical: Living by the Press (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 100. 11 London Society (7, 1865), front cover. 12 J.R.M., ‘The Two Valentines’, London Society (February 1866), pp. 121–7. 13 Coventry Herald (23 November 1866), p. 4. 14 H. T. Dunn, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and His Circle (Cheyne Walk Life), edited and annotated by G. Pedrick (London: Elkin Mathews, 1904), p. 73. 15 Pedrick, Life with Rossetti, p. 32. 16 Ibid., p. 32 17 D. Gaze, Concise Dictionary of Women Artists (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 69. 18 The Illustrated Times’s review of the 1867 SoFA exhibition declared that ‘ladies, as a body, fail in oil painting’ (23 February 1867), p. 11. The Morning Post reviewer commented: ‘there is a considerable amount of dead birds in the exhibition, but it is not easy to understand why ladies should indulge in such a predilection, living birds being so much prettier and so much pleasanter to behold. And it is worthy of remark that, true to the matrimonial instincts of the sex, the artists almost invariably represent dead birds in couples’ (Monday, 21 January 1867), p. 6. 19 The Marylebone Mercury (12 March 1870), p. 3 20 Englishwoman’s Review (LXIV, 15 August 1878), p. 341. 21 The Quiver (23 March 1867), p. 426. 22 Ibid., p. 425 23 Ibid. (27 November 1869), p. 126. 24 Ibid., p. 121. 25 P. Anderson, The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, 1790–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 119. 26 J. Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. 1 (London: George Allen, 1903), p. 48. 27 Pedrick, Life with Rossetti, p. 11. 28 The British Library restored eighty-six copies of The British Workwoman dated between August 1905 and June 1913. Most of the front-page images for these magazines were recycled from earlier issues. Twenty-seven used Hume illustrations, twenty-four of which were used previously as front-page covers. Only three of these Hume’s images were new and they are markedly inferior in quality. 29 H. Blackburn, Academy Notes (London: Chatto and Windus, 1885), p. 76. 30 E. Hume, ‘A Country Van’, The British Workwoman (April 1895), p. 50. 31 D. Tovey, St Ives (1860–1930): The Artists and the Community (Gloucestershire: Wilson Books, 2009), pp. 19–29. 32 H. Kraan, ‘The Vogue for Holland’, in The Hague School: Dutch Masters of the 19th Century, ed. Ronald De Leeuw, John Sillevis, and Charles Dumas (London: Royal Academy of Arts, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), p. 115. 33 Ibid., p. 117. 34 A. Stott, Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture. (New York: The Overlook Press, 1998), p. 28. 35 Pedrick, Life with Rossetti, p. 32. 36 C. Wright, Catherine Gordon, and M. Peskett Smith, British And Irish Paintings in Public Collections: An Index of British and Irish Oil Paintings by Artists Born before 1870 in Public and Institutional Collections in the United Kingdom and Ireland (London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 452.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 37 The Netherland Institute for Art History (RKD) holds a record of scholarly references to Hume’s Work, and a map showing where she was active in the country (RKD, 2019). 38 T. Hume’s artwork Abcoude Meer, Holland was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875; A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, vol. vi (London: Henry Graves & Co., 1906), p. 192. 39 Blackburn’s Academy Notes details the work of many artists who clearly visited the Netherlands during the late nineteenth century; for example, Scheveningen Pink Preparing for Sea by E. W. Cooke, R. A. (1877), p. 31, and By the Rolling Zuyder Zee by Charles J. Watson (1890), p. 89. 40 Kraan, ‘The Vogue for Holland’, p. 120. 41 J. J. H. Dekker, ‘Family on the Beach: Representations of Romantic and Bourgeois Family Values by Realistic Genre Painting of Nineteenth-Century Scheveningen Beach’, Journal of Family History, 28/2 (April 2003), p. 279. 42 Stott, Holland Mania, p. 60. 43 Tovey cites F. G. Stephens, ‘J. C. Hook, R. A.: His Life and Work’, Art Annual (1888), pp. 16–17. 44 D. Bebbington argues that the heightened sense of danger experienced in fishing communities often led to religious revival and conversion; Victorian Religious Revivals: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 90. 45 Forty-four of Hume’s fifty-seven front-page illustrations (77 per cent) were idealized rural, coastal working, or domestic life scenes. 46 D. Cherry, Painting Women:Victorian Women Artists (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 166. 47 Ibid., p. 182. 48 Ibid., pp. 182–3. 49 D. Mutch, ‘Social Purpose Periodicals’, in The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers, ed. A. King, A. Easley, and J. Morton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), p. 331. 50 Margaret Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own? Domesticity and Desire in theWoman’s Magazine (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 89–90. 51 Ibid., pp. 93–4. 52 The Queen (4 December 1880), p. 501. 53 Hume exhibited at least ninety-five artworks in six galleries in England, Scotland, and Ireland between 1870 and 1885. 54 Lady’s Pictorial (27 July 1889), p. 120.

7 ‘This woman who predominated in all things’: Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899 Nancy Marck Cantwell

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l i c e Barber Stephens (1858–1932) was among the first readers to recognize Dorothea, the heroine of George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), as a modern woman determined to define a purposeful life. Of the seventeen illustrations Stephens contributed to the 1899 American edition of Middlemarch, nearly half focus on Dorothea, isolating key moments that chart her growing authority, from sisterhood through a difficult marriage to widowhood.1 The illustrations won Stephens a gold medal at the 1899 exhibition of Women’s Work at Earl’s Court, London, but the eight Dorothea drawings particularly highlight woman’s expanding sphere of experience.2 In each setting, we see Dorothea as a singular figure dominating the tableau. Stephens presents her as a woman progressively asserting herself in opposition to the pressures exerted by her family, her class, and even her husband. Although critics today grapple with Dorothea’s limited success, many have come back to Stephens’s view, particularly in assessing Dorothea’s marriage to the pedantic Mr Casaubon. By the 1890s, Eliot’s reputation had suffered a serious decline, partly owing to a social climate more favourable to female independence, represented not only by the popular image of the ‘New Woman’ but also by women’s clearly expanding professional roles. As an artist who had early gained public acclaim, Stephens embodied the very idea of womanhood that critics used to dismiss Dorothea as old-fashioned. Dedicated from an early age to professional attainment, Stephens received the best training available to women artists at the time. Still in her teens, she began taking weekly art classes at the Philadelphia School of Design and, as she progressed to full-time study, learned wood engraving in classes taught by the respected English engraver John Dalziel – here she developed the ‘sensitivity to clean lines and acquired a sense for accurate perspective and detail’ that would become her hallmarks.3 Stephens (then Alice Barber) was among the first women admitted to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1876, studying with Thomas Eakins, whose belief in natural models had a formative influence on her realistic 131

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature style.4 As she rose quickly to prominence as an engraver, Stephens embodied the very broadening of women’s sphere of influence that prompted reviewers of George Eliot’s Middlemarch to dismiss Dorothea’s struggle to achieve an ‘epic life’ as an unredeemed failure, a sign that the author’s view of women’s ambitions was essentially conservative, limited to the domestic sphere. This interpretation, of course, overlooked Eliot’s own success as a professional woman, something Stephens may have both noted and appreciated. Importantly, the Middlemarch illustrations follow the popular series on the ‘American Woman’ that Stephens had just completed for The Ladies’ Home Journal in 1897, a series in which she represents the growing freedom of the ‘New Woman’ to seek meaningful employment.5 Her cover illustration of ‘The Woman in Business’ for the September 1897 issue particularly points to ‘some of the tensions in late nineteenth-century American society over shifting definitions of womanhood’.6 Stephens employs a realistic style to show a place of business dominated by women – female clerks of varying ages attend to female customers, while Stephens includes a girl customer in the background and a girl worker in the foreground, to make it clear that the next generation will also participate in the marketplace. This illustration received a lot of attention, both positive and negative, for announcing the ascendance of the career woman. However, the tide of cultural relevance had turned against Eliot by the 1890s, as a self-consciously modern sensibility declared the growing importance of female work, female health, and female empowerment. As Nancy Henry observes, ‘To this new generation, Eliot was an unfashionable repressed Victorian’.7 Eliot’s professional life as a woman writer and her financial success were also downplayed by her widower John Cross in his reverential and stolid 1885 biography, George Eliot’s Life As Related in her Letters and Journals; Cross was eager to establish an authoritative, ‘insider’ view of his famous wife, but he also wanted to quiet any remaining prurient interest in her long-standing scandalous co-habitation with the married writer George Henry Lewes.8 Eliot’s reputation as a moral author had always had to navigate this dilemma, but by the time Stephens undertook the illustrations for Middlemarch, critical consensus had strongly tilted in favour of Eliot’s earlier works, prior to Romola (1863), as superior realistic depictions of English rural life, ‘targeting a regrettable predominance of analytical reflectiveness and moral sententiousness over creativity and vitality’.9 The interpretation Stephens advances in her eight Dorothea illustrations challenges this dismissal – taken as a series, they unfold the drama of a woman’s search for personal fulfilment, hampered but not fully extinguished by the limitations of social expectations. That Stephens took a more modern view of Dorothea’s predicament becomes evident in her selection and handling of the series, in which she combines elements of 1830s and 1890s dress to underscore the progressive aspects of Dorothea’s experience that connect her to the modern reader of Stephens’s day. The first illustration, ‘Slipping the Ring and Bracelet On’, shows Dorothea absorbed by the beauty of a vivid emerald ring and bracelet set she has just tried on – her younger sister, Celia, has just requested that the two divide their mother’s jewels. Celia stands behind Dorothea, who is seated at a table in the foreground with the jewel case before

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea her, holding one ‘finely formed’ hand and wrist up to catch the natural light as it brings the gems to life.10 The novel opens in 1831, and in this early scene both young women are dressed similarly, wearing simple, light-coloured dresses probably made of a popular muslin-like fabric that does not have much body; their dresses appear soft and relatively unstructured in the gentle light, filtered through airy curtained windows in the background. Stephens takes careful note of Eliot’s opening observation in the novel, that ‘Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress’, which would itself set them apart from the exuberant fashions of the early 1830s.11 The sisters prefer the same plain style, rejecting the ‘frippery’ of more fashionable dresses to mark their religious and class distinction. Yet, this distinction also allows Stephens an opportunity to carry the point further by suggesting an openness to progressive ideas about women’s roles that were by the 1890s manifesting in the rational and aesthetic dress movements – the ease and softness of the garments in the illustration suggests only the mildest corseting, if any. While leg-of-mutton or gigot sleeves were popular in both the 1830s and 1890s, fashion historian Harper Franklin indicates that in the early 1830s they ‘reached an apex in size’ and often required undergarments that combined corseting and sleeve support.12 Since the fashionable silhouette of 1830s women’s dresses also required a ‘nipped waist that fell just above the natural waistline’ and ‘skirts that ended just above the ankle’, we can see Stephens making alterations that link the sisters to fashions of the 1890s – sleeves collapsing without support, visibly natural waistlines, and hemlines touching the ground – these longer skirts and more forgiving waistlines were hallmarks of the New Woman, advocated by the rational and aesthetic dressers of the 1890s.13 Fashion historian Patricia Cunningham observes that Americans became interested in aesthetic dress as described in popular magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and as practised by women of the artistic set in London: ‘An apparent absence of corsetry was one feature of aesthetic dress. Another was the full, puffed sleeve reminiscent of Pre-Raphaelite and Renaissance painting. The dresses were worn without petticoat or bustle and, by contrast to fashionable dress, seemed limp or drooping. The waist was either high or in a natural placement.’ 14 Although Dorothea and Celia focus their attention on the jewels, they view them very differently; Celia sees them literally as ornaments she would like to wear to dinner, but Dorothea has difficulty judging their worth. Although she dismisses the jewels as symbols of crass materialism and exploited labour, she does value the beautiful colour of the gems aesthetically, as ‘fragments of heaven’.15 Joseph Weisenfarth notes that Dorothea’s nearsightedness marks a tendency to misjudge ‘because she does not know how to deal with things she cannot see clearly’.16 Stephens captures this by casting Dorothea’s hand in shadows, backlit by the window, while illuminating her face and Celia’s to emphasize the act of discriminating vision. The sisters soon after differ in their assessments of the middle-aged scholar Mr Casaubon – while Celia finds him repellent, Dorothea mistakenly views him as an ideal husband, who will help her enter a purposeful life. Throughout the series, Stephens uses shadows deliberately to represent areas Dorothea either fails to perceive or misreads entirely.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature In the next four illustrations, which provide vignettes of Dorothea’s married life, Stephens contrasts fashions of the 1830s with those of the 1890s. Her references to 1830s fashion visualize the formidable resistance to Dorothea’s desire for an expanding life, while elements of 1890s dress identify Dorothea with independence and self-fulfilment. The first, ‘Dorothea in the Vatican’ (see Figure 7.1), serves as the frontispiece to the novel and is Stephens’s only study of a solitary figure. Stephens suggests the primacy of Dorothea’s plot over the novel’s other interwoven narratives and anticipates modern feminist critics like Elaine Showalter, who would observe that ‘The woman’s text in Middlemarch is the fall of Dorothea’.17 The frontispiece depicts Dorothea on her honeymoon in Rome, a destination chosen by her much older husband to further scholarly rather than romantic aims. Dorothea stands alone in the Vatican’s Gallery of Statues, her back turned to the famous secondcentury BCE sculpture of Ariadne. Its ‘marble voluptuousness’ serves as a background that throws Dorothea into relief as a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish grey drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face around the simply braided brown hair. She was not looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor.18 Eliot juxtaposes past and present by calling attention again to Dorothea’s plain dress in contrast to the ‘petal-like ease and tenderness’ of the statue’s sensuous drapery, but the contrast also suggests the absence of intimacy in the new marriage, as Mr Casaubon arranges such sightseeing tours for Dorothea in order to free himself to pursue his library research.19 Stephens also evokes a contrast between past and present in her illustration, first by setting the scene in much darker light than the natural illumination provided by the gallery’s series of long and tall windows. As Frederick W. Webber observed of Stephens in 1893, Her faces are expressive, her figures animated, and the surroundings assist materially in the presentation of the subject. So careful is she in every part of her work, that almost invariably her figure pieces are enriched by interesting studies of still-life, and the inanimate combines with the animate to tell the story. She has a delicate mastery of light and shade which enables her to reveal complexion in a countenance, texture in fabrics, and material in surroundings.20 The shadowy setting presents an immediate contrast to the brightness of the previous illustration with Celia and the emeralds, suggesting the emotional darkness and

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea

Figure 7.1  Alice Barber Stephens, ‘Dorothea in the Vatican’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature disappointment of Dorothea’s early marriage. Stephens positions Dorothea strategically so that her head appears just below that of the ‘inanimate’ Ariadne, to emphasize the commonalities of abandonment and erotic potential. Until the 1870s, the sculpture was mistakenly identified as Cleopatra, thus perpetuating the common interpretation of frustrated desire. Eliot’s scene presents the illustrator with several interesting technical challenges, not the least of which is representing a well-known sculpture, which Stephens may have seen and sketched during an 1886 visit to Italy. Regina Armstrong notes that ‘During her sojourn abroad she visited the various galleries of Europe and received valuable training from the pictures she thus had the privilege of observing’.21 Following Eliot’s indication that Dorothea is ‘standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble’, Stephens narrows the gallery visually so that the pedestal aligns with the sculpture in the background, and she raises the height of the pedestal itself since the original is too low to serve as a support. This is necessary so that Ariadne’s arm, raised over her head, frames and echoes the curve of Dorothea’s bonnet, which in turn directs attention to her hand and face, the brighter cloak, and the diagonal beam of sunlight on the floor, leading the eye back to Ariadne and completing the comparison between the two abandoned women. Stephens’s illustration engages the reader in the novel’s artistic perspective, as Dorothea is unaware that she is being observed by her husband’s cousin, Will Ladislaw, and his artist friend Naumann. Abigail S. Rischin observes that ‘the narrator also aestheticizes Dorothea in presenting her through the eyes of the two artists who contemplate her … as if she were a work of art’.22 Much critical attention has centred on the impact of this visual experience on Will Ladislaw, but this line of interpretation casts Dorothea as the object of the male artist’s gaze. Stephens calls attention instead to Dorothea’s gaze and thus departs distinctly from Eliot’s directions in the text.23 Although Eliot indicates that Dorothea’s ‘large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor’, Stephens places the sunlight behind her and out of her range of vision.24 On the polished floor before her, the viewer sees the reflection of her light-coloured cloak rather than light from the window before her on the right, which although out of the frame still illuminates her face and figure, reminding us of Stephens’s ‘liking … for subtle effects of sunlight’.25 The hand and forearm that echo the Ariadne’s pose call attention to Dorothea’s expression, which is abstracted, solemn, and sorrowful; Stephens shows her brows slightly drawn together in thought, and the proximity of her wedding ring, which the artist Naumann observes on her ‘beautiful ungloved hand’, links her ‘brooding abstraction’ to disappointment in her marriage.26 Accordingly, as her thoughts turn inward, Dorothea’s gaze focuses blankly on the space before her rather than on any of the works that surround her: ‘she was inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home’.27 Because ‘she does not know the language of art’, Weisenfarth rightly concludes that Rome provides ‘an image of Dorothea’s soul, which has longed to find a spiritual ideal in marriage and has found only desolation’.28 In Dorothea’s unfocused gaze into the future, Stephens conveys the estranging effect

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea of the gallery, where the statues only appear as a ‘vast wreck of ambitious ideals’ that overwhelms her, a portent of her empty marriage.29 Stephens opens the possibility of social change by combining anachronistic fashion elements, a deliberate choice since F. B. Sheafer notes in a 1900 review that Mrs. Stephens has a natural fondness for detail. She never works without a model, and she never ‘fakes.’ She invariably visits the scenes in which her pictures are laid, when that is possible, and all the accessories of her pictures, of whatever period, are authentic. She possesses a valuable wardrobe of old costumes, from which she draws.30 While Dorothea appears in the 1830s ‘white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face’, Stephens modifies the ‘Quakerish grey drapery’ into a suit-like garment popular in the 1890s – a combination of a narrower skirt without crinoline, matching jacket, and white shirtwaist blouse (often lace-trimmed) known as a ‘tailor-made’.31 This fashion was adopted by the New Woman, who became, as Carolyn Kitch explains, ‘a symbol of freedom – not only of women from old-fashioned gender roles, but also of the modern American twentieth century from the Victorian nineteenth century’.32 Professional women also wore tailor-mades as a sign of their seriousness and independence. Stephens herself was photographed wearing a tailor-made decorated with lace, and she wears a more serious-looking jacket with sharply defined lapels in a sketch made by fellow artist Charlotte Harding.33 By visually linking Dorothea’s first moment of marital crisis with a contemporary movement to empower women, Stephens anticipates modern feminist critics who read the Roman episode as the beginning of Dorothea’s awakening. The following three illustrations further develop both disillusionment and erosion of trust in the marriage, as Dorothea tries to focus her devotion on Casaubon and is repeatedly repulsed. In ‘“But You Do Forgive Me?” Said Dorothea’, Stephens records the momentous rift that results from Dorothea’s desire to play an active role in moving Casaubon’s work, The Key to All Mythologies, to completion. ‘As blind to his inward troubles as he to hers’, Dorothea probes her husband’s failure to begin to write his book after years of research, unconsciously exposing his sensitivity to criticism and becoming a ‘cruel outward accuser’ in his eyes.34 Choosing the scene in Rome in which Dorothea tries to apologize for distressing her husband, Stephens represents her first intimation of his ‘equivalent centre of self’.35 As they sit side by side on a sofa, she leans forward, her eyes focused on his face, while he sits ‘wearily’ with legs outstretched: ‘his elbow supported his head and [he] looked on the floor’.36 Stephens contrasts Casaubon’s dark evening clothes with Dorothea’s light-coloured 1830s gown; with its full skirt, large gigot sleeves, and a broad white collar that covers her bodice, the gown represents conventional fashion, just as Dorothea’s supplication mirrors expected wifely deference. However, as Dorothea imploringly leans forward, Casaubon leans backward, withdrawing from her, so that the brightness of her figure appears to be pressing the darkness of his figure backwards. Stephens creates a visual barrier between the two to mark their growing

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature estrangement, using Dorothea’s upraised left arm and open hand on the sofa back to form a single diagonal line with Casaubon’s rigid right arm, pressed down on his lap, ending in a clenched fist. His left hand supports his cheek, index finger extended to the temple to suggest the quarrel has disturbed his thoughts about Dorothea. While she looks directly at him tenderly and imploringly, he does not meet her eyes; his gaze appears fixed on his clenched fist. Stephens’s attention to background also emerges in the sombre formality of shadowy draperies and columns behind the sofa, so that Dorothea stands out as a bright figure wedged between two opaque and gloomy areas. Upon their return to England, Casaubon enlists Dorothea as his copyist, and Stephens depicts her first rebellious anger in ‘She Began to Work at Once, and Her Hand Did Not Tremble’ (see Figure 7.2). Placing Dorothea in the foreground, intent on her task as her husband drops his head in the gloomy library background, Stephens shows ‘her talent for depicting key moments’.37 In this scene, Casaubon’s resentment of Will Ladislaw flares up when the young man’s correspondence includes two private messages for Dorothea; when Casaubon insinuates that she solicited an inappropriately intimate exchange, Dorothea expresses anger: Dorothea left Ladislaw’s two letters unread on her husband’s writing-table and went to her own place, the scorn and indignation within her rejecting the reading of those letters, just as we hurl away any trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of mean cupidity. She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of her husband’s bad temper about these letters; she only knew that they had caused him to offend her. She began to work at once, and her hand did not tremble.38 This moment stands out in the novel as it marks a turning point in Dorothea’s growing resistance to Casaubon’s authority; insulted that he regards her as an adversary, she not only voices her indignation but accuses him of misjudging her: ‘I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions about my feeling’.39 Her righteous anger corrects her original view that her marriage would open wide intellectual vistas, and so Stephens positions her leaning forward over a large, solidly built desk, intent on the Latin words she is copying and surrounded by three piles of stacked books that represent the knowledge she has longed to access. Stephens emphasizes this ‘sense of superiority’ by foregrounding Dorothea’s activity against the shadowy and stagnant library, where the books remain shelved and unused.40 In contrast, Casaubon sits passively at the writing-table in the background, gazing down at one book lying open before him, his head supported by both hands, in a stricken pose that predicts the attack he is about to experience. Eliot points to this as a moment of hubris for Dorothea, however: anger prevents her from feeling compassion for Casaubon. But Stephens conveys both his vulnerability and despairing attitude by presenting him as a much smaller figure and repeating the gesture of the left index finger against the temple, which she associated with the disturbance of the quarrel in Rome. However, Dorothea’s expression has changed markedly from that affectionate

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea

Figure 7.2  Alice Barber Stephens, ‘She Began to Work at Once and Her Hand Did Not Tremble’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature appeal for forgiveness; here Stephens shows her unsmiling, lips pressed together, and jaw set as she focuses on the task before her. Her 1830s dress, too, has changed – the collar plainer and much smaller, the sleeves reduced in size, and the gown itself darker in shade. The rectangular and square shapes repeated in the tables and bookcases further suggest confinement and boundaries. Stephens’s presentation of Dorothea’s struggle for authority bears comparison to Frederic Leighton’s famous illustrations of Eliot’s 1863 novel, Romola. In ‘Coming Home’, he represents Romola’s disillusionment as she realizes that she has misjudged her husband’s character and, like Stephens, Leighton makes her the unsmiling focal point, standing above her husband on the staircase as he returns home. As Leighton does in his Romola illustrations, Stephens suggests the deterioration of Dorothea’s marriage through increasingly dark settings, progressing from the shadowy background in ‘But You Do Forgive Me?’ to the dimly lit library to the almost complete darkness of ‘She Put Her Hand into Her Husband’s and They Went Along the Corridor Together’, which marks the ending of Book IV. In this scene, Dorothea has struggled to repress her anger once more, as Casaubon in ‘his unresponsive hardness’ continues to repulse her efforts to approach him, fearing and resenting her pity for his illness.41 Eventually overcoming her outrage and her desire to wound him, Dorothea waits in the hallway in her white nightdress as her husband comes upstairs after a long night secluded in his study. Again, Stephens evokes sympathy for both partners but also contrasts their thoughts by focusing Casaubon’s stricken expression on the distant foreground, while Dorothea’s watchful gaze contemplates her husband, who turns away from her and leads her forward by gripping her hand, pulling her figure slightly off balance. In the corridor, with its long window, broad arch, and bust on a plinth, Stephens creates another formal and indistinctly shadowy background that appears both cavernous and gloomy; even the bust glances downward.The candle Casaubon holds before him to light their way illuminates his features, set in a dejected expression that appears ‘more haggard’ and oblivious to any other presence, while Dorothea, hesitant to incur another rejection, ‘looked up at him beseechingly’.42 Stephens skilfully uses lighting to dramatize the marital dynamic: the candle throws Casaubon’s shadow upon the floor to the left of the frame but also casts a dark and ominous pall over Dorothea’s white-clad figure. One particularly dark shaded area extends from her feet and draws the eye upward by seemingly pointing to her heart, the seat of her feeling, a reminder of the deep emotional struggles she has endured in her short marriage. The remaining three Dorothea illustrations represent her struggle to assert her own will against the confines of widowhood. Stephens not only evokes changing ideas about mourning dress and the status of widows but also charts Dorothea’s recovery from the psychologically debilitating effects of her marriage. ‘Dorothea Sat by in Her Widow’s Dress’ (see Figure 7.3) captures a moment shortly after Casaubon’s death. Dorothea sits in a distinctly female space, her sister’s bedroom at Freshitt Hall, and Celia attempts to distract her by displaying her new baby, as a nursemaid looks on approvingly. Stephens shifts back into the lighter, better-defined register of the jewel scene, her clean lines

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea

Figure 7.3  Alice Barber Stephens, ‘Dorothea Sat by in her Widow’s Dress’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature capturing the detailed patterns of the carpet, curtains, and the women’s dresses. There is no clear source of illumination – neither a window visible or suggested by a sunbeam, but the light appears to come from the left side and diffuses throughout the frame to suggest the sunnier marital prospects at Freshitt. Stephens shadows Dorothea’s face and illuminates the faces of Celia, her baby, and the nurse so that the viewer’s eye travels first among the three smiling figures and then, in contrast, back to the darker, unsmiling profile of Dorothea in her mourning dress, which oppresses the otherwise jubilant mood with a reminder of patriarchal power, since mourning clothes subsume a widow’s identity in her husband’s.43 Stephens’s illustration of Dorothea clearly alludes to a controversial painting of the day, James McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1, also known as Portrait of the Artist’s Mother. Universally criticized when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872, this painting offers a window onto Stephens’s technique in the Dorothea illustrations. Although Whistler began his career as a realist, by the 1870s he had started to experiment. Influenced by the use of space in Japanese compositions and by the modern sensibilities of Courbet, he had begun to visualize even something as typically individualistic as a portrait in abstract terms. To Whistler, the painting represented an arrangement of forms in a monochromatic palette, much like Stephens’s use of dark and light forms to represent Dorothea’s limited vision and the stark contrast between her emotional world and her husband’s oppressive aridity. Frank Anderson Trapp remarks that Whistler’s painting was on display at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts in 1881, five years before Stephens’s first European trip in 1886.44 At the time she was working in Philadelphia as an engraver, and it seems very likely that a serious artist of her calibre would have been interested in Whistler’s innovative use of a monochromatic palette, particularly since she was in early 1881 completing a series of wood engravings of Greek Tanagra figures for Scribner’s Magazine, engravings that demonstrate her ‘thorough knowledge of colour values, which enabled her to suggest the warm tones of the painted figures even though she was working in black and white’.45 Although Stephens’s frame is much busier than Whistler’s, the dark figure of Dorothea seated in her widow’s dress provides a mirror image of the black-gowned ‘Mother’. Both figures are posed identically in profile, seated in hard-backed chairs and leaning slightly backwards with their feet extended and hands clasped in their laps. Both wear mourning gowns and white caps, but while the Mother fixes her gaze on some point out of the frame but directly before her, Dorothea focuses on the Madonna-like grouping of her sister and the baby with a nursemaid, which Stephens poses in a manner that recalls the Virgin and Child with St Anne. As Whistler’s subject is elderly, her composure and ascetic appearance suggest an acceptance of her widowed state; to Trapp she is ‘grave and silent, the very image of ancestry’.46 Dorothea’s youth, however, adds energy to ‘the retrospect of painful subjection’ to Casaubon, whose will, Celia reveals, contains a codicil prohibiting her remarriage to Will Ladislaw: ‘now her judgement, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active’.47

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea In this illustration Stephens harks back to ‘Slipping the Ring and Bracelet On’ in the Dorothea’s seated posture – before her marriage, she sits upright as she regards the jewels, but in widowhood she leans back in her chair, her face in shadow. Dorothea’s mourning gown appears to be much less detailed than the more typical 1830s fashions worn by Celia and the nursemaid. As with the gowns in the first drawing, Stephens uses dress to suggest female compliance with and resistance to domestic expectations – here Dorothea’s gown has softer, unstiffened sleeves, an undefined waist, and a lengthened hem to suggest changing attitudes towards mourning in 1890s America, where women felt less obligated to follow the stricter expectations of English society. In the novel’s 1830s setting, a widow mourned her husband for two and a half years, throughout which her dress was carefully prescribed. According to fashion historian Lou Taylor, respectability depended on the widow’s close observance of the conventions of mourning dress: A widow wore a dress, made with a separate bodice and skirt, in dull black bombazine covered almost entirely in black crape. The skirt was covered in one deep, bias-cut flounce of crape sewn onto within an inch or two of the waist. After nine months two flounces or tucks were permitted in the skirt. The bodice was also totally hidden by crape.48 Stephens clearly departs from these prescriptions, although Dorothea would be in the strictest part of her widowhood, called First Mourning. This period lasted for a year and a day following the husband’s death, when the widow’s observance of rigid discipline respecting mourning clothes re-established her status in his absence. Dagni Bredesen links the visual spectacle of the widow covered in black crape, heavy veils, and cap to ‘coverture’, a British woman’s legal status as ‘covered’ by her husband, calling attention to Dorothea’s widow’s cap in this scene since head coverings ‘demonstrated that a wife had come under the covering of her husband’s authority. The decline in use of the widow’s cap coincides suggestively with legal as well as social shifts of the time’, including the Married Women’s Property Acts (1870 in England, 1839 in America) and the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, which made divorces more common.49 Eliot hints at these changing views when Celia later objects to the oppressive widow’s cap and removes it from her sister’s head. Since, as Bredesen notes, the widow’s cap ‘materially circumscribes her range of vision’, this move is Celia’s way of pressing Dorothea to expand her perspective and to accept that she ‘need not make such a slavery of her mourning’.50 This is prompted by the discovery that Dorothea’s mourning dress, as imagined by Stephens, aligns her with an 1890s sensibility regarding women’s independence. As Dorothea later writes to Casaubon, ‘I could not submit my soul to yours’.51 In ‘He Was Standing Two Yards from Her’ (Figure 7.4), Stephens more fully articulates Dorothea’s mourning dress to highlight the tension between constraining and liberating impulses. Unaware of the codicil, Will Ladislaw visits Dorothea at Lowick, where Stephens inscribes Casaubon’s lingering presence in background details – a Doric column recalls his classicism, an empty chair his absence, and an urn his death. Stephens’s composition

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Figure 7.4  Alice Barber Stephens, ‘He Was Standing Two Yards from Her, with His Mind Full of Contradictory Desires and Resolves’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea emphasizes his restraining influence by adding more 1830s details to the mourning gown from the previous illustration: gigot sleeves, short-waisted silhouette, and two clear flounces in the heavy skirt to mark the passing of nine months. Will and Dorothea face one another, with the long sunlit window between them to suggest brightening prospects, but they do not look at one another directly. Again, Stephens poses Dorothea turned away from the light, both literally and metaphorically, shading her eye sockets dark and skeletal with suffering caused by Casaubon’s ‘dead hand’. The carapace-like gown appears heavy enough to stand on its own accord; the offending widow’s cap Celia linked to slavery constrains Dorothea’s face, and its starched white adds rigidity to her form. By following the prescriptions for mourning Casaubon and respecting the terms of the codicil, Dorothea effectively buries her own will and aspirations, which she acknowledges by noting, ‘I used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things’.52 In contrast, Stephens shows Will fashionably dressed but off-balance, leaning on the table, gloves in hand; his armful of books intimates the widening knowledge of the world Dorothea feels bound to forgo. In this illustration, Stephens underlines Dorothea’s struggle to assert herself against oppressive social conventions; her mourning garments reflect what Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar call ‘a marriage of death initiated … by female complicity’.53 By firmly establishing the 1830s style, which American women of the 1890s would have found repressive, Stephens grounds this female complicity in the past and emphasizes the difficulty of rejecting convention by centring the ‘the horrible hue and surface of her crape dress’ as an emblem of female repression.54 As Dorothea’s agency develops, she adopts the less severe second and ‘lighter mourning’, symbolically beginning a new ‘active life before her’ with the belief that ‘fresh garments belonged to all initiation’.55 Stephens’s final illustration retains the solemnity of the mourning attire but uses it to engage the reader in imagining the radical impact of Dorothea’s break with tradition. Moved by compassion, Dorothea visits Rosamond Lydgate to advise her against damaging the trust in her marriage. Revealing her own marital conflicts, Dorothea feels ‘as if she were being inwardly grappled’, and her confession moves Rosamond so that ‘the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck’.56 While Eliot delineates the emotional impact of the conversation on both women as a commentary on women’s experience of marriage, Stephens frames the scene to emphasize Dorothea’s emergence from oppression. ‘You Are Thinking What Is Not True’ (Figure 7.5) shows the two women seated together in Rosamond’s well-appointed parlour. Stephens uses details to contrast Rosamond’s ostentatious aspirations – the sheen of her gown, the ornate chandelier, and the superfluity of decorative objects – with Dorothea’s ascetic mourning, which again serves as the central visual interest. Dorothea faces Rosamond, whose eyes are turned down, and Stephens juxtaposes the widow’s dark dress, bonnet, and long veil with the wife’s bright Indian shawl, brooch, and curls. Above them, Stephens adds a painting of a Madonna and child to add motherhood to women’s roles as wives and widows. The women’s figures form a pyramid as they lean towards one another, their

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Figure 7.5  Alice Barber Stephens, ‘“You Are Thinking What Is Not True,” Said Rosamond’, in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, 1899

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea hands clasped while Dorothea’s other hand holds Rosamond’s shoulder, the gulf of social class breached by mutual marital disappointments. Dorothea’s reaching out in compassion prompts Rosamond to reveal the painful truth, that Will Ladislaw loves Dorothea, which Stephens etches into Rosamond’s cherubic frown. As with Celia’s boudoir, in this scene Stephens creates a distinctly female space where the truth can be told, a space that recalls the ‘American Woman’ series by highlighting ‘conversation … entirely among women’ and presenting ‘a scenario in which women were the ones rising, the actors rather than the acted-upon’.57 Stephens emphasizes Dorothea’s active effort to enlist Rosamond’s participation in her marriage, a view associated with the New Woman and one relatable to female readers of the 1890s who embraced the redefinition of women’s domestic and professional roles. This truthful conversation prepares Dorothea to embark on her second marriage, ‘the most subversive act available to her within the context defined by the author, since it is the only act prohibited by the stipulations of the dead man, and by all her friends and family as well’.58 By centring Dorothea’s figure in this scene, Stephens calls attention to Eliot’s belief in the importance of the many ‘unhistoric acts’ that take place in female spaces and, as illustrator, takes authority over the text by deciding what to omit, what to represent, and how to represent it.59 Alice Barber Stephens was a key influencer for women, ‘an important role model in a male-dominated world’ because she both embodied the professional woman who could also succeed as wife and mother and represented modern womanhood for the reading public.60 By reimagining Eliot’s Dorothea for a contemporary audience, Stephens helped to secure Middlemarch for modern readers, effectively repackaging a neglected classic by making Dorothea more relevant for readers attuned to the idea of female independence. Through Stephens’s artistic talent and interpretive acumen, George Eliot was ‘brought closer by time as an imperfect, impulsive, and attractive sister whose conflicts and choices prefigure modern women’s emergent selves’.61 As her illustrations describe and advocate Dorothea’s progressive development of female agency, Stephens offers one of the earliest feminist interpretations of Middlemarch.

Notes 1 This American edition was published by Thomas Y. Crowell of Boston. In contrast, only two illustrations centre on co-protagonist Dr Tertius Lydgate; one on Mr Brooke; four on the plot concerning the lovers Fred Vincy and Mary Garth and the Featherstone inheritance; and two on the sanctimonious banker Nicholas Bulstrode. Interestingly, Stephens does not depict Dorothea following her engagement to Will Ladislaw near the novel’s close. 2 P. Peet, ‘Alice Barber Stephens’, Concise Dictionary of Women Artists, ed. Delia Gaze (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001), ebook, pp. 641–3. The medal also recognized Stephens for her illustrations for John Halifax, Gentleman by Maria Mullock Craik. 3 A. B. Brown, Alice Barber Stephens: A Pioneer Woman Illustrator (Chadds Ford, PA: Brandywine River Museum, 1984). 4 Brown, Alice Barber Stephens, p. 9. 5 C. Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 6 P. S. Scanlan, ‘“God-gifted Girls”: The Rise of Women Illustrators in Late Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia’, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 11/2 (Summer 2015), www.ncgsjournal.com/ issue112/PDFs/scanlan.pdf. 7 N. Henry, The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 8 Henry, Introduction to George Eliot, p. 107. 9 J. Wilkes, Women ReviewingWomen in Nineteenth-Century Britain:The Critical Reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010). Henry traces the impact of F. R. Leavis and Joan Bennett on critical estimation of the later novels; Introduction to George Eliot, pp. 108–9. 10 G. Eliot, Middlemarch (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2004), p. 39. 11 Ibid., p. 33. 12 H. Franklin, ‘1830–39’, Fashion History Timeline, 18 August 2020, https://fashionhistory.fitnyc. edu/1830–1839/ (accessed 18 March 2021). As an example of the combination corset and sleeve supporter, see ‘Woman’s Corset, England, 1830–1840’, Los Angeles Country Museum (M.63.54.7), https://collections.lacma.org/node/233817 (accessed 31 March 2021). 13 P. Byrde, Nineteenth Century Fashion (London: B. T. Batsford, 1993) and Franklin, ‘1890–99’. 14 P. A. Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850–1920: Politics, Health, and Art (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2015), ebook. 15 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 31. 16 J. Wiesenfarth, ‘Middlemarch: The Language of Art’, PMLA, 97/3 (1982), pp. 363–77, jstor.org/ stable/462228. 17 E. Showalter, ‘The Greening of Sister George’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 35/3 (1980), pp. 292–311. See note 1 above. Given the prominence of Lydgate to the plot, Stephens’s choice to focus on Dorothea stands out as even more remarkable. Eliot originally intended Lydgate to be the protagonist, but as Eliot worked on a story called ‘Miss Brooke’ she realized that, since his ambitions and fall form natural parallels to Dorothea’s, the two characters could be more effectively conceptualized as counterpoints. 18 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 176. 19 Ibid., p. 176. 20 F. W. Webber and Alice Barber Stephens, ‘A Clever Woman Illustrator’, The Quarterly Illustrator, 1/3 (1893), pp. 174–80 (p. 178), jstor.org/stable/25581826. 21 R. Armstrong, ‘Representative Women Illustrators: The Character Workers’, The Critic, 37 (1900), pp. 43–54, www.google.com/books/edition/The_Critic/j4XPAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&g bpv=1&dq=middlemarch+alice+barber+stephens&pg=PA46&printsec=frontcover. In Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: Routledge, 2009), L. Taylor indicates that Stephens visited Italy on her European tour of 1886 (p. 15), but we do not know that she visited Rome or the Vatican Museum, although both would have offered the artist appealing opportunities for study and sketching. Armstrong notes that ‘During her sojourn abroad she visited the various galleries of Europe and received valuable training from the pictures she thus had the privilege of observing’ (‘Representative Women Illustrators’, p. 45). 22 A. S. Rischin, ‘Beside the Reclining Statue: Ekphrasis, Narrative, and Desire in Middlemarch’, PMLA, 111/5 (1996), pp. 1121–32 (p. 1122). 23 For fuller discussions of the Ariadne and the role of art in Middlemarch, see Wiesenfarth, ‘Middlemarch’; C. Downing, ‘The Visual and Verbal in Middlemarch’, PMLA, 112/3 (1997), 434–5; G. Marshall, ‘Temporality and Statuesque Women in George Eliot’s Middlemarch’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth-Century, 29 (2020), n.p. https//doi.org/10.16995/ ntn.1937; H. Hunt, ‘Eternal City or the Stuff of Nightmares? The Characterization of Rome in The Portrait of a Lady and Middlemarch’, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, 75 (2012), 185–98.

Alice Barber Stephens’s drawings of Dorothea 24 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 176. Eliot later qualifies this by adding, ‘She did not really see the streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues’, so Stephens is actually more faithful to the spirit of authorial intention than might first appear (p. 187). 25 Webber, ‘A Clever Woman Illustrator’, p. 180. 26 Eliot, Middlemarch, pp. 176, 187. 27 Ibid., p. 187. 28 Wiesenfarth, ‘Middlemarch’, p. 366. 29 Eliot, Middlemarch, pp. 187, 180. 30 F. B. Sheafer, ‘Alice Barber Stephens’, Brush and Pencil (September 1900), pp. 241–7 (p. 246). 31 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 176; Franklin, ‘1890–99’. 32 Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover, p. 29. 33 See p. 241 of Sheafer, ‘Alice Barber Stephens’ and p. 44 of Armstrong, ‘Representative Women Illustrators’. 34 Eliot, Middlemarch, pp. 185–86. 35 Ibid., p. 187. 36 Ibid., p. 192. 37 M. H. Kennedy, Drawn to Purpose: AmericanWomen Illustrators and Cartoonists (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2018), p. 12. 38 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 246. 39 Ibid., p. 246. 40 Ibid., p. 246. 41 Ibid., p. 349. 42 Ibid., p. 351. 43 Along these lines, Taylor reports the frequency, even through the nineteenth century, of widows being confined to their bedrooms, citing the prevalence of mourning beds, where a widow was expected to languish (Mourning Dress, pp. 52–4). 44 F. A. Trapp, ‘A Rearrangement in Black and White: Whistler’s Mother’, Art Journal, 23/3 (1964), pp. 204–7. In the time between the American exhibitions and the painting’s purchase by the Luxembourg Museum, Whistler had altered it to create a more European effect. 45 Brown, Alice Barber Stephens, p. 13. Stephens’s Tanagra engravings appeared in the April 1881 issue of Scribner’s Monthly, and the proofs ‘were exhibited at the 51st Annual Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy’ (p. 13). 46 Trapp, ‘Rearrangement in Black and White’, p. 206. 47 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 399. 48 Taylor, Mourning Dress, p. 136. 49 D. Bredesen, ‘An Emblem of All the Rest: Wearing the Widow’s Cap in Victorian Literature’, in Fashioning the Nineteenth-Century: Habits of Being, ed. Cristina Giorcelli and Paula Rabinowitz (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), e-book, www.jstor.org/ stable/10.5749/j.ctt9qh3db.10, pp. 82–105 (p. 101). 50 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 436. 51 Ibid., p. 430; Eliot’s italics. 52 Ibid., p. 434. 53 S. M. Gilbert, and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic:TheWomanWriter and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, second edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 505. 54 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 433. 55 Ibid., p. 607. 56 Ibid., p. 612. 57 Kitch, The Girl on the Magazine Cover, pp. 25–6. 58 Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 530.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 59 Eliot, Middlemarch, p. 640. The spirit of reform in Stephens’s day found many similarly mundane but helpful channels. For instance, Taylor notes that organizations like the National Funeral and Mourning Reform Association, founded in 1875, was one of many societies dedicated to lessening the unequal social and economic burden of mourning on women and the poor (p. 159). 60 F. B. Taraba, ‘Alice Barber Stephens: The First Famous Female Illustrator’, Step-by-Step Graphics, 14/6 (1998), pp. 98–105 (p. 102). 61 Showalter, ‘The Greening of Sister George’, p. 299.

8 Florence and Adelaide Claxton: frames, doorways, and domestic satire Jo Devereux

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l t h o u g h as a young woman she evinced some ambition to exhibit her work in important galleries, Florence Claxton (1838–1920) seems almost to have been destined to become a caricaturist. Ellen C. Clayton in her English Female Artists (1876) claims that Florence Claxton ‘had done what no female artist in all the world had attempted before – made a drawing on wood for a weekly illustrated paper’.1 Not only did Florence achieve this feat: I suggest that she used the medium of the engraved illustration to express a recognition of and resistance to confining gender norms. From early in her career, an idiosyncratic blend of anarchic humour and sly feminism appears in her illustrations and paintings, many of which include walls and frames within the composition. These frames signify the enclosure of women within patriarchal ideology, and though there is a liveliness and vigour to her pictures, many of her illustrations evoke a melancholy yet sardonic view of the society of her time, situated as they are within these confining spaces. By contrast, her sister Adelaide, also an artist and illustrator, created a gentler representation of society and used the motif of doors and doorways to suggest the idea of ingress and egress. Both illustrators deploy what I call ‘domestic satire’ in their caricatures and pictures, images that call into question the dominant masculine perspective of nineteenth-century print and visual culture. Born in 1838, in Florence, Italy, the city after which she was named, Florence Claxton was the eldest daughter of the artist Marshall Claxton and his wife Sophia (née Hargrave).2 She was baptized at Greenwich in 1839. Adelaide was born three years later, in 1841. In 1850, Marshall Claxton moved his family to Australia in search of better job opportunities and moved them again in 1854 to India. Florence and her sister thus spent their early years travelling from Australia through India and the Middle East on their way back to England, and arguably this early peripatetic existence helped to shape the outsider’s perspective that both sisters exhibit in their illustrations. Florence and Adelaide were educated primarily by their father, who offered ‘ladies only’ classes at their home in 151

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Kensington. The sisters also studied briefly at Cary’s Academy, ‘an art school that had been founded by artist Henry Sass (1788–1844) in 1818 and one of the first to admit female students’.3 The two sisters began exhibiting and illustrating in the late 1850s and early 1860s. In 1858, Florence exhibited a series of six satirical pen-and-ink drawings called Scenes from the Life of a Female Artist (now lost), at the Society of Female Artists second annual exhibition. An anonymous reviewer in the English Woman’s Journal that year praised the series and recommended the pictures ‘to anyone who can appreciate fun’: ‘They are a fit commentary on the whole exhibition; there is the “ladies’ class,” the studio, the woodland wide-awake, all the aspirations, difficulties, disappointments, which lead in time to successes’.4 Even at this early age, Claxton was using her pictures both for comic effect and to make critical comments on society as she saw it. The following year, 1859, when Florence was twenty years old, she was one of the signatories on the petition of the Society of Female Artists demanding that women be allowed to study at the Royal Academy Schools. By 1860, the year that women were finally allowed to enrol at the RA Schools, Florence had already begun her career as an illustrator for periodicals. Like Florence, Adelaide Claxton produced numerous illustrations for periodicals, including The Churchman’s Family Magazine, Illustrated London News, Illustrated Times, London Society, and The Queen. When Florence Claxton was twenty-one years old, in 1860, she exhibited a watercolour titled The Choice of Paris: An Idyll. This picture was also published as a full-page engraving in Illustrated London News, 2 June 1860 (see Figure 8.1). Both the painting and the engraving are bisected by a wall and feature numerous doorways, windows, and frames. These elements underscore the picture’s parodic intent: to satirize the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Other early works reveal a similar satirical thrust: for example, Claxton’s watercolour, Art Students, South Kensington, 1861, a ‘caricature [that] shows a lively scene of art students copying pictures in the original paintings galleries of the South Kensington Museum’.5 This picture in many ways exemplifies the term ‘caricature’, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists: ‘A form of art, usually portraiture, in which characteristic features of the subject represented are distorted or exaggerated for comic effect or to make critical comment’.6 The Victoria and Albert Museum website suggests that the piece also parodies contemporary debate over women’s art practice. Several stereotypes of the female artist appear. In the background is the strong-minded woman who has been de-feminised by her professional ambition (hers is the largest easel). To the right, two dilettantes wander flirtatiously about the gallery distracting the male students. An article in the ‘The Athenaeum’ in 1860 had commented that ‘If anyone will visit the South Kensington Museum on what is called a “Students’ day” he will find the galleries … crowded with men and women, when not engaged in flirting, copying the pictures of that collection’.7 This watercolour was ‘published as a wood engraving in “The Queen”, an upmarket ladies newspaper, in 1861’.8 In the picture, some of the figures give sly, sidelong glances: they

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.1  Florence Claxton, ‘The Choice of Paris: An Idyll’, wood engraving, Illustrated London News, Vol. 36, 2 June 1860

are satirical portraits or caricatures in miniature. The faces of the art students all evoke an intense focus on something, whether that something be the drawing on which the student is working or another student who has caught their eye. That same year, Claxton exhibited an oil painting at the Portland Gallery: Woman’s Work: A Medley, which Catherine King points out is a parodic version of Ford Madox Brown’s Work (begun 1852, exhibited 1863).9 The catalogue entry on Claxton’s painting includes a long description (probably written by the artist herself): The four ages of man are represented: in the centre, youth, middle age and old age are reposing on an ottoman, infancy being in the background. The sugar plums dropping from the bon-bon box represent the airy nothings supposed to be within the mental grasp of womankind. A wide breach has been made [to the left] in the ancient wall of Custom and Prejudice, by Progress – emigration – who points across the ocean. Three governesses, seen in the [left] foreground, apparently ignorant of the opening behind them, are quarreling over one child. The upright female figure to the right is persuaded by Divinity [a parson], and commanded by Law [a lawyer], to confine her attention to legitimate objects. Another female has sunk, exhausted, against a door, of which the medical profession holds the key; its representative not perceiving that the wood is rotten and decayed in many places. An artist Rosa B[onheur] has attained the top of the wall (upon

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature which the rank weeds of Misrepresentation and the prickly thorns of Ridicule flourish – and others are following.10 The implicit parody of Jacques’s ‘seven ages of man’ speech out of Shakespeare’s As You Like It is telling, since that speech involves a tortured misogyny in the recounting of man’s suffering life, from the ‘infant mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms’, through the whining schoolboy, creeping like snail unwillingly to school – there to be taught by a harsh ‘dame’ – to the tormented lover, the deluded soldier, and ultimately to the infantilized old man, shorn of all his early masculine power.11 Claxton reduces the ages from seven to four, suggesting the limitation of options in the lives of women. Perhaps more importantly, she inverts the famous melancholy speaker’s perspective and speaks from the striving woman’s – as opposed to the putatively victimized man’s – point of view. The capitalized abstract terms ‘Custom’, ‘Prejudice’, ‘Progress’, ‘Divinity’, ‘Law’, ‘Misrepresentation’, and ‘Ridicule’ underline the ideological according of authority to men and the lack of recognition of the material conditions lived by women in the face of these monolithic and evasive terms. Woman’sWork, as CharlotteYeldham notes, appears to have been Claxton’s only exhibited oil painting.12 It has been called ‘a feminist allegory’, and Yeldham sees both this painting and The Choice of Paris as ‘more ambitious and more polemical’ than her early illustrations, published in the Illustrated Times (18 December 1858), the Illustrated London News (24 December 1859, 22 December 1860), Sunbeam Stories (1859), and Married Off: A Satirical Poem by H.B. (1860).13 Yeldham presents a detailed and compelling analysis of Woman’s Work, and I am only touching on this painting here in order to suggest that Claxton’s use of frames in many of her illustrations is connected to her inclusion of them in her few paintings. One of the pointsYeldham makes in her argument is that this painting incorporates images familiar as metaphors used by the women’s movement at the time: ‘Women were said to be “excluded”, “shut out” by “gates” or “doors” and needing an “opening” or at the foot of a “ladder” seeking a means of “ascent” or “elevation”.’ 14 As in The Choice of Paris, there is a wall in the painting, and this one has a female artist – albeit one of the most successful of the century, Rosa Bonheur – attempting to scale the wall, suggesting women’s exclusion from the fine art academy as part of the ongoing struggle of women to enter professions at mid-century. As Yeldham notes, Claxton’s own description of the painting calls the central wall ‘the ancient wall of Custom and Prejudice’.15 Gates, walls, and frames: Claxton uses these images in this painting and in her engravings to signify the oppression and exclusion of women from the professions in her lifetime.

Distortion, exaggeration, and framing In his chapter on ‘Frame and Shot, Framing and Cutting’ in Cinema 1:The Movement Image (1986), Gilles Deleuze says that ‘the frame is related to an angle of framing’ and that ‘the point of view can be – or appear to be – bizarre or paradoxical’.16 Adapting Deleuze’s reading of cinematic framing, I suggest that Florence Claxton took up an unconventional

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.2  Florence Claxton, ‘Christmas in Leap-Year’, wood engraving, Illustrated London News, Vol. 37, 22 December 1860

point of view to create her satirical engravings and that her use of multiple frames in these pictures effects a kind of critical aesthetic distance between figure and viewer in her illustrations. For example, an engraving which appeared in the Illustrated London News, 22 December 1860 (see Figure 8.2) includes frames within frames and exemplifies Claxton’s satirical approach to mid-nineteenth-century cultural norms.17 By including the representation of time passing through decades and even a century, this engraving also embodies Deleuze’s idea of time and montage in cinema: ‘Montage is composition, the assemblage [agencement] of movement-images as constituting an indirect image of time’.18 Even the subject of Claxton’s illustration relates to time. The title, ‘Christmas in Leap Year’, probably refers to the Irish tradition of women being allowed to propose marriage to men on 29 February. In the top left panel, we see a woman dragging a reluctant man into a church, while a group of women outside the church porch look on and weep and in the background two women are having a tug of war with a man or dragging another woman away from the scene. In the upper right panel, a boxing match between two women is about to begin, the prize being the dejected-looking man on the platform. The lower right panel, titled ‘The Last Man’, shows a crowd of women chasing a terrified man, who is desperately trying to reach a fully packed boat, no doubt with the aim of escaping by emigration. The lower left panel, titled ‘Extinct Species’, is set in the British

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Museum one hundred years later, in 1960, where we see an elderly lady pointing out to a young woman with a guidebook in her hand ancient relics of men’s clothing and accessories in a glass display case while, on the other side, another woman examines an ‘Embalmed Man Mummy’, resting on the floor. In the larger central section of the engraving, a man looks as though he has been drugged into submission, standing before a chair laden with fruit and wine, under a bough of mistletoe, and surrounded by eagerlooking young women, one of whom holds out a foaming glass of something – perhaps beer (the bottle label says, ‘Bass’) – to him. In the background, another vignette plays out, with another enfeebled-looking man being divested of his hat and cloak by two or possibly three women. The satire here is not precisely feminist, yet even in its somewhat conservative, not to say reactionary, mockery of women’s need to secure a suitable husband or risk leading apes in Hell – suggested by the sleeping monkey resting just below the main part of the picture in the ‘Leap’ section of the title – the engraving still manages to parody mid-nineteenth-century heteronormativity. In some ways, Claxton’s caricatures prefigure the subtle wit of the twentieth-century novelist Barbara Pym:19 like Pym’s fiction, Claxton’s illustrations encapsulate a humorous and satirical resistance to patriarchal ideology while sympathetically representing the difficulties faced by women within this social formation. Four years later, in 1864, an engraving by Phiz in London Society, titled ‘Leap-Year’ and accompanying a ‘A Solemn Warning to Single Men’,20 takes up the same topic and also uses branches to divide the scene, though the figures are much less caricatured than those in Claxton’s engraving of 1860 or in her illustration of grotesquely caricatured dancers in ‘Society on Its Feet’ in the same volume.21 The distortion of the figures in Claxton’s illustration combined with the comic exaggeration of the quest for respectable marriages renders her caricature of Leap Year sharper and, in a sense, more plangent than Phiz’s image. As in Woman’sWork, in this illustration Claxton again deploys both visual and textual satire to drive her point home. She also alludes to contemporary scientific discourse, by including the ‘Extinct Species’ in the British Museum in the picture. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species had been published a year before this engraving appeared, and although his Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals would not be published until 1872, Darwin’s interest in physiognomy – an essential aspect of caricature – can be seen at work in Claxton’s illustration.

London Society in the 1860s In the early 1860s, Florence and Adelaide Claxton began contributing to London Society: An Illustrated Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation, which Simon Cooke calls ‘one of the most popular journals of its time. Presented as an illustrated magazine, it was set up in 1862 and continued until 1898’.22 Cooke notes that the focus of the magazine on the leisure and pleasure of the middle classes in the 1860s anticipates the central preoccupations of the Impressionists some decades later, even if the media

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire and technique are, of course, very different.23 Yet many of the images in London Society satirize contemporary fashion and culture, thereby emphasizing the magazine’s concern with the ephemeral, unlike the dreamy, distilled visions that make up many Impressionist paintings, no matter how specific and contemporary the subjects. On the Victorian Web, I have talked about Florence’s full-page engraving for March 1862: ‘Ye Spring Fashions’ and about her illustrations for ‘London Societies. No. 1. Society for the Practice of Part-Singing’ (April 1862).24 The one point I will note here is that the entire half-page engraving for March 1862 has a frame of twigs and branches around it, highlighting the artificial elements of the fashions being satirized. In the same essay, I discuss the illustrations the Claxton sisters contributed to the Christmas Extra Number of London Society in December 1862: ‘The Young Gentleman’s New Year’s Dream’, by Florence, and ‘The Young Lady’s New Year’s Dream’, by Adelaide.25 Both full-page illustrations feature dream-figures that swirl about the central character of the young gentleman or the young lady. However, Florence’s figures are more clearly caricatured than Adelaide’s, suggesting not so much wish fulfilment as an ironic undercutting of love’s young dream. Although both Florence and Adelaide contributed numerous illustrations to London Society, Adelaide’s pictures are almost invariably less grotesque than Florence’s and therefore might seem more conventional. In the April 1864 number, for example, Adelaide contributed illustrations to a story titled ‘An April Fool’. One of her illustrations features the heroine, Mrs Honiton (née Somerset, a widow), being wooed by various suitors and thus continuing her monopoly on all the eligible men of the town. The engraving is a vignette, having no frame around it as Florence’s March 1862 full-page picture has, and at first glance it appears more earnest and demurer than her sister’s engravings, until we notice the sardonic expression on the face of the suitor in the left background. Meanwhile, Adelaide’s full-page engraving for the story shows less parodic faces on the men, even including the man at centre, who looks merely annoyed at being interrupted by the man on the right lifting his hat to Mrs Honiton. In May 1864, Adelaide contributed an illustration for ‘A Modern Masquerade’, which exemplifies the ways in which her pictures are typically both more earnest and less grotesque than Florence’s. The focus both on the grotesque and on mundane monetary concerns in Florence’s pictures features again in an engraving she contributed to the February 1864 number of London Society, ‘A Chat about Valentine’s’, in which we see a bridal couple in front of a church door, with the words ‘Temple of Hymen’ engraved above the archway and a sign pinned to the door reading ‘No Admittance under £300 per annum’.26 The use of the satirical text within the illustration connects this picture with social and political cartoons such as those printed in Punch. On other occasions, the satirical text appears not within the illustration but alongside it. In the October 1863 issue of London Society, Florence contributed a full-page engraving titled ‘Social Science: A New Opening for Female Labour’ to accompany a short comic poem, ‘Boat Song, 1863’.27 The poem is printed immediately after one about ‘Hop-Picking’, and the contrast between the satire on the foppish man (the speaker of the poem) who allows women to row him and the adulatory

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature tone of the poem celebrating the rustic young Sussex maidens and the ‘sturdy workmen’ hop-picking is notable. There is an irony to the juxtaposition of a pastoral eclogue that praises both male and female agricultural labourers with a comic poem that mocks a masculine renunciation of labour, along with a failure of gallantry, of course. As in so many of Florence Claxton’s illustrations, the satire is complicated by an acknowledgement of the difficulty attendant on evolving gender roles, at least for conservative men and women. Taking just the first stanza of this poem, we can see its attack on the foolish lisping ‘swell’: Tune. – ‘Row, Brothers, row.’ Wow, ladies, wow! The thun ith high. Pull long, pull stwong, Let the bweeze wush by; Let it play in my whiskers, And thport with my tie.28 Claxton’s illustration for the poem is more realistic and less grotesque than many of her caricatures, but the faces of the two women who are rowing the boat and the one man lounging under an umbrella in the stern suggest a small drama. The woman at centre is gazing at the man, who looks past her and at the other woman in the bow. She, meanwhile, looks sidelong at the man, either flirtatiously or mockingly, depending upon one’s interpretation of the scene. In other words, it is not clear exactly who is the target of this satire, though the text suggests it is the male figure in the picture. When Florence uses both frames and a montage or assemblage of faces and figures in her engravings, the similarity to the work of many Victorian male caricaturists becomes pronounced. For example, Florence’s engraving for a Tom Hood poem, ‘Absent Friends’ (see Figure 8.3), in the 1865 Christmas Number of London Society, recalls the work of Dickens’s illustrators Robert Seymour and Hablot Knight Browne (known as Phiz), as well as that of cartoonists like George Cruikshank, John Leech, and Kenny Meadows. The full-page engraving is enclosed by a frame of branches, as in the ‘Christmas in Leap Year’ engraving of 1860. The central convivial scene of a well-to-do looking group of people, some seated and others standing for a toast at a richly covered dining table, is surrounded by a nimbus of figures representing the absent friends of the poem. The illustration combines an elegiac with a ludicrous tone, which I would argue is characteristic of many of Claxton’s engravings and which accords well with Hood’s poetry. Hood’s father Thomas (1799–1845) was the author of ‘The Song of the Shirt’ (1843), a poem that exemplifies Victorian social satire on the condition of England and its effect on working-class women. Tom Hood (1835–74) produced numerous comic poems and in 1865 became editor of Fun. The faces and figures in Claxton’s illustration for this poem depict the satirical and the elegiac in a precarious balance that almost prefigures the works of Anton Chekhov at the turn of the century.

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.3  Florence Claxton, ‘Absent Friends’, wood engraving, London Society, Christmas Number, December 1865

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature The composition of the illustration recalls earlier scenes of Christmas cheer, such as Hablot K. Browne’s (Phiz’s) engraving ‘Christmas Eve at Mr Wardle’s’ for Dickens’s Pickwick Papers in 1836–37, as well as lively scenes around a table, like Robert Seymour’s ‘Mr Pickwick Addresses the Club’.29 Seymour’s earlier caricatures are anarchic and carnivalesque, mocking, for example, new inventions of the 1830s. From 1831 to 1834, he illustrated for Figaro in London, one of the forerunners of Punch. Hablot Knight Browne succeeded Seymour as illustrator of The Pickwick Papers and went on to illustrate ten of Dickens’s novels. He produced steel engravings, often vignettes, with a few or many figures arranged in almost theatrical or at least dramatic tableaux. Claxton’s illustrations similarly deploy a theatrical arrangement of figures, thus emphasizing the artificial and performative aspects of the scene. Performative elements also appear in George Cruikshank’s etchings, such as ‘Monstrosities of 1824’, which depicts grotesque and distorted fashionable people promenading in a park. Although Cruikshank’s figures have a more Hogarthian and satyr-like aspect to them than Claxton’s, often the faces in her illustrations are similarly caricatured to portray self-satisfaction, pride, or discomfiture. At the same time, her focus on physiognomy aligns her work with that of Kenny Meadows (1790–1874), an illustrator many years her senior who also contributed to the same Christmas number of London Society, December 1865. Meadows’s drawings feature a kind of Gothic whimsy, for example, in his illustrations of Shakespeare plays, as well as grotesque, not to say unsympathetic, exaggeration, for example, in Heads of the People; or, Portraits of the English (1840). Finally, Claxton’s caricatures show the possible influence of John Leech (1817–64), whose well-known engraving ‘Substance and Shadow’, Cartoon, No. 1, printed in Punch in 1843, was the first published drawing to be called a ‘cartoon’. This drawing includes numerous framed paintings on the wall of an art gallery, with a huddled group of impoverished people, from infants and small children to elderly men and women, standing in front of the paintings of the great and good. From Leech, Claxton may well have taken the technique of a sharp satirical contrast that draws the viewer’s attention to injustice, disparity, and despair in the face of an overwhelmingly complacent public. Like Leech, however, Claxton also occasionally reveals a possible complicity with the racist ideology of British imperialism. Both Florence and Adelaide contributed illustrations for ‘Captain Bob’s Farewell to His Sword’ (see Figure 8.4) in the April 1865 number of London Society: the poem is by ‘M. W. M. L.’, and all three illustrations were engraved by the Dalziels. Only Florence’s single full-page cut (labelled ‘Drawn by Florence Claxton and K.L.’)30 has figures swirling about the central characters, in a manner reminiscent of her Christmas 1862 engraving ‘The Young Gentleman’s New Year’s Dream’. The central figures in the 1865 illustration are Captain Bob, his two small dogs, and his valet, and the figures on the periphery of the picture represent memories rather than dreams. The poem is imperialistic, racist, and anti-Semitic; it laments Captain Bob’s current financial ruin after a career spent maiming and killing colonized peoples and destroying the wilderness from ‘the deep Canadian forest’ to ‘the Moorish desert’ and ‘far Rangoon’.31 In foreign lands, we are told, he had ‘Sought the Odalisque’s soft glances, / Reckless of the Paynim’s frown’.32

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.4  Florence Claxton, ‘Captain Bob’s Farewell to His Sword’, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. VII, April 1865

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Florence’s illustration for this poem shows Captain Bob reclining on a chaise longue and pointing his sabre, in its scabbard, in a somewhat phallic gesture, upward at the figures that swirl above and around him and his standing serving-man, who has a tray and is pouring a drink from a flask into a large glass. At left, there is a sort of Odalisque figure, but she is reaching out for the captain and he is turned away in renunciation. Directly above the tip of the sword is another sword, laid across the page obliquely and used as a spit for eight small figures, each either a soldier or a civilian in stereotypical racist attire. Other vignettes appear in a semicircular arrangement in the top half of the page. These miniature scenes depict past military actions and attacks on colonized people around the globe. Both the poem and the illustrations prefigure Randolph Caldecott’s illustrations for Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog’ (1879) but with racist slang and images. In Claxton’s illustration, the stereotypical figures of the colonized people may represent a satirical indictment of the British military’s imperialist exploits; but even so, the satire in the poem is very heavy-handed and the anti-Semitic terms are very apparent. Yet there is another possibility, which is that this engraving might be mocking the masculinist ideology of British imperialism and, to that extent, it may be another example of Claxton’s resistance to conventional gender ideals. The small detail in her picture of the captain renouncing the Odalisque might suggest Claxton’s determination subtly to skewer masculine narcissism and upper-class British male homosociality as the captain much less subtly impaled his enemies on his sword. A large cut for February 1867, labelled ‘Drawn by Florence and Adelaide Claxton’, caricatures St Valentine’s Day cards (see Figure 8.5). The illustration shows a pair of young lovers at centre, framed by an oval as if in a large cameo. The central picture is signed ‘A.C.’ in the left-hand corner: presumably, Adelaide drew the portrait of the couple at centre, and Florence drew the oval frame with its many small scenes of figures. The man and woman inside the oval frame are a respectable young bourgeois couple reading a book together. At left, the gentleman holds the small book in his left hand, while the young lady on his right looks demurely at the page that he is holding open, her left hand on the top of the pages. Surrounding this idyllic yet ordinary scene is a double frame of branches with ivy leaves, with a bow of branches at the top and crossed branches at the bottom. Within the frame and running around it, if we view it clockwise, we see a dozen separate scenes of lovers, led by a Victorian man and woman. The second couple wears a British notion of Chinese dress, and many of the couples that follow them are in period costumes – including medieval, eighteenth-century, Regency, classical, and highland dress. Some of the couples are walking, some dancing, and one is riding a horse. The effect of the scenes is theatrical, suggestive of a Christmas pantomime. The frame provides momentum and motion to the illustration, and it evokes the passage of time through the ages. It also offers a varied perspective because ‘reading’ the scenes in the frame requires turning the page around. This dramatic frame also suggests another popular Victorian spectacle: the panorama. Unlike another full-page engraving Florence provided for London Society in 1870, ‘In Dreamland’, the St Valentine’s Day

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.5  Florence and Adelaide Claxton, ‘St. Valentine’s Day’, wood engraving, London Society, Vol. XI, February 1867

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature engraving of 1867 combines frames and multiple small vignettes, making the illustration more self-reflexive so that it comments on both social norms and illustration itself.

Adelaide Claxton’s illustrations for ‘Riddles of Love’ Whereas Florence uses frames in many of her illustrations, Adelaide frequently includes doors and doorways. In this context, I will examine just one of her commissions, her illustrations for ‘Riddles of Love’, by the journalist Sidney Laman Blanchard (1825–83), serialized in London Society from January to December 1870. In this novel, the main characters travel from England to India and from one city to another in the Bengal province of the Raj. Blanchard’s novel – shaped by his own experience in India in the previous decade – incorporates in a glancing, marginal way the huge historical transformation sparked by the Indian Rebellion, which took place the year before the novel’s action.33 All but one of Adelaide’s twelve full-page cuts for this serial include doorways, suggesting the idea of borders, transit, and liminality. I would like to argue that her pictures hint at deeper issues effaced by this slight, imperialistic novel. As Florence subtly infused her caricatures with feminist resistance, so Adelaide’s illustrations undermine the imperialist assumptions of most Victorian readers of London Society. ‘Riddles of Love’ combines a tortuously complicated plot with social satire. The novel opens in England, in a provincial town called Shuttleton, whose name suggests a satire on the upwardly mobile middle classes of the ‘manufacturing districts’.34 The ‘riddle’ alluded to in the title, we learn, has to do with one Captain Halidame, ‘a light dragoon on leave from his regiment in India, who was supposed to have designs on Shuttleton society in the way of a wife’.35 Adelaide’s first illustration for the story, in the January 1870 number, shows two young ladies, May Pemberton and Lucy Cartwright, getting ready for a ball. More partygoers enter the room through a doorway in the upper right-hand side of the picture, providing a sense of ingress and egress at the opening of the story. There is some secret between Halidame and May’s father, Captain Pemberton, which will be uncovered in due course. Like Captain Halidame, almost all the male characters in this novel are Hussars in the British army. The only Indian character, Baboo Ramchunder Nellore, first appears in Chapter IX, and Adelaide’s first illustration that includes him is titled ‘The Baboo’s Visit’ (see Figure 8.6).36 The narrator’s description of this character is, unsurprisingly, racist. Like the anti-Semitic depictions of Fagin in Oliver Twist (1837–39) or – to take a later example – Svengali in Trilby (1894), this description highlights the ‘craft’ and ‘cunning’ of the face: ‘It was decidedly snaky indeed, and was made more repulsive from the fact that the white of the man’s eyes was not so much white as yellow’. The Baboo, whom the narrator refers to as ‘oriental’, advances and makes ‘a low salaam’.37 In contrast to the text, Adelaide Claxton’s illustration of the Baboo shows a tall, elegant figure, not making ‘a low salaam’ but instead saluting the seated figure of another character named Halidame, Sir Norman Halidame, ‘the proudest baronet in England’,38 who sits in front of a tall set of curtains covering a shuttered window, again suggesting a port of ingress

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.6  Adelaide Claxton, ‘The Baboo’s Visit’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter IX, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVII, January 1870

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature or egress from the scene. This set dressing, of course, also invokes the theatre, as does the subtle allusion to Shylock and his pound of flesh in the ‘abject servility’ and the ‘drops of blood’ mentioned by Sir Norman in connection with the blackmail money which he must pay to the Baboo to cover up a murder.39 The difference between the narrative and the illustration is that while the text uses racist stereotypes to demonize the Indian character, the illustration works against this debasing trope to depict a more dignified and therefore more sympathetic figure. Whereas this illustration of the Baboo subtly undercuts the racist narrative, Adelaide’s images of the women and the white men in the novel are often gently satirical. Adelaide was known for her illustrations of frivolous young ladies, such as the picture she drew to illustrate a poem titled ‘Academy Belles’, published in London Society, Vol. 12, in 1867. The poem mocks both the belles and the foolish ‘swells’ – such as one ‘happy young Captain McCupid’ – who pretend to like art ‘because it’s “the thing”’ – but go to exhibitions only to ogle the young women there.40 Adelaide’s illustration shows the belles in a close group admiring the pictures on the wall while a man in the background glances (or leers) sideways at them. In ‘Riddles of Love’, Lucy Cartwright, who becomes Mrs Manton, also appears as if on display, for example, in Adelaide’s illustration ‘Mrs Manton Tells “All about It”’. The image is of a photography studio, where her husband, Ensign Manton, is having his portrait taken in uniform, yet he is looking uncomfortable posing in the left background of the picture while the elaborately dressed and coiffed figure of Lucy takes up most of the foreground, as she talks with Captain Halidame, who is leaning against a table in the right foreground, on the verge of fainting after hearing of May and her father’s loss of income. Ensign Manton looks not merely nonplussed but unmanned. He is also relegated to the back and side of the picture, while Mrs Manton dominates the scene, as she does the text (see Figure 8.7). Many of the stories, essays, and poems in London Society skew towards a satirical treatment of pretentious gentlemen and, like her sister, Adelaide takes this approach and develops it fully. In ‘Riddles of Love’, after failing to obtain work as a governess – because she is too pretty – May Pemberton finds herself taken under the wing of a famous actress named Mrs Grandison and goes on the stage. Under her stage name ‘Miss Mirabel’, May has a fabulous success as an ingénue, as described in the narrative and depicted in Adelaide’s illustration ‘May’s Triumph’, which shows a blushing May bowing and receiving a ‘perfect avalanche of bouquets’ on the stage at her triumphant debut at the Imperial Theatre in the role of Bianca in Love and Liberty, or the Daughter of the Doge (Chapter XXIII, p. 420; see Figure 8.8). In Adelaide’s illustration, the proscenium arch of the stage itself suggests a doorway or a frame, and May stands beside the stage right proscenium, in front of the main curtain and behind the footlights. On the left side of the picture, we can see (peeping through the curtain) Mrs Grandison applauding and behind her the face of a gentleman, possibly the theatre manager or one of the other actors. Thus, we get an image of doorways within doorways in this theatrical illustration. Theatre and empire are connected in the novel by the name ‘Imperial Theatre’, but they also share space in the magazine itself. The April 1870 issue includes, as well as ‘On

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.7  Adelaide Claxton, ‘Mrs. Manton Tells “All about It”’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter XVI, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVII, March 1870

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Figure 8.8  Adelaide Claxton, ‘May’s Triumph’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter XXIII, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVII, May 1870

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire the French Stage’, ‘The Story of a Cashmere Shawl’, an essay on the making of cashmere in India. In a sense, the light comedy of manners of London Society sits somewhat uncomfortably with a touristic and commercial view of the Indian subcontinent and Britain’s colonial grip on that vast land and its people. In ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter XX, we learn that Captain Pemberton has been working for Sir Norman Halidame in an insurance company in the City and that he now has an opportunity to be part of a new venture called ‘The Great India Amelioration and Development of the Resources Company’: the object of the association was to supply every project for improvement in India, which could not obtain a government guarantee, with a private guarantee instead and thus counteract – so said the prospectus – the working of a selfish and short-sighted policy which, since the period of Plassey, had impeded the progress of our great empire in the East, the brightest jewel of the British crown, and brought incalculable miseries upon the hundred and eighty millions committed to our charge.41 Sir Norman tells Pemberton that the Baboo, connected with the company in some way, is ‘over here [in England] as the agent of a deposed rajah’. In Chapter XXX, in the July 1870 number, Captain Pemberton and May sail to India on the P&O (Peninsular and Oriental) steamship Exuberant. Other characters in the novel, including Sir Norman, who has fallen in love with a young Englishwoman named Constance Beltravers in Paris, also take the steamship to Calcutta.42 In India, the plot thickens until all secrets and family connections are finally revealed and all the intended lovers are united in marriage. Yet, we never learn anything about ‘the hundred and eighty millions committed to [Britain’s] charge’. Instead, details of the setting connect the narrative clearly to the experience of British colonists in Calcutta in the period, for example, the setting of Garden Reach, a real place where Europeans built luxurious Palladian mansions spaced far apart to encourage air flow and to control the spread of disease. Chapter LIII recounts the difficulty May faces in travelling ‘up-country’ from Calcutta to Dehra Doon, owing to what Mrs Beltravers calls ‘those dreadful mutinies last year’ which have meant that ‘some parts of the country are still disturbed’.43 Here the rebellion is figured as an inconvenience for the British tourist in India. More racism appears in the narrator’s description of the railway: ‘The iron horse in India is very much like the iron horse anywhere else. You cannot orientalise a steam-engine, and the rails and sleepers also persist in retaining their European character’.44 With an insistently Eurocentric perspective, May and the other English characters marvel at the nearly naked porters, and when the train goes, they ‘see tropical trees and ancient temples, and villages which seem made of mud and matting, whirl by the windows, and monkeys and strange birds perching upon the telegraph wires’.45 In Chapter LIV, the narrator begins peppering his descriptions with Indian words: Milward gets his ‘jawab’ (answer) from Constance;46 before taking the train to Howrah in Chapter LV, they descend the ‘ghat’ (steps going down to a river) to board a boat.47

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Of course, the word ‘bungalow’ is derived from Gujarati, meaning in the Bengal style, and ‘verandah’ [sic] from Portuguese and Hindi.48 The narrator at this point speaks of ‘gharries’ (carts), a ‘chupprassy’ (messenger), the ‘Khansamah’ (cook) and his ‘moorghee’ (pigeon) grill and curry. A ‘Khitmutgar’ (male servant) is enjoined to have a new ‘pugree’ (a light turban), and the narrator cites the ‘native’ view of ‘feringhees’ (foreigners).49 The use of Indian words and phrases in no way renders the narrative more sympathetic to the Indian people; instead, it almost transforms the novel into a travel book, thereby reinforcing the sharp division between the Indians and the British, a division which is further emphasized by the terrifying account of a violent murder of two subaltern officers in the vicinity.50 Underlining the enmity between the British and the Indians, Chapter LVII, in the final (December 1870) instalment of the serial, is called ‘The Journey – The Enemy’s Camp – Who Went to Meet the Enemy’. When the travellers meet a troop of cavalry on the road, they are at first alarmed to see that the soldiers are Indian and then relieved when they discover that the officers in charge are white: ‘White officers, by Jove! Thank God, we are saved’, says Windermere (the gentleman who winds up marrying May at the end).51 Of course, the only speakers in the scene are white: as in the rest of the novel, the Indian characters, with one exception, are silent and serve only as an undifferentiated part of the backdrop to the action.Yet, if the text insists on this racist division, Adelaide’s illustration for Chapter LIX – her final illustration for the novel – offers some amelioration: it shows Captain Pemberton lying ill on a couch in front of a door or tall window with jalousie blinds as an Indian servant fans him with a punka and May leans over her father (see Figure 8.9). The servant, a handsome dark-skinned young man, looks shyly at the viewer as if unaccustomed to being sketched. Meanwhile, the narrative itself omits any mention of an attendant. The text erases any presence of Indian characters except for the stereotyped Baboo and the threatening and unknowable ‘millions’. We might guess that Adelaide merely wished to embellish the illustration with some local colour by adding the attendant, but I would suggest that the image goes some way towards a recuperation of the elided Indians in the novel. Of course, all the figures are silent in this image – as in any image – so the division is less apparent than the inclusion of an active Indian character. Indeed, the illustration recalls act 4, scene 7 of Shakespeare’s King Lear, where Lear wakes up to find Cordelia leaning over him in the company of a doctor. This scene of reconciliation, though of course invoking a feudal and patriarchal world order, is yet redemptive. After it, both Lear and Cordelia perish, but the moment still resonates. In ‘Riddles of Love’, the white British characters are all neatly sorted out by the end of the story and all return home to England, leaving India behind as if it were a dream of theirs and not a real place inhabited by ‘the hundred and eighty millions committed to our charge’. The novel may contain a very oblique hint that Britain has ‘ta’en / Too little care of this’,52 but it never goes any deeper than a superficial skating along the surface of social life, whether in England or in India among the English. I suggest that Adelaide Claxton’s gently satirical illustrations present a subtle corrective to the racist obliviousness of both the novel and its readers.

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire

Figure 8.9  Adelaide Claxton, ‘After the Accident’, illustration for ‘Riddles of Love’, Chapter LIX, by Sidney Laman Blanchard, wood engraving, engraved by Dalziel, London Society, Vol. XVIII, December 1870

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Both Adelaide and Florence Claxton produced illustrations that reflect their idiosyncratic perspectives on social norms and customs, particularly those related to gender. Their early peripatetic lives that took them from Europe to India, Australia, and Britain helped to shape their understanding of English social life, providing them with an outsider’s viewpoint. While Adelaide’s later work featured commercial projects and even inventions, such as the Claxton ‘Ear-cap’,53 Florence’s work as an illustrator continued to be more iconoclastic, for example, in her satirical picture book The Adventures of a Woman in Search of Her Rights (1870). The marriages of both sisters (Florence in 1868 and Adelaide in 1874) appear to have limited their careers as illustrators. At age 43, Adelaide had a son. Florence died by suicide in 1920, while Adelaide died at age 86 in 1927. The work they have left behind them, filled as it is with their spirited and humorous insights, gives us a wonderfully personal glimpse into the lives of middle-class Englishwomen in the later decades of the nineteenth century.

Notes 1 Ellen Creathorne Clayton, English Female Artists (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876), vol. 2, p. 44. 2 Catherine Flood, ‘Florence Claxton’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (26 May 2016), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/109622 (accessed 1 September 2020). 3 Karen Westendorf, ‘Florence Ann (1838–1920) and Adelaide Sophia Claxton (1841–1927)’, Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum & Galleries, https://aberystwythuniversitycollections. wordpress.com/2019/03/07/florence-ann-1838-1920-and-adelaide-sophia-claxton-1841-1927/ (accessed 1 September 2020); see also Catherine Flood, ‘Contrary to the Habits of Their Sex? Women Drawing on Wood and the Careers of Florence and Adelaide Claxton’, in Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), pp. 108–22. 4 Anonymous, ‘XXVIII. – The Society of Female Artists’,The EnglishWoman’s Journal, 1/3 (1858), pp. 205–8. 5 ‘Art Students, South Kensington’, V&A Search the Collections,Victoria and Albert Museum, London, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O105359/art-students-south-kensington-watercolourclaxton-florence/ (accessed 1 September 2020). 6 ‘Caricature’, in The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, ed. Ian Chilvers, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), doi: 10.1093/acref/9780199532940.001.0001 (accessed 1 September 2020). 7 V&A Search the Collections, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O105359/art-students-southkensington-watercolour-claxton-florence/ (accessed 1 September 2020). 8 Ibid. 9 Catherine King, ‘Florence Claxton’, in Dictionary of Women Artists, ed. Delia Gaze (Abingdon: Routledge, 2001), vol. 1, p. 405. 10 Quoted in King, ‘Florence Claxton’, p. 405. 11 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, ed. Agnes Latham (London: Methuen, 1975), act 2, scene 7, lines 140–66. 12 Charlotte Yeldham, ‘“Woman’s Work” A Medley (1861) by Florence Claxton (1838–1920)’, The British Art Journal, 20/3 (Winter 2019/20), p. 88. 13 Ibid.

Florence & Adelaide Claxton: domestic satire 14 Ibid., p. 90. 15 Ibid. 16 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement Image, translated by High Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), p. 15. 17 Florence Claxton, ‘Christmas in Leap Year’, Illustrated London News, 37 (July to December 1860), p. 606. 18 Deleuze, Cinema 1, p. 30. 19 Barbara Pym (1913–80), the only writer to be named twice (by Lord David Cecil and Philip Larkin) in 1977 as Britain’s most under-rated novelist of the century. In novels such as Some Tame Gazelle (1950), Excellent Women (1952), and Jane and Prudence (1953), she blends subtle wit with melancholy and often mocks patriarchal authority. 20 Phiz, ‘Leap-Year’, London Society, 5 (February 1864), p. 176. 21 London Society, 5 (January 1864), p. 6. 22 Simon Cooke, Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s (Pinner: PLA; London: The British Library; Newcastle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2010), pp. 67–8. See also the VictorianWeb, www.victorianweb.org/ periodicals/londonsociety/cooke.html (accessed 1 September 2020). 23 Simon Cooke, ‘London Society’, VictorianWeb, www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/londonsociety/ cooke.html (accessed 1 September 2020). 24 Jo Devereux, ‘Florence Claxton (1838–1920) and Adelaide Claxton (1841–1927)’, Victorian Web, www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/claxton/devereux.html (accessed 11 May 2021). 25 Florence Claxton, ‘The Young Gentleman’s New Year’s Dream’; Adelaide Claxton, ‘The Young Lady’s New Year’s Dream’, London Society, Christmas Number, 1862. 26 Florence Claxton, ‘A Chat About Valentine’s’, London Society, 5 (February 1864), p. 178. 27 Florence Claxton, ‘Social Science: A New Opening for Female Labour’, London Society, 4 (October 1863), p. 361. 28 Ibid. 29 Robert Seymour, ‘Mr Pickwick Addresses the Club’, Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers (1836), Chapter 1, www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/seymour/1.html (accessed 1 September 2020). 30 I have not yet been able to identify ‘K.L.’ 31 M. W. M. L., ‘Captain Bob’s (H.M. 210th, The Impecunious Regiment) Farewell to His Sword’, London Society, 7 (April 1865), p. 380. 32 Ibid. 33 Blanchard went to Calcutta in 1854 to write for an Anglo-Indian newspaper, but he left for England during the Rebellion in 1857 and did not return to India until 1873. See Westendorf, ‘Florence Ann (1838–1920) and Adelaide Sophia Claxton (1841–1927)’. 34 Sidney Laman Blanchard, ‘Riddles of Love’, London Society, vol. 17 (January 1870), p. 14. 35 Ibid., p. 7. 36 Ibid., Chapter IX, facing p. 140. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., p. 139. 39 Ibid., p. 141.The figure of Shylock was enormously popular on the Victorian stage. 40 ‘Academy Belles’, London Society, 12 (July 1867), p. 11. 41 ‘Riddles of Love’, p. 334. 42 ‘Riddles of Love’, London Society, vol. 18 (July 1870), p. 57. 43 Ibid., p. 400. 44 Ibid., p. 402. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., p. 401.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 47 Ibid., p. 402. 48 Ibid., p. 404. 49 Ibid., pp. 402–3. 50 For an example of a contemporary travel book on India, see Nina Elizabeth Mazuchelli (1832–1914), The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them: Being a Narrative of Two Years’ Residence in the Eastern Himalaya and Two Months’ Tour into the Interior, By a Lady Pioneer (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1876). 51 ‘Riddles of Love’, p. 491. 52 King Lear, act 3, scene 4, lines 37–8. 53 For an image of this invention, see the Wellcome Collection digital images: ‘The “Claxton” earcap, patented by Adelaide Claxton to correct ‘outstanding’ ears and worn by children when asleep’; https://wellcomecollection.org/works/ygn9pgfn (accessed 25 April 2022).

9 Marie Duval: the methods and politics of attribution Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite

Duval’s life and career: a historical overview Marie Duval (1847–90) was one of the most important cartoonists of the nineteenth century: largely forgotten since the Victorian era, her rehabilitation is ongoing. Although much of her work was anonymous, she had a style that was recognizable – so much so that in 1876, when Ellen Clayton published English Female Artists, Duval was included among the front rank: ‘Of all the comic artists now living […] this lady is the only one who can be called really a humorous designer. The others are undoubtedly witty and graceful, but rarely provoke laughter’.1 Born Isabella Tessier in London, she took the name ‘Marie Duval’ as a stage name at the start of her career as an actor (mostly in low theatre productions and pantomimes) and kept it when she started cartooning in the late 1860s. Although she drew for a variety of comedy magazines and books, and produced her own children’s book, the bulk of her output was for the weekly magazine Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal (founded 1867) where, between 1869 and 1885, she published hundreds of cartoons, illustrations, and comic strips, and thereby became a formidable presence in the popular culture of the nation.2 At Judy, Duval’s untutored drawing style – contorted bodies, wild changes of perspective, and dynamic storytelling – split the critics but won tens of thousands of fans, contributing significantly to the publication’s success.3 Judy’s main recurring character, Ally Sloper, a London rogue, was developed by Duval to become a national institution and the focus for spin-off publications, stage productions, and merchandising.4 Judy was a Punch rival but more downmarket, selling at tuppence versus thruppence, and therefore aiming at a slightly different readership, one which expanded beyond the middle class to the emerging lower-middle class and working class. Within these social categories, women were an increasing readership, and Judy reserved pages for them and had a more inclusive attitude to the hiring of female contributors than Punch (Clayton was a sometime contributor).5 175

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Judy was published from 1872 by the famous firm of engravers and publishers the Brothers Dalziel, with Gilbert Dalziel placed in charge, and was edited from 1869 by a doyen of penny publishing, Charles Henry Ross, with whom Duval would have a longstanding personal relationship and produce a child (in 1874). The Judy formula, established before Ross’s arrival, involved a mix of light material to counterbalance the heavier satirical fare. Duval’s role, therefore, was to put the ‘comic’ in ‘serio-comic’. This she did through her Sloper work and much else (Sloper was only in the region of 15 per cent of her total output). The work was sometimes signed, and the spin-off books often carried her name on the cover. Ross was a major figure in her life, professionally as well as personally. He was a cartoonist as well as an editor and writer. He had been the originator of Sloper in 1867 and passed over the bulk of drawing duties to her in 1869. Although he paid credit to Duval’s comedic élan when he wrote: ‘her pictures are not imitations of Mr C.H. Ross’s absurd style and can very easily be distinguished from that gentleman’s production, because Mademoiselle is an artist and C.H.R. is not’, it is likely that he continued to play a role in writing at least some of her material, even though it was increasingly signed by her.6 Thus, for the most part in Judy, Punch-style illustration (topical, allegorical, symbolic, detailed, and revealing a lifetime’s training on the part of the cartoonist) rubbed shoulders with more slapstick fare, which in Duval’s hands meant untutored, reckless drawing, often centring on the comic strip form. This was important because it challenged an entire cartooning tradition: the supposedly ‘improving’ cultural work done by satire, along with its main historical proponents such as Hogarth and Gillray, was challenged by Duval’s deliberately less worthy style, which derived from other sources (notably the children’s book illustration tradition typified by Wilhelm Busch). Her contribution as a visual journalist – the way she essayed characters from the streets, and performers on the stage – has been revealed and discussed in our Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist.7 Taken in its entirety, the achievement of Duval’s cartooning career was to confound the twin ideas that women could not be funny or professional. She made Judy and Sloper what they were, and offered a new kind of visual comedy to the British public. When Clayton put her among her ‘… roll call of honourable names,’ it seemed as if her place in the canon would be assured.8 This makes Duval’s subsequent erasure from history all the more surprising. The process began with the creation of a new comic for Sloper. In 1883, Ross sold his copyright to the character to the Dalziels, who then set up a company with Gilbert Dalziel in charge to publish a new comic with Sloper as the star: Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday (1884). It was an immediate bestseller.9 However, Duval was excluded from the new comic’s success, along with Ross. She was never mentioned therein, and when her Judy work was reprinted – which happened on a weekly basis for many years – she was never credited, and her signature was erased. This went not just for her Sloper work but for

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution countless other strips and cartoons. More damning, perhaps, was the behaviour of her publishers, who went to concerted efforts over nearly thirty years to obscure her work. In 1901, the Dalziel Brothers produced a memoir of their firm’s business, entitled A Record of Work. In it they asserted ‘[Ross’s] pages of humorous pictures, which appeared in Judy, were generally signed “Marie Duval”.’ 10 Elsewhere in the volume, they talk enthusiastically of their children’s books while ignoring Duval’s own children’s book, published with them, Queens & Kings and Other Things.11 Gilbert Dalziel, for his part, made two minor interventions in the 1920s. In a letter dated 20 February 1920, he wrote about the circumstances of the publication of Queens & Kings and Other Things: ‘It was a Dalziel venture, Charles H Ross being paid by us for his part, and Chatto & Windus being paid for publishing the book. I have all the original designs by Ross’.12 Seven years later, he had a letter published in The Referee, a theatrical journal, stating that ‘[Ross] no doubt availed himself of her [Duval’s] artistic tendency in helping him with his “Sloper” drawings. Often these would be signed “M.D.” or “Marie Duval”; but they were, in reality, the creations of Ross himself.’ 13 How are we to think about these statements by the Dalziels? Their context is important. On one level, they can be seen as examples of society’s suppression of women’s contribution. In the publishing world of the long nineteenth century, this was routine. For example, historians of periodical studies commonly cite two journals: Fraser’s Magazine (1830–82), which promoted its stable of creatives as exclusively male ‘Fraserians’, thus erasing the contributions of several women; and Punch, which had women writers and cartoonists, but which stuck to its self-definition as a ‘brotherhood’.14 The various Dalziel magazine publications similarly did not foreground their female contributors (with the obvious exception of Judy and Duval), and there are certainly other moments in A Record of Work where the ‘record’ is incomplete. Even the Dalziels’ own sister Margaret, an important figure in the firm for four decades, was described there, like Duval, as an assistant. This kind of sexism was also evident in the way the history of the visual arts was being chronicled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and by the time of the Dalziels’ book, and certainly by the time of Gilbert’s letters, the ‘great men’ theory of artistic accomplishment (according to Thomas Carlyle (1840) and William James (1880)), was commonplace.15 What this meant for cartooning was that John Tenniel, John Leech, Matt Morgan, William Boucher and other men were preeminent, while in children’s book illustration the same went for names such as Tenniel, Randolph Caldecott, and Walter Crane. There was not much room in either case for Duval, or indeed any woman, to find ingress. Additionally, although Ross was not considered a ‘great’ in the same way and dealt in a different kind of visual humour, in terms of prevailing gender politics and the way history was being told, citing him as the author of the Judy material and of Queens & Kings and Other Things was to be expected. Similarly, because men were privileged over women in this way, it meant there was a pay differential. It may even have been the case that Ross did indeed tell Gilbert that the Judy drawings and Queens & Kings and Other Things illustrations were his, but can we discount a bit of subterfuge? He had a family to keep, after all.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature But perhaps the real reason for Duval’s erasure by the Dalziels had to do with Ally Sloper’s success, and a perceived need to protect his revenue-making potential: is it possible that the Dalziels did not want to acknowledge Duval’s input into the character for this reason? For example, we can speculate that the presence of Charles Ross (junior), the son of Duval and Ross, as a key contributor on the Half-Holiday in the 1890s and 1900s, must have been anxiety-making for the Dalziels. (He even wrote stories involving Sloper’s extended family, notably Tootsie, Sloper’s daughter, who had been first drawn by Duval.) There is no evidence relating to Ross (junior)’s relationship with the Dalziels. What we do know is that in 1909, he attempted to set up a rival Sloper publication and was defeated in court. Ross was still alive at the time of Gilbert’s 1920s letters and still laying claim to Sloper.16 The way in which Duval was made invisible in the Half-Holiday in the 1880s (especially via the obliteration of her signature) was extended and reinforced in the 1890s and 1900s. As the comic settled into a pattern of celebrating its own cultural producers, she was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps most perniciously, the creation of a supporting cast for Sloper was attributed to new star artist William Baxter, when in fact Duval had first drawn these figures long before. In 1922, the comic (now no longer under the Dalziel yoke but still associated with them) ran a nostalgia piece and repeated the line that Ross was ‘assisted by Marie Duval’.17 Hence, Duval was progressively forgotten in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. If she was spoken of at all, which was very rarely, then it was common for the line about her being a ‘front’ for Ross to be repeated. This went for press articles and the work of historians, both within and outside academia. The major exception was an essay by art historian David Kunzle, which deserves credit for its focus on Duval but which centred on Sloper and was written at a time when Duval’s outputs were thought be in the dozens rather than hundreds.18 Of course, this kind of historical discourse is quite different to contemporary commentary and analysis.19 When we started our Duval project in 2014, our first aim was to create an online visual archive of her work – the Marie Duval Archive: www.marieduval.org. This collects together all her known outputs (at the time of writing, 1,360 cartoons, illustrations, and strips, leading to a further list of publications that we suspect contain other drawings but which we have been unable to view). The Archive opened up new avenues for analysis and has been credited with redefining the canon of nineteenth-century cartooning.20 Questions of attribution remained and remain inevitable. As we examine these questions in this chapter, a number of Duval’s drawings are discussed in detail. The Archive also provides a useful resource for readers to view further large numbers of signed and unsigned drawings that we attribute to Duval.

The methodological framework for attribution Our methodological framework for attributing published drawings to Duval was suggested largely by our understanding of the historical ecology in which she produced them. This

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution ecology encompassed appearances, processes, and relationships developing over time, including the formal and material properties of her drawings and the contingencies of how she made them, when and where she made them, how they were used when they were new and how they have been used since. This framework was not as well founded as it seemed. The history of attribution – and in particular, visual stylistic analysis – is punctuated with theorists who disavow such contingencies solely in favour of the descriptive interpretation of comparative visual properties.21 The methodological approach taken by these historically influential theorists is now untenable, unless substantiated by documentary research and technical analysis. In 1988, Ebitz claimed that ‘traditional methods of connoisseurship that rely upon the eye have been extended to the rigorous visual examination of new material’ (i.e. beyond the artwork).22 As Carrier points out, visual appearance ‘at best provides a good guide to the facts about [a visual work’s] origin. If in making an attribution, there is a conflict between appearances and the facts, then a judgment based on the facts always takes priority’.23 On this basis, we adopted a syncretic approach to attribution, undertaking comparative description of visual properties when the historical contingencies of production and use could be demonstrated. We maintained a hierarchy. Our analysis, conjecture, interpretation, and argument about what we saw was only ever suggested by demonstrable facts about print production and distribution, the distributed business of publishing, personal and professional biography (in Duval’s case, on the stage as well as the page), and surviving contemporaneous commentary. Further, we also understood that vision is itself contingent, taking into account the idea that ‘the proper object of study for visual culture studies should in fact be a non-object: “visuality” itself’.24 This enabled us to compile and relate what we saw on the page to the many aspects of Duval’s drawing and publishing ecology, by asking ‘what happens when people look, and what emerges from that act?’ 25 In practice, our process of attribution went back and forth between viewing, descriptive interpretation, and the range of documentary evidence. We conjectured that Duval had made many more drawings than those circulating in secondary and tertiary sources at the start of our study. This hypothesis was based upon the wide range of dates of the small amount of material that was already available. As a result, our process of attribution commenced with a search for the publications in which we knew for certain that Duval’s work appeared, within a speculative historical time frame. We also built upon the tiny number of existing scholarly papers and popular articles on Duval’s work, although our searches for documentation soon came to contradict some of the key findings of these (such as Duval’s birth name – Tessier, not de Tessier – nationality – she was English, not French – and her relationship with editor, author, and impresario Charles Ross – they were not married).26 Our decisions about what to view (or not) were directed by searches in primary and secondary sources for documentary evidence. Although we did not anticipate that our searches would devolve entirely to printed material, we found no autograph drawings

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature by Duval. The absence of anything but published drawings is explained in part by the process of reproducing images in the period and in part by the cheapness of Judy. For periodicals where time and money were at a premium, artists often drew directly onto the engraver’s gessoed woodblock without making preparatory drawings and these blocks were frequently shaved for new engravings to be made.27 Our searches encompassed (a) publications and dates (specifically, the mass of Duval’s drawings that appeared in Judy, but also Will-o’-the-Wisp, albums, annuals, and a children’s book), (b) Duval’s personal and professional biography, (c) commentary and criticism contemporaneous with her life and career, (d) the wide ecology in which her drawings were made and used, (e) signatures to her work (Figure 9.1), and (f) her use of pseudonyms, which encompassed Marie Duval, Noir, S.A. The Princess Hesse Schwartzbourg, Ambrose Clarke, Snooks, and Sloper himself. Information gained from these searches not only directed our choices of drawings to view but also substantiated (g) our final attributions to Duval, through visual stylistic analysis and (h) the related question of the authorship of the words and images that frequently appear in her drawings. We published most of the documentary evidence for topics (a)–(f) plus aspects of our analysis of our viewing and attribution in 2020.28 As discussed, we compiled the Archive to make available in one place the majority of the work that we attribute to Duval and a list of works that we have not been able to include, for a range of practical reasons (such as difficulties conserving some items prior to photography). According to our method, attribution of published drawings to Duval rests first upon a drawing’s historical appearance in particular publications at particular times, plus the specific congruence of these appearances with Duval’s personal and professional biography. As much as documentary evidence focuses attribution upon a list of possible drawings and rules others out, it also contributed to our understanding of the cultural characteristics of Duval, her collaborators, and readers and to our understanding of the significance of her drawings for different people. For example, Judy, Will-o’-the-Wisp, and Fun each had distinct editorial policies, visual and literary identities, and political opinions. Judy was strongly Disraelian, politically. Alongside Duval, contributors included writers Arthur Pask and Clothilde Graves and artists Adelaide Claxton, Archibald Chasemore, and William Boucher. Judy was printed by a number of London printers. These facts parallel others and accumulate to reveal a network of possibilities and impossibilities for the attribution of drawings to Duval. Duval’s book Queens & Kings and Other Things offers quite a different set of cultural, social, and technical characteristics to Judy. Both drawings and text are credited to Duval by her contemporaneous biographer Ellen Clayton, who explicitly refers to the authorship of the book.29 Hence, the range of documentary sources built both to guide our viewing and to increase our understanding of the drawings’ aesthetic as well as discursive significance. The triangulation of documentary evidence with our viewing of those drawings that satisfied documentary criteria produced some rich results. Consider the signed drawing ‘The Beast and the Beauty at The Royalty’, a full page from Judy, published on 20 October 1869.30 Besides the signature, on descriptive interpretative grounds, it shares visual

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution

Figure 9.1  Marie Duval, ‘Merry Christmas!’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, Vol. 2, Almanac, 1 January 1873

properties with signed Duval drawings of the same period in Judy (such as ‘The Story of a Lady Who Marries a Walking Gent’).31 As significant as the signature and shared visual properties, it also occupies the same place in the order of pages in the journal, which was a common practice identifying particular contributors with particular ‘slots’ that

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature were familiar to readers. We learned from documentary searches that Duval acted in The Beast and the Beauty a week before this drawing appeared and, as a result, we can identify one of five of the play’s characters, who appear in the drawing, as a self-portrait.32 Sometimes, documentary evidence guided our formulation of hypotheses about the topics and treatments in Duval’s drawings – her ethos. As the number, type, and sequence of our attributions accumulated, we were able to note the recurrence of gender swapping and cross-dressing characters in the drawings. We learnt that Duval acted in ‘travestie’ or trouser roles, playing young men. This was a common practice in the class of theatre in which she performed. However, connecting a specific historical aspect of one of Duval’s professions to another (drawing and acting), we were enabled to conjecture about the gendering of her professional lives and the ways in which she imported practices from one profession to another. We discovered documentary evidence that male transvestites and sex workers Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park had joined Duval on stage. This was not shown by specific documents as such but is proven by separate accounts detailing the appearance of all three in the same scene.33 This threw into sharp relief the characteristic relationships between Duval’s professional lives and her (acted and drawn) depictions of gender transformations. Contemporaneous commentary on Duval’s work proved contradictory and often incoherent. As we note, the idea that Charles Ross made Duval’s drawings emerged and was continually repeated, even in the face of directly contradictory evidence known to the authors of the repeated idea. This gained in significance, as we discovered increasing evidence that signed drawings by Duval were dismembered and re-purposed and her signature erased.34 Duval fulfilled the role of a journalist at Judy, with the distinction of providing visual rather than verbal copy. This definition of Duval, the Judy contributor, arose from our increased understanding of periodical publishing as a ‘distributed business’ based upon ‘team production’.35 Thinking of Duval as journalist substantiated the idea that Duval was not working in the milieu of fine art or fine art publishing, which required studio training. It placed her within a corporate system and clarified that her work was a product of a coherent set of professional relationships – with her editors, with wood engravers, other contributors, readers, and theatre audiences. Understanding her place in this system, through documentary evidence, allowed us to distinguish her work from contemporaries. Adelaide Claxton pursued her print career in light of her career in fine art. William Boucher made use of extensive visual arts studio training to locate him as a serious political commentator (his academic style indicated intellectual gravitas). In this sense, Boucher had more in common with Duval than Claxton. Claxton traded as an artist (even when drawing advertising copy), whereas Duval and Boucher traded as journalists. We considered the wide range of Duval’s signatures. Autographic signature continues to occupy a privileged place in popular conceptions of artistic authenticity and value. In the case of Duval’s drawings, this direct association of signature with the hand of the artist is problematic in two ways. First, other hands, most significantly the hands of the engraver, processed Duval’s drawings. The printed drawings and signatures always index

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution the engraver’s interpretation. Second, Duval signed her work inconsistently. The signing for the pseudonym Marie Duval was morphologically various, but for her other pseudonyms, less so. We discovered no autograph signature elsewhere with which to compare these engraved versions. Related to the identity and origin of these signatures was the question of anonymity and pseudonym. We were able to cross-reference documentary evidence and visual interpretation to discover that Duval also made drawings under other names, both female and male, alongside her signed work and anonymous work. The occasions for pseudonym and anonymity were easy for us to parse, because of the widespread use of the practice in verbal journalism and literature. A great deal has been written on the topic.36 Given the historical contingencies discussed above, which directed us towards some groups of publications and drawings and away from others, we viewed approximately 12,000 pages of print from a range of sources, from the period 1867 to 1890, in order to arrive at our current attribution of 1,360 drawings to Duval. Our viewing engaged with Meyer’s definition of style as ‘a replication of patterning, whether in human behavior or in the artifacts produced by human behavior, that results from a series of choices made within some set of constraints’.37 We looked at drawings within the constraints of the documentary evidence, which guided us towards the possibility of authorship by Duval and sometimes substantiated it. We looked for the visual, thematic, technical, and aesthetic (in the sense of how we felt) repetitions, rhythms, and patterns in the drawings, continually testing these against our knowledge of the documentary evidence. The viewing activity towards which our documentary searches led us relied upon the idea that it is possible ‘to see the visual qualities’ that artworks articulate and to be able to provide ‘an account […] when they match the visual reasoning against the pictures’, despite the fact that the viewer ‘may have no practical way of providing necessary and sufficient conditions explicitly identifying the style’.38 At no point did we claim an attribution that documentary evidence contradicted or that the wider ecology rendered implausible or impossible. In practice, our visual stylistic analysis involved making benchmarked comparisons between similar items, frequencies, locations, and other visible formal and material properties, where the field of study or, rather, tactic range is small – effectively demarcated by the boundary of the drawing, if not the printed page or spread. There is little difference between the aforementioned methods of Morelli or van Dantzig and those of more recent comics scholars such as Pascal Lefèvre (2016), Charles Forceville, Elisabeth El Refaie, and Gert Meesters (2014). Lefèvre directs the viewer towards subsets of ‘coherency’, such as detail, deformation, line, distribution, depth, light, colour, plus, outside the set, narrative functionality,39 whereas Forceville, Refaie, and Meesters direct the viewer to evaluate and compare ‘pages, panel arrangements and the gutter’, ‘body types, postures and facial expressions’,40 ‘framing and angles in panels’, ‘speech and thought balloons’,41 ‘onomatopoeia and written words in the story world’,42 and ‘pictograms and pictorial runes’.43 They urge the viewer to ‘focus on an emotional or a mental state/attitude’ 44 and ‘constantly monitor who narrates’.45 Even if they are

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature similar in method, however, the aims of the stylistic analysis of these comics scholars on one hand, and Morelli and van Dantzig on the other hand, are widely different. In the cases of these comics scholars, analysis of comparative visible properties aims ultimately to align formal visual analysis with analysis of the wider ecology in which the viewer and the comic exist, whereas the latter aim reifies vision as a unique and incontrovertible arbiter of authorship, the capacity for which gives the viewer expertise, or ‘authority’. A minor, but significant, aspect of descriptive interpretation in the case of Duval’s drawings lay in the attribution of images and words. Conventional museological practice tends to allocate different practices to a single author, due to the historical relationship between artists, their cultural products, and the commercial fine art market. The most blatant (and now violent-seeming) decontextualization of printed images from the publications in which they appeared was standard collecting and display practice in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such practices shored up the singular authorial identity of artists whose works had, in fact, been created through team production. With Duval, this tendency had the potential to obscure our understanding of the authorship or co-authorship of her words and images. With her smaller visual jokes and multi-part drawings, the texts and images are most frequently less integrated, raising the possibility that someone else wrote the words. We discovered no documentary evidence for this, and the verbal corpus is too small to undertake any convincing verbal stylistic analysis. Our method of attribution revealed a body of work with changing horizons, rather than a definitive catalogue. A proportion of the drawings that we attribute to Duval, using this method, are incontrovertibly hers. We are able to claim this in instances where there is a perfect nesting of comparable topics, treatments, and techniques within a documented context. We used these drawings to make comparisons with drawings that were more equivocal, where attribution leant upon a regular location in a periodical or a series, plus a direct visual comparison with another drawing or drawings, in terms of topics, treatments, sensations, and techniques. The method that we adopted generated our attributions. Our faith in this method resides in the fact that it is permeable and amenable to changes. New documentary facts and relationships emerged and found new interpretations. Choosing and viewing potential drawings by Duval, we were guided by demonstrable facts about print production and distribution, the business of publishing, biography, and surviving contemporaneous commentary. Using this as the context for visual analysis, we discovered Duval.

Attribution In making our attributions we were fortunate in having the context and limitations suggested by Duval’s career and associations. Her style, which is distinctive and unusual in the period, meant that unsigned possible contenders for attribution to her were limited. There were only two cartoonists drawing in anything like Duval’s style in Judy, so that when there is a question of attribution it is usually a matter of deciding whether the

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution drawing is by her, Ross, or Archibald Chasemore. As we viewed thousands of pages of Judy, it appeared to us that Chasemore frequently followed Duval’s methods and topics. However, his style was markedly more disciplined, and he had strong individual habits such as drawing characters in balanced poses and often with oversized heads – a convention Duval used only a handful of times in her signed work. Chasemore was also more consistent than Duval in signing his drawings with his distinctive monograph, even in books where he is also clearly credited as sole illustrator, for example Rattletrap Rhymes and Tootletum Tales.46 Charles Ross’s work is much more difficult to disentangle from Duval’s. Not only did Duval use many of his visual tropes and topics but she also had the task of taking over the visual narrative of Ally Sloper from him. It is evident from her drawings of 1869 and 1870 that she had both the interest and ability to visually mimic Ross. Although Ross drew increasingly intermittently after 1870, Duval continued to make Ross-style Sloper drawings throughout her career. Thus, there are signed Duval drawings which reproduce very clearly the style established by Ross, especially in Sloper panels and the white on black ‘chalk’ drawings which both artists produced. However, Duval was able to produce a wider stylistic range of drawings, as distinct from Ross’s singular style. Variations exist in both carefully worked drawings often using ‘glamorous’ women juxtaposed with more loosely drawn and caricatured men (see ‘The Fatal Ending of a Flirty Fly: an Idyll’),47 and also with the lively childlike scrawls, mostly following the conceit that these are drawn by Sloper or Snooks (for the former see ‘To Mrs Judy’ of 21 April 1875;48 for the latter ‘The Statues of London From a One-Eyed Point of View’ 49). Duval only occasionally signed these drawings, for example ‘Crimes and Disasters (From a Sloperian Point of View)’, 26 January 1876, where she signed herself ‘D’ (see Figure 9.2).50 Of course, this is descriptive analysis, albeit supported by documentary evidence. Whilst respecting the rejection of designations of high and low art, we feel there are differences in properties between Ross’s and Duval’s work, and this was an opinion Ross himself recorded at the time, in letter to a periodical, as we have seen.51 However, on this letters page, the anonymous reviewer’s point – to which Ross replies in his letter – is just. There are a number of unsigned cartoons that we have attributed to Duval rather than Ross, when the opposite could be argued. There are generally two reasons for our attributions away from Ross. After 1870 Sloper cartoons were either signed by Duval (and very many were) or unsigned. Only a very small number were signed by Ross. One such exception is the centre fold of the 1879 Ally Sloper’s Comic Kalendar where both Ross and Duval signed the large drawing. It is possible Ross contributed drawings, but equally possible the signature here was an expression of the fact that he contributed the words to the entire pamphlet (the Comic Kalendars have no acknowledged author or artist on the title pages, maintaining the conceit that Sloper is writing them). With this rare exception, we feel it is reasonable to assume that as Duval was the acknowledged artist who was drawing Sloper by this time, she was likely to have produced

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature

Figure 9.2  Marie Duval, ‘Crimes and Disasters (From a Sloperian Point of View)’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, Vol. 18, 26 January 1876

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution the unsigned drawings. Even when the Sloper images look very like Ross, Duval signed one in the sequence. An example of this (and one not of Sloper, although there are examples of that too) is the drawing ‘Pickings from “The Times” Advertisements’ on the back page of Judy on 17 April 1872.52 However, a few weeks later a four-frame cartoon in similar style (also on the back page) is signed ‘MD’ (‘The Putty-Head Peculiars’, 8 May 1872).53 The consistent position of the drawing in the journal here evidences the consistency of producer. For example, there is a sequence of ‘Pastorals in Slate Pencil’ where a slate is defined by a depicted wooden border with a white chalk drawing within it. Of the four drawings, which are stylistically similar, only the third in the sequence is signed ‘MD’, on 8 May 1872.54 The others appear in the same position on 21 February,55 13 March,56 and 10 July of the same year.57 As described, our method consisted of moving back and forth between stylistics, context, and historical ecology. We only considered those images which had a strong documentary case to be by Duval (rather than by one of her fellow Judy artists), but we also searched for drawings which appeared in Duval’s style in other places. We were unable to find any which suggested Duval worked outside Ross’s circle after 1869, despite a comment by her biographer, Ellen Clayton, that she worked for ‘three or four English, French and German journals, and illustrated several books’.58 The three or four English journals could certainly be accounted for by Judy, Will-o’-the Wisp, and The Grasshopper, not to mention Smiles and Styles, all of which she had contributed to by the time Clayton published her work in 1876. However, despite looking ourselves and consulting a number of European scholars we have been unable to find any evidence of Duval drawings appearing in French or German journals. Clayton’s mention of ‘several books’ with different pseudonyms does provide additional evidence for what is, we believe, our most precarious attribution of the works given to Ambrose Clarke. Combining documentary evidence with descriptive analysis of Ross’s publications of the period, which might plausibly have been illustrated by Duval, we were able to attribute the drawings in The Story of a Honeymoon to Duval, although the names on the book cover are Ross and Ambrose Clarke.59 The book’s verbal text follows Ross’s established style and topics, the production technology is exactly the same as other Duval-authored productions, and the book dates to exactly the period when she was putting herself forward as an illustrator for the first time. The name Ambrose Clarke appeared again in 1877, as co-author of Rattletrap Rhymes and Tootletum Tales. Duval’s authorship of words is plausible, given she had written a book of absurd rhymes in 1874 (Queens & Kings and Other Things). An obviously comic introduction to Rattletrap Rhymes and Tootletum Tales (headed ‘A word in your ear’) makes it clear Clarke is a pseudonym, with perhaps a suggestion it is also a woman (‘it is not the least bit like his real name’) followed by an extended joke out of the departure of Clarke, Ross’s ‘dear old friend’, to Jamaica.60 There are also enough similarities of visual treatments and topics to attribute the drawings in A Story of a Honeymoon to Duval. For example, the lost profile in ‘This is

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature Rose Anna Picking up some of our “Bargains”’ 61 is similar to a number of Duval-signed profiles, for instance, ‘Sentimental and All That Sort of Thing’ from Judy of the same year,62 whilst the back view of the woman in ‘This Illustration is Wholly and Solely Allegorical’ 63 shares exactly the same structure as the woman in the central panel of ‘At Brighton’.64 Given Duval’s use of pseudonym to continually reform her relationships with readers, the drawings that purport to be by drawn by fictional characters Sloper and Snooks are also significant. These are unashamedly technically inexpert, yet delightfully lively, drawings in which Duval fully exploits her ability to depict movement and employ distortion. The Snooks drawings (all from 1875) have the conceit that Snooks is wandering London drawing statues for the magazine, whilst the Ally Sloper drawings are distributed between the long running ‘From a Sloperian Point of View’ series, the parodies of Royal Academy Exhibitions, the Franco-Prussian war, and other specific sequences. Duval occasionally signs these drawings made by fictional characters as herself, such as ‘Crimes and Disasters (from a Sloperian Point of View)’ of 26 January 1876,65 and the 23 February 1876 drawings with the same title, both of which are signed ‘D.’ 66 No other artist ever signs these highly unusual drawings. Taking the documentary and stylistic evidence together, we also attribute these unsigned drawings to Duval. Sarah Lodge has recently ascribed a short pamphlet to Duval, the anonymous 1877 Calendaria Botanica Ridiculoso.67 However, we note that the drawings are chromolithographs, a colour print process which was never used in Duval’s signed published work. The process was relatively expensive and, as a result, associated with fine art reproductions and the more polite type of deluxe book products. The Calendaria has no connection to publishers or collaborators associated with Duval and has no close specific similarities to the visual properties or the topics of her known drawings. In terms of descriptive methods of analysis, Lodge only asserts that the Calendaria’s ‘similarities to [Duval’s] other nonsense make its authorship transparent’.68 She does not explain what stylistic similarities these might be. Undertaking a purely descriptive analysis ourselves, in the face of historical contingencies that contradict an attribution to Duval, we did not find it possible to match the drawings to any of the visual properties or topics seen in known Duval drawings. On the basis of the lack of documentary affirmation (that is, the absence of possible similarities of historical contingency of the Calendaria with known processes, relationships, and circumstances) and the lack of visual similarity between Calendaria and known drawings by Duval, we cannot agree with Lodge’s attribution to Duval. What statistics emerge from our attributions to Duval? Of the drawings we have attributed to Duval, many are signed, were produced under one of her pseudonyms, or derive from the Ally Sloper’s Comic Kalendar or Ally Sloper’s Summer Numbers. The signed drawings accounts for 63 per cent of the drawings in the archive (that is 859 drawings). If we include only those signed and the pseudonyms Noir and S.A. Princess Hesse Schwartzbourg (that is, including those sanctioned by Duval’s contemporary Clayton and omitting Ambrose Clarke) the percentage is 43 per cent (584 drawings). Hence, Duval signed about half of the drawings we have attributed to her. If so, there is some interesting

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution variation in the way she signed drawings through her career. Duval was active as visual journalist and illustrator from 1869 to 1885. Until 1877 she signed at least half of her annual output, signing almost all in 1870, 1871, 1873, and 1874. From under half in 1877, the signatures then drop to a third and a sixth in 1878 and 1879. Duval then only signs a handful of drawings in the last six years of her activity (1880–85). Why did Duval sign her work in the first half of her career, and for the last few years signed little in Judy and published her work unsigned in the Ally Sloper Summer Numbers and Ally Sloper’s Comic Kalendars? Ross followed a similar course as regards putting his name on these as writer, something which he did consistently in earlier years on the Judy spin-offs. It seems feasible that later on, secure in her career (and confident of receiving payment) when living with Ross, Duval may have felt less need to take professional credit for her drawings and therefore little need to sign them. This is conjecture. Of her pseudonyms, Duval never signed work as Ambrose Clarke or S.A. The Princess Hesse Schwartzbourg. These were credits on the covers of books. She did use three pseudonyms as signatures: Noir (thirty times), Snooks (a character, three times), and Sloper (once in a ‘letter’ which is handwritten with images, 21 April 1875). All these appear in Judy. In Judy she identified herself as Marie Duval in a number of ways. Of these by far the most common was ‘MD’ (69 per cent of signatures). The variations of her signatures are (with the number of occurrences in descending order): ‘MD’ (346); ‘DUVAL’ (112); ‘MARIE DUVAL’ (19); ‘M DUVAL’ (13); ‘D’ (11). There are three instances of joint signatures, two with Ross (‘MD CHR’) and one with an unidentified collaborator (‘PS MD’). All Duval’s signatures are in capitals, with only one exception, being ‘Duval’ on ‘Betises’, 7 April 1875.69

Notes 1 Ellen Clayton, English Female Artists (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876), vol. 2, pp. 332–3. 2 Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, The Marie Duval Archive (2016), www.marieduval.org (accessed 10 May 2021); Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). 3 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist; Richard Scully, Eminent Victorian Cartoonists (London: Political Cartoon Society, 2018), vol. 2, p. 3. 4 Roger Sabin, ‘Ally Sloper: First Comics Superstar?’, Image and Narrative, 7 (2003), n.p.; Roger Sabin, ‘Ally Sloper on Stage’, European Comic Art, 2/2 (2009), pp. 205–25; Roger Sabin, ‘Ally Sloper, Victorian Comic Book Hero: Interpreting a Comedy Type’, in Visual Communication, ed. David Machin. Handbooks of Communication Science 4 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 429–44; David Kunzle, ‘The First Ally Sloper: The Earliest Popular Cartoon Character as a Satire on the Victorian Work Ethic’, Oxford Art Journal, 8/1 (1985), pp. 40–8; David Kunzle, ‘Marie Duval: A Caricaturist Rediscovered’, Women’s Art Journal, 7/1 (1986), pp. 26–31. 5 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, pp. 11–35. 6 Charles Henry Ross, ‘Letter to the Editor’, The Theatrical Journal: A Weekly Review of Public Amusements, 30/1558 (16 October 1869), p. 331. 7 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, pp. 118–33. 8 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, p. iv.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 9 Sabin, ‘Ally Sloper: First Comics Superstar?’; Sabin, ‘Ally Sloper on Stage’; Sabin, ‘Ally Sloper, Victorian Comic Book Hero’; Peter Bailey, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 10 Gilbert Dalziel and Edward Dalziel, The Brothers Dalziel; a record of fifty years’ work in conjunction with many of the most distinguished artists of the period, 1840–1890 (London: Methuen and Company, 1901), p. 320. 11 Marie Duval, Queens & Kings and Other Things (London: Chatto & Windus, 1874). 12 Gilbert Dalziel, Letter to Mrs Callcott, 1920. Private collection. 13 Gilbert Dalziel, ‘Who Invented Ally Sloper?’, Referee (15 May 1927), p. 10. 14 Alexis Easley, First-Person Anonymous:WomenWriters andVictorian Print Media, 1830–1870 (London: Routledge, 2004); Patrick Leary The Punch Brotherhood (London: The British Library, 2010). 15 Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1840); William James, ‘Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment’, Atlantic Monthly, 46 (1880), pp. 441–59. 16 Pettingell Collection, University of Kent Archive. Uncatalogued. 17 Boswell Jnr, ‘Chats at “The Cheese”’, Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday, new series, number 2 (1922), p. 11. 18 Kunzle, ‘Marie Duval: A Caricaturist Rediscovered’. 19 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, pp. 7–8; Alexis Easley, Andrew King, and John Morton, Researching the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Press (Oxford: Routledge, 2017); Marianne Van Remoortel, Women,Work and theVictorian Periodical: Living by the Press (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Laurel Brake and Marysa Demoor (eds), Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (Ghent: Academia Press, 2009); Easley, First-Person Anonymous; Laurel Brake, Bill Bell, and David Finkelstein, ‘Introduction’, in Nineteenth-Century Media and the Construction of Identities, ed. Laurel Brake, Bill Bell, and David Finkelstein (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 1–13; Laurel Brake, Subjugated Knowledges: Journalism, Gender & Literature (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994). 20 Richard Scully, ‘Review of Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist’, Review19 (2021), www.review19.org/view_doc.php?index=602 (accessed 10 May 2021); Simon Grennan, ‘The Marie Duval Archive: Memory and the Development of the Comic Strip Canon’, in Comics Memory: Archives and Styles, ed. Maaheen Ahmed and Benoît Crucifix (New York: Palgrave, 2018). 21 Giovanni Morelli, Italian Masters in German Galleries (London: George Bell and Sons, 1880); M. M. van Dantzig, Pictology, An Analytical Method for Attribution and Evaluation of Pictures (Leiden: Brill, 1973). 22 David Ebitz, ‘Connoisseurship as Practice’, Artibus et Historiae, 9/18 (1988), p. 207. 23 David Carrier, ‘In Praise of Connoisseurship’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 61/2 (2003), p. 165. 24 Gillian Rose, ‘The Question of Method: Practice, Reflexivity and Critique in Visual Culture Studies’, in The Handbook of Visual Culture, ed. Ian Heywood and Barry Sandywell (London: Berg, 2012), p. 542. 25 Meike Bal, ‘Visual Essentialism and the Object of Visual Culture’, Journal of Visual Culture, 2/1 (2003), pp. 5–32. 26 United Kingdom General Register Office Index to Births 1847: 1.156; Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, p. 2. 27 Charles Henry Ross and Dower Wilson, Flirting Made Easy: A Guide for Girls (London: Dalziel Brothers, 1882), p. 110. 28 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist. 29 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, pp. 330–3.

Marie Duval: methods & politics of attribution 30 Marie Duval, ‘The Beast and Beauty at the Royalty’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 5 (1869), p 260. 31 Marie Duval, ‘The Story of a Lady who Married a Walking Gent’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 5 (6 October 1869), p. 242. 32 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, p. 68. 33 ‘Remarkable Case at the Melbourne District Court. Park and Boulton. Abridged from The Argus of Saturday’, The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia) (28 April 1873), p. 6. 34 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, pp. 241–2. 35 Sudhir Agarwal and Sebastian Rudolph, ‘Semantic Description of Distributed Business Processes’, Stanford CA: AAAI Spring Symposium. Unpublished paper (2003), p. 399. 36 Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, pp. 59–63. 37 Leonard Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History and Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 3. 38 Carrier, ‘In Praise of Connoisseurship’, p. 165, italics in original, and p. 160. 39 Pascal Lefèvre, ‘No Content without Form: Graphic Style as the Primary Entrance to a Story’, in The Visual Narrative Reader, ed. Neil Cohn (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 73–4. 40 Charles Forceville, Elizabeth El Refaie, and Gert Meesters, ‘Stylistics and Comics’, in The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, ed. Michael Burke (London: Routledge, 2014), p. 489. 41 Ibid., p. 491. 42 Ibid., p. 492. 43 Ibid., p. 493. 44 Ibid., p. 494. 45 Ibid., p. 495. 46 Charles Henry Ross and Ambrose Clarke, Rattletrap Rhymes and Tootletum Tales (London: Diprose and Bateman, 1879). 47 Marie Duval, ‘The Fatal Ending of a Flirty Fly’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 23 (1878), p. 182. 48 Marie Duval, ‘To Mrs Judy’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 17 (1875), p. 3. 49 Marie Duval, ‘The Statues of London from a One-Eyed Point of View’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 17 (1875), p. 38. 50 Marie Duval, ‘Crimes and Disasters (From a Sloperian Point of View)’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 18 (1876), p. 153. 51 Ross, ‘Letter to the Editor’. 52 Marie Duval, ‘Pickings from “The Times” Advertisements’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 10 (1872), p. 250. 53 Marie Duval, ‘The Putty-Head Peculiars’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 11 (1872), p. 30. 54 Marie Duval, ‘Pastorals in Slate Pencil’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 11 (1872), p. 21. 55 Marie Duval, ‘Pastorals in Slate Pencil’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 10 (1872), p. 161. 56 Marie Duval, ‘Pastorals in Slate Pencil’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 10 (1872), p. 191. 57 Marie Duval, ‘Slate Pencil Pastorals’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 11 (1872), p. 113. 58 Clayton, English Female Artists, vol. 2, pp. 331–2. 59 Charles Henry Ross and Ambrose Clarke, The Story of a Honeymoon (London: Ward, Lock & Tyler, 1869). 60 Ross and Clarke, Rattletrap Rhymes and Tootletum Tales, n.p. 61 Ross and Clarke, The Story of a Honeymoon, p. 45.

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Book illustration, cartoons, and caricature 62 Marie Duval, ‘Sentimental and All That Sort of Thing’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 6, Almanac (1869), p. 3. 63 Ross and Clarke, The Story of a Honeymoon, p. 266. 64 Marie Duval, ‘At Brighton’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 5 (1869), p. 182. 65 Duval, ‘Crimes and Disasters’. 66 Ibid., p. 195. 67 Sarah Lodge, Inventing Edward Lear (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2019), p. 212. 68 Ibid., p. 215. 69 Marie Duval, ‘Betises’, Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal, 16 (1875), p. 257.

Part III Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908

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10 Romance fiction, folk tales, and poetry: Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement Kate Holterhoff

‘An Old-World Love Tale’ by painter, illustrator, playwright, and textile artist Amy Sawyer (1863–1945) appeared in the 12 December 1891 Illustrated London News. Set on the outskirts of a darkening forest in premodern times, Sawyer’s picture depicts two women, one dark, one light, listening to a man telling what audiences might presume to be a love story (see Figure 10.1). The fair-haired woman’s abstracted expression, forward lean, and closeness to the storyteller’s eye-level betrays her deep interest in this tale, and possibly in its teller. Like Desdemona, she appears to have fallen in love with her Othello’s wonderful stories. Whether love-of-stories transfers to love-of-the-storyteller remains uncertain in this woman’s case and reveals the clever double entendre of this illustration’s title. However, the knowing smile and glance of the fair maiden’s companion suggests the latter’s probability. By seeming to epitomize Oscar Wilde’s sentiment that women ‘love with [their] ears’,1 Sawyer elevates her storyteller’s status. This young man is a magician. Not only does his outstretched hand seem to conjure the living things beneath to grow and thrive but he himself reflects the vital energy inherent in stories of ‘romance interest’, an energy which the nineteenth-century literary critic George Saintsbury points to as romance fiction’s ‘most fertile source – a source more fertile than all others joined together’.2 Romance fictions are not only wonderfully compelling: as ‘the earliest form of writing’ their literary form joins together past and present, nature and art.3 Sawyer’s forest setting underscores the power and wonder of this rustic raconteur’s unaffected physicality and closeness to nature. Indeed, with his face cast in shadow, the image invites viewers to join the women in admiring the comely form of this interesting arcadian. It is anyone’s guess as to whether the quality of his speech matches his muscular body’s sensual appeal, but in the midsummer twilight this delicious love tale – lived-in and listened-to – achieves great potency. And yet, because this maiden looks unsmiling into the distance rather 195

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Figure 10.1  Amy Sawyer, ‘An Old-World Love Tale’, Illustrated London News, Vol. 99, No. 2747, 12 December 1891

than the storyteller’s inviting eyes, Sawyer maintains some ambiguity in her ‘Old-World Love Story’. In this image, Sawyer may be allegorizing herself as the rapt lover of wonderful stories. Throughout her career, wild-minded romances from the distant past and fairyland served as subject matter for most of her artworks. In the words of Andrew Lang, perhaps romance fiction’s most vocal advocate, ‘the great heart of the people demands tales of swashing blows, of distressed maidens rescued, of “murders grim and great,” of magicians and princesses, and wanderings in fairy lands forlorn’.4 Sawyer’s psychological and marvellously suggestive compositions nearly always dramatize incidents and themes from romance.Yet, for all their nostalgic escapism, her distinctive artworks grapple fully with the present. The social forces which must drive this poor storyteller and his genteelly dressed auditors apart were as powerful during the fin de siècle as in any romantically conceived ages past, perhaps more powerful. The gorgeous, if barbaric, garb of these barefooted ladies reveals their elevated stations. Their clean, tailored, and elegantly embellished gowns and curiously wrought jewellery represent costly finery reserved for those in high stations. In contrast, the man is crudely garbed in animal skins and cross-gartered leather sandals befitting a shepherd. Perhaps the forbiddenness of their association has driven these lovers to their woodland tryst. Or, perhaps, the women happened upon this rustic, previously unknown to them, while rambling in the woods. The picturesque

Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement contrast between Sawyer’s fine maidens and sylvan youth permits audiences to generate their own suggestive, if inconclusive, narratives to explain the nature and history of their attraction. The women are shining, unobtainable stars for all men to worship. The man embodies a bucolic way of life enchanting in its freedom and simplicity. The women’s desirability is cerebral, the man’s sensual. It is the fair maiden that, by spurring viewers to inward reflection, reveals Sawyer’s central idea. She implores us to join her in contemplating what it is about romance – broadly conceived (indeed, Corinne Saunders states ‘the genre of romance is impossible adequately to define’ 5) – that offers its magnetic pull. This chapter examines Sawyer’s work as an illustrator of love stories, adventure fiction, folk and fairy tales, and many other subgenres expressed in prose and poetry within the romance form. While offering the narrative appeal of fantastic illustrations like those in ‘An Old-World Love Story’, her artworks also incorporate late nineteenthcentury ideological aesthetic and cultural histories. Sawyer’s concern with social themes relating to sex and gender informs the paintings and prints she produced as an active part of the Bushey, Hertfordshire, and later Ditchling, Sussex, Arts and Crafts movement. In this chapter, I begin with a brief biography focused on the life and education of this little-known artist. In the second section I consider Sawyer’s unique contributions to the imperial romance and adventure fiction form, focusing on two illustrations Sawyer produced for H. Rider Haggard’s Heart of the World (1895). In the third and final section, I study Sawyer’s lush illustrations created to accompany her art book of lithographs, The Seasons (1901). The chapter will explore Sawyer’s engagement with the problems of imperialism, gender, and social class at the fin de siècle.

Biography and the Herkomer School of Art Born in 1863 in East Grinstead, Sussex, Amy Sawyer was the oldest of the seven children of Charles Sawyer, a draper and grocer, and Eliza Sawyer (née Blacklock). Little is known about Sawyer’s childhood, though we might speculate that her younger siblings could have kept her busy telling stories, directing games, and instructing lessons. We can also presume that she spent much of her time as a child out of doors. In her article ‘Sussex Witches and Other Superstitions’ (1935), Sawyer attributes her knowledge of local folklore and ‘earliest natural history’ to the family’s nanny. In fact, Sawyer’s skills in mushroom foraging and gardening would be well regarded later in her life. By 1881 the Sawyer family had moved to Croydon, where Charles ran a brush-mat and matting factory. During the next fifteen years, all of Amy’s siblings emigrated to the British colonies or to America, so that by 1896 she and her parents alone remained in England. Charles Jr (b. 1865) immigrated to New Zealand; William (b. 1868) and Frederick (b. 1868) immigrated to Apalachicola, Florida; Harry (b. 1873) and likely George (b. 1866) immigrated to South Africa; and her sister Mabel immigrated to Melbourne, Australia. Even her father spent twelve years abroad in New Zealand before returning to England in the late 1890s. The mysteries, opportunities, and dangers of these far-off lands must have made

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 a great impression upon the artist. Although she never visited these climates and continents personally, the imperial idea looms large in Sawyer’s imagination. In 1885, at the age of twenty-two, Amy Sawyer moved to the village of Bushey to enrol in the Herkomer School of Art (fl. 1883–1926). Sawyer excelled at this institution. After graduating in the late 1880s she stayed on to teach courses in 1891 as part of the Lulu scholarship (named for Herkomer’s second wife, Lulu Griffith) and became a Fellow of the Herkomer Art School (FHS) in 1893. Bushey’s rural setting encouraged a utopian communal atmosphere among the students that was unavailable to them at larger urban institutions such as the Royal Institution School of Art, Edinburgh, or the RA Schools in London. Upon acceptance students agreed to live in Bushey and stay for at least nine months (three terms). Tuition at this two-year school was free, and there were no prizes in order to eliminate uncooperative competitiveness between students. While the RA schools followed the French model of having students copy old masters and draw from antique casts prior to sketching from life, Herkomer’s school fostered individual expression by emphasizing figure drawing above all other skills. Acceptance to the school was based on the proficient execution of a charcoal portrait, and once a student was admitted, ‘[t] he curriculum was simple: painting from the nude living model from nine until three, five days in the week; drawing in charcoal or pencil from the nude model at night from seven till nine; on the Saturday morning, a village model was requisitioned for head painting only’.6 Sawyer’s love for and proficiency in drawing the human figure can be directly traced to Herkomer’s curriculum. Moreover, to save his students from what he considered the common defect of derivativeness, Herkomer’s lessons fostered individuality: a trait that he termed ‘quality’. According to Herkomer, ‘[b]y this method … every successful student produced a different kind of quality and brushwork, clearly proving that the insistence on [the figure drawing] phase in the technique in no way interfered with the development of his own personal idiosyncrasy’.7 While some artists found Herkomer’s je ne sais quoi standards of excellence liberating, others were oppressed by his opaque expectations and temperamental manner. Sawyer thrived in this idiosyncratic and creative environment, though her friend and fellow student Mary Godsal (d. 1907) complained in her journal, ‘he was not pleased with the work of anyone – quite the reverse … no one understood what he wanted!’ 8 Sawyer remained in Bushey’s artist community until 1901, when she joined her parents in Ditchling, Sussex. Beginning in 1887 Sawyer began producing fantastical illustrations for periodicals such as Black and White and the Illustrated London News, as well as for gift books featuring the poetry of Edith Prince-Snowden, such as Lilies, Poppies, Daisies, and Remembrance (Raphael Tuck & Sons, London, n.d.). Sawyer also exhibited her fairy-tale paintings widely at galleries including the RA; the Society of Women Artists, Brighton; the Institute of Painters in Oil; and the Paris Salon. Sawyer’s whimsical paintings generated some comment and excitement. The Studio remarks of the four-panel screen Sawyer exhibited at the 1896 Arts and Crafts Exhibition, London, reproduced in full for the magazine: ‘despite its really gorgeous colour, it is in no way garish or obtrusive, but is a fine piece of decoration that, pictorial as its treatment may appear, always observes the limits which

Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement separate the decorative from the pictorial’.9 Because The Studio reproduced her panel in grey halftone, this colour-focused description serves the double duty of complimenting her artistic abilities, as well as assisting readers to imagine this artwork in the glory of full colour. Compliments on Sawyer’s colour-sense were not universal, however. One Public Opinion reviewer reflected in 1894, ‘Miss Amy Sawyer is a woman of imagination, but she is better in black and white than in colour’.10 Critical disagreements aside, it is significant that during the fin de siècle art journalists considered Sawyer a successful and noteworthy artist. Sawyer kept up her professional art career for roughly twenty-five years, until around 1913 when – now living in Ditchling – she developed lead poisoning from paint under her fingernails and lost the use of her right hand. This disability may have inspired Sawyer to move from drawing and painting to playwriting and costume design. However, there is evidence that Sawyer abandoned the profession of art by choice rather than necessity. In response to an undated letter asking her to join an arts committee, Sawyer not only declines but also enumerates her grievances with this occupation’s shifting ideals. Sawyer expresses particular dissatisfaction with institutions that propose ‘to encourage that lowdown form of art, picture making, after having for years discouraged the infinitely higher one of Design, and originality’.11 The type of untrained but worthwhile craft (which she terms design) can be found in peasant needlework and schoolgirls’ handicrafts because these are inspired by fancy rather than sterile art training. Like her mentor Herkomer, Sawyer has little patience for expressive unoriginality and hackneyed designs copied ‘badly from a Daily Mail back page’.12 Sawyer values roughness and earnest expression for much the same reason that John Ruskin, perhaps the most prominent voice of England’s Arts and Crafts movement, admired rough-hewn Gothic carvings: their expression of ‘fancifulness, love of variety, [and] love of richness’.13 By expressing her complaints against the profession Sawyer reveals much about her own motives for leaving: ‘Picture making requires putting down with a strong hand, as a hobby it is frightfully expensive and as a trade it is a delusion and a snare’.14 An accident may have robbed Sawyer of her ‘strong hand’, but economic and ideological complaints are ultimately to blame for Sawyer’s turn against visual art. Although increasingly embittered with the field, Sawyer continued to enjoy the vibrant community of artists that also called Ditchling home, which included Eric Gill, Edward Johnston, Hilary Pepler, and Sir Frank Brangwyn. Today very few paintings by Sawyer remain. It was rumoured that Eric Gill, driven by jealousy, burned her paintings, but no evidence exists in support of this accusation.15 Sawyer died at her home, the Blue House, Ditchling, presumably in the company of her companion Minnie King,16 on 1 October 1945.

‘What shall I say to this headstrong girl?’ In an illustration for Rider Haggard’s Central American romance Heart of the World (1895), Sawyer depicts the heroine Maya, the Aztec Princess of the City of the Heart, on the edge of an underground water source she has braved much danger to reach (see

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Figure 10.2  Amy Sawyer, ‘So beautiful was this bubble … that for some minutes Maya watched it’, Heart of the World by H. Rider Haggard, 1895

Figure 10.2). Kneeling on the slippery rocks, she holds aloft a torch and leans forward to better see the natural wonder of a bubble created by the spring’s forceful upwelling. Nearly naked except for an armband and a leather waterskin bag, Maya is alone in the cueva (‘cave’). Readers observe Maya as she pauses to admire this quiet wonder’s beauty, a sight she alone is courageous enough to enjoy. Stripped of her garments, companions, and duties, she is self-sufficient and self-actualized. This brief respite from the emergency of fetching water to save her lover’s life provides viewers with the opportunity to appreciate both the princess’s mettle and her handsome figure. Sawyer psychologizes Haggard’s heroine by positioning her outside the context of male interpretation – an aesthetic decision which sets this illustration apart from those typical of the adventure fiction genre. Haggard and his contemporaries generally depict the women in this genre as flat stereotypes or passive receptacles into which men project their desires. Sawyer’s illustrations accentuate Maya’s individuality by refusing these demeaning conventions and instead dramatizing her interiority and self-sufficiency. Although pictured here in a moment of quiet contemplation, she appears to be one of Haggard’s doughtiest heroines. 17 Not a damsel in distress by any measure, ‘She was young and active, and from childhood it had been a delight to her to climb in dangerous places about the walls and pyramids of the City of the Heart’.18 Sawyer captures Maya’s bravery and fondness of activity in this illustration. Undeterred by perils which cause her two male companions to reject the prospect of descending into the cave, Sawyer demonstrates Maya’s fortitude and loyalty in undertaking this desperate adventure by showing the princess calmly achieving her goal while surrounded by the cave’s chthonic terrors and wonders.

Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement Sawyer’s approach to Maya – her beauty, heroism, and complex interiority – must have met with the art editors at Longmans, Green, and Company’s approval, as they employed her to illustrate Heart of theWorld for their US and UK editions (fifteen illustrations appear in the 1896 London edition, and thirteen in the 1895 New York edition).19 This commission is remarkable in the graphic history of Rider Haggard. Well over one thousand unique illustrations were commissioned to accompany the approximately sixty romance fictions Haggard published during his lifetime, but of these only eighteen can be attributed to a woman artist – all by Sawyer for Heart of the World. Given that Haggard was one of the period’s most frequently illustrated authors, the absence of women artists is noteworthy, especially because so many women illustrators were active in the US and UK. Haggard was not personally opposed to women illustrators, promising Scottish Arts and Crafts artist Phoebe Anna Traquair in 1887 ‘to put some work in your way should you care to have it’.20 Yet, for some reason women were consistently overlooked for these commissions. Publishers may have preferred male artists because Haggard specialized in ‘books for boys’ 21 – adventure fictions set in dangerous locales at the fringes of the British Empire. Heart of the World fits this boilerplate. Set in Central America, mostly in Mexico, this adventure follows Don Ignacio, the last heir of Guatemoc and the ruler of the Aztec Empire before Cortés, and his English friend James Strickland on their exciting quest to a lost civilization in the wilderness, the City of the Heart. Zibalbay, the cacique (‘chieftain’), and his beautiful daughter Maya guide these adventurers to the city through many dangers (bandits, a desert, venomous snakes). The last of these nearly claims Strickland’s life, were it not for Maya’s love-inspired quest to fetch him water from the cueva. In order to remove the venom, Strickland must be dehydrated by sweating, meaning that without water to drink he nearly perishes. It is likely because Haggard’s heroine demonstrates such gumption and independence that Sawyer treats her exciting underground exploit pictorially. Since the 1980s, postcolonial critics including Patrick Brantlinger have argued for the significance of Haggard’s ‘quest romances with Gothic overtones in which the heroic white penetration of the Dark Continent is the central theme’.22 The immense popularity of his King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and She (1887) installed the imperial romance form as one of the most commercially lucrative in Britain, America, and the colonies. Several critics have noted the role visual paratexts play in this legacy, primarily as they relate to E. K. Johnson’s illustrations for the serialization of She that appeared in The Graphic and Harper’s Weekly. Pascal Fischer argues that illustrations lend credibility to the British imperialist project because ‘[e]ven the most fantastic elements of the novel appear less incredible when seen in the context of other images in the newspaper’.23 Julia Reid notes the close connection between Haggard’s serialized fictions and ‘many other tropes, topics, and concerns relating to imperial commerce, including the imperial spectacle, the readeras-explorer, weaponry and big game, imperial tyranny, commercial brands, and the ease of travel’.24 What makes Haggard’s legacy for postcolonial and visual cultural studies significant for this study of Amy Sawyer is his fiction’s establishment of the empire as the place to discover strong women, and particularly strong indigenous women. From ‘shewho-must-be-obeyed’, the terrible immortal Queen Ayesha in She, to the vengeful Zulu

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 warrior Maiwa from Maiwa’s Revenge, Haggard capitalized on the fin de siècle interest in powerful femininity, which accompanied the historical expansion of women’s rights in the UK, embodied in legislation such as the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act, entitling married women to control their own property, as well as their entrance to the public sphere with the formation of the Primrose League (est. 1883) and the Women’s Liberal Associations (est. 1887). Anne McClintock suggests the long-standing ideological work that sex, gender, and visual art accomplish within the project of Western imperialism by focusing particularly on Theodore Galle’s fifteenth-century engraving of ‘America’, represented by a nude allegorical indigenous woman awaiting her European bridegroom.25 Sexually available non-white beauties enable audiences to project their dually erotic and imperialist fantasies onto the tempting forms of the empire’s women. Images of attractive non-white women in McClintock’s ‘Porno-Tropics’ suggest the ideological work that illustrations accomplish.26 Although indigenous maidens seem muscular and free, these fictional beauties are curated to fulfil the desires of white, Western audiences. European illustrations of these non-white women offer a form of dominance, and, in this way, Sawyer’s illustrations of Maya demonstrate what Nicholas Mirzoeff terms the ‘Right to Look’, which engages Foucauldian discipline to show that the power to observe is also the power to control.27 Sawyer built her reputation as a professional artist on the success of her powerful, stereotypically ‘primitive’ women. Although she admired an idealized wild type of femininity, Sawyer was complicit in the actual objectification of indigenous women that her images served to reify. In addition to Maya, she depicted imaginary, premodern female royalty in several fine artworks, including ‘Fantasy Queen Seated on a Throne with Attendants’ (watercolour and gouache, 1901), ‘Maidens on the Steps near a Fabulous Beast and Its Master’ (watercolour and gouache, c. 1900), and ‘The Swine Herd’ (oil on panel, 1895).28 Sawyer’s depictions of witches and their familiars, which appear in her illustration ‘The Witch’s Goose-Girl’ (Illustrated London News, 4 November 1893) and painting ‘Witches Anointing Themselves’ (watercolour and gouache, c. 1900), are reminders that Sawyer associated women with not only strength but also nature and the fantastic. Ideas about witchy feminine power were common in the late nineteenth century. Karl Pearson argues in his 1897 essay ‘Woman As Witch’ that matriarchal societies revered witches because they served ‘as the wise woman, the medicine woman, the leader of the people, the priestess accompanying the victim to the altar’.29 This powerful figure – with its multifarious associations, good and bad – fascinated Sawyer. Interestingly, unlike Sawyer’s illustration depicting a male sorcerer conjuring a celestial woman, ‘The Wizard’s Triumph’ (Black and White, 1891), none of the women associated with witches in these pictures are shown performing magic. It is their suggested heroism, wisdom, and closeness to nature that make Sawyer’s indigenous and witchy women not only well suited to accompany fictions of empire but also complicit in the project of British imperialism. Sawyer’s ‘Next Came Maya Herself’, which shows this princess and her marriage train, is extraordinary not only for its expressive and painterly technique but also for

Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement

Figure 10.3  Amy Sawyer, ‘Next came Maya herself’, Heart of the World by H. Rider Haggard, 1895

what it reveals about Haggard’s heroine (see Figure 10.3). The layered impasto brushstrokes surrounding these pictured women (a remarkably different style from ‘So beautiful was this bubble’) add texture and interest to the composition – particularly in the flower-strewn ground and the darker flowing dresses of the four women accompanying Maya. The procession occurs before the Council of the Heart in the royal banqueting-hall, during which ‘a number of young girls robed in white only, and carrying white lilies in their hands, which they threw upon the floor to be trodden by the feet of the bride’.30 Sawyer uses almost no modelling to shadow the face and arms of these women, but Maya, above her companions, positively glows. Her supernatural whiteness may be an aesthetic decision ensuring that the audience’s eyes are drawn immediately to Haggard’s radiant heroine. As her marriage is ill-omened it also casts her in a spectral light, foreshadowing her impending death. Indeed, the uniform lines delineating Maya’s face, arms, and torso, like the Pre-Raphaelites’ definitively outlined women (consider Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Goblin Market illustrations), contrast markedly with the chaotic painterliness of her attendants’ dresses. But this extreme illumination may also be intended to show that ‘Maya looked more like a white woman than one of Indian blood’.31 Imagining indigenous maidens that combine the stereotypical loveliness of European women with the jungle’s untamed wildness has a long history in adventure fiction,32 and illustrators were eager to depict these attractive, nearly-white characters visually. Western heterosexual masculine desire informs pictorial compositions promising intimacy with indigenous princesses. By imagining the empire by way of its desirable women, Sawyer contributes to the notion that far-off lands and their peoples are objects to acquire and consume. The dangers and opportunities

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 afforded by marrying and procreating with non-white women troubled Haggard – who may have taken a black mistress in the late 1870s during his time stationed in Natal.33 Interracial unions appear in almost all of Haggard’s romance fictions. However, his white heroes’ non-white lovers are generally killed off as part of the plot although, as Rebecca Stott explains, ‘the paler the skin of the native woman the greater her chances of survival’.34 This concern regarding miscegenation carries over to Sawyer’s illustration, which seems to erase any hint of racial hybridity from Maya and her retinue. Only the clothing and painterly dynamism of these women suggests their identity as non-European. The lush, frenetic textures surrounding Sawyer’s minimally rendered princess dramatize her conformity to European conventions of beauty as well as her titillating savagery. Thick, slashing brush strokes mirror the ecstatic dance of the woman immediately before Maya. This dancer’s body forms an elegant s-curve emphasized by her outstretched left arm, the dark negative space behind her right knee, and her bejewelled bare foot – all of which add vigour and excitement to the procession. While the lilies that pour onto the ground from a cloth held loosely around this dancer’s waist remind audiences of Maya’s virginal purity, the princess’s ravishing and wild escort suggests her unrestrained and passionate nature. This erotic composition draws from the discourses of anthropology and Arts and Crafts to create a pictorial synthesis of racial and imperialist ideas. Sawyer’s illustrations insist on Maya’s rich, primitive, and electric personality. Although Haggard’s male characters try repeatedly to force Maya into accepting situations she rejects (Strickland’s death, marriage to Tikal) all fail to bend her to their will, causing the heroine’s exasperated father to complain of ‘this headstrong girl’.35 Sawyer’s success with illustrating strong women made her a good fit for the Haggard commission, but the Longmans, Green, and Company editors may also have reasoned that she could leverage Maya’s determined character to reach women and girl readers. Publishers during the fin de siècle had become increasingly interested in attracting women to their romance fiction offerings. Haggard serialized several of his fictions in magazines marketed to women including Atalanta and The Lady’s Realm. In 1910 he also renamed Queen Sheba’s Ring (initially titled ‘Maqueda’) at the publisher’s request because ‘[t]here’s romance in the title and women love a story about a ring’.36 Even his breakout King Solomon’s Mines succeeded in attracting girl readers. As Haggard reflected in an interview for The Strand, shortly after publishing this romance he ‘received a letter from a girls’ school in America, thanking him most gratefully for writing a book “without a woman in it”!’ 37 The type of flat, ‘angel in the house’ femininity so often portrayed in fiction is likely the culprit for these schoolgirls’ disapproval, rather than the presence of women in general (indeed, an African maiden Foulata and villainous hag Gagool feature largely in King Solomon’s Mines). It was to discerning readers like these girls that Sawyer’s heroic Maya was intended to appeal. Maya’s strength appears in every illustration Sawyer executed of the princess: a character that appears more often than any other in Heart of the World (she features in eleven of eighteen unique illustrations across the US and UK editions). Maya is a superhuman goddess, terrible and merciful, as well as a loving and earnest but deeply flawed ‘native’

Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement girl in need of masculine domination. At the fiction’s climax Maya loses her reason after the Council of the Heart executes her and Strickland’s infant son in retribution for their dishonourable ruse of forging a prophecy to sanction their marriage. She releases a sluice to flood the city, which effectively kills thousands and destroys Zibalbay and Don Ignacio’s hopes for restoring the Indian people to their former glory. Sawyer shows the marvellous princess of the Heart in all her contradictory aspects as saviour, bride, sinner, mother, mad woman, and, finally, corpse in flames on her funeral pyre. Motivated by more than just the desire to titillate readers or the recognition of her adventures’ visuality, Sawyer returns to Haggard’s heroine because Maya registers her ideas about femininity as strong, primitive, and witchy.

The Seasons Sawyer’s art book The Seasons (1905) was published as a large folio containing twelve coloured plates with transparent onion skin paper overlays. The square, linear, colour block illustrations, clearly inspired by the Japonisme movement and the Yellow Book, demonstrate Sawyer’s late style before losing the use of her right hand. Although most of Sawyer’s illustrations were printed as grey halftones, The Seasons features vibrantly hued art lithographs. Each print shows one or several lovely women representing some botanical corresponding to a month: for example, violets (January), primrose (February), daffodil (March), and water-buttercup (April). The spareness of Sawyer’s prints is calculated. Her minimal style is appealing for the simplicity of its form, but when viewed through its overlay each picture gains thematic meaning and literary context. More than a caption, each overlay page contains the month, the plant’s name, lines from a well-known poem and its author, and a linear botanical design. The text for September, for instance, reads: ‘Poppy / A gipsy – / Drowsed in sleepy savageries, / With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss – Francis Thompson’ (see Plate 10). Covered by printed tissue, Sawyer’s lithograph appears indistinct and hazy in comparison to the crisp black lines of the flower design and text. The desultory ladies’ forms representing this opium-providing flower are softened, becoming a sort of decorative backdrop or wallpaper. The use of tissue paper to synthesize text with image advances Sawyer’s organic design conception. The Seasons transforms a protective cover sheet into an essential introduction for each lithograph. Enjoying Sawyer’s book occurs through carefully curated stages that transfigure the act of encountering this text into a sort of Dance of Seven Veils. The slow reveal heightens the audience’s enjoyment of her prints through pleasurable anticipation. It doubles the number of illustrations by making both states (covered and uncovered) equally correct. Sawyer integrates word and image in a more profound, imbricated manner than is achievable in captioned images alone. This synthesis allows readers to absorb the textual introduction to each print in a pleasingly liminal manner. Her personified poppies, inspired by poet and opium addict Thompson’s 1893 poem ‘The Poppy’, combine the sensuality and drowsiness promised by his words. In fact, Sawyer’s deeply symbolic illustration seems to draw from the entirety of Thompson’s poem concerning time’s relentlessness,

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 and not just this excerpt. The women’s supine postures and flattened vermillion dresses resemble not only the rounded-rectangular shape of poppy petals but also the withering of a plucked flower which spurs the poem’s narrator’s reflections. Thompson compares the poppy’s fragility to the permanence of printed texts, which must outlast the author’s loftier aspirations: ‘I fall into the claws of Time: / But lasts within a leaved rhyme / All that the world of me esteems – / My withered dreams, my withered dreams’.38 Just as Thompson’s poetry will continue after his death, so Sawyer’s illustrations of supernaturally beautiful flower-women offer the artist a sort of beautiful immortality, however tragic and ‘withered’ her reality. The Seasons walks the line between fine art and illustration. Several art dealers during the fin de siècle partnered with publishers to issue limited print runs of lithographs by popular artists. These were sold as collected albums or portfolios. Inspired by the vogue for peintres-graveurs in André Marty’s L’Estampe originale (fl. 1893–5), French dealer Ambroise Vollard, for instance, issued several of these portfolios featuring colour lithographs by prominent avant-garde artists.39 Bliss, Sands and Co., London, joined Vollard in meeting the demand for art prints, publishing an album of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs entitled the Portfolio Yvette Guilbert (the Série Anglaise) in 1898. Sawyer was inspired particularly by the book making of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press (fl. 1891–8), which advanced the ideal of hand-crafted book design that takes into consideration the whole book’s production: paper, ink, kerning, type form, and decorative embellishments. This degree of care, evident in the richness of Sawyer’s prints and their thought-provoking overlays, demonstrates the artist’s keenness to follow Morris in disregarding no aspect of book design. Although its publisher, Sands and Company, is not an Arts and Crafts press, The Seasons’ high degree of aesthetic mindfulness and rigour is the same that inspired the generation of Arts and Crafts presses after Kelmscott, including the Ashendene, Doves, Eragny, and Vale Presses.40 All sought to mitigate the publishing industry’s mechanization by designing and crafting beautiful printed texts. Sands and Company’s willingness to meet Sawyer’s quality and design standards attests to the level of care she brought to all her illustration and book art productions. Although the remarkable life and art of Amy Sawyer remains in many respects mysterious, a study of this fin de siècle artist offers insight not only into the place of Arts and Crafts and the fantastic in illustration but also, as this chapter endeavours to show, the role of illustrations in illuminating issues relating to gender, race, sexuality, and imperialism. Sawyer’s work is inextricably situated within contemporary socio-political conversations regarding the Woman Question and the British Empire. Sawyer brought a sense of design and individual expression inherited from the Herkomer School’s Arts and Crafts style to all of her projects. During her lifetime, Sawyer’s art drew much praise for its thematic freshness and masterful execution. As one reviewer from The Connoisseur effuses of her 1919 exhibition at Walker’s Galleries (New Bond Street, London), ‘Miss Sawyer believes in the latest phase of anecdotalism, combining sound technique with flights of mystic imagination. There are many refreshing qualities in this lady’s work. Her watercolour is

Amy Sawyer and the Arts and Crafts movement handled with comprehension; her colour is harmonious; her compositions well balanced … Miss Sawyer is very imaginative, addressing the beholder as a person of imagination’.41 Although Sawyer’s subject matter tends to the whimsical, including romantic incidents from folk tales, adventure fiction, and poetry, her art’s ideological complexity makes it a uniquely opportune marker of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century British culture. Her interest in women as subjects – particularly strong, complex, regal, symbolic, and witchy women – offers a compelling glimpse into her concerns as a successful professional woman illustrator.

Notes 1 Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Joseph Bristow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 165. 2 George Saintsbury, ‘The Present State of the Novel’, The Fortnightly Review, 48/249 (1 September 1887), p. 415. 3 Ibid. 4 Andrew Lang, ‘Realism and Romance’, The Contemporary Review, 52 (1887), pp. 684–5. 5 Corinne Saunders, ‘Introduction’, in A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 1–2. 6 Hubert von Herkomer, My School and My Gospel (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1908), p. 14. 7 Ibid., p. 30. 8 Qtd in Kevin Matthias, ‘Portrait of Two Artists’, The Journal of the Friends of Bushey Museum, 5 (May 2004), p. 12. 9 ‘The Arts and Crafts Exhibition, 1896’, The Studio (1897), p. 277. 10 J. S. L., ‘The Institute of Painters in Oil, Piccadilly’, Public Opinion, 9 November 1894, p. 595. 11 Qtd in Anne Parfitt-King, Amy Sawyer of Ditchling: Artist, Eccentric and Lady of Letters (Bakewell, Derbyshire: Country Books, 2013), p. 64. 12 Parfitt-King, Amy Sawyer of Ditchling, p. 65. 13 John Ruskin, On the Nature of Gothic Architecture: And Herein of the True Functions of the Workman in Art (London: Smith, Elder, & Co, 1854), p. 3. 14 Qtd in Parfitt-King, Amy Sawyer of Ditchling, p. 64. 15 Parfitt-King, Amy Sawyer of Ditchling, p. 57; Ruth Lawrence, ‘The History of Amy Sawyer; Creative Lady of Ditchling’, Sussex Living Magazine (16 February 2015), http://west.sussexliving.com/ amy-sawyer-history/ (accessed 11 July 2022). 16 Sawyer’s domestic relationship with Minnie King was complex. At times Sawyer describes her as an employee and at others like family. In one letter Sawyer rather impersonally discusses Miss King’s upcoming ‘day off’ from her duties as companion, whereas in another she more warmly, if morbidly, states, ‘if I get wiped out [in a car accident] and Miss King by a miracle survives, I commend her to your tender mercies seeing she has made my last days happy and has no money at all of her own’; Parfitt-King, Amy Sawyer of Ditchling, pp. 94, 106. 17 Other examples include the Zulu Maiwa from Maiwa’s Revenge (1888). 18 H. Rider Haggard, Heart of the World (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1896), p. 167. 19 Interestingly, although ten of these illustrations appear in both editions, both feature unique illustrations absent in the other. 20 H. Rider Haggard, ‘Dear Mrs Traquair’, 14 December 1887, Private Collection.

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 21 H. Rider Haggard, The Days of My Life: An Autobiography, ed. C. J. Longman (London: Longmans Green and Co., 1926), vol. 1, p. 220. 22 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 189. See also Lindy Stiebel, Imagining Africa: Landscape in H. Rider Haggard’s African Romances (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001), passim; Neil Hultgren, Melodramatic ImperialWriting: From the Sepoy Rebellion to Cecil Rhodes (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014), pp. 63–89. 23 Pascal Fischer, ‘The Graphic She: Text and Image in Rider Haggard’s Imperial Romance’, Anglia, 125/2 (2007), p. 276. 24 Julia Reid, ‘Gladstone Bags, Shooting Boots, and Bryant & May’s Matches: Empire, Commerce, and the Imperial Romance in the Graphic’s Serialization of H. Rider Haggard’s She’, Studies in the Novel, 43/2 (2011), p. 155. 25 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 21–5. 26 Ibid., p. 21. 27 Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory ofVisuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 28 All of these paintings are in private collections and reproduced in Parfitt-King, Amy Sawyer of Ditchling. 29 Karl Pearson, ‘Woman As Witch’, in The Chances of Death, and Other Studies in Evolution, vol. 2 (London: Edward Arnold, 1897), p. 12. 30 Haggard, Heart of the World, p. 294. 31 Ibid., p. 294. 32 See also Haggard’s Black Heart,White Heart (1896) and King Solomon’s Mines; Frank Aubrey’s The Devil Tree of El Dorado (1896); and William R. Bradshaw’s The Goddess of Atvatabar (1891). 33 D. S. Higgins, Rider Haggard: The Great Storyteller (London: Cassell, 1981), p. 35. 34 Rebecca Stott, ‘The Dark Continent: Africa as Female Body in Haggard’s Adventure Fiction’, Feminist Review, 32/1 (1989), p. 70. 35 Haggard, Heart of the World, p. 242. 36 D. E.Whatmore, H. Rider Haggard: A Bibliography (Westport, CT: Meckler Publishing Corporation, 1987), p. 52. 37 Harry How, ‘Illustrated Interviews No. VII. – Mr. H. Rider Haggard’, The Strand, 3 (1892), p. 14. 38 Francis Thompson, ‘The Poppy’, in Poems (London: Elkin Mathews & John Lane, 1893), lines 77–80. 39 Jonathan Pascoe Pratt and Douglas W. Druick, ‘Vollard’s Print Albums’, in Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde, ed. Rebecca A. Rabinow (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), p. 189. 40 Rosalind P. Blakesley, The Arts and Crafts Movement (London: Phaidon, 2006), p. 69. 41 ‘Subjects by Amy Sawyer’, The Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors (1919), p. 264.

11 Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale as a black-and-white artist Pamela Gerrish Nunn

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a ry Eleanor Brickdale (1872–1945) – later known as Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale – became one of the most familiar artists of Edwardian Britain, widely recognized for her painting, watercolour, and illustration within the trend termed neo-Pre-Raphaelitism. In this chapter I shall, however, consider her formative – Victorian – years in the profession, when she looked set to become a leading graphic or black-and-white artist typical of the age. ‘Black-and-white’ was a well understood and fashionable category of visual culture in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, but since then it has stood art-historically in the hierarchy of media well below painting, sculpture, and watercolour, with one foot in the field of fine art and the other in mundanely commercial territory. Brickdale’s initial success has, then, been occluded by the fine-art reputation that she subsequently gained. A consideration of her journey from apprenticeship to public acclaim throws up the question of how often, in fact, the field of black-and-white work functioned as a platform for late nineteenth-century women’s artistic careers. Brickdale was born into an upper-middle-class family with a long history, in which the sons were expected to go into professions that served society and the daughters to make good marriages, from the security of which they could contribute altruistically to the quality of national life. Needless to say, according to this script women in the family would neither need nor seek to earn, as they would be financially supported in turn by their father, their husband, and if necessary, eventually by their sons. Accordingly, the elder Brickdale son, Charles, followed their father into law and the younger one, John, went into medicine, and over the years both published specialist texts that gave them enduring status in their fields, Charles even receiving a knighthood in 1911. But neither Mary Eleanor nor her elder sister Kate fulfilled their conventional destiny with marriage: Kate Fortescue Brickdale remained a private individual, without husband, children, profession, philanthropic causes, or scandal to bring her into the public eye, while her younger sister, embodying a more modern type, became well known as a professional 209

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 artist. Black-and-white art, a field so typical of the 1890s, was the vehicle for this transition in her case from the traditional to the new. There are proofs of the young amateur in pen-and-ink and pencil sketches Brickdale made while travelling through Germany and Switzerland in 1885, that is to say when she was aged thirteen or fourteen, and northern Scotland in 1889 (aged seventeen or eighteen), and it can be supposed that her artistic career began with a pastime and gradually crystallized as an occupation and an identity. At the age of seventeen (1889), she enrolled at the Crystal Palace School of Art, Science, and Literature, not far from the family home. Although its chief recommendation may have been that it was nearby, Brickdale later gave the Crystal Palace School credit for providing her with a firm foundation in design.1 Its rather general aims embraced anatomy and composition, ‘artistic wood carving’ and ‘decorative art and design’;2 and prizes were awarded for drawing from the antique, modelling from the life and from the antique, animal studies, original designs in illustration, oil painting, sculpture and architecture.3 When much later in life Brickdale was asked to advise young women about the artistic profession, she recalled ‘working at black-and-white before going to the school in the morning and also after returning home at night’.4 Regardless of how far her artistic ambitions stretched at this point, this was clearly a possible way into the artistic profession for a young woman in a liberal, well-to-do family with no history of art-making although well-disposed to the visual arts. At an unknown date in the mid-1890s, Brickdale moved on to the St John’s Wood School of Art in north central London. This action may have been both prompted and enabled by the unexpected death of her father in May 1894 and the family’s subsequent move into central London, although the absence of documentary records for the St John’s Wood School makes the exact dates of Brickdale’s attendance impossible to pinpoint. Regardless, this school was a stepping-stone to the Royal Academy Schools, and all its classes, including study from the nude, were open equally to female and male students. The procedure for entering the RA Schools was to submit certain prescribed pieces of work which secured a person entry as a probationer: Brickdale was admitted on 10 January 1895.5 Already the young woman had begun to forge a professional practice as an artist in black-and-white, a field that was evidently enjoying (or suffering) a marked popularity at that moment: ‘[T]he correspondence editors of the Sunday papers have found a new outlet for the superfluous energies of their eager querists in advising them to “go in” for black and white’, had been the observation of one sceptical writer in the new art and design periodical The Studio in the summer of 1893.6 A headpiece by Brickdale appeared in the November 1894 issue of the Pall Mall Magazine over the article ‘Italian Despots of the Quattro Cento’ (see Figure 11.1). The Pall Mall Magazine, only one year old, was an offshoot of the Pall Mall Gazette, offering literate and cultured content produced by moderately well-known writers, critics, and pundits. Aiming at an American level of quality (its founder was US millionaire William Waldorf Astor, although the editors, Hamilton and Straight, were both British), the Pall Mall Magazine has been considered to have attained ‘the very highest level in English magazine production’.7 Its visual aesthetic

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art

Figure 11.1  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, headpiece for ‘Italian Despots of the Quattro Cento’, Pall Mall Magazine, November 1894

favoured the late Pre-Raphaelite/Studio magazine style, though a list of visual contributors compiled in retrospect presents a motley crew of illustrators: ‘Lewis Baumer, Frank Brangwyn, D.Y. Cameron, Bertram MacKennal, Patten Wilson, Arthur Rackham, Maurice Greiffenhagen, W. Hyde, Raven Hill, A. S. Hartrick, Miss Brickdale, Jessie Bayes, E. J. Sullivan, W. Hatherell and Byam Shaw’.8 Though this first appearance was slight, once an artist had sold a drawing to a regular publication it could be used over and over again, and indeed this vignette was used to head quite another article in the September 1895 issue of the Pall Mall Magazine. These items would probably have belonged to a pool of illustrations accepted from petitioning artists into which the editor could dip when laying out the magazine every month. Other designs in Brickdale’s early oeuvre not known to have appeared in publication, both vignettes and more elaborate compositions, indicate that the apprentice artist was producing numerous such mix-and-match designs to sell to editors at piece-rates when she was still unknown and seeking to make an inroad into the profession. One piece that hints at how

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 the system worked is an undated design for ‘Without Prejudice’, which was the title of a regular column written by Israel Zangwill in the Pall Mall Magazine: this was probably produced speculatively, so the artist could show how she might be able to produce what was needed, but it never appeared in the magazine. Two other new pieces did appear in the same journal in January 1896, however.9 Although the strength of character needed for Brickdale to seek employment in this way should not be overlooked, it was by this time accepted that women might occupy this territory successfully – and that it might lead to greater things. One doubts that she knew of the pre-Victorian examples listed by Barbara Onslow in considering nineteenthcentury female illustrators in 200010 but of the leading illustrated papers of her youth, The Graphic (first appearing in December 1869) had carried work by Helen Paterson (later Allingham) and Mary Ellen Edwards (later Freer, later Staples) from 1871. Although a marked tendency can be discerned for these two to be allocated subject matter in which women and children appear, their subjects were not confined to the domestic sphere and the family circle.11 Both these women had at the same time sought exhibition for their original work and were well-known artists as well as familiar illustrators by the time Brickdale was starting out – Allingham was even a regular solo exhibitor. Kate Greenaway made a similar journey, her first black-and-white work occurring in 1867, her first exhibition appearance the following year, and her first illustrated book – published under her own name – in 1872. She featured prominently in an 1892 roll-call of the illustrators employed by the Illustrated London News, advertising to the observant reader the fact that black-and-white work could lead a woman to great artistic success. Further, at the Royal Academy Schools Brickdale had before her the example of Gertrude Demain Hammond, ten years her senior, who had been a prize-winning student in 1885 and in 1896 joined the select numbers of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (or the ‘New’ Society). These individuals, alongside the more heavyweight William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and their Kelmscott Press, the publications of Walter Crane and Joseph Pennell and others, rendered the territory of illustration culturally influential.12 As Holbrook Jackson later declared of the standing of black-and-white art in the 1890s, ‘In no other branch of pictorial art was there so much activity during the whole of the period, and, on the whole, so much undisputed excellence as in the various pen and pencil drawings which blossomed from innumerable books and periodicals’; black-and-white art in that decade ‘achieved a distinction rarely if ever attained before’, showing ‘in an outburst of ability as prolific as it was varied, the full strength of our native genius for all forms of black and white art’.13 In that 1932 interview already cited, Brickdale advised her readers that in building a career ‘there are chances, which should never be neglected, for a student who is enterprising and has worked hard to gain some commission through open competition – for an advertisement perhaps’ – and it was with such a piece (now untraced) that she first appeared in exhibition, at the Royal Academy annual show of 1896.14 Of course, this kind of work was considered a very junior element of the annual Academy exhibition,

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art but its very inclusion indicated an acceptance that commercially oriented black-and-white work had a legitimate connection with fine art. Other work Brickdale made in the mid-1890s shows further ideas that could attract commercial commissions: a bookplate for each of her brothers; a nursery calendar, with characters from well-known folkloric and fairy-stories providing the monthly watercolour images – Jack the Giant-killer for January, Dick Whittington for December – exhibited a few months after the Academy at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’s annual show; an elegant pen-and-ink design incorporating Robert Herrick’s poem ‘To Violets’ showing an awareness of the Art Nouveau style; Arthurian or medieval story pictures in pen and ink including The Princess and the Swineherd, Lancelot du Lake, St George and the Dragon; and illustrations of quotations and proverbs. While showing that Brickdale was abreast of the current trends in design, such as bookplates (of which The Studio’s editor, Gleeson White, wrote in the first issue, ‘the fashion for making new ones in spreading rapidly’),15 overall this work indicates which choices might bring a female illustrator early success at the turn of the century. The traditional typecasting of women led to subject matter deemed appealing to children – nursery rhymes, fairy tales, folkloric sources, early-learning material (the alphabet, simple numbers) – being widely assumed to enjoy a fundamental place in the female worker’s repertoire. But, while Brickdale’s apprentice work seems to accept this, notably absent from it were those other gendered staples, flowers and everything floral, and dress/fashion. This corpus of work reflects equally the influence of Studio magazine; William Morris, Burne-Jones, and Walter Crane; and the design styles most in fashion, Arts and Crafts, Pre-Raphaelitism, and Art Nouveau. This aesthetic bent was promoted by The Studio not only in its choice of contents but in its competitions, which began in the first year of publication, addressed most particularly to art students.16 Scores of designs were submitted month after month, tempting entrants not by the promise of fame (for submitters had to use a pseudonym) but by money prizes. It also suggests what kind of work was seen as suitable for the female artist – a question addressed in a long article appearing in The Ladies’ Field in August 1898 under the title ‘Practical Advice to Lady Illustrators’. Its tones were less than encouraging: ‘[G]reat novelty is not what the average editor needs. Still less does he want old poems with ornamental borders. Herrick’s lyrics or Shakespeare’s sonnets may give opportunity for pretty fancy, but the market is glutted with them. Nor does he want decorative compositions’.17 The very presence of this article – in a periodical which was employing Brickdale at the time – indicates that the path she was by then successfully treading was hugely popular with aspiring female artists of the day, whether they aimed to become illustrators or to establish a stepping-stone to more prestigious media. In many cases, such as that of Nelly Erichsen (b. 1862), say, it appears that their early strategy was to cast their bread upon the waters and see which efforts led to success; in her case, an early start in both illustration and painting gave way eventually to more enduring opportunity as a black-and-white artist, after a good illustrating commission in 1894; her last exhibition as a painter was in 1897 and she has now no reputation as a painter, though known to

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 historians of illustration.18 Evidence suggests that the boundaries between these different visual practices tended to be seen by these women as porous, as, conscious of their special difficulties in firstly getting opportunity and secondly cementing their visibility, they respected far less the hierarchy of forms that the men with whom they competed had constructed, and tried whatever options they could – as indeed we have seen Brickdale doing. Was this, after all, not what the pioneers – Edwards, Allingham – had done? Black-and-white had led to greater things for them, and now she could see it doing so for her nearer competition such as Gertrude Demain Hammond. Looking around her, Brickdale could also see that the older artist Jessie MacGregor (b. 1851), while recognized for her historical genre paintings since the 1870s, contributed illustrations to a travel book in 1898, then illustrated a little book for children in 1900 with pencil drawings very much in the same style as her paintings, hinting at black-andwhite being a way to boost the more prestigious work that would remain her principal product.19 And one of Brickdale’s ultimately most successful contemporaries Lucy Kemp-Welch (b. 1869) could be seen trying to break into the public arena by simultaneously (1895–6) making her first submission of an oil to the Academy and providing black-andwhite illustrations to a historical memoir by Maude E. King, Round about a Brighton Coach Office.20 By contrast, Hammond’s sister Chris Hammond was at that point a well-respected and popular provider of black-and-white illustration for quality authors including Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, and William Thackeray, but looked set to progress no further in reputation without a move into colour work or the exhibition of original pictures. It should not be assumed, however, that the universal aim of the female artist at the time was to make a name: some, such as Chris Hammond, would have been satisfied with making a living. But a name was the key to some independence of action as well as to steady work. Brickdale’s individual standing began to form when at the end of 1897 she had been presented to the public as a promising decorative artist, winning one of the annual prizes at the Royal Academy Schools,21 and the first published article to focus on her appeared in March 1898, identifying her as an up-and-coming designer and illustrator.22 Her work was contextualized by the names Byam Shaw, Crane, and Aubrey Beardsley, and, while it was suggested she had borrowed certain specific elements from the first of these, surely Beardsley’s name was cited only to indicate black-and-white work’s current power to attract headlines, for his sexual suggestiveness and frequent outright eroticism was a far cry from Brickdale’s somewhat unworldly and devout outlook. It was a well-worn tactic to derogate women artists’ work by suggesting it was derived from men’s, and in an article appearing a few months later, it was perhaps pointed for the writer to claim that ‘Miss Brickdale is possessed of an independent spirit in relation to her art’ with ‘a horror of slavish imitation’ – although the names of Millais, Madox Brown, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Beardsley were still adduced in explanation of her work. Despite much of this alleged inspiration being from painters, she was reported to be ‘intending to make black-and-white her speciality’.23 The black-and-white artist of the period needed such promotion in the press because he or she was typically a freelancer. Periodical publications were the most

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art likely place to start looking for employment, the hope for many being to graduate to books, but the very popularity of black-and-white in the 1890s led to the field being overcrowded at the end of the century. The periodical devoted to a female readership – where the apprentice female artist might hope to find a natural home – was in particularly vigorous competition, as Margaret Beetham has demonstrated.24 Already in January 1895, a journalist writing in The Sketch under the title ‘Journals and Journalists of To-Day’ posed the justified question, ‘How on earth do all the ladies’ papers manage to live?’ 25 So, family connections made a timely and considerable contribution to Brickdale’s growing curriculum vitae at this point, in confirmation of the belief often expressed that these were more or less essential to a female artist’s success.26 Charles recruited his sister to design a certificate of registration for his newly established Land Registry Office: it shows that the medieval continued to be the preferred aesthetic hallmark of the English state. Another contemporary manifestation of the medieval was the craze for bookplates, and she designed one for each of her brothers. One of over seventy designers mentioned in The Studio’s special number on the topic appearing in October 1898, Brickdale was described herein as ‘a young illustrator of conspicuous promise […] likely to become as popular in this field of design as in others where already she has scored notable successes’.27 Then she was used in her brother-in-law J. Arthur Gibbs’s book A Cotswold Village to provide twenty pen-and-ink sketches of rural scenes described by the text.28 This book, appearing in January 1899, was based on a series of articles published in the Pall Mall Magazine, in which it had been illustrated by photographs. The choice of hand-drawn illustrations for the book reflects the current popularity of autograph black-and-white work in creating cultural cachet.29 However, although A Cotswold Village saw Brickdale move from the periodical press into the slightly more prestigious field of book illustration, she lacked the status that would have put her name on the frontispiece (and indeed the drawings themselves were published unsigned). It was good fortune that a network of upper-class liberals, a cultured and modernizing class of progressive (though not necessarily radical) individuals, families, and enterprises, surrounded this aspiring artist. Such people – the Fortescue Brickdales, the Gibbs, and their friends – were in microcosm the readership of the new large-format upper-class weeklies Country Life and The Ladies’ Field begun by George Newnes in January 1897 and March 1898 respectively, which provided the next expansion of Brickdale’s visibility as a black-and-white artist.30 The first of these was to leave a significant mark on English life for more than a generation, and Brickdale’s numerous and varied designs for the two titles allowed her to develop a repertoire and attract a public that she was able to mine for years to come (see Figure 11.2). Country Life has been described as ‘the manual of gentrification for the late Victorian and Edwardian middle classes’,31 part of the Liberal trend for appreciation of the English country life and rural traditions that embraced the National Trust and the Ancient Monuments Protection Acts, gardening guru Gertrude Jekyll and the mechanization of agriculture, Allingham’s villages and inherited estates. Though Country Life’s by-line was ‘The journal

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Figure 11.2  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, illustration for Country Life, 25 March 1899

for all interested in Country Life and Country Pursuits’,32 those who could afford a shilling a week (if both titles were purchased) on this non-essential item were more likely to be those materially invested in the countryside than those financially dependent upon it, when the average weekly earnings of a rural labourer were sixteen shillings.33 Both magazines addressed a leisured reader with time to appreciate approximately thirty pages of heavy, shiny paper. As Clive Aslet observes, Country Life’s commercial success ‘depended on its appeal not just to landed families but to the aspiring middle classes as well’ – by which is meant already middle-class Britons with aspirations to rise further, their mobility facilitated by bicycles and motor-cars and their confidence manifested in their possession, both actual and imagined, of the national past (see Figure 11.3). Both Country Life and The Ladies’ Field were up-to-the-minute in combining photography and original illustration, selecting as principal illustrators not only Brickdale but Shaw and their slightly older contemporary Arthur Rackham (b. 1867), all beginning to make their names familiar to the cultured reader and regular gallery-goer. This small stable of artists (several others were active in these periodicals but less visible, gaining little ultimate reputation)34 provided a set of signature designs – not so much illustrations as decorations

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art

Figure 11.3  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, illustration for Country Life, 23 September 1899

– invoking the aesthetic trend associated in the public mind with Morris, Crane, and Studio magazine but also with some elements of turn-of-the-century painting and literature. It can be hazarded that their work was received by readers as a little Arthurian, a little Shakespearean – and thoroughly English. Although the somewhat pejorative label ‘nouveau riche’ does not describe all Country Life’s and The Ladies’ Field’s readers, many were certainly related to the ‘new titles springing up among soap manufacturers like the Levers, grocers like the Liptons, armament tycoons like the Armstrongs, and cigarette makers like the Wills’, whom G. E. Mingay lists in his account of late-century British rural life.35 The magazines’ visual vocabulary evoked an England which had long been a hierarchical society of inherited social position and extreme divisions of wealth and opportunity, but tempted the reader to think of the present as a time informed by the best of a glorious past. While these illustrations presented labourers alongside seigneurs and their consorts, the former were no muck-spreaders, stone-pickers, turnip-hoers, swede-grubbers, or gleaners, but smiling fellows and girls in roles of folkloric appeal such as milkmaid, baker, and footman, tempering nostalgia with selective modernization, rustic habit with urbane convenience.36 These appealing hand-drawn figures expressed no signs of distress, dissent, or class conflict: thinking of contemporary visions of the rural, this was an evocation of country life less in the vein of Tess of the d’Urbervilles than of Lark Rise to Candleford, in which all members of society lived amiably together. And thus it perhaps goes without saying that Brickdale’s (and Shaw’s and Rackham’s) dramatis personae were almost exclusively white, with members of other races merely glimpsed when called for by some textual specificity, such as ‘Society at Home and Abroad’, whose headpiece showed the polite encounter between a European lady and a Chinese man.37

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 This accorded with the positive, optimistic and go-ahead stance of these two magazines, whose founder was emphatically Liberal, rather than Tory, and thus sensed himself to be a man of the future, perhaps from the past but emphatically not of the past. His readers, reassured, encouraged, or excited by these magazines, became Brickdale’s typical patrons, remaining firm admirers for years to come; in this practical sense, too, then, her beginnings in black-and-white contributed to Brickdale’s gradual rise in status from graphic artist to painter. While no detail of the contracts under which this artwork was done is known to this writer, it can be surmised that the artist was paid for an original design initially requested for a specific slot in the magazine, either a regularly repeating item such as ‘Correspondence’; a series with successive episodes such as ‘Sport in Other Lands’; or a unique text. Any drawing would then be placed and used as often thereafter as the editor saw fit. For instance, a Brickdale design featuring a milkmaid and cattle headed the article ‘Haymaking’ in Country Life of 6 August 1898 but by the end of 1900 had appeared about thirty times at the head of articles on diverse topics. A cynic could conclude from this practice that the managers or editors became less and less willing to purchase original artwork, but it is also an indication of the designs’ importance to the magazine’s fundamental character that they were considered valid and appropriate over such a long period. The Ladies’ Field did not carry the same designs as Country Life but the result of the same artists producing similar pieces for the same folio format with the same combination of photographs and decorations was a common appearance. As a woman’s magazine, it thus resembled Country Life much more than it did its direct rivals, such as The Queen (established 1867), which were of manifestly lower quality with no autograph artwork on show. The Ladies’ Field included both classically inspired figures and a much greater number of contemporary figures, such as the twin readers heading the regular feature ‘Books of the Day’ and the twin tennis players of another regular column, ‘Sports and Pastimes’. Was this a nod to the female reader’s supposed alertness to fashion? Or a belief that the female reader was generally less invested in a notion of the past and more attuned to the topical or modish? Brickdale had a further Newnes commission for a more modest women’s title, the quarto monthly Fashions and Fancies, and it is indicative of the potential of the woman’s periodical market at this point in time that he put his top female illustrator on the job. But, where Country Life and Ladies’ Field were claimed by Newnes’ first biographer ‘to be found in almost every country house in the United Kingdom’ 38 in the early years of the new century, Fashions and Fancies with its middlebrow character had a rather more modest reach and, as it turned out, far less success and thus a much shorter life: it ran for less than eighteen months between May 1898 and the end of 1899. Whether there was a natural fit between publications aimed at women and the female illustrator is moot, as is the question of whether the female illustrator had any fears about being ghettoized by such opportunity. Indicatively, The Girls’ Own Paper, beginning publication in 1879, made a feature of the work of Kate Greenaway, and also used women to illustrate its lynchpin, the serial story, with M. Ellen Edwards and Marcella Walker conspicuous in this role. It

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art also positioned these illustrators as artists by means of the free-standing colour plate in the role of frontispiece, the caption ‘from the painting by …’ pushing the implication that this was fine-art work even though by a person the reader knew as a graphic artist.39 But at the same time, it carried pictorial content by more male artists – over twenty in the decade 1890 to 1900.40 Other women’s titles with pretensions to visual impact, such as The Queen and The Lady’s Pictorial, might make a point of using women’s work without confining themselves to it. Others, such as Oscar Wilde’s Woman’s World, simply used the editor’s favourite artists. The woman’s paper’s content was well established by that time, and Fashions and Fancies conformed to it: biographical profiles of royalty, anecdotes about women in fashionable society, domestic crafts, hints on how to achieve a more complete femininity – though it steered clear of the recipes and ‘how-to’ projects typical of mid-Victorian women’s papers and the moralizing fictions typical of Christian periodicals. While Brickdale’s headpieces were the most visually striking aspect of any page, they suffered from a generally poorer standard of production and often had to compete with photogravures of famous individuals and the latest fashions, although there was more consistency in their deployment: that is to say, the design for the ‘Home Dressmaking’ feature was the same one from month to month; and Father Time greeted a fashionably dressed young woman on the page that was regularly devoted to hints about womanliness, be the topic ‘To Become a Graceful Woman’ (February 1899) or ‘Girls That Men Dislike’ (March 1899). The pages of Fashions and Fancies expose the illustrator as a servant, not a master, and for many in this role it was only eventually that he or she might have accumulated enough of a name to exercise the kind of self-determination that it was generally thought the fine artist enjoyed. As Edmund J. Sullivan (himself an illustrator of the press) complained in early 1901, ‘To look at the condition of modern illustration is to see a spectacle of fine talents being thrown away, grinding away at a degrading treadmill or cutting blocks with razors, not pleasant to behold […] The Art Editor is a broomstick in the hand of the housemaid, brandished over the head of the unlucky artist’.41 In 1899 came Brickdale’s second commission as a book illustrator, for the publisher George Bell and Sons. She was asked for ten black-and-white drawings to illustrate a new schoolroom edition of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (see Figure 11.4). An octavo volume appearing at the price of one shilling in 1900, this stylistically unpretentious publication joined such classics as Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Swiss Family Robinson on Bell’s list. Once again, this put Brickdale’s work before a huge audience, as the peer of Bell’s other illustrators, Shaw and Robert Anning Bell. The aesthetic was rough-and-ready: heavy outlining and a liberal use of empty space made the images easy to understand, while a diligent deployment of period costume signalled what would become a staple of Brickdale’s practice. Pre-Raphaelitism’s repertoire hovered behind these illustrations of Scott’s well-known medievalist adventure, though style was of less importance than readability in such a project, intended to appeal by its accessibility, and elegance an unnecessary expense.

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Figure 11.4  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ‘Gurth and Wamba’, Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, 1900

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art Brickdale was already preparing for a step up from black-and-white artist to colourist, and from illustrator to creator, however: in the summer of 1899 the Bond Street art dealers Dowdeswell’s commissioned a suite of watercolours to be exhibited in a solo show. Dowdeswell’s, like its main rival the Fine Art Society, could make an artist’s reputation. (Arguably, this is what the Fine Art Society had done for Allingham.)42 In addition, although still busy exposing herself as a black-and-white artist in her appearances that year at both the Academy and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, Brickdale snagged a share of the Constable edition of Shakespeare’s works, to be illustrated in colour and to appear in 1901. This project put her into the company of Shaw, Frank Cadogan Cowper, Gerald Moira, and others, consolidating the idea of a neo-Pre-Raphaelite cohort of artists visible at the level of illustration or commercial art rather than exclusively on the higher plane of painting or fine art. However, like those other artists, Brickdale was making efforts to climb further up the hierarchy of art-workers. Thus her appearances at the Academy annual exhibition, confined to black-and-white in the first three years (1896, 1897, 1898) but for the sole addition of her prize-winning RA design Spring, expanded in 1899 to include oils along with black-and-white works. Similarly, at the 1900 exhibition she was hung in both media. It could be said that in so doing she was muddying the waters of her public image, but if it had been her original hope to gradually work her way up the hierarchy of media, it was certainly timely that Brickdale was poised to leave the designation ‘illustrator’ behind for the more prestigious one of ‘painter’: for, discussing in mid-1900 the ambitious exhibition of modern illustration planned for the South Kensington Museum, the Pall Mall Gazette’s correspondent declared that ‘the black-and-white artists are deserving of all our sympathy for their case is, indeed, a hard one […] the great mass of [them] are chronically without commissions of any kind – the market is woefully overstocked’, observing disgustedly that a drawing representing three days’ work might attract no more than five shillings remuneration.43 In the years between 1898 and 1901 Brickdale was getting thirty shillings for a small design, so she must have felt she had a good chance of succeeding at the next level and did not ensure her inclusion in this major exhibition of black-and-white artists, perhaps hoping that she was about to change her status as an artist.44 In 1901, Academy-goers could see in Brickdale’s exhibited oil The Deceitfulness of Riches a skilled and confident painter, while Country Life readers (to an extent, the same audience) continued to be reminded week after week of her ability in black-and-white work. The watercolours for Dowdeswell’s were presented to the public in June that year, one month after the Academy had opened, the not inconsiderable number of forty-five pictures creating quite a stir. Curiously, none of the show’s reviewers, who ranged from the totally enthusiastic to the guardedly approving, referred to their maker as an already established artist in black-and-white. Was it assumed that she wanted to disassociate herself from her former repute? Though her new fame as a watercolourist consolidated her acceptance as a painter, Brickdale did not abandon the field of black-and-white art, suggesting the same ambivalence

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Figure 11.5  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ‘At the Sepulchre’, Pall Mall Magazine, December 1901

about the hierarchy of forms that has been considered already as possibly typical of the female practitioner of the time. In ‘At the Sepulchre’ for the Pall Mall Magazine (December 1901) (see Figure 11.5) and two designs illustrating poems by William Wordsworth shown at the winter exhibition of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1903 (see Figure 11.6), she showed her affinity for Burne-Jones and Morris’s Kelmscott Press work, and it is significant of her ongoing willingness to be known as a black-and-white artist that Brickdale was represented in Walter Shaw Sparrow’s important 1905 book Women Painters of the World by these and a watercolour and a crayon drawing; and indeed the text identified her as both a painter and an illustrator.45 The field of black-and-white illustration provided Brickdale with a further major opportunity in 1905, with the publication by Bell and Hyman of an illustrated edition of Poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson. This was in a series of octavo books, each of which used a single contemporary illustrator to interpret a distinguished writer; Brickdale joined a roll-call of Shaw (Robert Browning), Robert Anning Bell (Keats, Shelley), A. Garth Jones (Milton), and W. Heath Robinson (Poe). This commission showed that Brickdale belonged to a team of black-and-white artists enhanced in the public mind as illustrators by their simultaneous standing as painters.46 It is tantalizing to know nothing of these contracts nor how they came about, but what can be observed is that she was not being confined by gendered typecasting to the female authors favoured at the time, nor to an audience/readership of children, a hackneyed

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art

Figure 11.6  Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, The Female Vagrant, 1903

allocation to female practitioners in all creative fields.47 It will never be known if this was due to Brickdale’s assertiveness, her publishers’ open-mindedness, or some other insignificant circumstance, but it positioned her in the mainstream of illustration and illustrators – albeit liable to be appraised by reactionary observers as the interloper in an otherwise male cohort. Illustrated publications of Tennyson’s poetry were plentiful still, and the challenge in this commission was not only to match the standard set by preceding volumes in the series but to satisfy the reader’s expectations of this particular text while avoiding the

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 stale, the obvious, and the passé.48 Brickdale had to negotiate the iconic images of PreRaphaelite predecessors such as Millais, laid down half a century earlier, while offering her own interpretation. Some individual designs, such as those for ‘Mariana’ and ‘The Lady of Shalott’, would surely have been especially scrutinized by some readers for signs of plagiarism and shortfall. As it was, the full-page designs in particular, with their densely-filled spaces, clean use of heavy lines, and strategically deployed areas of patterning, continued the look for which Brickdale was described in the press as neo-Pre-Raphaelite, while showing simultaneously, in some aspects such as the use of the female nude, their genesis in the Aestheticism surrounded by which their maker had first made her mark. Seventy designs including seventeen full-page illustrations used the style and formats Brickdale had employed for Country Life and The Ladies’ Field and the aforementioned ‘Sepulchre’ and Wordsworth illustrations. Many of the vignettes, indeed, would have looked at home on the pages of Newnes’ magazines, and this resemblance could only enhance the artist’s brand. From this point, Brickdale the illustrator and Brickdale the painter became, in combination, a fixture in the new trend for coloured gift books while her regular exhibition of original pictures continued, and she became in addition a designer for stained-glass windows. Even so, as the years went by Brickdale would revisit the medium that had given her a platform from which to build her career: in 1910, to invent a logo for the art school that her old friends Shaw and Rex Vicat Cole set up;49 in 1916, to produce insignia for the Star and Garter home for wounded soldiers; in 1919, to fulfil the commission from the government’s Maternity and Child Welfare department for public information posters left unfinished on Shaw’s unexpected death; in 1926, to provide another old friend, Dion Clayton Calthrop, with illustrations for his book A Diary of an Eighteenth-Century Garden.50 It is not clear, then, if on the one hand Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale expected to make her name as a black-and-white artist tout court or if on the other she felt that black-and-white work was merely a suitable apprenticeship to a practice that would carry greater prestige – a practice to which she did in fact graduate. She had both before her and around her examples of women negotiating the same set of questions about how, in a still prejudicial environment, they could succeed as creative women in forging a career. Although her present-day recognition is for the work she did as a colourist of various sorts, this chapter has intended to make clear that, before becoming such a favourite painter of Edwardian Britain, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale was an important fin de siècle graphic artist, making a similar journey to other women in the last quarter of the nineteenth century from illustration to the higher grounds of the visual arts – and as such embodying some of the key trends of her time while producing a notable body of work.

Notes 1 Fortescue Brickdale quoted in James Cassidy, ‘The Palace Beautiful’, The Ludgate (September 1898), p. 425.

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art 2 See Tessa Mackenzie, The Art Schools of London (London: Chapman and Hall, 1895), pp. 30–1. 3 See ‘Notes on Current Events’, The British Architect (31 July 1891), p. 80 and ‘International Horticultural Exhibition’, The Times (2 August 1892), p. 2 for details of Brickdale’s progress. 4 Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, ‘The Artist’s Career As a Practical Profession for Women’, Women’s Employment (15 January 1932), p. 28. 5 Marion Hepworth Dixon, ‘Our Rising Artists: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale’, Magazine of Art, 25 (1902), p. 257. 6 Charles G. Harper, ‘Pen-Drawing for Reproduction’, The Studio, 1/4 (August 1893), pp. 197–200. 7 James Thorpe, English Illustration: The Nineties (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1975), p. 170. 8 Albert Kinross, ‘Coming of Age’, The Pall Mall Magazine, 53/253 (May 1914), p. 576. 9 Pall Mall Magazine (January 1896): ‘The Undecided Man’, p. 27; ‘Conrad Reuter of Second Avenue’, p. 80. 10 Barbara Onslow, Women of the Press in 19th-Century Britain (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 156 ff. 11 The Graphic was widely seen as having set a benchmark for modernity, not least in its employment of Paterson and Edwards: for its late-Victorian image, see C. N. Williamson, ‘Illustrated Journalism in England: Its Development – III’, Magazine of Art, 13 (1890), pp. 391–6, although, discouragingly, Williamson demonstrates the common habit of occluding women’s participation in his account of this periodical’s significance. 12 Walter Crane, Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New (London: George Bell & Sons, 1896); Joseph Pennell, Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen: Their Work and Their Methods (London: Macmillan, 1897). 13 Holbrook Jackson, The 1890s (London: Grant Richards, 1913), pp. 339–40. 14 Design for an advertisement, No. 1494. 15 Gleeson White, ‘Designing for Bookplates’, The Studio, 1/1 (April 1893), p. 24; ‘Some recent Bookplates’, The Studio, 1/4 (July 1893), pp. 149–50; ‘And book-plates! all the newest crazes, you see…’ (‘Mrs Percy Dearmer at Home’, The Sketch (26 June 1895), p. 485); this was a specifically black-and-white form. 16 See notice in The Studio, 1/6 (September 1893), p. vi. 17 An Art Editor, ‘Practical Advice to Lady Illustrators’, The Ladies’ Field (20 August 1898), pp. 458–9. 18 On Erichsen, see Sarah Harkness, A Hidden Life (Gloucester: Encarta Publishing, 2018). A typical example of the work that she became identified with is Norwood Young, The Story of Rome (London: J. M. Dent, 1901), later editions of which carried her name on the spine alongside that of the author, indicating her standing. 19 J. S. Fletcher, A Picturesque History of Yorkshire (London: J. M. Dent, 1898) and Christmas Eve at Romney Hall (London: Elkin Mathews, 1900). 20 The Gypsy Horse Drovers, exhibited RA 1895; Maude Egerton King/Hine, Round About a Brighton Coach Office (London: John Lane, 1896). 21 See typically ‘Royal Academy Students Competitions’, The British Architect (17 December 1897), p. 454. The winning design appeared at the next RA exhibition (1898) as Spring, no. 1198. 22 EBS, ‘Eleanor F. Brickdale, designer and illustrator’, The Studio, 13/60 (March 1898), pp. 103–8; it has been speculated, though no evidence has ever been adduced, that the author was Evelyn Pyke-Knott, by then Evelyn Byam Shaw – this is extremely unlikely. 23 E.M.E, ‘The Field of Art’, The Ladies’ Field (27 August 1898), pp. 502–3. 24 Margaret Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own? (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 120–6; and, further, Beetham and Kay Boardman (eds), VictorianWomen’s Magazines (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001) and H. Fraser, S. Green, and J. Johnston (eds), Gender and the Victorian Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 25 ‘Journals and Journalists of To-Day’, The Sketch (30 January 1895), p. 23. 26 Although what was usually meant by this observation was that the woman was related to male artists, as in: ‘I am not aware of one [female artist], unless it be Suor Plautilla or Mrs Wells, with whose antecedents I am only partially acquainted, who did not overcome the difficulty, by the advantage of an early familiarity with art from having been the daughter of a painter or at least of an engraver’ (Sarah Tytler, Modern Painters and Their Paintings (London: Isbister and Co, 1874), p. 301 (sixth edition, 1891) . 27 Gleeson White, ‘Modern Book-plates and Their Designers’, The Studio, 15/67 (special issue October 1898). 28 She was credited in the closing words of the author’s preface as Miss E. F. Brickdale; Gibbs, A Cotswold Village or County Life and Pursuits in Gloucestershire (London: John Murray, 1898), p. viii. Photographs by Colonel Mordaunt also helped to illustrate the book. Re-issued in October 1899, in 1918 it was still in print in its third edition. 29 Gibbs was not only a family relation but also a friend of Edwin Austin Abbey, the hugely popular American illustrator who was amongst the staff teaching Brickdale at the RA at that time, himself known for putting opportunities in the way of his students: ‘To many young men [sic] beside myself he gave a start in life by obtaining commissions for them and introducing them to collectors of works of art’; Frank Cadogan Cowper, Brickdale’s contemporary at the RA, quoted in E. V. Lucas, Edwin Austin Abbey (London: Methuen; New York: Scribner, 1921), p. 372. See also Edwin Austin Abbey, Yale University Art Gallery, 1973. 30 This opportunity was credited by the journalist Marion Hepworth Dixon to a personal introduction to Newnes, but the Pall Mall Magazine, which had already taken her work, was a Newnes title, so he might well have been aware of her already; Marion Hepworth Dixon, ‘Our Rising Artists: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale’, Magazine of Art, 25 (1902), p. 257. Newnes’ significance in fin de siècle periodical publication has been ably documented and appraised by Kate Jackson in George Newnes and the New Journalism in Britain 1880–1910 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2001); see also Howard Cox and Simon Mowatt, ‘Enterprise and Innovation: Technology, Organisation and Innovation: The Historical Development of the UK Magazine Industry’, AUT Business Research Paper 04–2003 (2003), pp. 10–11. 31 Roy Strong, Country Life 1897–1997: The English Arcadia (London: Country Life Books, 1996), p. 29. 32 The Ancient Monuments Protection Act was passed in 1882 and revisited in 1900 to extend its remit. The National Trust made its first purchase of buildings (as opposed to land) in 1896. On mechanization and changes in land ownership, see G. E. Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1990). 33 Figures for 1898, cited in Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England, p. 74. 34 Frederick V. Poole, Edmund J. Sullivan, Harold Nelson, Miriam Garden. 35 Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England, p. 42. 36 Richard Jefferies contends that already in 1892, country women ‘never or rarely milk now’; The Toilers of the Field (1892) quoted in Roger Ebbatson, ‘Women in the Field’, in Gender and Space in Rural Britain 1840–1920, ed. Gemma Goodman and Charlotte Mathiesen (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), p. 18. Karen Sayer’s Women of the Fields (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995) is also relevant here, though she does not consider Country Life and The Ladies’ Field in her examination of the rhetoric of the female field-worker. 37 The Ladies’ Field (18 May 1898), p. 489. Photographs, however, showed foreigners more often. The ways in which empire and imperialism appeared in the magazine of the 1890s is considered in Fraser, Green, and Johnston, Gender and theVictorian Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’s black & white art 38 Hulda Friedrichs, The Life of Sir George Newnes, bart. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911), p. 132. 39 For instance, Edwards’ The Green Leaf and the Sere (1 October 1887); Grandmother’s Girlhood (3 December 1892); The Truant (25 November 1893). 40 There is food for thought in the fact that The Boys’ Own Paper seems to have used only male illustrators. 41 Edmund J. Sullivan, ‘Roundabout Art, Illustration, and Jenny’, Pall Mall Magazine (January–April 1901), pp. 278–81. 42 Drawings illustrating Surrey Cottages, Fine Art Society March 1886; In the Country, drawings, Fine Art Society April/May 1887; On the Surrey Border, Fine Art Society April/May 1889; Drawings, Fine Art Society April/May 1891; Watercolours, Fine Art Society March/April 1894; etc. 43 GLH, ‘Art Notes’, Pall Mall Gazette (13 July 1900), p. 1; the Loan Exhibition of Modern Illustration ran at the South Kensington Museum from January to March 1901. This display of more than a thousand exhibits was intended to evoke public interest in and support of this field; there were nine female exhibitors, including Edwards, Allingham, Greenaway, and MacGregor. 44 30 shillings was £1 and a half; G. L. Taylor, Centenary Exhibition ofWorks by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1972), p. 3. At the high end of the spectrum, Hugh Thomson had been used to getting £3 per drawing up until 1900; Michael Felmingham, The Illustrated Gift Book 1880–1930 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988), p. 29. 45 Walter Shaw Sparrow, Women Painters of the World (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1905): Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care (watercolour), p. 114; To the Daisy and The Female Vagrant (black-and-white), p. 141; Iseult of Brittany (crayons), p. 142. 46 For an indication of that roll-call after a decade of the new century, see C. Geoffrey Holme, Ernest G. Halton, and M. C. Salaman, Modern Book Illustrators and TheirWork (London: The Studio, 1914). 47 The life’s work of Florence Harrison (b. 1877) makes an instructive comparison: see www.florenceharrison.com. 48 On Tennyson’s many illustrators, see Jim Cheshire, ed, Tennyson Transformed: Alfred Lord Tennyson and Visual Culture (Lincoln: The Collection, 2009). On the Endymion series, see Gordon N. Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 182–4. 49 Brickdale also taught at this school for at least three years, 1910–13. 50 This should be called, literally, green-and-white work since the line drawings are reproduced in that colourway rather than the usual form of monochrome.

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12 ‘The great within’: the illustrations of Jessie Marion King for Seven Happy Days Carey Gibbons

J

e s s i e Marion King is known for producing work with ethereal, delicate imagery. Her distinctive style, with its attenuated linear quality and willowy figures, often embellished with stars or petals around their heads and bodies, suggests a preoccupation with the elusive and insubstantial. As John Russell Taylor writes, ‘the image she conjures up of pale ladies festooned in stars and attended by flights of birds, of wan haloed knights, lost in reverie and drifting through wispy landscapes of faint transfigured trees and insubstantial dream-castles of the mind, is not quite like anything else in art, and once entered, never wholly escaped from’.1 Despite these associations with the fantastic, the ethereal, or the immaterial, a consideration of King’s personal writings suggests an interest in the latent power of the subconscious that gives her work a sense of purpose and direction not initially apparent. Colin White, the author of the only monograph on King, describes her early illustrations as depicting ‘a static world where time stood still’, with ‘characters largely motionless, dressed in cumbersome gowns and suits of armour that did not encourage action’.2 Although her work might seem to follow that description, resisting ideas of strong action or motion, a closer investigation of her series of illustrations titled Seven Happy Days, a 1913 Christmas supplement to The Studio, in relation to writings by Christian Larson, a founder of the New Thought movement, reveals an underlying pattern of cause and effect, sense of purpose, and assertion of the power of the individual to control one’s own destiny through constructive, conscious efforts.

Jessie Marion King (1875–1949) Jessie M. King was born the daughter of Mary Ann Anderson and the Revd James W. King of New Kilpatrick parish (now Bearsden, near Glasgow). Her father was a minister of the Church of Scotland, and although he tried to discourage her from becoming an artist, King nevertheless pursued a career as an art teacher at the Queen Margaret College 228

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King in Glasgow before entering the Glasgow School of Art in 1892. Under the direction of Francis Newbery, the School was becoming the centre of a Scottish branch of the Art Nouveau movement known as the Glasgow Style, headed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert McNair, and the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald. Newbery observed King’s remarkable talent for illustration and encouraged her to continue pursuing her detailed and decorative linear style. As Cordelia Oliver notes, King ‘seemed perfectly sure of the direction in which her talent pointed’, and Newbery relieved her of the responsibility of completing the full academic curriculum at the school, sensing that it would not benefit her as she continued developing her talent.3 King asserted that she saw her imaginative pictures vividly with her ‘internal eye’ before applying pen to paper, and in a handwritten lecture for the women of the Rural Institute on a tour of Arran, she wrote of the need for artists to follow their individual visions rather than copying or producing literal representations, asking the women, ‘Why not draw out of our head?’ 4 King also related a story in the lecture about a French visitor to the Glasgow School of Art who saw one of the first exhibitions of her work and declared, ‘I hate her work – she draws things God Almighty never made! She puts tulips on chrysanthemum leaves and makes chrysanthemums have tulip leaves – I hate her work. But it fascinates me!’ A lengthy article on her work in The Studio in 1902 also provides insight into her approach to her art; Walter R. Watson writes, ‘Miss King would persist in seeing things and representing them entirely with her own vision, and absolutely in her own way’.5 Her early career is distinguished by achievement in book cover design, including covers of books published by Verlag, Berlin, a subsidiary company of the great Berlin department store, Wertheim’s, between 1899 and 1902. In 1902, she won a gold medal for a gold-tooled white vellum cover for L’Evangile de l’Enfance (c. 1900) at the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Turin, where her binding was displayed alongside drawings, metalwork and needlework panels, and two stained-glass designs by her husband, E. A. Taylor.6 Newbery was responsible for the Scottish section of works for the exhibition, which increased awareness of the Glasgow Style and acted as a launching point for King’s career in book design and illustration. In the same year she visited Europe on a travelling fellowship, and while in Italy, she became attracted to Renaissance art, especially the works of Sandro Botticelli. King quickly became known for her decorative, delicate, and intricately worked illustrations designed with pen and ink on vellum, a material that had been frequently used for illumination in medieval manuscripts. In addition to Botticelli, her work reflects the influence of Aubrey Beardsley, nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her work has been viewed as an extension of the work of the Pre-Raphaelites, with similar subject matter, shallow spaces, flowing lines, and prominent female figures; in 1908 a survey of Scottish art noted the presence among ‘the younger Scottish painters’ of ‘a number of artists in whose work decorative qualities … frequently associated with some intellectual or poetic motive, predominate over the more purely pictorial elements’, citing the names of Phoebe Traquair and

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 King among those whose works ‘are in some respects products of the aftermath of Pre-Raphaelitism’.7 Additionally, the elongated figures, fluid forms, and ornamental motifs in King’s early work are reminiscent of those adopted by her fellow students at the Glasgow School of Art known as ‘The Four’, consisting of Mackintosh, McNair, and the Macdonald sisters. Their works, particularly those of the Macdonald sisters, include swirling forms linking the group to Art Nouveau and elusive compositions with strange humanoid figures associating the students with European Symbolism, causing them to also be known as ‘The Spooks’. Although King’s works possess a similar otherworldly, enigmatic aspect, and can also be understood within the context of European Symbolism and Art Nouveau, they lack the dark and menacing qualities associated with The Spooks and are distinguished from their work by a wealth of line and decorative detail. In 1899 King joined the staff of the Glasgow School of Art as a Tutor in Book Decoration and Design, and in 1906 she became Tutor in Ceramic Design, teaching at the school until 1908, when she married E. A. Taylor. King retained her maiden name after her marriage, which was unusual at the time but was doubtless due to the fact that she had developed a successful international career. From 1898 onwards, The Studio regularly mentioned King in articles and notes, often reproducing images of her work.8 In 1902 she was given a twelve-page, copiously illustrated feature which helped establish her as a leading artist associated with the Glasgow Style and one of the most talented illustrators of the day. Two important exhibitions, at Bruton Street Galleries, London (1905) and Annan’s Gallery in Glasgow (1907), similarly helped build her reputation. King’s third exhibition at Annan’s in Glasgow in 1912 featured a series of six glowing watercolours on vellum with transparent washes of pastel pink, blue, and green, along with petals and butterflies in silver and gold. The series of watercolours Seven Happy Days was published in 1913 with additional drawings as a Christmas supplement for The Studio. The designs for the supplement are described by White as ‘among the later expressions of Jessie’s Arcadian dream before the harsh realities of wartime brought about a change in her style’.9 In 1910 King and Taylor moved to Paris, where Taylor was appointed professor in the Studio School of Drawing and Painting with Tudor Hart, and together they ran the Shealing Atelier, a studio gallery for fine and applied art. King continued to work as an illustrator but fell under the influence of the innovative colour and design work of Léon Bakst, who was known for his dazzling costumes designed for the Ballets Russes, causing her to move away from the creation of linear, decorative, intricate designs and towards the production of less detailed works emphasizing flat, pure, bright colour. King also experimented with batik, a wax-resist technique that could be applied to clothing and curtains, and wrote a how-to book on the subject entitled How Cinderella Was Able to Go to the Ball (1924). While based in Paris, King and Taylor ran a summer sketching school on the Isle of Arran that attracted participants from across Europe and other regions of the world. The First World War forced King and Taylor to leave France and return to Scotland, where they settled in the village of Kirkcudbright at the ‘Greengate Close’ until King’s

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King death in 1949. Kirkcudbright had emerged as an ‘artists’ town’ in the mid-nineteenth century and became an important centre for women artists in particular. Although the focus of her career was illustration and book design, King also became known for her work in ceramics, textiles, costumes, jewellery, wallpaper, and interior design.

Jessie Marion King and New Thought The papers of Jessie M. King at the National Library of Scotland contain an undated piece of notepaper belonging to King with the following quote: From the great within by Larson Every thought, desire or idea that is taken into the subconscious as mind falls asleep, will be impressed upon the subconscious, & will cause corresponding expressions to be brought forth into the personality – [to eliminate all undesirable thoughts & feelings from mind before going to sleep is therefore extremely important.] the hours of sleep may be employed in the development of anything we may have in view: because whatever we impress upon the mind when we go to sleep will enter the subconscious & will cause the within to give expression to those effects that we desire to secure in the without – 10 The quote is taken from The Great Within (1907), a book written by Christian Larson, an American leader of the metaphysical movement known as New Thought and a prolific author of New Thought books. In The Great Within, Larson describes the subconscious mind as ‘the great within – an inner mental world from which all things proceed that appear in the being of man’.11 According to Larson, ‘Every conscious action produces an impression upon the subconscious and every subconscious reaction produces an expression in the personality’.12 The religious scholar Sydney E. Ahlstrom included New Thought in the tradition of transcendentalism, spiritualism, and theosophy, describing it as a ‘harmonial religion’ that could cross sects and denominations.13 In The History of New Thought (2012), John Haller similarly describes New Thought as a loosely organized movement, which ‘represented groups of like-minded thinkers whose goal was to teach the Christianity of Jesus without dogma, sects, or denominations, and the acceptance of an inner voice as the source of inspiration, health, power, and prosperity’.14 God is understood to be incarnate in nature and human beings; as Haller writes, ‘All that a person was and could be lay within human power that, by inference, was received through an influx of life from the Divine’.15 In The Message of New Thought (1914), Abel Leighton Allen conveys this idea in his description of the subconscious mind as an ‘infinite storehouse of intelligence and power’ that man can draw from after learning the laws ‘by which it is reached, impressed, and controlled’

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 and subsequent explanation that man is ‘coming into consciousness that the great subconscious, “the Great Within”, his own masterful soul, is the link that unites him with the Great Divine Soul’. According to Allen, when man has learned that the subconscious will respond to ‘whatever thought is impressed upon it’, and the secret of ‘transmuting thought into power’, ‘he has found the kingdom of God within’.16 Although we do not know how extensively King engaged with Larson’s texts and New Thought more broadly, her early works, particularly her illustrations for The Studio’s 1913 Christmas supplement titled Seven Happy Days, suggest the influence of the movement. King is described as ‘an illustrator of dreams’ and is known for her drawings of ‘slender, unsubstantial knights and princesses, fairies and nymphs’, characters that ‘belonged to no time and place outside the eternities of dreams’.17 However, an exploration of her designs for Seven Happy Days in relation to Larson’s writings and New Thought beliefs gives her work a surprisingly purposive and practical aspect. Her work also appears more outward-looking and optimistic than might initially be perceived, challenging descriptions of her works as melancholy scenes with languid figures and the tendency to associate her designs with the darker compositions of The Spooks. Furthermore, a consideration of her work in relation to Larson questions the apparent disparity between her art and life noted by White: Her art spoke of stillness and privacy. Her life, by contrast, was public and active. To the outside world she was bold and expansive, a leader and organizer. No matter what pools of silence and reserve lay within, her persona was one of laughing good nature and exuberant friendliness.18 A closer examination bridges this distinction, revealing the sense of action, purpose, and expansiveness at the centre of both the New Thought movement and King’s illustrations.

The Woodlands Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others was issued in 1913 as a bound Christmas supplement to volume 60 of The Studio with seven colour and eight black-and-white illustrations by King.19 Quotations by John Davidson and others appear as titles and inscriptions in the illustrations. Gerald and Celia Larner observe that while King retained her early style for a long period, it is probably not as long as is suggested by the 1913 appearance of the Seven Happy Days illustrations, since at least one of the drawings for the supplement was exhibited in 1909.20 Additionally, an exhibition at Annan’s in Glasgow in 1912 featured six of the watercolour drawings from the series. The works in the series contrast sharply with the works King created soon afterwards; as Cordelia Oliver notes, ‘Two Christmas supplements in The Studio emphasize in mood and colour-scheme the pre- and post-Ballets Russes experience. Seven Happy Days (1913) is all palest tints and silver, while Good KingWenceslas (1919) is shot with clear vivid colours in a way that is redolent of European peasant

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King art’.21 The enchanting landscapes in Seven Happy Days were painted with transparent washes of pink, blue, and green on vellum, giving each drawing a soft glow. King owned a reproduction of Botticelli’s La Primavera, and the influence of the painting is reflected in the fluttering butterflies and petals, as well as the inclusion of figures with prominent lower jaws, long and delicate fingers, and bare or hidden feet that give them a light, floating quality.22 The designs for the series also reflect the decorative and poetic qualities associated with works of the Pre-Raphaelites, along with the influence of Beardsley, particularly the detailed ‘pen embroidery’ style associated with his illustrations for The Rape of the Lock (1896), a book which King owned.23 The opening illustration for Seven Happy Days (see Figure 12.1) includes the text ‘The Woodlands’ along the bottom. It is not clear whether King had a particular poem or story in mind when she completed the design. The illustration reflects King’s fascination with halos, featuring four figures and numerous birds with circular forms around their heads. Although Mackintosh and the Macdonald sisters often surrounded their wiry figures with loops and circles, King’s work reflects a more sustained and extensive engagement with the halo as a compositional element. She featured numerous of them in her designs, and they are often quite complex, composed of or containing trails of petals, butterflies, or stars, and sometimes with multiple loops. In The Woodlands a prominent halo composed

Figure 12.1  Jessie Marion King, The Woodlands, plate 1 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60, 1913

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 of fine dots encircles the head of the female figure standing in profile on the right, as she faces two angelic figures playing music and a sleeping figure on the left. The halo takes on a new meaning when viewed in relation to Larson’s The Great Within, which describes the mind as ‘an immense sea of soul forces, all of which move in circles and spirals’.24 Larson uses circles to explain the interaction between the conscious or awake mind and the subconscious mind during sleep, writing, ‘The circumference of each circle is acted upon by the conscious ego during the waking state, therefore, the sum total of all the circumferences of all the mental circles may be termed the outer mind, the objective mind, the conscious mind, the wide-awake mind’.25 He continues, ‘During sleep the conscious ego withdraws from the circumference of the mental circles and enters the mental field within; that is, the subconscious’. Placed in this context, the halo around the right figure’s head or ‘mind’ can be seen as representative of the site of conscious activity, with the field inside the circle becoming the domain of the subconscious. The halo allows the viewer to understand conscious and subconscious activity as different phases within the same mind, as Larson emphasizes in The GreatWithin; he asserts that to think of the subconscious as a second mind ‘is to place an artificial barrier between the outer person and the limitless within. There is but one mind; the outer phase is the conscious or the objective; the inner phase is the subconscious or the subjective’.26 Larson also compares conscious impressions to seeds that are sown in the rich mental field of the subconscious, stating that they ‘will bear fruit after its kind, be the seeds good or otherwise’.27 According to Larson, ‘The more we think during the day, providing our thought has quality, the more good seeds we shall place in the garden of the mind during sleep, and the greater will be the quality and the quantity of the coming harvest’.28 King’s illustration contains numerous floating, seed-like fragments; although some appear to be petals or butterflies, others are less clearly defined and appear as small, scattered circular or oval specks. The tiny fragments within the right figure’s halo can be interpreted as seeds or visualizations of conscious impressions within the subconscious, which, according to Larson, will ultimately be expressed consciously or externally, since ‘every subconscious reaction produces an expression in the personality’.29 Larson explains that the subconscious does not only reproduce the seed itself or exactly what is recorded, however; it ‘will also form, create, develop and express what mind may desire when the impression is being made’, and it reproduces ‘as many more seeds as the original seed desired to reproduce, and also the exact degree of improvement in quality that was latent in the desire of the original seed or impression’.30 The appearance of tiny, seed-like forms across the figure’s garment, in her immediate surroundings, and scattered across the composition suggests the reproduction of subconscious seeds in her personal being, expressed through her body and in the exterior atmosphere or environment which she inhabits. Similarly, the blooming flowers and plant life in the landscape suggest growth and development, or the result of positive conscious impressions or seeds placed in the subconscious mind during sleep. The slumbering female figure on the left appears to further allude to the presence and productivity of the subconscious during sleep; her halo, hairstyle, and robe

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King are similar to those of the figure on her right, and an implied diagonal line further links the two, emphasizing the importance of subconscious activity for both. The passage King copied from The Great Within relates to the potential for the subconscious to act during sleep, causing the ‘within to give expression to those effects that we desire to secure in the without’. This reflects her particular interest in the productivity of the subconscious during sleep and the interplay between internal and external that occurs when impressions that have entered the subconscious ultimately become expressed. Like The Woodlands (see Figure 12.1), plate 11 in Seven Happy Days (see Figure 12.2), which illustrates a lullaby by Ethelbert Nevin titled ‘Cradle Song’ that was translated from the original German by Elizabeth Prentiss in 1887, reflects an interest in the latent potential of sleep. King has incorporated the following lines from the song into her illustration: Sleep baby sleep, Thy father guards his sheep, Thy mother rocks the dreamland tree, Down falls a little dream for thee.31 A tall, robed female figure is shown shaking a tree, sending a tiny, fairy-like figure towards the figure lying on the grass. The tiny figure or ‘little dream’ appears on the verge of passing into the halo belonging to the sleeping figure, again supporting Larson’s description of the subconscious existing within a conscious circle. Although the idea of the dream as a separate being or entity appears to initially contradict Larson’s assertion that the subconscious is not distinct from one’s self, King could be using the figure to allude to Larson’s belief that the ‘soul of an idea’ should be impressed on the subconscious.32 Additionally, the peaceful, serene atmosphere in this illustration, as in The Woodlands, supports Larson’s belief that harmony, peace, and relaxation before sleep are essential for the successful operation of the subconscious.33 The stars inside cloud-like forms in the margins are also significant; they allude to the vastness of the skies and the realm beyond earth, thus suggesting the unbounded, limitless quality of the subconscious continually remarked on by Larson. As Larson states, ‘Nothing is impossible; the great within is limitless – the inexhaustible source of everything that may be required for the highest development and the greatest accomplishments in human life, and whatever we may direct the within to produce, the same will invariably be produced’.34 The robed, silver-haloed angelic figures rising above the other figures and playing music on the left of The Woodlands evoke Larson’s continual assertions of the human potential for brilliance and superiority via the subconscious. A trail of scattered petals or ‘seeds’ act as conscious impressions and connect the supernatural figures to the female figure on the right, who is seen staring at them intently with a hand raised in their direction, desiring their radiance and talent. Within the context of Larson’s text, the figure’s potential desires and aspirations become a central theme of the composition. As Larson states, whatever is ‘produced in the within will invariably come forth into expression

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908

Figure 12.2  Jessie Marion King, Sleep baby sleep…, plate 11 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60, 1913

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King in the personality; therefore, by knowing how to impress the subconscious, man may give his personal self any quality desired, and in any quantity desired. Personal power, physical health, mental brilliancy, remarkable ability, extraordinary talent, rare genius – these are attainments that the subconscious of every mind can readily produce and bring forth when properly directed and impressed’.35 He later writes, ‘Desire the fullest possible expression in the great eternal now; realize that your own inherent powers and capabilities are limitless, and impress that idea upon the subconscious’.36 The placement of the angelic figures directly behind and above the sleeping figure seems to emphasize the latent potential of the subconscious and its role in achieving power, health, brilliancy, ability, talent, and even genius. King’s palette of white and pastels throughout the composition links all the figures, creating a harmonious and clear relationship between the self, what or whom the self desires, and the heightened and productive presence of the subconscious mind, which receives and acts on conscious impressions during the act of sleeping. The brilliancy of the angelic figures is suggested by their appearance and placement within the composition but also through their music-playing abilities. Shown with a lute and harp, the figures symbolize the talent and ability that results from utilizing the subconscious. The theme of music is reinforced through the inclusion of small, kneeling angelic figures in the bottom corners of the composition, birds with halos perched on a branch in the composition’s centre, and a pair of birds in each top corner. Within the context of Larson’s The Great Within, the theme of music signals the need to give way to the subconscious and become thoroughly receptive, enabling a complete expression of the power of the subconscious. Larson explains that ability, talent, and genius appear when ‘the personal self is forgotten and the greater interior self is given full possession of both the mentality and the personality’.37 He references music explicitly, writing, ‘When the musician forgets herself, there is something in her music that awakens the very depths of the soul, and you are lifted to a fairer world than you ever knew before’.38 He elaborates on the notion of forgetting the self by referencing the role of the will: ‘While the subconscious is being impressed, the will should act firmly and directly upon that consciousness that is felt in the subconscious, but when the subconscious is expected to respond the will should be relaxed into a state of complete inaction’.39 Forgetting the personal self or relaxing the will involves making the conscious mind receptive, quiet, and serene; according to Larson, ‘Harmony, serenity and poise are indispensable states both when the impression is being made and when the expression is expected’.40 King’s designs for Seven Happy Days, including The Woodlands, illustrate a world of tranquil beauty, without dramatic encounters or events. It would be a mistake to conclude that no important action is occurring, however. Beneath the peace and serenity, King suggests that subconscious forces are being awakened and developed through deep and strong actions of mind. Similarly, the unearthly, ethereal atmosphere of the illustration plays against a sense of action and purpose. King’s woodland scene is mysterious and unknown but also familiar and resolute, as it suggests the channelling and manifesting

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 of the subconscious activity continually occurring within ourselves. A passage from a typed story about an unknown land in King’s papers at the University of Glasgow supports this reading of the illustration and her engagement with Larson’s ideas: No, the world that awoke in me so keen a curiosity, the world of which I dreamed incessantly was an unknown land, secret, silent, and somber; a land of which I had only to think to be filled with a delicious dread. I drag my lengthening chain of years behind me without giving up my search for the unknown. In all my journeyings I seek it still. But my search is in vain, one can never find more than is in one’s self. The world for each of us is contained in ourselves. As for the unknown land that I sought, I was right when I was little to think that it was just beside me. The unknown does, indeed, surround us for it is all that is outside of us. And since we can never get outside ourselves, we shall never, never reach it.41 The author of the story is unknown, and underneath the passage a handwritten line appears, stating, ‘We can bring it within’. Although the author of the handwritten line is also unknown, it is likely that King added it as a way of confirming the idea that ‘the world for each of us is contained in ourselves’ while contradicting the notion that the unknown land can never be reached. The handwritten annotation could be referencing ‘the great within’ – the mysterious inner world of the subconscious. It appears to imply that the unknown land is really the subconscious, and that it can in fact be reached if only the hidden, vast, unbounded power within the self is acknowledged, properly impressed or directed, and allowed to awaken and come forth.

Love’s Golden Dream The words ‘Love’s Golden Dream’ appear across the bottom of plate 10 of Seven Happy Days (see Plate 11). Although it is not entirely clear if the illustration was inspired by a particular text, King likely had Lindsay Lennox’s song Love’s Golden Dream (c. 1890) in mind. In the song, the narrator longs to be reunited with their lover in the afterlife and looks back at their sweet memories together: I hear tonight the old bells chime Their sweetest, softest strain; They bring to me the olden time In vision once again. Once more, across the meadowland. Beside the flowing stream. We wander, darling, hand in hand. And dream love’s golden dream.42

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King The song ends with the narrator speaking to the lover and yearning to ‘at the portals bright’ ‘clasp your hand again’. Like The Woodlands (see Figure 12.1), Love’s Golden Dream is a harmonious scene containing figures in a peaceful landscape. King creates an environment that resonates with the mental serenity and peacefulness of mind and body that Larson encourages in The GreatWithin. As in TheWoodlands, it would be wrong to conclude from the sense of calm that no action is taking place; the illustration suggests the ongoing activity of the subconscious and the purposeful efforts to understand and apply its power, allowing it to come forth and find expression in one’s personal being. Similarly, the fantastical and mysterious aspects of King’s landscape are juxtaposed with the underlying presence of reachable goals and actions. Scattered fragments are not as random and spontaneous as they might at first seem; King appears to be pointing to larger aspirations and a sense of purpose. The critic James L. Caw offers insight into her approach in his description of her work in relation to Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian Symbolist poet and playwright, describing it as ‘mystical, allusive, decorative. The action is slow, rhythmical and symbolic … the effect is like that of faded tapestry seen in a dimly lit interior’.43 Although her scenes are not erupting with dramatic events, the action and purpose are still there, as Caw suggests. Lovers are shown standing together on the left of the composition in profile, facing the angelic figure on the right playing a lute, with a trail of birds connecting the figures. As in The Woodlands, King references the relaxation of the will that takes place during music, referring more broadly to the forgetting of the self that is necessary when giving the right of way to the subconscious and allowing greatness to take place. The inclusion of the angelic figure also suggests the attainment and achievement, or unfolding of a superior version of oneself, that can result from awakening ‘the great within’. King further elaborates on ideas explored in The Woodlands in Love’s Golden Dream, alluding to the act of impressing the subconscious through the inclusion of a faint halo surrounding the lovers. The halo contains tiny fragments that are multiplied in their immediate vicinity and in the surrounding landscape, suggesting the action upon the halo by conscious impressions, the entrance of impressions into the interior of the halo like seeds sown in the field of the subconscious, and the multiplication of impressions as they are externally expressed in the personality. King expands on her visualization of this process in The Woodlands in Love’s Golden Dream, enclosing the lovers within both a halo and what appears to be a kind of mist, steam, or vapour, also filled with an array of tiny fragments resembling confetti. The mist can be viewed as a kind of ‘aura’, which, according to White, King was able to see as a ‘vaporous mist, sometimes colored, around people’s heads’.44 King appears to be using this concept of the aura to communicate how the subconscious mind, described by Larson as ‘a finer mentality that permeates every fibre of the entire personality’, finds expression.45 Additionally, the trees contain circular leaves with tiny dots in the centre that serve as small reminders of the interior ‘seeds’ that exist within the circular enclosures of the conscious mind, while the abundance of flowers and vegetation suggests the potential for seeds within the subconscious to produce transformation and growth externally.

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 The composition is also distinguished by the inclusion of haloed birds in flight that further illustrate the process of impressing the subconscious and applying what the subconscious has brought forth into expression. The birds begin their journey at the top left of the composition, and after flying downwards, they enter the halo surrounding the lovers. The swift and energetic birds compellingly visualize Larson’s description of concentrating attention and desiring gently and with deep feeling to ‘draw all the present active energies of the system into the subconscious’. Larson continues, ‘The more energy that is drawn into the subconscious during this process, the more power will be impressed upon the subconscious, and the more power that is impressed upon the subconscious the more power will be expressed from the subconscious’.46 Additionally, Larson stresses the need to practically apply what the subconscious brings forth, asserting that nothing comes ready-made.47 After entering the lovers’ halo, the flock of birds exits on the right, flying towards the angelic figure on the right side of the composition. The male figure embraces his lover with one arm while holding the other arm upright so that it extends horizontally. The birds appear to emerge from the figure’s raised hand, as if under his direction and control, producing a visual metaphor for the expression and application of power from the subconscious. Birds are also prominent within plate 13 of Seven Happy Days (see Figure 12.3), a scene illustrating lines from ‘My Garden’ by the late Victorian poet, scholar, and theologian Thomas Edward Brown, commonly referred to as T. E. Brown: Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; ’Tis very sure God walks in mine.48 The illustration depicts God, robed and with shoulder-length hair, with his back facing the viewer and feet above the ground, giving him a floating quality. His head is surrounded by a halo with birds inside lining the circumference of the circle, acting like impressions within the subconscious. Birds also swarm around the figure, pointing towards the expression of impressions in the being of man. The illustration works with Love’s Golden Dream to associate God with the subconscious, suggesting that God acts through the subconscious to unlock the self’s capacity for limitless possibilities. King implies that God is incarnate in nature and human beings, illustrating the New Thought belief in an inner human power ‘received through an influx of life from the Divine’. In further describing New Thought, Haller states, ‘Unlike dogma-bound Christians who dwelt on humankind’s fall from grace and the need to expiate themselves from sin and darkness, the practitioners … chose to celebrate life by identifying the spark of divinity in humanity’s inner nature’.49 King illustrates this idea of the ‘divinity within’, drawing a link between God and the subconscious, as Larson does in The Pathway of Roses (1910), published a few years after The GreatWithin: ‘A genius is asleep in the subconscious of every mind; a spiritual giant is within us awaiting recognition; and in the soul is the Christ knocking at the door … It is not right to live a small life no matter how comfortable that life may be when we have received the gifts

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King

Figure 12.3  Jessie Marion King, Not God in gardens…, plate 13 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60, 1913

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 of the supreme life from on high’.50 Larson later writes, ‘Do not look towards the vastness of the without, but look towards the divinity of the within, and God will be there’.51 Desire is a central theme of both Love’s Golden Dream and of The Great Within. Larson encourages his reader to feel the soul of the idea that is being impressed and repeatedly refers to the need for desire, explaining, ‘Every desire for power, ability, wisdom, harmony, joy, health, purity, life, greatness, will impress itself upon the subconscious, and will cause the thing desired to be produced in the great within, the quality and the quantity depending upon the depth of the desire and the conscious realization of a true idea conveyed by the desire’.52 He also encourages the development of love, writing that ‘all tendencies to anger, hatred and similar states, may be removed by causing the qualities of love, kindness, justice and sympathy to be more fully developed in the great within’.53 The expression ‘love’s golden dream’, the title and subject of King’s work, references the activity of the subconscious through the act of dreaming, while also referring to the act of love – both explored by Larson in his text. The word ‘golden’ is also significant in relation to Larson’s beliefs; he explains to his reader, ‘To constantly impress the subconscious with mental sunshine, is to establish the tendency to live on the bright side, the sunny side; and to live on the bright side is to increase your own brightness’.54 He later writes of the need to ‘think deeply, strongly and feelingly of joy, brightness, kindness, amiableness, cheerfulness, sweetness and loveliness’ and adopt a ‘sunny disposition’ in order to achieve ‘the steady development of ability, talent and genius’.55 The word ‘golden’ in King’s title becomes visualized through the inclusion of gold highlights; the petal or seed-like fragments, halos belonging to the angelic figures on either side, birds, and other small areas throughout the composition all appear in gold. ‘Golden’ also resonates with the colour of the male figure’s shirt and the female figure’s hair, creating an atmosphere that forms an appropriate parallel to Larson’s descriptions of ‘mental sunshine’, ‘brightness’, and a ‘sunny disposition’. The viewer’s eyes move from within the halo to outside, following the woman’s golden hair towards the man’s outstretched golden sleeve, and then tracking the flock of birds, seemingly released and directed by the male figure’s hand. The scene suggests the creation of a pervasive ‘mental sunshine’ within the subconscious and the exertion of a self-determining power, as one works towards a life filled with brilliance and brightness.

‘Ballad of Tannhäuser’ Two illustrations in Seven Happy Days for the Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist John Davidson’s ‘Ballad of Tannhäuser’ reiterate the importance of self-reliance and the immense latent potential of the subconscious. Tannhäuser (full title: Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg) (1845) is an opera in three acts, with music and text by Richard Wagner, that explores the struggle between sacred and profane love. The plot involves Tannhäuser’s attraction to the mythological figure of Venus and her home of Venusberg, the subterranean domain of erotic love. Plate 2 in Seven Happy Days (see Figure 12.4) illustrates the following lines from the poem, which are incorporated into King’s design:

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King

Figure 12.4  Jessie Marion King, The air a harp of myriad chords…, plate 2 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60, 1913

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 The air, a harp of myriad chords, Intently murmured overhead; My heart grew great with unsung words: I followed where the music led.56 In Davidson’s text the beautiful music becomes as seductive as the beauty of Venus, resulting in the loss of Tannhäuser’s willpower as he gives into his desire and enters Venusberg.57 King appears to expand on the theme in her illustration, moving beyond Tannhäuser’s loss of control and exploring more broadly the relaxation of the will that occurs when the subconscious responds to impressions. The two angelic figures in the illustration continue the theme of music that appears throughout the series, symbolizing the forgetting of the self or suspension of the will that occurs when a musician is playing. The male figure on the right, probably intended to be Tannhäuser, holds a cymbal but does not play music. Within the context of Larson’s ideas, the figure’s lack of action combines with the ‘unsung words’ referenced in Davidson’s text to suggest that he has not yet learned how to utilize the power within the subconscious. In contrast with the halos in the previous illustrations, the figure’s halo appears empty, perhaps intended to convey the lack of conscious impressions within the subconscious field. Wind-blown petals flutter around the composition, becoming symbolic of the ‘myriad chords’ of music in the air that Tannhäuser follows. King suggests that in order for him to achieve greatness, he must not be content with simply following the music; he must also make music by acting firmly and directly with the will, while knowing when to release the will and allow the subconscious to take over. Tannhäuser later realizes his sin with horror but cannot keep from plunging into the underworld to be with Venus again. Before this occurs, he sings the following lines: ‘All day’, he sang – ‘I feel all day The earth dilate beneath my feet; I hear in fancy far away The tidal heart of ocean beat.58 Interestingly, King replaces ‘he’ with ‘she’ in her version of the passage at the bottom of her design, plate 6 in the series (see Figure 12.5), seeming to reflect her personal engagement with the themes explored within her illustration. Taken in relation to her other designs for Seven Happy Days, the illustration establishes a relationship between the vast, immense ocean and the subconscious. Sections of the ocean actually move beyond the vertical frames of the composition to suggest the limitless potential of the subconscious. King was likely familiar with Larson’s description in The GreatWithin of the subconscious as ‘an immense sea of soul forces, all of which move in circles and spirals’, as well as his discussions of the subconscious in relation to water, comparing the way the subconscious permeates the personality to the manner in which ‘water permeates a sponge’.59 Additionally, in Your Forces and How to Use Them (1910), Larson describes the

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King

Figure 12.5  Jessie Marion King, All day she said…, plate 6 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60, 1913

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 subconscious as a ‘great mental sea of life’ and declares that in trying to control and direct our powers, ‘we must enter the deeper life of those powers, so that we can get full control of the undercurrents’.60 He later explains that these undercurrents act through the subconscious and are controlled by the subconscious; thus, the subconscious must be understood and acted upon in order to achieve ‘the greatest measure possible of the results desired’.61 This effort to obtain control of the ‘undercurrents’ appears to be occurring within King’s illustration; although the female figure on the left is encircled with an empty, white halo, she stares into the water, where a circular reflection of the halo can be seen with fragmentary forms inside, presumably meant to be reflections of stars but also suggestive of conscious impressions entering the domain of the subconscious. The act of looking into the water suggests both the role of the conscious mind in impressing ideas upon the subconscious and the need for the conscious mind to understand and apply what the subconscious has brought forth into expression. King convincingly expresses the harmonious, reciprocal relationship between the conscious and subconscious sides of mind.

Conclusion Although Jessie Marion King is known for creating enchanting, otherworldly scenes with delicate, detailed, floating forms, she has not been traditionally recognized for the applied idealism, self-affirmation, direction, and purposefulness that coexist with these qualities in her work. It is perhaps not surprising that her illustrations combine these characteristics when considering her upbringing and training. White observes that she was raised by her nursemaid Mary McNab (called Maime), who was a disciplined Presbyterian and ardent churchgoer but had Gaelic as her first language. She ‘remained a country-woman and bore the legacy of an ancient Celtic tradition with its echoes of paganism and superstition’. According to White, ‘The intimacy between Jessie and Maime must have allowed folk legend and strict Christian belief to mingle in Jessie’s mind from an early and impressionable age’.62 Additionally, King attended the Glasgow School of Art under Newbery, who attempted to reconcile the symmetry and stability associated with the Arts and Crafts movement with the movement and instability of Art Nouveau, ‘superimposing fluidity over a static core’ and making the Scottish version of Art Nouveau ‘more rectilinear and structured’ in relation to its continental counterpart.63 This structured quality was also combined in the work of The Four with a Celtic mysticism that similarly played against notions of order. Like The Four, King combines fluid, mobile components with vertical and rectilinear elements, such as the inclusion of trees to frame a scene, or the incorporation of frames with marginal figures and decorative elements surrounding a central composition, creating a grid-like structure that counters the presence of fantastic, ethereal forms. Beyond this, her work suggests a deeper effort to reconcile the concept of a mysterious, limitless, and potent subconscious, infused with life from the Divine, with a belief in the ability to control one’s destiny through an ordered, predictable law of cause and effect. Her illustrations convey the idea that every subconscious reaction is

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King the direct result of a corresponding conscious action, with each subconscious reaction finding expression in the personality. Despite comparisons between King’s work and the work of her fellow GSA students, her illustrations have qualities that set her work apart from theirs, including a foundational principle of optimism or idealism. Additionally, in his history of Scottish painting J. L. Caw discusses King’s work, observing the influence of Beardsley but declaring that ‘it would yet be absurd to describe her work as decadent … it is untainted by that distressing morbidity and moral unhealthiness which are the signs of the real decadent’.64 Instead, her illustrations resonate with the positive and transformative philosophy associated with the writings of Christian Larson and the New Thought movement. The illustrations reaffirm the approach that she took in life, as she strove to succeed as a woman artist, ended up with the longest career of any of the Glasgow decorative artists, and worked to enable other women artists to have productive careers as well. She was fortunate to attend the Glasgow School of Art, a progressive institution that had opened its doors to women three years after opening in 1845 and enabled women to attend classes in the day sessions and have access to live models.65 From 1905 onwards, King was an active member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists, and she wrote lectures for the Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes emphasizing the value of an artistic career for women. Later in her career, she played an important role in establishing a strong network of women artists at the ‘Greengate Close’ at her home in Kirkcudbright. It became a prominent centre for women artists, with a writer for the Glasgow Evening News calling it the ‘centre of the women artists’ coterie’ and observing that ‘in the Close women artists have settled down or come as birds of passage with the spring and summer’.66 King’s life was full of brightness and action, and her illustrations suggest a belief in Larson’s self-affirming philosophy centred around an inner, guiding power that serves as a source of inspiration, growth, and achievement. She trusted and listened to her inner self, following her internal eye throughout her career and causing the critic Walter Watson to observe that she represents things ‘absolutely in her own way’. Watson also notes, ‘Thought and execution form a complete ensemble, and the stamp of a strong personality is seen on everything that is produced’.67 King continually applied her inner vision, mobilizing ‘the great within’ to come forth in her personality and give expression to her belief in the inherent and unbounded power of the self.

Notes 1 John Russell Taylor, The Art Nouveau Book in Britain (Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing, 1979), p. 137. 2 Colin White, The Enchanted World of Jessie M. King (Edinburgh: Canongate Publishing, 1989), p. 104. White’s lavishly illustrated book is directed towards a general audience, and although it has a chronology and a list of the more than 200 books in which King’s work appeared, it is without notes or a bibliography, making it difficult to track down the original sources he cites. 3 Cordelia Oliver, Jessie M. King 1875–1949 (Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, 1971), pp. 5–6. 4 I am grateful to the Scottish Society for Art History for providing me with a grant to complete archival research on King in Scotland. See Special Collections, University of Glasgow Library,

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 Jessie Marion King Papers, MS Gen 1654/1219, Jessie M. King, ‘Design. Batik or Pottery’, p. 3. See also ‘Jessie M. King, Painter, Designer & Book Illustrator’, in Nan Muirhead Moffat, Round the Studios 1939: Portraits of Twelve Lady Artists at Work (Milngavie: Heatherbank Press, 1982), n.p. 5 Walter R. Watson, ‘Miss Jessie King and Her Work’, The Studio, 26 (September 1902), p. 178. 6 Cordelia Oliver, ‘Jessie M. King, 1875–1949’, in H. Jefferson Barnes, Joan Hughson, and Cordelia Oliver, Jessie M. King and E. A. Taylor: Illustrator and Designer, from the collection of Miss Merle Taylor sold by Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co. at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, Queen’s Cross, Glasgow on Tuesday, 21st June, 1977 (London: Paul Harris Publishing and Sotheby’s Belgravia, 1977), p. iv. 7 James L. Caw, Scottish Painting Past and Present 1620–1908 (Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1908), pp. 354–5. See also Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement (London: Virago Press, 1989), pp. 132, 137–9. 8 King was featured in The Studio in her early career on the following occasions: vol. 14 (1898): three illustrations for Sir Edwin Arnold’s poem ‘The Light of Asia’, pp. 58–9; vol. 15 (1899): two illustrations for Eugene Field’s lullaby, ‘Wynken, Blynken and Nod’, pp. 278–80; vol. 17 (1899): three illustrations for William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World, pp. 264–5; vol. 24 (1902): illustration for ‘The Dance of the White Rose’, p. 281; vol. 26 (1902): Watson, ‘Miss Jessie King and Her Work’, pp. 176–88; vol. 30 (1904): featured an embroidered and appliqué curtain designed by King on p. 115 and a short review of The Defence of Guenevere on p. 271; a Christmas Supplement for 1913 featuring fifteen illustrations titled Seven Happy Days, accompanying quotations by John Davidson and others. 9 White, The Enchanted World, p. 88. 10 National Library of Scotland, Papers of Jessie M. King, Acc. 6740, No. 23. The quotation appears in Christian D. Larson, The Great Within (Chicago: The Progress Company, 1908), pp. 81–2. The manuscript belonged to King, and I think it is safe to assume that it was written by King herself since it matches her handwriting. The punctuation in the handwritten transcription is slightly different from the published version; King uses an ampersand instead of ‘and’, adds brackets, inserts a colon in place of a comma, and uses dashes in place of periods. She has also skipped a paragraph in the book between the two Larson paragraphs she has quoted, which reads, ‘Before going to sleep the conscious mind should be thoroughly cleansed from everything that one does not care to reproduce or perpetuate, and the subconscious should be given definite directions as to what should be developed, reproduced and expressed’ (p. 81). A vertical line, most likely for emphasis, appears in the margin of the manuscript alongside the handwritten passage from Larson’s text. 11 Larson, The Great Within, p. 9. 12 Ibid. 13 Sidney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 1019–20, 1026–9. 14 John S. Haller Jr, The History of New Thought: From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation Press, 2012), p. 8. 15 Ibid., p. 4. 16 Abel Leighton Allen, The Message of New Thought (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1914), pp. 118–19. 17 White, The Enchanted World, p. 1. 18 Ibid. 19 Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement, vol. 60 (London: The Studio, 1913). 20 Gerald and Celia Larner, The Glasgow Style (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 13–14.

‘The great within’: Jessie Marion King 21 Barnes, Hughson, and Oliver, Jessie M. King and E. A. Taylor, p. viii. 22 White, The Enchanted World, pp. 37–8. 23 Ibid., p. 40. 24 Larson, The Great Within, p. 98. 25 Ibid., pp. 98–9. 26 Ibid., p. 97. 27 Ibid., p. 10. 28 Ibid., p. 83. 29 Ibid., p. 9. 30 Ibid., pp. 16–17. 31 See the record for the song on Song of America, a comprehensive archive of American song launched by the Hampsong Foundation in 2009: https://songofamerica.net/song/cradle-song (accessed 14 January 2022). The language is slightly different from King’s version. 32 Larson, The Great Within, p. 13. 33 Ibid., p. 86. 34 Ibid., p. 11. 35 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 36 Ibid., pp. 35–6. 37 Ibid., p. 36. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 53. 40 Ibid. 41 University of Glasgow, Jessie Marion King Papers, MS Gen 1654/1457, 1451, Story, with poems inserted, ‘The Unknown Land’. 42 J. P. McCaskey (ed.), Franklin Square Song Collection: Songs and Hymns for Schools and Homes, Nursery and Fireside, vol. 7 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891), p. 5. 43 Caw, Scottish Painting, p. 417. 44 Colin White, A Guide to the Printed Work of Jessie M. King (London: The British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2007), p. 2. 45 Larson, The Great Within, p. 12. 46 Ibid., p. 39. 47 Ibid., pp. 18–19. 48 Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), p. 956. 49 Haller, History of New Thought, p. 4. 50 Christian Larson, The Pathway of Roses (1910), reprinted in The Optimist Creed and Other Inspirational Classics by Christian D. Larson (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2012), p. 59. 51 Ibid., p. 121. 52 Larson, The Great Within, p. 10. 53 Ibid., p. 31. 54 Ibid., p. 32. 55 Ibid., pp. 67–8. 56 John Davidson, ‘A New Ballad of Tannhäuser’ (1896), Poems of John Davidson (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924), p. 69. King does not include Davidson’s punctuation in her design for this illustration or illustration for the subsequent passage. 57 Phyllis Weliver, The Figure of Music in Nineteenth-Century British Poetry (Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2017), p. 37. 58 Davidson, ‘New Ballad of Tannhäuser’, p. 74. 59 Larson, The Great Within, pp. 98, 13.

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 60 Christian Larson, Your Forces and How to Use Them (1910), reprinted in The Optimist Creed, p. 221. 61 Ibid., p. 235. 62 White, The Enchanted World, p. 18. Mary McNab, a young girl from Strachur at the head of Loch Fyne in the Highlands, was engaged as a nursemaid when Jessie was born and her mother, Mary King, with three other children under age five, needed help in the home. She also looked after Jessie’s daughter as a nursemaid. 63 White, The Enchanted World, p. 13. 64 Caw, Scottish Painting, pp. 416–17. 65 Jude Burkhauser, ‘Restored to a Place of Honour’, in Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880–1920, ed. Burkhauser (Edinburgh: Canongate Publishing, 1990), p. 22. 66 University of Glasgow, Jessie Marion King Papers, MS Gen 1654/490, ‘Beatrice’, ‘A Close Coterie: Women Artists in the South’, Glasgow Evening News, 10 April 1925. 67 Watson, ‘Miss Jessie King and Her Work’, p. 187.

13 Working against ‘that thunderous clamor of the steam press’: Pamela Colman Smith and the art of hand-coloured illustration Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and Marion Tempest Grant

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n 1908, transnational artist Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951) published an article entitled ‘Should the Art Student Think?’ Blaming industrialization ‘for a lack of inspiration’, she encouraged art students to ‘force a way out of that thunderous clamor of the steam press’ in order to find less standardized modes of illustration.1 Over the course of her artistic career, Smith’s illustrative practice staged a resistance to the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ that shackle creativity.2 Like her admired predecessor William Blake (1757–1827), Smith combined printing with hand-colouring and spiritual vision with material means. In her illustrations for books and periodicals, she continually followed her own advice: ‘Find eyes within, look for the door into the unknown country.’ This visionary quest, she averred, will reveal ‘what we are all seeking – Beauty. Beauty of thought first, beauty of feeling, beauty of form, beauty of color, beauty of sound, appreciation, joy, and the power of showing it to others.’ 3 In her pursuit of beauty, Smith’s hand-coloured illustrations opposed the uniformity of industrialized mass print, while her subject matter focused on works that ‘are green for ever’, as her manifesto for The Green Sheaf (1903–4) proclaimed.4 Although contemporaries recognized Smith as an original artist whose imaginative approach could be compared with Blake or Aubrey Beardsley,5 she fell into obscurity after the First World War, when she largely withdrew from artistic practice. This chapter participates in a recent effort to recuperate the illustrator and her work, most of which was produced between 1899 and 1909. After providing a brief sketch of her life, artistic influences, and style, we analyse some of her first book illustrations for American publishers before turning to her two little magazines of the Irish Revival. Our selection of Smith’s oeuvre aims to establish some of the ways in which her artisanal methods and chosen subjects combined to resist modernity’s commercial industrialism and to envision a world of beauty, harmony, and joy. Smith was born in London in 1878 to Anglo-American parents who encouraged her artistic development and love of theatre; her extended family was a creative one, including 251

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 actors, authors, engravers, and painters.6 She spent her early years in Manchester before moving with her family to St Andrews Parish, near Kingston, Jamaica at age ten. In 1893 she went to Brooklyn to study art at the Pratt Institute, returning to Jamaica three years later to care for her sick mother.7 Smith and her father returned to New York in 1898; here they were able to reconnect with friends in the arts, including the well-known English actors of the Lyceum Theatre, Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Smith remained close to Terry, who renamed her ‘Pixie Pamela’. When her father died in December of that year, Smith joined the Lyceum troop’s nine-week tour of England, contributing her design skills to posters, pamphlets, sets, and costumes, and even acting in the crowd scenes. Although she continued to travel back and forth across the Atlantic, Smith made England her permanent home from the turn of the century until her death in Cornwall in 1951. Smith quickly became embedded in London’s artistic community; her ‘at-homes’ drew poets, painters, and actors to her Chelsea flat. In Bohemia in London, Arthur Ransome devotes an entire chapter to the ‘goddaughter of a witch and sister to a fairy’ they called ‘Gypsy’ 8 – a name suggesting Smith’s ongoing identification with the marginalized and magical. Ransome recalls Smith’s studio as full of paint pots, inks, and pigments; books and china figures; Japanese prints and ‘brilliant-coloured drawings, etchings and pastel sketches’. This vibrant space provided a backdrop for her performances, which included recitals of the poems of William Butler Yeats and dialect storytelling of West Indian tales.9 Ransome’s visits to 14 Milborne Grove, The Boltons, were in the evenings, so he may not have realized that Smith’s studio was also the location of her Green Sheaf School of Hand Colouring, which she launched in spring 1903 when she started publishing The Green Sheaf, a little magazine of the Irish Revival. Even in this short biography the two most significant influences on Smith’s artistic practice stand out: her training at the Pratt Institute and her immersive experiences in theatre. At the Pratt she studied composition with the cutting-edge educationalist Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow taught that design could be reduced to three basic elements: line, notan, and colour.10 The element of line governed Smith’s black-bounded drawing style and the way she related lines and spaces. ‘Notan’ – the Japanese concept of tonal values – directed Smith’s balancing of dark and light tones in her compositions.11 ‘Colour’ – defined by Dow as ‘the quality of light’ – was the chief element in painting and Japanese prints, both of which influenced Smith’s hand-coloured illustrations.12 When used successfully, line, notan, and colour created ‘harmony’, the end goal of all design.13 In contrast to the usual colour wheel, Dow taught Albert Munsell’s distinctive colour theory, which identified red, green, and blue as the primary colours, and yellow and purple as the secondary.14 Smith’s hand-coloured illustrations show various values and chromas of Munsell’s five colours, as well as his principle of creating ‘transition’ between colours by using washes akin to those applied by Japanese ink painters.15 Inspired by contemporary French Impressionists, Smith used grey to bring out the colour harmonies in her designs, whether two-dimensional for the page or three-dimensional for the stage. Writing on ‘Appropriate Stage Decoration’ for The New Age, Smith observed that

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art Impressionist painters understood that ‘grey is the admixture of pure colours’ and can thus increase ‘the effect of light’.16 An avid theatre-goer and gifted theatrical designer, Smith advised art students to ‘Go and see all the plays you can. For the stage is a great school – or should be – to the illustrator’.17 Smith combined her understanding of theatre with her knowledge of Japanese ukiyo-e prints in her designs. Like the woodblock prints she collected, her illustrations typically show an elevated perspective that creates a sense of looking down onto a scene; a cropped subject, conveying the idea that the scene extends beyond the picture frame; flat colouration; and a combination of thick and thin lines forming a black outline.18 Smith experimented with stage design, costuming, and hand-colouring when she built her first miniature theatre. Henry Morgan, her play about the seventeenth-century privateer who became Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, was staged publicly in Kingston in December 1896.19 When he saw her theatre in New York a few years later, critic Gardner Teall wished that ‘some of our modern playwrights might come here for a lesson in dramatic construction’, as ‘the scenic artists of to-day’ and the ‘professional costumer’ might ‘learn a new thing or two!’ 20 It was while building the toy theatre that Smith developed her stencilling technique, adapting the traditional method used for colouring sheets of theatrical prints, which were sold ‘penny plain and tuppence coloured’ from the late eighteenth century onwards.21 By 1898 she was selling her hand-coloured prints and cards at the William Macbeth Gallery in New York and starting to get commissions for book projects.

Early book illustrations: visualizing oral folklore Pamela Colman Smith illustrated more than twenty books in the course of her relatively short career. The first four of these came out in 1899, when she was twenty-one years old and living in New York City. Engaging folklore from various oral traditions, each collection features human and non-human, sometimes even supernatural, characters in rural, village, or fantastic settings. In illustrating these works, Smith participated in the late Victorian effort to collect, record, and publish the regional folklore that many feared was vanishing in the modern world. With her self-illustrated Annancy Stories, Smith joined a small group of European women who published folk tales in the 1890s featuring the Jamaican trickster.22 Although she was recording stories of the previously enslaved rather than her own oral tradition, Smith’s impulse to collect and preserve these tales may be compared to the contemporary efforts of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924) in Devonshire.23 It was from his Songs and Ballads of the West: A Collection Made from the Mouths of the People (1895) that Smith drew the lyrics for her hand-coloured editions of Widdicombe Fair and The GoldenVanity and the Green Bed.24 While the Annancy Stories was aimed at the Christmas market as a children’s gift book, the west country ballads were limited-edition art publications. In contrast, her illustrations for Seamus MacManus’s In Chimney Corners: Merry Tales of Irish Folk Lore25 was a more commercial venture, its coloured pictures reproduced by mechanical process.

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 Smith developed an illustrative method that connected figures to landscapes and individuals to crowds through her distinctive black-outline, two-dimensional style. Using line, notan, and colour, Smith created designs unlike anything by her artistic contemporaries. In order to identify the elements in her compositions, we begin with the black-and-white designs of the Annancy Stories before turning to the hand-coloured plates of Widdicombe Fair. Illustrations in these collections demonstrate her ability to bring a pictorial scene to life through theatrical staging and attention to character, gesture, and costume. At the same time, they showcase her visual storytelling method: Smith’s design sequences enhance the texts they accompany by creating parallel narratives that bring the traditionally marginalized into view. These marginalized figures include women – especially active women – non-Europeans, animals, and spiritual or supernatural beings. The Jamaican trickster tales gave plenty of scope for Smith to exercise her interests in folklore, performance, and the marginalized. The artist’s fascination with West Indian folklore was, moreover, an enduring one. Her first publication was a pair of trickster tales in the Journal of American Folk-Lore in 1896.26 Three years later, she published the self-illustrated Annancy Stories and in 1905, she brought out the self-illustrated Chim-Chim Stories with her own Green Sheaf Press.27 In London, she developed a sideline as a performance artist who told Jamaican tales under the name ‘Gelukiezanger’, the Tiger who appears with Anansi in some of his adventures. Smith’s assumption of this persona suggests she identified at some level with the Jamaican tricksters, whom recent scholarship has identified as resistance figures against cultural colonialism.28 Understanding the Jamaican oral tradition as an art form in itself, Smith tried to preserve its dialect in both her oral and her print versions of the Annancy Stories. Nonetheless, as Emily Zobel Marshall observes, Smith’s middle-class and Euro-Christian values as an Anglo-American woman inevitably influenced the selection and content of the tales she told.29 In illustrating these stories, Smith did not use Jamaican imagery but rather developed her own folkloric iconography for the characters. According to Elizabeth O’Connor, Smith’s ‘depictions are the first known drawings of Anansi, a trickster figure who can assume the forms of both a man and a spider’.30 The facing frontispiece and title page of the Annancy Stories display an integrated black-and-white design, thanks to Smith’s decision to hand-letter rather than typeset the publishing information (see Figure 13.1). Together, the hand-drawn letters and simple black-and-white drawings reference the broadsides and chapbooks that flourished in popular culture before mass industrial print. Smith further integrates the double-page opening through illustrative features: the rolling landscape of hills, fruit trees, and flowering vines visually connects the worlds of the colonial present and the Jamaican imaginary. As the visual threshold to the collection, the frontispiece stages a scene of a disappearing oral culture: a black woman sits under a tropical fruit tree, animatedly telling stories to five white children and a parrot. Like Blake, who introduced his Songs of Innocence with a pastoral scene of a mother reading to her children,31 Smith represents the principal speaking voices in the ensuing tales. The frontispiece visualizes the narrator, who speaks in Jamaican dialect, as a black woman embedded in oral storytelling. Parrot, a key figure

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art

Figure 13.1  Pamela Colman Smith, frontispiece and title page for Annancy Stories, 1899

in the Annancy Stories, joins the listening children as if to comment on and disrupt the anarchic tales with his screeches. His presence suggests Smith recognized that these are stories of symbolic subversion. As a representative of the oppressed Jamaican, Anansi frequently gets the better of powerful ‘buckra’ (white) humans by using his wits.32 In the decorative header on the facing title page, Smith depicts Anansi the Spider facing the viewer with a wide grin. Although she gives Anansi non-human features – enormous ears and a pair of antennae – Smith does not gender the trickster. Wasp-waisted with spindly legs and arms, Anansi has a small upper body and bulbous bottom, covered in swirling decorative patterns. Next to Anansi is Gelukiezanger the Tiger, whom Smith always represents as a small-waisted androgynous figure in a striped costume and beret. The other two characters are Anansi’s wife, Cookie, and son, Tacoma. By including Tiger in this family group and later adapting the Gelukiezanger name for her oral performances, Smith implies a close identification with the world of the Jamaican trickster. In ‘Why Toad Walk ’pon Four Leg’, Smith relays a tale in which an Obeah woman tries unsuccessfully to trick the Prince – fanciful stand-in for white ruler – into marriage by disguising herself as a buckra woman. The story begins by referencing the days before the 1834 abolition of chattel slavery in the British Empire: ‘In a long before time – before Queen Victoria come to reign over we, Toad was a buckra gentleman, an’ walk ’pon two leg, an wear quee-quee shoe, an’ a hat wid feaders, an’ a long two-tail coat!’ 33 Smith’s headpiece illustration shows Toad striking a pose on an elevated knoll in the foreground,

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908

Figure 13.2  Pamela Colman Smith, double-page opening for ‘Why Toad Walk ’pon Four Legs’, Annancy Stories, 1899

puffed up with pride in the finery of an eighteenth-century English gentleman (see Figure 13.2). Behind him, two Black women converse under a tree; one gestures as if to give directions to the other woman, who is carrying a large bundle on her head. Labouring up the hill behind them are two more burdened women. Smith artfully uses elevation, costume, gesture, and off-scene action to imply a critique of the power relations embedded in the characters’ relationships. In the full-page illustration across the page opening Smith stages the revelation scene like a play, with the Prince pulling aside the curtains to declaim the Obeah woman in her tent. Peeking in behind him is the diminished Toad, who has betrayed the woman’s disguised nature to the Prince and thereby prevented the wedding. Toad’s transformation from buckra gentleman to mere animal is already in process, as Smith indicates by his smaller size, lower position, and missing hat. In the story, the Obeah woman punishes Toad for his betrayal by stripping off his clothes, beating him with a stick, and condemning him to walk on all fours. The extreme violence symbolically turns the tables of power on the former buckra gentlemen, who endures pain, humiliation, and permanent life change at the hands of the Obeah woman. In Smith’s illustrations for the Annancy Stories, the black lines of figures and landscapes bring humans, animals, land, and magic into integration, just as her notan-balance of solid blacks and open white spaces creates visual harmony. The third element of composition – colour – is implied rather than added. In Widdicombe Fair, the limited-edition publishing

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art format gave Smith the artistic freedom to use her stencil method to add colour (see Plate 12). The thirteen mounted drawings that accompanied the separately printed ballad in an unbound portfolio case were all hand-coloured and mounted on art paper, without caption or text of any kind. In reviewing Widdicombe Fair for Brush and Pencil in 1900, Teall observed that ‘vigor, both of composition and color, is the striking characteristic’ of Smith’s art.34 Vigour is not the characteristic typically ascribed to Victorian women’s art by contemporaries, but it is certainly an accurate descriptor for Smith’s dynamic designs. The force and energy of her vigorous drawings and vibrant tones leap out from the mounted plates, introducing ‘the quality of light’ to her compositions.35 Smith’s palette for Widdicombe Fair follows Dow’s primary colours of blue, green, and red, augmented by golden-brown and white, in flat tones that complement the two-dimensional, decorative style of her designs. At the time of publication, Widdicombe Fair was one of the most popular and best known of the Old English ballads.36 Like most traditional ballads, it begins in the middle of the action and relays the story through dialogue and impersonal narration. An unknown speaker engages with Tom Pearce to borrow his grey mare, so that he can go to Widdicombe Fair with ‘Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawk, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all’. In the ensuing stanzas, these eight men and the unnamed speaker form the entire cast of characters, other than the old mare who dies under the strain of the trip. Subsequently, the ‘gashly white’ horse haunts ‘the moor of a night’.37 With its exclusively masculine cast the story does not seem a promising one for a feminist artist with an interest in tricksters and other marginalized figures. However, like a theatre producer interpreting a centuries-old play for a contemporary audience, Smith visually reimagines the traditional tale through costume and setting. Most importantly, she brings into view a subversive subplot, which attaches a new meaning to the supplicant’s need for Tom Pearce’s nag. Smith visually identifies the unnamed principal speaker by making him the most prominent figure in the opening plates. A dashing young man in high boots, tail-coat, and flowered waistcoat, the speaker emerges as a kind of trickster figure in the sequence of plates. Smith creates an individual character for the named individuals and mare-borrowing speaker, assigning each an age, body shape, costume, and implied occupation. She also creates an alternative visual story, introducing actions and characters not mentioned in the ballad to add some diversity to its exclusively masculine world. The plate that pictures the fair is a tour de force of visual storytelling and character-building (see Plate 12). Smith places the now-familiar speaker in the bottom right foreground, enjoying the carnival activity in the company of a new main character. Positioned prominently in the foreground, the black-haired, red-kerchiefed gypsy sits in profile surveying the scene with a somewhat haughty mien. Opposite her, at bottom left, the grey mare’s head emerges from part of the scene that remains out of view. Theatrically speaking, woman and horse occupy the front of the stage, indicative of their role as the principal actors, triangulating with the male speaker, who is positioned slightly behind the gypsy. Other

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 women dominate the foreground: one feeds sugar to the mare; one carries a plate of fruit; one is being asked to dance by peg-legged Uncle Tom Cobbleigh; one receives a rose from an amorous young Dan’l Whiddon. The middle ground includes circus performers, children, a performing dog, and a dancing pirate, as well as numerous women in patterned gowns, dancing with each other or with the other men named in the ballad. In the background, Smith creates a line of peaked white tents with red pennants furled against a blue sky. The illustration of the fair launches Smith’s subplot, which unfolds in the ensuing sequence of plates. According to the visual story Smith tells, the speaker and gypsy leave the fair to abscond with the grey mare into the country, where the gypsy reads the young man’s palm. They then elope together on the back of the mare, Bill Brewer in hot pursuit. When the mare can go no further, the two continue on foot. Eventually, Tom Pearce, Bill Brewer, and the rest locate the expired horse, but the gypsy and her lover are nowhere to be seen. After a series of pictures showing the men mourning the dead horse, Smith concludes with an image of the ghost-mare galloping joyously on the moor, looking as happy as she did when she was carrying the lovers. Smith’s visualization manages to both support and subvert the traditional ballad. The rhythm of her lines, and the dynamic gestures, joyous dancing, and glowing tones of her designs, convey the energy of the rollicking song that is Widdicombe Fair. At the same time, her introduction of the speaker and gypsy as trickster partners in cahoots with the grey mare stages a carnivalesque disruption to the ballad’s patriarchal world. Smith signals the importance of this female-driven subplot on the front and back covers. The decorated title page pasted down on the front of the portfolio features the speaker and gypsy dancing in the foreground, while the old grey mare looks on, grinning. The back cover sports a reduced image of the ghostly horse galloping before a rising moon, an image of joyful animal freedom rather than Gothic haunting. Together, the covers provide the key to Smith’s anti-patriarchal story and look forward to the integrated material/spiritual vision she brought to her little magazines, A Broad Sheet and The Green Sheaf, in the early years of the twentieth century.

Illustrating little magazines of the Celtic Fringe: publishing from the margins When Smith moved to London, she was unable to find a publisher for her book projects, which included proposed illustrated editions of works for children by Anna Barbauld (1743–1825) and William Blake. Within a few years, however, she became involved in two little magazines of the Irish Revival, co-editing A Broad Sheet (1902) with Jack Yeats and then taking on sole editorship of The Green Sheaf (1903–4). While both magazines included hand-coloured illustrations and comparable content, The Green Sheaf allowed Smith to develop herself as a feminist entrepreneur while continuing to preserve and promote regional folklore. Rejecting the publishers who had rejected her, Smith created her own Green Sheaf Press and Green Sheaf School of Hand-Colouring, and produced

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art the little magazine at her studio in Chelsea, where she also sold issues to the public. She made good use of her periodical publishing contacts in her new venture. In addition to drawing on A Broad Sheet’s subscription list, she sold The Green Sheaf from the bookstore of Elkin Mathews, the former magazine’s publisher. In contrast to the single-page, co-edited Broad Sheet, The Green Sheaf gave Smith, as editor-publisher, room to develop her ideas in eight to sixteen pages, and to advertise her performative and illustrative services and hand-coloured prints in the monthly issues. The ideas she developed, as we shall see, expressed her increasing interest in issues relating to the spiritual and visionary on the one hand, and ways of understanding the material world and the human place within it, including the role of gender, on the other. Smith’s control over the mode of production enabled her to express her ideas through the overall aesthetic harmony of each issue’s design. Smith’s year co-editing the monthly issues of A Broad Sheet provided an artistic and organizational bridge between her illustrated books for other publishers and her private press publication of The Green Sheaf. The two magazines had many similarities. Both combated the uniformity of modern art and print production by using manual methods. A Broad Sheet’s titular and material evocation of the pre-industrial publishing format for popular prints, songs, and political activism no doubt appealed to Smith; the title she gave her own magazine, The Green Sheaf, overlaid the notion of organic growth onto the printed sheaf of paper. Both magazines included regional folklore and had common contributors, many of whom were leading figures in the Irish Revival. As editor-publisher of The Green Sheaf, Smith also chose to include some transnational artists and authors whose interests aligned with her own. She found room in both magazines for excerpts from posthumous authors like Barbauld and Blake, no doubt drawing on illustrations she had not been able to place with the London publishers. These illustrated texts found new life in the Broad Sheet and Green Sheaf, where they harmonized with her quest for beauty and understanding. Smith’s combined interest in the mystic vision of folklore and an integrated understanding of the world of experience is evident in her inclusion of the Irish peasant poet Anthony Raftery (1779–1835) and the British poet and educator Anna Laetitia Barbauld in both magazines. Issue nine of A Broad Sheet, for example, featured an illustration by Jack Yeats for Lady Augusta Gregory’s translation of Raftery’s ‘Repentance’, and one by Smith for Barbauld’s ‘It Is September’ from Lessons for Children (1778–9) (see Figure 13.3). Barbauld’s lyric, aimed at teaching children age-appropriate ways they can contribute to the autumn harvest, appears at the top of the sheet. Smith’s pastoral scene depicts a young boy and toddler in a green garden under an apple tree, with a hillside town in the distance, set against a yellow-washed sky. She visualizes Charles, the lyric speaker, preventing his infant brother from climbing a ladder, aptly bringing to life the text found on the left side of the page: ‘We must gather apples – / No, you cannot go up the ladder; / You must have a little basket, / And pick up apples under the tree’.38 Here Charles, the young hero of Barbauld’s Lessons, shares the knowledge he has gained about living in harmony with himself, plants, and people; in other Barbauld passages Smith selects and illustrates for

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 The Green Sheaf, he appears in his role as experiential learner, guided by his mother in empirical observation to increase his knowledge of the world. Below this text by Barbauld and image by Smith is Lady Gregory’s translation of Raftery’s ‘Repentance’ and Jack Yeats’s coloured illustration. A note introduces the bard as ‘the Blind Connaught Poet, whose songs are known in every Irish-speaking county of Ireland’,39 highlighting Raftery’s prominence in the Irish Nationalist effort to preserve and record the country’s regional folklore – a different kind of harvest than Barbauld’s. Yeats’s illustration depicts the aged bard in a homespun suit, leaning on a rock wall and holding a shillelagh, or wooden cane, in his right hand.Yeats visualizes the address to the heavens that begins the passage by showing Raftery looking up to the sky with his hand extended up in a beseeching gesture. The design of the page balances blocks of text and image, harmonized by the black ink of the letterpress and the black-outlined drawings (see Figure 13.3). In its overall composition as a single art piece, the Sheet alludes to Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience. As in Blake’s work, the pictures connect the complementary dualities of life: innocence and experience, childhood and maturity. The layout suggests Raftery is addressing the children in the frame diagonal from his, telling them of his experiences with drunkenness and sinful behaviour, both of which are the cause of his current state of distress as he contemplates his end. Smith’s interest in Irish folklore, evident throughout The Green Sheaf, is highlighted by her editorial decision to illustrate a work by Raftery in the opening page of the first number. Entitled ‘The Hill of Heart’s Desire’, the piece gives an idealized description of the hills of County Mayo, where Raftery was born. Smith’s illustrative headpiece depicts Raftery facing this place of perfect sufficiency, where nothing is lacking, even beauty (see Figure 13.4).40 Situated in the left foreground in an elevated position, Raftery leans on his walking stick, dressed in black. Although the poet was blind, Smith has drawn him so that he appears to be overlooking the rolling hillside, lush greenery, and beautiful valleys, which she colours in hues of green, yellow, red, and purple to capture the serenity of the place. Smith’s attention to sartorial details when she represented historical figures like Raftery recalls the clothing she created for individual characters in Widdicombe Fair, which individualized period dress according to age, class, and personality. As she did for her theatrical costume designs, Smith always researched her illustrations, drawing on reference materials in galleries, museums, and libraries. In ‘Should the Art Student Think?’, Smith recommends studying portraits for signs of the sitter’s place and time. ‘When you see a portrait of a historical person’, she writes, ‘note the dress, the type of face; note the pose, for often pose will date a picture as correctly as the hair or clothes’. When the period was not immediately evident, Smith advised illustrators to ‘make a pencil sketch and take it with you to some reference library’, a practice she clearly followed herself.41 In 1910, she recommended that ‘the much-talked-of National Theatre should include a carefully classified and arranged library, to which donors could give prints and scrap-books of value for the study of historical and international costume’.42

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art

Figure 13.3  A Broad Sheet (No. 9), Jack Butler Yeats and Pamela Colman Smith

Smith’s research-based approach to illustration is particularly evident in the international stories she included in The Green Sheaf, which sometimes featured non-European places and people. Demonstrating careful study of historical and religious iconography, colour theory, and mythology, her editorial selections and hand-coloured illustrations attest to

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Figure 13.4  Pamela Colman Smith, ‘The Hill of Heart’s Desire’, The Green Sheaf, 1, 1903

her growing interest in spirituality and religion. Smith chose Laurence Irving’s ‘Prince Siddartha’ as the last item in the magazine’s fourth number. Irving retells the ancient story of the young and naive prince who comes into contact with ordinary people who teach him about the reality of suffering, eventually leading him to forsake the world and become the Buddha.43 Two accompanying images serve as bookends to Irving’s text. Smith’s headpiece shows Prince Siddartha encountering the sick man who teaches him of disease, suffering, and death (see Plate 13), while Cecil French’s tailpiece depicts the Buddha as an enlightened figure. Smith’s colouring of these illustrations shows her

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art scholarly approach to depicting historical figures. In the headpiece, Smith depicts Prince Siddartha wearing a white kurtas, or long tunic, and a white pagri, or turban, as well as a necklace with green and red gems. The Prince faces a blue-skinned man in dark, tattered clothing, with a hand outreached to the future Buddha. In Indian colour psychology, the colour white has a number of meanings, two of which are peace and purity.44 Smith uses white to represent the Prince’s innocence, in contrast to the blue-skinned man, who represents suffering, disease, and death. The colour contrast between the two men signals the dichotomy of innocence and experience and directs the viewer’s understanding of the Prince’s current naivety and future purity. In colouring French’s tailpiece, Smith applies a saffron yellow colour to the Buddha’s robes, signalling his fully enlightened transformation, as saffron is worn by religious figures in Buddhism45 to symbolize incorruptible being.46 Smith colours the necklace on the Prince and the Buddha with the same green and red jewels to show that the figures in the head- and tailpiece are the same person. Smith’s inclusion of Irving’s piece in The Green Sheaf underscores her desire for spiritual insight and new ways of seeing the world, as well as her interest in regional stories of all kinds. Nevertheless, the presence of ‘Prince Siddartha’ in an Irish Revival magazine seems odd. Insofar as this illustrated item participates in the late Victorian fascination with Buddhism and other Eastern mystic traditions, it cannot be understood in isolation from the long-standing history of British imperialism and Orientalism.47 Smith’s scholarly approach is evident in her illustration for Thomas Campion’s ‘A Hymn in Praise of Neptune’ in The Green Sheaf’s sea-themed sixth number. Smith depicts seven ‘Tritons dancing in a ring’ of turbulent water, with two other Tritons hiding beneath a wave on either side of the circle (see Plate 14).48 Smith draws each Triton in keeping with the demigod’s historical representation in Greek and Roman mythology as a hybrid figure with a human upper body and a fish-like tail.49 Although Campion’s text does not explicitly state that the Tritons are carrying tridents, Smith shows each one brandishing one as they dance. Historically, Tritons almost always carried conch shells, which are noticeably absent in the illustration.50 Smith’s inclusion of the trident in lieu of the conch shell indicates her close reading of this seventeenth-century poem as well as her mythological research. In the text, Campion describes the Tritons causing a quaking ‘like the thunder sounding’.51 Smith picks up on this allusion to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where the trident is the weapon used by Neptune to cause earthquakes.52 Although the mythological Tritons are traditionally masculine, Smith’s figures have an androgynous appearance: they could be mermaids, mermen, or neither. One of the many things that stand out in Smith’s illustrations is her queering of supernatural figures, as we saw in her depiction of Anansi and Gelukiezanger in the Annancy Stories. Katherine Cockin argues that the androgynous aspects of Smith’s work mark her resistance to gender norms and challenge to heteronormativity.53 Smith’s refusal to denote many of her supernatural beings as either feminine or masculine supports Cockin’s claim, especially considering how the characteristics of these figures, if gendered, would work to enforce historical and cultural stereotypes. In the context of Smith’s later involvement in the

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 suffrage movement and her lifelong association with queer authors, playwrights, and artists, her androgynous illustrations can be read as a rejection of sex and gender binaries and barriers. In the illustration accompanying Ernest Radford’s ‘Eventide’ in issue three of The Green Sheaf, Smith depicts a human interacting with two groups of supernatural beings: pixies and spirits (see Plate 15). Smith uses colour to differentiate between the supernatural and the human figures, a tactic she employs throughout her oeuvre. In contrast to the human figure, which is tinted in hues of beige, off-white, and grey, the supernatural beings are given a single wash of colour, making them appear less fleshly. In the foreground of the image is a group of grey pixies, dragging a figure wrapped in a spider web down a hill towards ‘no-man’s land’.54 In the background, situated in front of a yellow-washed sky with a bright yellow moon, are five couples, all tinted with a very light red, almost pink, colour-wash. Each couple stands on top of a cloud, embracing. Nothing in either the text or the illustration indicates a heterosexual pairing. Smith applies the same colour and line treatments within each pair. The figures are almost identical, with similar haircuts and dress; the only variation is a slight height difference. Challenging Victorian heteronormativity, Smith’s androgynous couples signal the beauty of love, regardless of gender or sex. When The Green Sheaf ended its print run in spring 1904, Smith turned her attention to artisanal publishing, women’s suffrage, and the mystical. In the thirteenth and final issue of the magazine she announced that The Green Sheaf School of Hand-Colouring had opened a new shop in Knightsbridge, and that notices of all publications by its Press would be sent to the magazine’s subscribers. Smith’s Green Sheaf Press brought out a series of hand-printed, hand-coloured illustrated books between 1904 and 1906, most of them works of fantasy or folklore by women. In 1908, she became a member of the recently founded Women’s Guild of Arts, established because women designers and workers were excluded from the Art Worker’s Guild.55 As Zoë Thomas comments, the Women’s Guild, which ‘accepted members who worked across many fields and with hybrid influences’, was a perfect milieu for Smith’s eclectic range of work in hand-colouring, book illustration, performative storytelling, and theatrical design.56 The female-centred Guild allowed Smith to network with other artisans who were interested, as she was, in the cause of women’s rights. In 1909 she became a founding member of the Suffrage Atelier, using her skills in illustration, stencilling, and hand-printing to create feminist propaganda. Her largest illustration commission, and the one for which she is best known, also came in this year, when Arthur Waite invited her to create pictorial designs for a new Tarot deck. Now known as the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot cards, this deck continues to be used throughout the occult world to understand the individual’s relationship to the world. In this sense, they are a fitting memorial to the artist’s spiritual/material interests and visual storytelling skills. Smith was only to illustrate a handful of books and magazines after this commission, so in some ways her Tarot designs represent a final resistance to the modern world and its stereotypes, whether formed by the impressions of industrial press or patriarchal culture.

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art

Notes 1 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Should the Art Student Think?’, The Craftsman, 14/4 (July 1908), pp. 417–19. Reprinted in Stuart R. Kaplan, with Mary K. Greer, Elizabeth Foley O’Connor, and Melinda Boyd Parsons, Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story (Stamford CT: U.S. Games Systems, 2018), pp. 389–91 (p. 391). 2 William Blake, ‘London’, Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789, 1894). The Blake Archive, Object 36, www.blakearchive.org/search/?search=London. 3 Smith, ‘Art Student’, p. 391. 4 Pamela Colman Smith, Manifesto of The Green Sheaf. Printed on front cover, vols 4–13 (1903–4). Digital Edition of The Green Sheaf, edited by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Yellow Nineties 2.0, Toronto Metropolitan University Centre for Digital Humanities, 2021, https://beta.1890s.ca/ green-sheaf-volumes/. 5 Benjamin de Casseres, Camera Work (1912), quoted in Kathleen Pyne, ‘The Photo-secession and the Death of the Mother: Gertrude Käsebier and Pamela Colman Smith’, in Modernism and the Feminine Voice: O’Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 1–61 (p. 53). 6 Dawn G. Robinson, Pamela Colman Smith,Tarot Artist:The Pious Pixie (n.p.: Fonthill Media, 2020), pp. 15–19. 7 Elizabeth Foley O’Connor, ‘Pamela’s Life’, in Kaplan et al., Pamela Colman Smith, pp. 11–99 (p. 17). 8 Arthur Ransome, ‘A Chelsea Evening’, in Bohemia in London (London: Stephen Swift, 1912; reprinted, London: Forgotten Books, 2015), pp. 45–62 (p. 52). 9 Ransome, ‘Chelsea’, pp. 52, 58–9. 10 Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, seventh edition, revised and enlarged (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1913), p. 7. 11 Ibid., p. 84. 12 Ibid., p. 8. 13 Ibid., p. 3. 14 Ibid., p. 101. 15 Ibid., pp. 102, 113. 16 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Appropriate Stage Decoration’, Supplement to The New Age, 7 (2 June 1910), in Kaplan et al., Pamela Colman Smith, pp. 288–9 (p. 289). 17 Smith, ‘Art Student’, p. 389. 18 Melinda Boyd Parsons, ‘Influences and Expressions in the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck’, in Kaplan et al., Pamela Colman Smith, pp. 350–70 (p. 356). 19 O’Connor, ‘Pamela’s Life’, p. 19. 20 Gardner Teall, ‘Cleverness, Art, and an Artist’, Brush and Pencil, 6 (1900), pp. 135–41 (p. 140). 21 Melinda Boyd Parsons, To All Believers: The Art of Pamela Colman Smith. Delaware Art Museum Exhibition Catalogue, September 11–October 19, 1975, n.p. 22 The main collections of Jamaican Anansi tales at the fin de siècle include Pamela Milner-Home’s Mama’s Black Nurse Stories (1890); Ada Wilson-Trowbridge’s ‘Customs and Folk-Stories of Jamaica’, in Journal of American Folk-lore (1896); Una Jeffery-Smith’s A Selection of Anancy Stories (1899); and Pamela Colman Smith’s Annancy Stories (1899). Only Smith spells the trickster’s name ‘Annancy’; we follow contemporary folklorists in referring to the trickster as ‘Anansi’, except when we cite Smith’s work, when we follow her spelling. See Emily Zobel Marshall, ‘“Nothing but Pleasant Memories of the Discipline of Slavery”: The Trickster and the Dynamics of Racial Representation’, Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, 32/1 (2018), pp. 50–75 (pp. 60–3).

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 23 Sabine Baring-Gould, Songs of the West Country: Recorded from the Mouths of the People (London: Methuen, 1895). 24 Pamela Colman Smith, Widdicombe Fair (London and New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1899); and The GoldenVanity and The Green Bed (London and New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1899). 25 Seamus MacManus, In Chimney Corners: Merry Tales of Irish Folk Lore, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith (London and New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1899). 26 Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Two Negro Stories from Jamaica: “Annancy and the Yam Hills” and “De Story of de Man and Six Poached Eggs”’, Journal of American Folk-Lore (October–December 1896), p. 278. Reprinted in Kaplan et al., Pamela Colman Smith, p. 100. 27 Pamela Colman Smith, Annancy Stories (New York: R. H. Russell, 1899); and Chim-Chim: Folk Stories from Jamaica (London: Green Sheaf Press, 1905). 28 Emily Zobel Marshall, ‘Anansi Tactics in Plantation Jamaica: Matthew Lewis’s Record of Trickery’, Wadabagei, 12/3 (2009), pp. 126–50 (p. 126). 29 Marshall, ‘Anansi Tactics’, p. 133. While Pamela Colman Smith was raised in white AngloAmerican middle-class privilege, some scholars believe she may have had mixed-race ancestry. See, for example, Elizabeth O’Connor, ‘Pamela Colman Smith’s Performative Primitivism’, in Irish Caribbean Connections: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Alison Donnell, Maria McGarrity, and Evelyn O’Callaghan (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2015), pp. 157–73 (p. 158). 30 O’Connor, ‘Pamela Colman Smith’s Performative Primitivism’, p. 163. 31 William Blake, Songs of Innocence, 1789. The Blake Archive, Object 2. www.blakearchive.org/ search/?search=Songs%20of%20Innocence. 32 Marshall, ‘Anansi Tactics’, p. 128. 33 Smith, Annancy Tales, p. 14. 34 Teall, ‘Cleverness, Art, and an Artist’, p. 135. 35 Dow, Composition, p. 8. 36 Publisher’s note, pasted on the inside cover of Widdicombe Fair. 37 Smith, Widdicombe Fair, tipped-in printed lyrics (n.p.). 38 Anna Barbauld, ‘It is September’, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, A Broad Sheet, 9 (September 1902). 39 Lady Augusta Gregory, note for and translation of Anthony Raftery, ‘Repentance’, illustrated by Jack Yeats, A Broad Sheet, 9 (September 1902). 40 Lady Augusta Gregory, translation from the Irish of Anthony Raftery, ‘The Hill of Heart’s Desire’, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, The Green Sheaf, 1 (1903), [p. iii]. 41 Smith, ‘Art Student’, p. 417. 42 Smith, ‘Appropriate Stage Decoration’, p. 289. 43 Laurence Irving, ‘Prince Siddartha’, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith (headpiece) and Cecil French (tailpiece), The Green Sheaf, 4 (1903), pp. 12–14. 44 Rohit Vishal Kumar, ‘A Note on Colour Psychology of Indian and Chinese Culture and Possible Impact on Advertising’, ResearchGate, 2016, pp. 1–11 (p. 6). www.researchgate.net/ publication/312172043_A_note_on_colour_psychology_of_Indian_and_Chinese_culture_ and_possible_impact_on_advertising (accessed 5 June 2021). 45 Bina Rao, ‘The Sacred Yellow’, Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, 6–9 October 2010, pp. 1–4 (p. 2). 46 Kumar, ‘Note on Colour’, p. 7. 47 Jeffery Franklin, ‘The Life of Buddha in Victorian England’, ELH, 72/ 4 (2005), pp. 941–74 (p. 941). 48 Thomas Campion, ‘A Hymn in Praise of Neptune’, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, The Green Sheaf, 6 (1903), p. 13.

Pamela Colman Smith and hand-coloured art 49 ‘Triton’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7 February 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/Triton-Greekmythology (accessed 5 June 2021). 50 John Ashton, ‘Mermen’, Curious Creatures in Zoology (London: John C. Nimmo, 1890), pp. 206–13 (p. 210). 51 Campion, ‘Hymn in Praise of Neptune’, p. 13. 52 Ovid, ‘The Flood’, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 9. 53 Katherine Cockin, ‘Pamela Colman Smith, Anansi and the Child: From The Green Sheaf (1903) to The Anti-Suffrage Alphabet (1912)’, in Literary and Cultural Alternatives to Modernism: Unsettling Presences, ed. Kostas Boyiopoulos, Anthony Patterson, and Mark Sandy (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 71–84 (p. 72). 54 Ernest Radford, ‘Eventide’, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, The Green Sheaf, 3 (1903), p. 5. 55 Zoë Thomas, Women ArtWorkers and the Arts and Crafts Movement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), p. 5. 56 Ibid., p. 7.

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14 Olive Allen and the graphic nonchalance of the Modern Girl, illustrated Jaleen Grove

‘Everybody here thinks me awfully good … I don’t like being thought good very much. What shall I do?’ 1

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h i s provocative question was posed in 1904 by the twenty-four-year-old illustrator and versifier of girlish subjects, Olive Allen (married name Biller; b. 17 October 1879, United Kingdom, d. 1957, Canada). It is laced with irony for at home, Olive, nicknamed Anna, was the family clown and mischief-maker, the youngest of seven children born to Methodist minister George Allen and his wife, school director Mary Jane Pethybridge Allen. In a 1903 illustrated verse, Olive comically styled herself a headstrong child whose ‘artistic temperament’ is ‘MISUNDERSTOOD’ (her emphasis). Her relations consequently consider her ‘Bad Anna’ and, annoyed, she retaliates until finally she ‘slapped her sister till she died!’ (see Figure 14.1). In conclusion, Olive counsels: ‘Dear Reader, ’tis a lesson sad, / Never to call a person bad. / – Beyond a slight eccentric manner / At first there was no vice in Anna’.2 Coming just when the lately vilified independence-seeking New Woman was reincarnating as the cuter, irreverent Modern Girl,3 this cautionary tale sweetly demanded the illustrating girl be granted some mild social transgressions lest she truly rebel. Surviving artworks, manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, and interviews with her daughter Jill Sims illuminate how Allen’s illustrations, verses, plays, and stories developed during her early career. In the intersection of biography, illustration history, humour, periodicals, and Modern Girls, we find what personal advantages enabled her to enter professional illustrating yet constrained her potential. We shall see how Allen – and, by extension, sister illustrators – defined English-speaking girls’ Edwardian social identities as they departed from Victorian norms by couching pointed messages in amusing, unstudied-looking forms that we might call graphic nonchalance. This visual rhetoric of nonchalance allowed such ideas to exist and supported a wider social shift towards proto-feminist freedoms, but it also had built-in limitations. 268

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated

Figure 14.1  Olive Allen, comic self-portrait and verse, ‘Bad Anna, or, Give a Dog a Bad Name’, Trebarfoot journal volume 4, 1903

Print culture in the realm of girls Allen’s Bad Anna was probably inspired by the Bad Anna regularly cartooned by Sybil Reid in 1903–4 in The Girl’s Realm magazine (published 1898–1915), which also ran Allen’s own works between 1902 and 1912. Like other women illustrators of her generation,

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 due to sexism, Allen found a profession easiest to attain in polite print culture aimed at children and fellow ‘girls’ – females in their teens and early twenties, in the period parlance. She came to this ‘women’s work’ eagerly in both personal and professional life, meeting with an international vogue for illustrated children who were ‘defusing sociopolitical tensions’, to paraphrase comics historian Lara Saguisag.4 But where Saguisag finds the representation of naughty girls in American newspaper comics quite compromised, in British girls’ periodicals, the Modern Girl had a ‘room of her own’.5 Second-wave feminists have problematically cast female magazine readers as dupes and victims of print capitalism,6 branding illustrators as complicit culture-industry manipulators, an accusation also found in media and art criticism.7 These analyses based on a later publishing industry, however, do not map uniformly onto the Edwardian period, where Sally Mitchell has documented a girls’ ‘separate culture’, largely formed by print.8 Postcards, greeting cards, children’s books, trade cards, needle cases, magazines and other cheap printed matter gave them a common visual culture, much of it conceived, edited, written, and drawn by other girls and women, that they used for productive self-fashioning.9 Feminist magazines likewise bonded women through a community of writing,10 while generalist periodical work allowed women illustrators to influence and opine in the public sphere.11 In a handmade book of her dramas, Allen announced on the title page that they were ‘For school-girls and other people’.12 Her conscious centring of girls over other people, as well as signalling that girls were people, reflected this subculture and women’s emerging public and legal personhood.13 Cartoons and illustrations in the early numbers of The Girl’s Realm appeared alongside advice on where to get an education, how to earn a living, what sports to play, and which unconventional women to emulate, while still encouraging ladylike attributes.14 Production values were high, and advertising was relegated to the back pages. Editor Anne Corkran put readers in dialogue with one another on social issues and ethics, encouraging their collective identity as Modern Girls, a category that purported to include of all shades of middle class in Great Britain and its colonies (the annuals also circulated in the United States).15 In scholar Dawn H. Currie’s words, girlhood is ‘a textually mediated social relation’ where magazines ‘actively construct and normalise categories of girlhood’.16 This construction is contested and negotiated in an ongoing process where readers exercise some agency in their interpretations and feedback to the editors.17 Like subscribers, but with more effect, freelance writer-illustrators and cartoonists could interject with highly influential original content.

Allen at home Allen’s middle-class background was typical of women illustrators of the period, but her upbringing was unconventional in that she grew up in a ‘high-class school for girls’ with ‘an ample staff of qualified teachers’,18 in Launceston, Cornwall, established in 1883 by her mother (d. 1896?) and operated by her sisters. ‘Very flourishing’ North Hall – one of many newly progressive schools that collectively birthed the educated girl as a social movement – prepared elementary and high school students for college matriculation

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated with classes in French, music, Euclid, and more.19 In her diary, Allen also mentions studying chemistry and etiquette the same evening and occasional assistance with teaching. We also hear of a tennis court, garden, greenhouse, library, study, music room, and breakfast room. While students were expected to be serious academic achievers, a ‘Half Term Feast’ of cakes was held in the dormitory, where Allen gave an impromptu speech and there was ‘much screaming and yelling and rolling on the beds’.20 Having sisters as breadwinning authority figures emboldened her aspirations, while their boarders provided insight into child psychology. In an atypically sober verse, ‘The New Girl’, Allen drew a woebegone figure sitting alone while others stare at her from a distance. She laments, ‘The girls all look me up and down / They look me round and round. / Some smile, some giggle, and some frown / But I look on the ground. / It’s 2184 long hours more /… before / I start for home again.’ 21 Symbolizing the attributes of the Modern Girl’s education, at her feet are a work box, atlas, drawing book (labelled Olive Allen), and textbooks for Latin, French, and algebra. Diaries reveal Allen’s robust reading included poets Christina Rossetti, Shelley, and Swinburne; women’s periodicals were the highbrow Atalanta and The Queen. Cornhill, Punch, The Century, and subscriptions to Scribner’s and The Studio kept her up to date in illustration trends. Her fiction tastes encompassed both popular and literary fiction, and she prepared a paper on Jane Austen, given at an unidentified Guild. Recurring activities are walks, bike riding, making and receiving calls, feeling poorly and sleeping in, decorating the drawing room, violin rehearsal, arranging flowers, tennis, eating many cakes, and occasional chores. She also smoked cigarettes. Despite the comforts, budgeting was tight. Allen bemoaned the rising price of bread and had just one smart frock (albeit from Liberty), originally purchased for her sister’s wedding. Despite the sibling rivalry in ‘Bad Anna’, her diary is remarkably free of strife (minus occasional ‘sweary’ moods).22 In August 1898, the Allens and friends took their vacation to Trebarfoot, a Cornwall seaside farmstead they rented annually. One can track Olive’s artistic development in thick journals logging their pursuits,23 where she contributed dozens of posters, paintings, cartoons, word games, jokes, stories, photographs, and verses – ‘Bad Anna’ among them. She also took commissions there, and Trebarfoot landscapes and children (cousins Roland and Annabel, and others) appear in nearly every one of her books. At Trebarfoot, said her daughter, ‘men and women were equal’.24 They engaged in bicycling, bathing, rowdy games, plays, and pranks; on a scorecard of misconduct, Allen won for ‘being a boldsome hussy and morally corrupting the general company; for all round bad behaviour’.25 A yearly tongue-in-cheek competition with categories for best novel and best poetry whetted Allen’s composing of comic fiction, doggerel, and song parody. These jocular summers led to her eventual marriage to frequent guest Jack Biller in 1912 and defined her preferred creative mode as a collective endeavour of tomfoolery.

Fooling and graphic nonchalance In the 1898 diary Allen repeatedly used the colloquialism ‘fooling’. She ‘fooled’ away time doing chores, playing parlour games, and reading magazines, and ‘played the fool

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 violently’ during a Trebarfoot sports match. She also wrote, ‘After tea fooled about and drew a bookplate’ and ‘Afternoon fooled around sketching’. Her seeming dilettantism is deceptive. Having North Hall’s staff and elder family members to run things enabled her art-making many days of each week. Two male relatives were prominent magazine contributors, which meant her family acknowledged the profession’s legitimacy (these were her brother-in-law Harold Avery, a popular writer of boys’ fiction, and her cousin John Ley Pethybridge, painter and illustrator of boys’ magazines, who also lived nearby). When everyone on the Trebarfoot holiday confessed their greatest wishes in the world, she stated that hers was ‘to be allowed to work quietly upstairs’; a photo shows her doing so, accompanied by a verse: ‘Seek among her books and brushes / At her table in the bedroom / You will find poor Boylee [Olive] working / Working hard to get a living.’ 26 ‘Fooling’ is not to be dismissed. Mockery in Punch and elsewhere performed an important check on social ills, such as the status of women workers.27 In the 1890s, feminist writers such as Ella Hepworth Dixon reclaimed female humour (rumoured to be absent since Jane Austen) as a way to advance their arguments and counter opposition to the New Woman and her mythic humourlessness.28 The decade also saw the emergence of many female cartoonists and humorous illustrators. Olive Allen’s work typically exhibits a mildly clownish lack of polish. She herself said she ‘drew as usual rapidly and incorrectly’.29 Anatomy and faces are often wonky; hands splay and knees buckle; inconvenient elements inexplicably end or fade away; and frequently, compositions seem ill-planned, with foreground characters or shapes touching or running out of the frame on one side but not the other. Her work, however, would not have looked amiss to girls’ magazine subscribers, where many of the commissioned illustrations exhibited naivety or were by young readers who had won the magazine’s competitions. Certainly, women artists were held to lower standards than men; one patronizing critic even considered ‘technical defects’ the pardonable mark of a ‘true woman’.30 But Allen, who had four years of elite training and enjoyed being unconventional, was simply declining to become slick. ‘Fooling’ permits us to understand this graphic nonchalance as a productive space. Devon Smither has argued that ‘unfinish’ in a female painter’s work resists masculine codes of ‘mastery’ that a woman was unlikely to be credited with no matter her skill, while enhancing authorial subjectivity and somatic feeling. Smither’s theory was inspired by punk musician Kathleen Hanna, who observed that crude recordings invited other women to bravely participate with their own efforts regardless of talent or training.31 Mass participation leads to identity and empowerment. As has been argued in defence of medieval ‘nun’s work’, nuns’ ‘bad’ drawing is misunderstood; rather, they developed their own visual language, one that bonded community much as postcards did in Allen’s era.32 Like with rapidly pasted-up and photocopied punk zines, or with Girl’s Realm contributions, the tightly networked target audience saw not a lack of quality but rather a semiotic marker of ‘their’ print and a defiant, alternative measure of excellence that valued sharing regardless of imposed strictures. For hesitant and hostile viewers, graphic nonchalance was the equivalent of saying, ‘Don’t take this too seriously; I’m just fooling

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated around’ – a jester’s rhetoric concealing a barb, or, a mask concealing serious intents. For example, Allen’s flat, spot-coloured, casual drawings in Too Good To Live (1906), like the new comic strips with their preponderance of disruptive children, visually expressed the book’s argument for the tolerance of healthy misbehaviour by use of this disreputable stylistic form (see Figure 14.2).33 It is important to note that the Allen family’s unimpeachable respectability afforded Olive the privilege of performing lighthearted foolery as ‘Bad Anna’ without social cost. Because prior Victorian social cartoonists were esteemed for their propriety (in contrast to Georgian era caricaturists),34 and women particularly were not to be funny at all,35 it was imperative to maintain respectability. In 1876, Ellen Clayton carefully explained that the rare lady cartoonists (herself one) were exercising wit (an intellectual exercise; more distanced), not humour (from the body and heart; more instinctive), for the latter risked an unseemly descent into the vulgar.36 An example of that was Marie Duval’s aggressively primitive-looking slapstick cartoons in Judy, reminiscent of the vulgar graphic satire associated with women in particular: the ‘vinegar’ or ‘mocking’ valentine, with its insulting caricatures and biting captions. To the consternation of moral-panic commentators, cruel, sexually suggestive and grotesque ones were circulated anonymously by working-class women with malicious intent.37 Vulgarity was also associated with the music halls’ comediennes, male impersonators, and sex workers (Duval herself was an actress).38 Therefore, a 1902 biography of cartoonist Hilda Cowham (1873–1964) in highbrow Girl’s Realm carefully explained that Cowham ‘combines artistic ability with a dainty sense of real humour’ [emphasis added].39 The article also said she was the ‘only lady artist’ to do so – an incorrect statement, but proving the relative novelty of Cowham’s, Reid’s, Allen’s, and other ‘girl’ cartoonists emerging at this time. They were more irreverent than the ‘amiable humour’ of the ‘drawing-room sociability’ of previous cartoonists such as Florence and Adelaide Claxton,40 but rarely as coarse as Marie Duval. Though Allen referenced vinegar valentines in a plot of one of her plays (discussed below), her cohort relied more on cuteness, satire, and irony in a mode we might call genteel feminism. Many cartoons by suffragists themselves likewise avoided the damaging visual vulgarity that would have resulted if they had illustrated the brazen verbal ridicule and repartee that radical suffragettes wielded in campaigns and protests.41 Allen’s daughter actually claimed her mother ‘was not a feminist’ while acknowledging ‘she probably knew some of them’.42 Indeed, suffragists abounded among illustrators connected with the Slade, where Allen finished her formal training in 1900–2, and among New Woman children’s writers. These included Mary Lowndes, Anne Anderson, Mabel Dearmer, Clemence Housman, Maud James, Olive Hockin, Edith Nesbit, Nellie Syrett, and Evelyn Sharp43 – all of whom, like Allen, remained provocative more than offensive in their published work. The Girl’s Realm also urged decorum in suffrage matters.44 Some menu card designs (likely for Trebarfoot use) Allen drew with nonchalant informality are ambiguous on militancy. In one, a suffragette is heading out the door, leaving her stoic but suffering husband to care for the children – a common anti-suffrage trope. On the wall is a sign that reads, ‘What is home without MOTHER?’ (Allen’s loss of her own

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Figure 14.2  Olive Allen, illustration for story critiquing Victorian mores by Sidney Chawner, Too Good to Live, 1906

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated mother may have influenced her here). Yet in another, a glamorous society belle clubs a policeman into signing her petition (see Plate 16). Perhaps suffragettes were just ‘Bad Annas’ driven to criminality because their more reasonable demands were denied.

Art school Olive Allen’s earliest work both follows and departs from ‘Sixties’ Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts forerunners such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Walter Crane, with their medievalism, literary subjects, psychological moodiness, and decorative design. In autumn 1898, she commenced at the School of Architecture and Applied Art at University College, Liverpool, where she studied under illustrator Robert Anning Bell. He was a close friend of Crane, whose books The Decorative Illustration of Books (1896) and Claims of Decorative Art (1892) Allen promptly bought. She also obtained Joseph Pennell’s Modern Illustration (1895), which promoted a more autographic approach made possible by photoengraving.45 Her favourite instructor, J. Herbert McNair, a member of the Arts and Crafts group the Glasgow Four (nicknamed The Spooks), encouraged wild invention and fantasy. Allen soon joined the trend for imaginative (or ‘weird’) decorative book illustration in black and white. At art school, Allen immediately bonded with other girls (Christine Drummond Angus, who later married the painter Walter Sickert, became a close friend), taking classes in drawing, design, repoussé, jewellery, modelling, and stained glass. Only three weeks in, McNair said her designs were ‘best of all’ and later signed some, the custom when the master saw efforts he approved of.46 Allen particularly ‘enjoyed it awesomely’ and ‘went home chuckling’ when, in a Sketch Club exhibition where drawings were hung anonymously, hers were mistaken for those of a male fellow student.47 Her playful side was at odds with the high-mindedness of medievalism, Pre-Raphaelite, and Arts and Crafts movement social reform on one hand; and the Aestheticist focus on beauty decoupled from social concerns on the other. Allen satirized both in a manuscript titled ‘The Mind Enbalmed [sic]’.48 Indebted to Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera Patience, and resembling a little magazine, it self-mocks girl students (‘Lovespooks’), caricatures teachers (Professor McNightmare), parodies artworld reportage, and spoofs advertisements for crafts. One badly limned page depicts two men wearing capes and hose: Sir Thingamyjig: ‘By the Rooo! … That is no small thing in latch keys that thou carriest!’ Sir What’D’Youcall [bearing a gigantic key]: ‘By the Mass! … Methinks thou art right. Twas designed by one J. Herbert McNair!’ The latchkey was a well-known symbol of the New Woman, here turned into a rather phallic commentary on masculine creative prowess. Indicating her concern for Art Nouveau representations of women, another cartoon shows a hirsute, medievalesque lady admonishing

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 a bewildered little girl: ‘Seek not, O maid, to know /… Why we are fashioned so /… Why we in robes that flow /… All weird and wan with woe …’.49 These satires guard us against taking Allen’s published work at face value. In McNair’s ‘Spook’ vein, her earliest drawings revelled in dark themes with doubled-up, pained figures squeezed against edges, infested with webs of cloying, convoluted linework. One for William Morris’s ‘The Hill of Venus’, winning an Honourable Mention in The Studio, is typical: rather overdone, it has a whiff of sarcasm, differing from the earnest, academic correctness of contemporaries such as Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale (see Figure 14.3).50 That same year, she illustrated Fact and Fable in a similarly grotesque style; the images teeter between creepy and goofy. The Slade School of Art – where she began in October of 1900 – was abruptly different. Legendary taskmaster Henry Tonks caused her to sketch herself crying, with ‘My first day in LIFE. And Tonks. O-hhh’ closely followed with ‘Fearsome jaw from Tonks – Nearly wept! Tonks knows everything about everybody and will probably know about the dreadful Studio competitions.’ 51 She dropped the weirdness for more conventionally adorable and commercially viable child subjects in ink and watercolour. Unfortunately, the only other diary available is for 1930–4.52 Letters home document her trip to Italy with art school friends in 1904, sketching in Florence, Venice, and Siena,

Figure 14.3  Olive Allen, illustration for poem by William Morris, ‘The Hill of Venus’, printed and given an Honourable Mention in The Studio Vol. 21, No. 91, October 1900

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated where she deplored being thought ‘good’.53 But upon her return, Allen was very good: she resumed helping at North Hall, delayed marriage in order to nurse her father (deceased 1910), and freelanced.

To get a living Allen’s business records have not appeared, but drawings and clippings in her estate show she was publishing self-originated pieces (single-panel gag cartoons, short sequential narratives in verse, and plays) and commissioned story illustrations in children’s and girls’ magazines (The Girl’s Realm, The Jabberwock, Stokes Children’s Annual, Blackie’s Children’s Annual); ten book commissions also appeared 1906–11, mainly published by T. C. & E. C. Jack. Like that of many other contributors, Allen’s magazine work observed children’s delightful absurdity and amusing naughtiness, or the silliness of Victorian clothes and manners. In a typical piece, a prim clergyman asks small Annabel, ‘And do you – er – keep bees?’ The child answers, ‘No, but we keep flies.’ A small vignette beneath the large illustration depicts her peering intently into a decidedly unfeminine, buzzing zoological specimen jar.54 An atypical series, ‘Gems from a German Grammar Book’, features non sequiturs: ‘Has your cousin any relations or friends?’ – ‘No, but she has a china ink-stand.’ The ink-stand in question has a matched pair of pots; the cousin is spilling one.55 Many of the commissioned books were classics and fairy tales, which differ from her personal work in that they are not humorous and look only mildly eclectic. They convey prettiness and charm with some distinctly twentieth-century touches: sometimes, conventionally drawn people in period costume are placed into landscapes of arcs and flat, simplified greenery, in keeping with Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau aesthetics but not always with their gracefulness, while other plates in the same book maintain perspectival space (see Figure 14.4).56 Mainly, as a hired hand, Allen behaved with artistic propriety, observing normal gift-book taste with a debt to Walter Crane, who valued inventiveness but privileged structure, with hand-lettered captions, architectural borders, symmetrical compositions, and repeating motifs. ‘It seems to me,’ Crane stated, ‘that in all designs certain conditions must be acknowledged, and not only acknowledged but accepted freely, just as one would accept rules of a game before attempting to play it.’ 57 Allen’s drawings, like the gracious home that Crane compared books to, complete with forecourt, gardens, ‘frontispiece like a facade’, and closing ‘gate’ of the tailpiece, reinforced a distinctly middle-class orderliness. Tanglewood Tales also underscored women’s lesser status: Allen portrayed Proserpina, Europa, and Pandora as little girls, while Midas, Mercury, and Cadmus are youths.58 For Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1906),59 babes laze in pastoral landscapes, modelled by Roland and Annabel at Trebarfoot. Blake scholar G. E. Bentley found it ‘very distressing’, perhaps because Allen’s intimate portrayal of her relatives – originally grinning at her through her camera, we discover in Trebarfoot journals – comes off as mawkish.60 Literary critics identifying with Mallarmé’s famous preference for ‘no illustration’ (meaning no commercial illustration) championed an aloof approach, whereas Allen’s tots and colourful

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Figure 14.4  Olive Allen, illustration for story by Maria Edgeworth, The Birthday Present, 1908

floral garlands recalled the tradition of women’s sentimental print culture of keepsakes and greeting cards.61 Quite in contrast and unique among her book commissions, the fantasy Humpty Dumpty and the Princess (1907) is her best effort at imaginative book illustration (see Figure 14.5). Here, graphic nonchalance gives way to seriousness, where lines and masses are

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated carefully arranged in lyrical black-and-white compositions with some of Aubrey Beardsley’s sensibility.62 Although pleasing to the eye, they lack the spontaneity and lively mirth of her self-generated work.

Naughty innocents and idealized innocence Allen’s assertion that Bad Anna was MISUNDERSTOOD evokes the 1869 bestseller Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery, a book indicative of how, during the nineteenth century, children went from being regarded as born sinners in need of correction to born innocents in need of patience.63 Among new advocates of childhood, mild disobedience and mischievousness were thought to be a result of an innocence integral to the development of pluck, genius, and morality.64 The protagonists of Bee, Paul and Babs (Allen’s eleventh commission, 1920) therefore go unpunished for kidnapping a toddler, since their noble motive stemming from a misunderstanding was to rescue her from poverty.65 In such stories, the children’s errors are the result of innocence in the sense of inexperience and misunderstanding. Similarly, Bad Anna’s initial waywardness, as an outcome of inborn artistic temperament, deserved respect because it was natural, innocent. Julia Briggs notes that Edwardian women writers ‘began to make common cause with children as irresponsible and subversive of the dominant social order’.66 For Allen, this identification with children informs graphic nonchalance, where unruly draughtsmanship seemingly innocent of academic standards likewise resisted discipline. In a 1908 project that informs her own writing, Allen edited and illustrated Catherine Sinclair’s 1839 classic Holiday House. Sinclair’s Rousseau-like objective was to celebrate children’s nature and the value of play and parental affection rather than disciplinarian, machinelike conformity. Unusually, ‘Laura soon became quite as mischievous as Harry, which is very surprising, as she was a whole year older, and had been twice as often scolded,’ wrote Sinclair. In her preface, Allen gleefully assured that children were just as capable of being bad in 1839 as they were in 1908.67 Significantly, she expurgated Sinclair’s deathbed scene that was supposed to be the miscreants’ sobering, moralizing punishment, focusing instead on their amusing atrociousness. In pictures that often abuse the rules of perspective, Allen lets the children (Roland and Annabel) abuse their privileges without consequences. Notably, Allen disliked Kate Greenaway’s work.68 Because Greenaway’s conception of innocence was so contrived, her characters could never misbehave. Many scholars have been sharply critical of this kind of idealized innocence, arguing that its purported absence of the erotic is a signifier of its hidden presence, enabling sexual abuse and sexist oppression.69 This school of criticism makes a convincing case for how the media image of the innocent child or virgin informs patriarchal exploitation in pornography, art, literature, film, and advertising; and in racism. Others, however, disagree that girls are ignorant and helpless receptacles of expectations and media determinism.70 The assumption

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Figure 14.5  Olive Allen, illustration for Humpty Dumpty and the Princess by Lilian Timpson, 1907

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated that girls were ‘everything nice’ opened Greenawayesque innocence to subversion, as Regina Barreca explains: Learning to sound like a Good Girl, while half-concealing the text of the Bad Girl, has been the subject of a great deal of women’s humor. In other words, if you present yourself as being so completely naive that nothing you say can be interpreted as having sexual or aggressive connotations, then you can give any covert message you choose to the proper audience […]. Women use this kind of ‘innocence’ to mask, in mixed social situations, their risky comments.71 Written for girls and breaking with the limitations of her commissioned work, innocents playing with innocence was potent rhetoric in Allen’s plays, where she and her characters’ fooling (joking around) and fooling (deceit) as innocents redefined girlhood as intelligent, sexually self-aware, and proactive.

Staging gender Amateur theatre was an ongoing amusement in Launceston. A newspaper reported that Allen’s ‘inimitable drolleries … [were] capitally done’ in a minor role she played in HMS Pinafore.72 The free hand Allen exercised in the plays she wrote and directed, some of which appeared in The Girl’s Realm, contrast with her commissioned books (Too Good To Live and Holiday House excepted). Although published as farces for children, the local live performances were for all ages and shared with adult women’s theatre a desire to write ‘the Real girl’, as one feminist playwright put it,73 with performers satirizing the artifice, fashions, and gender prescriptions of the most upright Victorians. The full extent of Allen’s ‘real girl’ impetus is most revealed in Allen’s unpublished work, where flirtatious heroines drawn very nonchalantly are often caught between their fun-loving proclivities and their moral duties overseen by a strict, spoilsport older woman. ‘“Oh hang what mother says,” she thought / “It’s dull to do as you were taught”’, says one soon-to-be-ruined innocent reminiscent of Bad Anna.74 ‘Clementina’s Copy Book’ continues Allen’s good/bad girl trope, following Clementina’s cycle of flirtations and repentances each month of the year, as she struggles to emulate ideal comportment and satisfy her sensuality at the same time.75 She rebuffs caricaturish Mr Puddingface, Mr Headstrong, and Signor Subito, but ‘enjoys’ the beach – with its handsome, attentive officers. Scolded by her aunt, in November, she tries her best to be ‘a gleam of sunshine in the house’, only in December to say, ‘Abandon[ed] the sunbeam idea. Prefer to be a thundercloud … do not wish to be good.’ Clementina’s diary entries contrast ironically with the preachy, sexist copy-book maxims she halfheartedly scrawls to practise penmanship, where she switches pronouns from he to she and renders ‘Read not books alone but men’ as ‘Read——men’. The story, with no happy marriage at the end, is an example of what Amanda T. Smith (following Judy Little) argues is ‘renegade comedy’ that ‘implies, or perhaps advocates, a permanently inverted

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 world, a radical reordering of social structures’.76 It is also an example of what an 1896 commentator identified as humour particular to women, for making fun of men and sharing ‘a secret shudder’ at their obnoxiousness.77 In the vein of Holiday House, Allen’s plays used ‘innocence’ to sugar-coat the stings. In Auntie McAssar, Bad Barbara (Olive Allen playing a tween) engineers a marriage proposal between elderly Auntie and insect-collecting Herr Professor that is calculated to relieve Barbara and her siblings of Auntie’s overprotectiveness.78 Quick-witted Barbara’s schemes involve deception and original poems and songs. Friend Priggish Patty says, ‘But, Barbara, if we are found out, we shall be dreadfully punished!’ to which Barbara grins, ‘And isn’t it worth it?’ At the end of the play, the Professor warns, ‘Zou Barbara, for a female child, hast of intelligence ze beginnings. Cultivate it not, small mees, or zou wilt not marry’ (original emphasis).79 But such hyperbole from a misogynist caricature (skewering actual critics of progressive girls’ education)80 is made laughable by Bad Barbara’s success, her lack of punishment, and Auntie’s own marriage in old age. Allen, herself becoming an old maid, was not concealing her own intelligence but drawing attention to it through public performance, undermining the idea that smart or unmarried women ought to suppress themselves. To put this in context, a prominent theatre periodical, The Mask, was in 1910–12 agitating to ban women from the stage altogether.81 Aunt Grundy: A Moral Play was performed in Launceston, then published in The Girl’s Realm and reprinted in a book of plays.82 The drama, performed in early Victorian garb, parodies innocence but also cautions against the excesses of the unchecked Modern Girl. Good girl Seraphina has just graduated from an old-fashioned seminary school but is forbidden to yet enter society by her aunt, Mrs Grundy. Influenced by lowbrow romance fiction, bad girl Fanny Frivol (played by Olive Allen) induces Seraphina to elope with a scoundrel for a laugh. But worldly Fanny goes too far, and Aunt Grundy must throw the scoundrel out, restoring order and chastity. Especially surprising is that when disillusioned Seraphina shuns Fanny at the end, instead of showing remorse, unrepentant Fanny mocks her ex-friend’s tears and promises to gossip about the failed elopement. She gaily exits the stage, unreformed and unpunished. Although immoral Fanny ought to have been booed, a local reporter observed that ‘Whenever [Allen as Fanny] appeared she imparted a freshness and gaiety which was irresistible. The sudden change from almost boisterous frivolity to demure modesty at the sudden appearance of Aunt Grundy was a consummate piece of acting, and one which provoked long and sustained applause.’ 83 By demonstrating how ‘demure modesty’ and seeming innocence could be donned like a cloak, Allen made explicit that femininity was a mere act. And she made a travesty of Seraphina’s idealized Victorian innocence, exposing it as dangerous naivety that put the overly sheltered girl at risk. Sally Mitchell suggests ‘the ethics … in the world of girls’ popular fiction [may] represent a serious critique of adult beliefs’.84 Seraphina’s cloistered education and Victorian purity are obviously targeted. A more veiled message is that despite being ridiculed as authoritarian, class-policing, and stingy, Mrs Grundy is a strong woman: middle-aged with two young children and no husband ever mentioned, she ‘commands the whole

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated town’. Seraphina concludes, ‘If the people in the world are as foolish as Archibald, Fanny and myself – someone like Aunt must be very necessary. She is kinder than I thought … I have decided to be guided by Aunt until I have seen enough of life to judge for myself.’ 85 Singular Mrs/Aunt Grundy (perhaps a widow) being the simultaneous bugbear/ heroine recalls the Victorian disregard of those other ‘aunts’: spinsters (one-quarter of British women) described as ‘surplus women’ who were also central in the suffrage movement, where many protested the subjugation of women that marriage norms entailed.86 The reconciling of traditional and modern, a line The Girl’s Realm often walked,87 also characterizes ‘The Little Female Academy’.88 As before, its main objective was satirical indictment of middle-class Victorian girls’ education, calculated to make the North Hall students who performed the play thankful for the Allens’ curriculum. ‘Miss Tom Tomkins’ time-travels to attend her grandmother’s school, where a comparison is made between the modern Tom in a hockey outfit and the old-fashioned girls in lacy pantalettes, who are forced to extremes of correct deportment under frequent threats of becoming otherwise unmarriageable. When Tom introduces herself, her name is challenged because ‘only a male could be called Tom’. The overdressed girls are also the worst of snobs, studying the peerage and boasting of their aristocratic relatives (a review of historical girls’ schooling confirms Allen’s representation is not far-fetched).89 Their pretensions are exposed, however, when a clandestine delivery of valentines reduces them to unseemly swooning – and unladylike tantrums when it turns out they are vinegar valentines telling unflattering truths about them. A photo in the artist’s estate shows the beau delivering the cards was played by a girl, demonstrating to North Hall students that class, femininity, and masculinity were all performances that depended on costumes and affectations. In publication, an illustration with a caption uttered by Miss Priscilla Plume invites us to share her judgemental scrutiny as she eyes and condemns Tom’s ‘unmaidenly attire’. But the nonchalant lack of pictorial space, flat outlines, visible brush strokes, antiquarian lettering, and off-kilter perspective, showing Tom’s shoulder from above but her profile straight on, provoke Allen’s intended counter-reading. We follow Tom’s gaze and her almost prodding stick back to the spectacle of Priscilla on full-frontal display, making clear that the latter is the true butt of the joke (see Figure 14.6). The story and illustrations broke the eugenic equation of beauty with goodness and class that elder cartoonists such as John Leech had propagated90 – furnishing the reader with a moral high ground if she were unwilling or unable to adhere to impossible beauty and class standards.

Illustrator versus fiancé Following writer L. T. Meade’s initial naughty heroines, stock figures in girls’ fiction were wilful, rude, athletic, smart, and gutsy.91 Allen penned one in ‘Pixie and the Publisher’, a short story that gives some insight into her experience of being an illustrator.92 It begins when a letter arrives at ‘Penhallow Farm’ (Trebarfoot) for illustrator ‘Miss Priscilla Parker Smith’ – Pixie – whose work, though ‘often faulty in drawing, does not lack originality’

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Figure 14.6  Overdressed Priscilla Plume criticizes the athletic Modern Girl, Tom Tomkins. Olive Allen, illustration for the play ‘The Little Female Academy’, performed in Launceston, Cornwall, and published in The Girl’s Realm

(a criticism Allen herself heard as a student). It requests a second round of ridiculous changes to the finished art, altering her initial creative concept entirely, and twenty-year-old Pixie bawls melodramatically. Her elder sister points out that the publisher is being pushy because they think of her as a child, and at her sister’s insistence, she reluctantly writes back with a ‘gentle but firm’ refusal. Part of Pixie’s reticence was the risk of losing a £20 fee that she needed for art school tuition.

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated In keeping with a feminist impetus to write ‘the real girl,’ Allen modelled Pixie’s home and family on her own, and was doubtless recalling her own first book, Fact and Fable, when writer Effie Johnson’s meddling made Allen ‘swear’ (original emphasis).93 Illustrating was a competitive field, where the cheap ephemera that women were encouraged to illustrate did not pay highly – a stark contrast to the hyped income of a few stars.94 Pixie’s story coached readers in what the glamorous illustrator life was really like, indicating emotional toll, sexism, how to self-advocate, fees, the importance of proper training – and what to do about marriage proposals. In this climate, the financial security of marriage was tempting, a prospect Allen has Pixie bring about through the foolery of (un)innocent playing at innocence. Allen employs several kinds of humour, including cruel caricatures that Pixie (‘with a savage grin’) scrawls to assuage her insulted ego; the toddler’s cute parodies of stock illustration poses; slapstick; irony; mistaken identity; and comic juxtaposition. The publisher and Pixie meet-cute at the nearby shore where he mistakes her for a juvenile. Pixie bewilders him with bratty pranks and inexplicable (to him) tomboyish attractiveness as she innocently (actually, flirtatiously) takes his hand to lead him through brambles and woods: ‘Such a delightful, tantalizing, bewitching little schoolgirl! … This one looked so sweet and frank and child-like standing there before him. He wondered if she were really too old to be kissed [paternally].’ Then, having slipped away via a shortcut she arrives at the house before him and changes her dress, coming out to surprise him, ‘clad all in white, dainty and demure .… His first thought was, “How fortunate that I did not offer to kiss her!” His second, “But how I wish I had!”’ Romance ensues and a formulaic marriage proposal comes. But instead, breaking with the convention of even New Woman novels95 – ‘“Marry!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I’m not thinking of marrying. I’m thinking of art. Do you forget I’m going to study at Littlejohn’s…?” … there was her art, her career… No, she would never marry.’ But then she looks around at the ‘big, empty landscape, flat, stale, and unprofitable’ and suddenly ‘she flung her arms around his neck. “I’ll tell you at Littlejohn’s,” she whispered, close against his ear.’ Allen lets readers decide the ending, thereby questioning convention without directly challenging it. Framed as a mere lark, with the heroine’s un-innocent tomboy side juxtaposed with her dainty side – an absolute must for the Modern Girl idea to be appealing, given the mannish caricatures of the New Woman and suffragette – she presented a fully empowered woman who could claim the privileges of both Modern Girl and traditional belle at the same time. But how did life turn out for the real Pixie? The ‘flat, stale and unprofitable’ landscape was a metaphor for the freelancing illustrator’s life, since beloved Penhallow/Trebarfoot was a sizeable working farm. Thirty-one-year-old Allen now had ten years of publications behind her and a realistic idea of women’s prospects. She later observed that ‘life is short and art is difficult’.96 Women’s print was patchwork: scrap-books, miscellanies, keepsakes, and magazines made up of a hodgepodge of pieces jostling side by side. This piecework translated into a great number of makers of small things, with few achieving the ‘no small thing’: the latchkey needed to unlock paying recognition. And in The Girl’s Realm,

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 it was over: ‘Pixie and the Publisher’ was not illustrated by Allen herself but by (N.?) Schlegel; for by 1911, dissipating under a male editor since 1904, The Girl’s Realm ran only polished fiction illustrations by a few regular illustrators, only one of whom – Elizabeth Earnshaw – was unambiguously a woman.97 Nor were there any more illustrated comic verses, whimsical head- or tailpieces, illustration competitions, or cartoons that had been the entry point for Allen and other females. Ironically, the same volume carries an essay by Christabel Pankhurst that could apply to Allen with her multiple styles and multidisciplinary work, decrying how held-back women were ‘Jill-of-all-trades’ but ‘mistress of none’.98 The proposal Pixie won from her publisher may have been Allen’s parable for greater control, since wedding him might guarantee career opportunities or support of amateur practice. Perhaps Allen was wistfully fantasizing. In 1912 she emigrated with her longtime fiancé to a homestead in Canada. The isolation, marriage, motherhood, then widowhood and single parenting (Jack Biller died fighting in World War I) meant giving up her profession. Moving in the 1920s to small James Island in the far west, she wrote a community newspaper social column and gave her employment as ‘stenographer’ in the Census.99 She illustrated personal work into the 1930s, exhibited in Arts and Crafts Society shows, and sold an unidentified illustrated story in 1930,100 but gradually turned to landscape painting in the progressive Canadian School vein until her death in 1957.

Conclusion Besides the visual identity that graphic nonchalance gave women’s print, that lack of polish is also symptomatic of women’s ambivalent professional status. Competitive boldness in business, innovation, and self-interest were necessary, but besides being much closed to ladies, these clashed with the collectivist values of women’s print culture. Perhaps this is why much of the work in Allen’s estate, such as ‘Clementina’s Copy Book’, is unfinished, hinting at frustrated efforts. Graphic nonchalance usefully allowed provocations to be tolerated as ‘just a joke’ but also prevented work from being acclaimed. Looking back, Allen would have had more success if she had evolved the weird style of her early work, made it either more obviously slapdash or more polished, and claimed a more unfettered social commentary in a fully adult voice rather than ventriloquizing through juveniles. This would have overcome what design historian Martha Scotford has identified as a sexist bias to the male designer with a linear career path shooting surely from early recognition up a ladder of modernist triumphs considered original and autographic, specializing narrowly in media and concept, and producing for ‘important’ clients. Scotford proposed an alternative ‘messy history’ of practitioners characterized by more collective and cooperative work, career gaps to care for family, work on behalf of small or local audiences, and form and content that ignores the avant-garde.101 We may also add budding careers cut short by conservative social expectations, for the ‘male’ path would have cost Olive Allen respectability and affected the reputation of the family’s boarding school. Another path would have been to become a comic strip artist, but the field was biased to cartoonists

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated and illustrators already known to newspaper offices as reporters and caricaturists – with rare exceptions, a decidedly male preserve. Olive Allen Biller was typical of many genteel feminist illustrators. Despite limitations, their work was not without impact. Before bachelors and sceptics could be persuaded that the Modern Girl was alluring, the girl herself had to be convinced. Rare trailblazers noticed in conventional histories might start change, as when the painter Rosa Bonheur shifted perceptions of female talent and gender norms, but it is the numerous low-profile ‘Bad Anna’ writers and illustrators who, maintaining respectability, made transgressions acceptable by re-coding them from ‘vulgar’ to ‘clever’. No matter how formulaic, safe, and commercialized – or rather, because it was formulaic, safe, commercialized – the tomfooling Bad Barbaras, Fanny Frivols, and Pixies in the girls’ print circa 1900 seeded more daring flappers, funny girls, and career-minded Miss Moderns after 1920.102 I thank Michael Willis and Kristina Huneault for academic input; John Biller and Jill Biller Sims for sharing their mother’s life and work; and participants of Jared Gardner’s seminar Caricature, Cartooning, & Comics, 1620–1920 for feedback.

Notes 1 Olive Allen to her family, letter, 1904. Reprinted in Olive Allen, Italian Spring, ed. Jill Sims (Nanaimo, BC: Phantom Press, 1997). The original letters are in the Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Bo1, item 1.6. 2 Olive Allen, ‘Bad Anna, or, Give a Dog a Bad Name’ (1903), in ‘The Three Bears’ Feet’ [manuscript journal], Trebarfoot volume 4 (1901–4), pp. 150–2. Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.4. 3 Miriam Silverberg, ‘After the Grand Tour: The Modern Girl, the New Woman, and the Colonial Maiden’, in Alys Eve Weinbaum et al. (eds), The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 358. 4 Lara Saguisag, Incorrigibles and Innocents: Constructing Childhood and Citizenship in Progressive Era Comics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019), p. 1. 5 Saguisac, Incorrigibles and Innocents, pp. 98, 100, 142–74. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929). 6 Margaret Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own? Domesticity and Desire in theWoman’s Magazine, 1800–1914 (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 2; Dawn H. Currie, ‘From Girlhood, Girls, to Girls’ Studies: The Power of the Text’, in Girls,Texts, Cultures, ed. Clare Bradford (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015), p. 9. 7 Michele H. Bogart, Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Jaleen Grove, ‘But Is It Art? The Construction and Valuation of Illustration by Victoria’s Island Illustrator Society’ (Master’s thesis, Ryerson University, 2006), pp. 67–76. 8 Sally Mitchell, The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880–1915 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 1–2. 9 Beetham, Magazine of Her Own, pp. 2–3; Catherine Driscoll, Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 38; Beth Rodgers, ‘Competing Girlhoods: Competition, Community, and Reader Contribution in The Girl’s Own Paper and The Girl’s Realm’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 45/3 (Fall 2012), pp. 277–300. For the range of nineteenth-century women’s graphic arts work in the United States, see April

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10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27

28

29 30

Masten, Art Work:Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Michelle Elizabeth Tusan, ‘Inventing the New Woman: Print Culture and Identity Politics during the Fin-de-Siecle’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 31/2 (Summer 1998), p. 173. Marianne Van Remoortel, Women, Work and the Victorian Periodical (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 101. Olive Allen, ‘The Little Female Academy’ [manuscript book]. Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.7. Margaret Beetham, ‘Periodicals and the New Media: Women and Imagined Communities’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 29 (2006), p. 234. Kirsten Moruzi, Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850–1915 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 163, 165. Beth Rodgers, ‘The Editor of the Period: Alice Corkran, The Girl’s Realm, and the Woman Editor’, in Women, Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1830s-1900s: The Victorian Period, ed. Alexis Easley, Clare Gill, and Beth Rodgers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 171–4. Dawn H. Currie, Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), p. 31. Van Remoortel, Women,Work, p. 3. Advertisement, West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser, 4 January 1900, p. 1. Cornish & Devon Post, 1 December 1900, p. 8; Joan Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980); Driscoll, Girls, p. 38; Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 40–78. Olive Allen, diary, 5 March 1898, n.p. Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.4. Olive Allen, ‘The New Girl’, in Girl’s Realm Annual, ed. S. H. Leeder (London: S. H. Bousfield & Co., 1906), p. 652. There are four in the series describing schoolgirl types: ‘The Beauty’, ‘The Poetess’, and ‘The Clown’ are droll. Olive Allen, diaries for 1898, 1900 (contains very few entries also for 1903, 1911). Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, items 1.4, 1.5. Olive Allen et al., ‘The Three Bears’ Feet’, [manuscript journal] volumes 1–6 (1890–1912); hereafter, ‘Trebarfoot volumes’, Trebarfoot volume 1 (1890–4), Trebarfoot volume 2 (1895–8), Trebarfoot volume 4 (1901–4), Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, items 1.1–1.3. Trebarfoot volumes 3 (1899–1900), 5 (1905–9), and 6 (1910–12) are in the Olive Allen Biller estate. Sims in conversation, 2003. Trebarfoot volume 5 (1909), p. 154. Trebarfoot volume 4 (1902), pp. 67, 87–9. See Patricia Marks, ‘Women’s Work: More “Bloomin’ Bad Bizness”’, in Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers: The New Woman in the Popular Press (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), pp. 55–89. Amanda T. Smith, ‘A Keen Sense of the Ridiculous: Comic Reframing and the Laughter of Sisters in Ella Hepworth Dixon’s My Flirtations’, Women’s Writing, 19/1 (February 2012), pp. 110–28, DOI:10.1080/09699082.2012.622995; Margaret D. Stetz, BritishWomen’s Comic Fiction, 1890–1990: Not Drowning but Laughing (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 4–5. Allen, Italian Spring, p. 39. The Studio (1900), quoted in John Howe and Anne Carling, ‘“The Stuff of Dreams”:The Illustrations of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale’, IBIS Journal 5: Colour and Line (Guildford: Imaginative Book Illustration Society, 2014), pp. 6–47.

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated 31 Devon Smither, ‘Duration and Unfinish in Pegi Nicol MacLeod’s Self-Portraits’, RACAR, 46/1 (2021), fn. 11, pp. 62, 65. 32 Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns As Artists:TheVisual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997). 33 Olive Allen [illustrator] and Sidney Chawner [writer], Too Good to Live (Swan Sonnenschein & Co; New York: EP Dutton & Co, 1906). 34 Henry J. Miller, ‘John Leech and the Shaping of the Victorian Cartoon: The Context of Respectability’, Victorian Periodicals Review, 42/3 (Fall 2009), pp. 267–91. 35 Stetz, British Women’s Comic Fiction, p. ix; Catherine Flood, ‘Contrary to the Habits of Their Sex? Women Drawing on Wood and the Careers of Florence and Adelaide Claxton’, in Crafting the Woman Professional in the Long Nineteenth Century: Artistry and Industry in Britain, ed. Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 108, 114; Simon Grennan, ‘The Significance of Marie Duval’s Drawing Style’, in Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, ed. Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 143–4. 36 Ellen C. [Eleanor Creathorne] Clayton, English Female Artists (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1876), vol. 2, p. 319; Malcolm Y. Andrews, ‘Laughter and Conviviality’, in Victorian Comedy and Laughter: Conviviality, Jokes and Dissent, ed. Louise Lee (London: Palgrave, 2020), p. 38. 37 Annebella Pollen, ‘“The Valentine Has Fallen Upon Evil Days”: Mocking Victorian Valentines and the Ambivalent Laughter of the Carnivalesque’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 12/2 (2014), pp. 127–73, DOI:10.1080/17460654.2014.924212. 38 Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). 39 Edith Young, ‘How I Began: An Interview with Hilda Cowham’, Girl’s Realm Annual (1902), p. 115. 40 Flood, ‘Contrary to the Habits’, pp. 108, 113–14. 41 Krista Cowman, ‘“Doing Something Silly”: The Uses of Humour by the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903–1914’, International Review of Social History, 52, supplement 15: Humour and Social Protest (2007), pp. 259–74, DOI: 10.1017/S0020859007003239; Lisa Tickner, Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 42 Sims, in conversation, 2003. 43 Jill Shefrin and Dana Tenny, “A quick wit and a light hand”: Design Movements & Children’s Books 1880–1910 (Toronto: Friends of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections, Toronto Public Library, 1993); Dawn Cope and Peter Cope, Postcards from the Nursery:The Illustrators of Children’s Books and Postcards 1900–1950 (London: New Cavendish Books, 2000). 44 Moruzi, Constructing Girlhood, pp. 181–2. 45 Allen, diary, 17 October, 11 November, 19 November 1898. 46 Ibid., 27 October 1898. 47 Ibid., 14–16 November 1898. 48 Olive Allen and anonymous, in ‘The Mind Enbalmed’ [manuscript book] (1898–9), n.p. Unaccessioned, in the care of University College London Art Museum. 49 Olive Allen, ‘Villanelle’, in ‘The Mind Enbalmed’. The verse is based on Austin Dobson’s poem ‘Tu Ne Quaesieris’, 1887. My thanks to Mairéad Byrne for identifying this. 50 Olive Allen, illustration for William Morris poem, in The Studio, 21/91 (October 1900), p. 222. 51 Allen, diary, 10 October, 1 November 1900. 52 Olive Allen, diary for 1930–4. Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.9.

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Illustration at the fin de siècle, 1890–1908 53 Allen, Italian Spring. 54 Olive Allen, ‘The Absurdities of Annabel’, ink on illustration board, c. 1905. Olive Allen Biller estate. 55 Olive Allen, ‘Gems from a German Grammar Book – I’, in Girl’s Realm Annual, ed. Anne Corkran (London: S.H. Bousfield & Co., 1903), p. 508. Series continues pp. 590, 652, 764, 886, 966. 56 Olive Allen [illustrator and editor] and Maria Edgeworth [writer], The Birthday Present (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1908). The main character is modelled on her cousin Annabel Ley Pethybridge, to whom Allen also dedicates the book. 57 Walter Crane, Of the Decoration of Books Old and New (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896), p. 218. 58 Olive Allen [illustrator] and C. E. Smith [writer], Tanglewood Tales (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1906). 59 Olive Allen [illustrator] and William Blake [writer], Songs of Innocence (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1906). 60 G. E. Bentley, quoted in Brian Alderson, ‘Classics in Short No. 26: Songs of Innocence’, Books for Keeps, 127 (March 2001) p. 28, https://booksforkeeps.co.uk/article/classics-in-short-no26-songs-of-innocence/ (accessed 5 November 2022). 61 Anna Sigrídur Arnar, The Book as Instrument: Stéphane Mallarmé, the Artist’s Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 62 Olive Allen [illustrator] and Lilian Timpson [writer], Humpty Dumpty and the Princess (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1907). 63 Gillian Avery, Childhood’s Pattern: A Study of the Heroes and Heroines of Children’s Fiction, 1770–1900 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975), p. 146; Humphrey Carpenter, Secret Gardens:The Golden Age of Children’s Literature (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985), p. 107. 64 Avery, pp. 143–5, 156–8; Carpenter, p. 9; Julia Briggs, ‘Transitions (1890–1914)’, in Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History, ed. Peter Hunt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 173. 65 Olive Allen [illustrator] and Evelyn Maud Whitaker [writer], Bee, Paul, and Babs (London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1920). 66 Julia Briggs, ‘Women Writers and Writing for Children: From Sarah Fielding to E. Nesbit’, in Children and Their Books: A Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie, ed. Gillian Avery and Julia Briggs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 224, 248. 67 Olive Allen [illustrator and editor], ‘About This Book’, in Catherine Sinclair, Holiday House (London and Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1908). p. 7. The characters are modelled on Allen’s relatives and Trebarfoot. 68 Sims, more than once in conversation, 1997–2007. 69 James Kincaid, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); Anne Higonnet, Pictures of Innocence:The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998). 70 Gaylyn Studlar, ‘Oh, Doll Divine: Mary Pickford, Masquerade, and the Pedophilic Gaze’, Camera Obscura, 16/3 (2001), pp. 11, 197–227; Currie, Girl Talk, p. 9. 71 Regina Barreca, They Used to Call Me Snow White … But I Drifted:Women’s Strategic Use of Humor (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2013), p. 16. 72 Unidentified newspaper clipping, Olive Allen Biller estate. 73 Elizabeth Wright, ‘Women, Drama, and Print Culture 1890–1929’, in Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, 1890s-1920s:The Modernist Period, ed. Faith Binckes and Carey J. Snyder (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), p. 92. 74 Olive Allen, ‘Wooden Doll Emma’, Trebarfoot volume 5 (1905), pp. 33–40.

Olive Allen and the Modern Girl, illustrated 75 Olive Allen, ‘Clementina’s Copy Book’, thirteen unfinished panels, ink and watercolour on illustration board. Olive Allen Biller estate. 76 Judy Little quoted in Smith, ‘Keen Sense’, p. 112. 77 Laura Marholm quoted in Stetz, British Women’s Comic Fiction, p. 18. 78 Auntie McAssar may be unpublished; a printed programme shows it was publicly performed. Olive Allen Biller estate. 79 Auntie McAssar, script, n.d. Olive Allen Biller Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of British Columbia, Box 1, item 1.8. 80 Moruzi, Constructing Girlhood, p. 128; Marks, Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers, pp. 90–116. 81 Wright, ‘Women, Drama’, p. 98. 82 ‘Olive Allen, Aunt Grundy: A Moral Play’, in Girl’s Realm Annual, ed. S. H. Leeder (London: Cassell and Company, 1908), pp. 332–45. Reissued in Cecil Henry Bullivant (ed.), Home Plays, a Collection of New, Simple, and Effective Plays for Boys and Girls… (London and Edinburgh: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1911), pp. 337–56. 83 Unidentified newspaper clipping, Olive Allen Biller estate. 84 Mitchell, New Girl, p. 4. 85 ‘Allen, Aunt Grundy’, p. 344. 86 Sheila Jeffreys, ‘Spinsterhood and Celibacy’, in The Spinster and Her Enemies (North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1997), pp. 86–92. 87 Moruzi, Constructing Girlhood, pp. 166–7. 88 Allen, ‘The Little Female Academy’. The engraver’s inscription on the artwork in the Olive Allen estate indicates The Girl’s Realm, issue unidentified. Reissued in Bullivant, Home Plays, pp. 225–37. 89 Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 48–55. 90 Miller, ‘John Leech’, p. 270. 91 Kirsten Drotner, English Children and Their Magazines, 1751–1945 (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1988), p. 196; Mitchell, New Girl, pp. 21–2. 92 Olive Allen, ‘Pixie and the Publisher’, in Girl’s Realm Annual, by S. H. Leeder (London: Cassell and Company, 1911), pp. 771–9. 93 Allen, diary, 30 August 1900; Sims to Grove. 94 Amos Stote, ‘The Illustrator and His Income’, Bookman, 28 (September 1908), p. 25. 95 Stetz, British Women’s Comic Fiction, pp. 31–2. 96 Allen, ‘Jiller and Jiller’, appended in diary for 1930–4. 97 Mitchell, New Girl, p. 179, observes Girl’s Realm also pictured physically active girls less; Rodgers, ‘Editor of the Period’, p. 174, finds suffrage material also dropped off. 98 Christabel Pankhurst, ‘What Woman Suffrage Means’, in Girl’s Realm Annual, ed. S. H. Leeder (London: Cassell and Company, 1911), p. 575. 99 Sixth Census of Canada, District number Nanaimo 19, 1921. 100 Allen, diary, 28 October 1930. 101 Martha Scotford, ‘Messy History vs Neat History: Toward an Expanded View of Women in Graphic Design’ [1994], in Women in Graphic Design 1890–2012, ed. Gerda Breuer and Julia Meer (Berlin: Jovis Verlag, 2012), pp. 340–53. 102 Michelle Ann Abate, Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), pp. 6–7; Penny Tinkler, ‘Miss Modern:Youthful Feminine Modernity and the Nascent Teenager, 1930–40’, in Women’s Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918–1939: The Interwar Period, ed. Catherine Clay, Maria DiCenzo, Barbara Green, and Fiona Hackney (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); Weinbaum et al., The Modern Girl.

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Index

Aestheticism 12, 224 Allingham, Helen 16, 107, 124–5, 212, 214, 215, 221, 227 Andersen, Hans Christian 45 Argosy (magazine) 96, 106 Art Nouveau 12, 213, 230, 246, 247, 275, 277 Arts and Crafts movement 2, 3, 12, 16, 195, 197, 199, 208, 267, 275 Athenaeum 152 Audubon, John James 8 Beardsley, Aubrey 214, 229, 233, 247, 251, 279 Belgravia (magazine) 10, 96, 101, 102, 106, 115–16 Bell, Robert Anning 219, 222, 275 Bewick, Thomas 8, 21, 23, 26–7, 29, 32, 43, 90 Black and White (magazine) 198, 202 Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith 2 Bowers, Georgina 7, 15 Bradbury and Evans (printers) 114 Braddon, Mary Elizabeth 10, 96–7, 101–2, 106, 115–16 Brake, Laurel 2, 110, 190 British Institute 114 Brown, Ford Madox 153, 214 Browne, Hablot Knight (Phiz) 1, 2, 12, 15, 16, 103, 158, 160 Browning, Robert 222 Burne-Jones, Edward 46, 212, 213, 222, 229 Butler, Elizabeth 7, 11, 16 Byam Shaw, John 13, 211, 214, 225

292

Caldecott, Randolph 1, 9, 15, 78, 162, 177 Carroll, Lewis 55 Cary’s Academy 152 Cassell, John 10, 99, 111, 117, 208, 291 Cassell’s Illustrated Readings 99, 111 Cherry, Deborah 2, 4, 16, 17, 43, 123, 124–5, 130 Clarke, Meghan 3, 16 Clayton, Ellen C. [Creathorne] 11, 14, 18, 21, 22, 26, 42, 43, 44, 94, 95, 110, 111, 151, 172, 175,176, 180, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 273, 289 Codell, Julie 2 Cole, Henry 11 Cole, Rex Vicat 224 Collins, Wilkie 114 Cornhill Magazine, The 16, 96, 97, 100, 103, 105, 111, 112, 271 Country Life 215–16, 217–18, 221, 224, 226 Crane, Walter 9, 46, 47, 78, 177, 212, 213, 214, 217, 225, 275, 277, 290 Cruikshank, George 1, 12, 15, 16, 83–4, 91, 158, 160 Cruikshank, Percy 83–4, 91 Cruikshank, Robert 83, 91 Crystal Palace School of Art 13, 210 Dalziel Archive Dalziel Brothers Dalziel, Gilbert Dante Alighieri Darwin, Charles

44, 110 27, 28, 35, 177 176–8, 190 34, 35 8, 21, 58, 59, 60, 71, 156

Index De Morgan, Evelyn 16 Deleuze, Gilles 154–5, 173 Derrida, Jacques 25, 43 Dickens, Charles 16, 34, 107, 158, 160, 173 Oliver Twist 164 Pickwick Papers 160, 173 Du Maurier, George 114 Trilby 164

Illustrated Times 96, 116, 129, 152, 154 imperialism 4, 5, 47, 55, 57, 160, 162, 197, 202, 206, 208, 226, 263

Eliot, George 11, 103, 131–6, 138–41, 143–7, 148–50 Engen, Rodney 15, 16, 94, 110 English Woman’s Journal 152, 172 Englishwoman’s Review 4, 17, 117, 128, 129

Kelmscott Press 206, 212, 222 Kew collection 71 Kew Gardens see Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew

Faithfull, Emily 4 Fashions and Fancies (magazine) 218, 219 Female School of Art 4 Fletcher, Pamela M. 94, 110 Foster, Myles Birket 1, 16 Fun (magazine) 158, 180 Furniss, Harry 1, 15 Gaze, Delia 129, 147, 172 Geographical Society of London 60 Gilbert and Sullivan 275 Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar 145, 149 Glasgow School of Art 14, 229–30, 246–7 Gleeson White, Joseph 1, 9, 15, 94, 103,110, 111, 213, 225, 226 Golden, Catherine 2 Goldman, Paul 2, 15, 94, 110 Good Words 27, 28, 96, 111 Gould, John 21 Graphic, The 10, 93, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 201, 208, 212, 225 Greenaway, Kate 9, 16, 17, 78, 107, 114, 212, 218, 227, 279, 281 Grimm, Brothers 46 Haggard, H. Rider 197, 199–205, 207, 208 Hague School 5, 10, 121, 122, 129 Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the d’Urbervilles 217 Heatherley’s School of Art 10, 114 Herkomer, Hubert 13, 93, 107, 109, 197–8, 199, 206, 207 Holman Hunt, William 214 Hood, Tom 158 Illustrated London News 202, 212

152–5, 173, 195, 198,

Jones, A. Garth 222 Jopling, Louise 3, 15, 114 Judy, or the London Serio-comic Journal 12, 175–7, 180–2, 185–9, 191–2

Ladies’ Field, The (magazine) 213, 215–18, 224, 225–6 Landseer, Edwin 7, 8 Langham Place Group 3, 4, 114 Lear, Edward 8, 83, 192 Leech, John 1, 16, 114, 158, 160, 177, 283, 289, 291 Leighton, Frederic 13, 93, 140 Lewes, G.H. 132 London Society (magazine) 10, 12, 96, 113, 114–15, 129, 152, 156–69, 173 Maeterlinck, Maurice 239 Mallarmé, Stéphane 277, 290 Marsh, Jan 2, 248 Meade, L. T. 109, 283 Meadows, Kenny 12, 158, 160 Millais, John Everett 8, 13, 93, 97, 99, 100, 103, 107, 114, 214, 224 Mitchell, Sally 270, 282, 287, 291 Montgomery, Florence 279 Morris, William 16, 54, 206, 212, 213, 217, 222, 248, 276, 289 National Gallery 2 New Gallery 3, 16 New Woman novels 13, 45, 131, 132, 133, 137, 147, 272, 273, 275, 285, 287, 288 Once a Week 96, 100, 111, 114, 129 Opie, Iona and Peter 89, 90, 91, 290 Ormond, Leonée 16 Orr, Clarissa Campbell 2 Ouida 115 Pall Mall Gazette 210, 227 Pall Mall Magazine 210–12, 222, 225, 226, 227 Pankhurst, Christabel 286, 291

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294

Index Paris Exposition Universelle (1900) 11 Perrault, Charles 47 Potter, Beatrix 9, 10, 18 Pre-Raphaelite movement 2, 12, 13, 15, 46, 49, 50, 53, 70, 94, 109, 110, 114, 118, 128, 133, 152, 203, 211, 221, 224, 229, 233, 248, 275 Punch; or, the London Charivari 12, 15, 16, 99, 114, 157, 160, 175, 176, 177, 190, 271, 272 Queen, The (magazine) 127, 130, 152, 218, 219, 271 Queen Victoria 4, 86, 255 Quiver, The (magazine) 10, 96, 116–17, 129 Rae, Henrietta 16, 17, 114 Reid, Forrest 94, 110, 112 Robinson, W. Heath 222 Rossetti, Christina 52, 57, 271 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 46, 96, 114, 118, 128, 129, 203, 214, 229, 275 Royal Academy (RA) 3, 10, 11, 13, 16, 21, 93, 114, 129, 130, 142, 152, 188, 210, 212, 214, 225 exhibitions 10, 11, 16, 21, 93, 114, 129, 130, 142, 188, 212 Royal Academy Schools 3–4, 13, 152, 210, 212, 214, 225 Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew 5, 16, 17, 46, 58–60, 69 Royal Glasgow Institute 10 Royal Society of British Artists 10 Royal Watercolour Society 222 Ruskin, John 7, 8, 13, 21, 27, 31, 33–5, 42, 44, 117, 129, 199, 207 Ruskin School of Drawing 13 Sala, G.A. 115 Sambourne, Linley Sass, Henry 152

2

Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe 219, 220 Seymour, Robert 2, 16, 158, 160, 173 Shakespeare, William 42, 154, 160, 166, 170, 172, 173, 174, 213, 217, 221 Sinclair, Catherine 279, 290 Sketch, The (magazine) 215, 225, 226 Slade School of Art 273, 276 Society of Female Artists 3, 21, 29, 116, 152, 172 Society of Women Artists 10, 13, 198 South Kensington Museum 152, 221 South Kensington School of Art 10, 95 Sparrow, Walter Shaw 222, 227 Studio, The (magazine) 198–9, 207, 210–11, 213, 215, 225, 226–7, 228, 229, 230, 232, 248, 271, 276, 288–9 Tenniel, John 2, 16, 177 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 111, 222, 223, 227 Tonks, Henry 276 Trollope, Anthony 94, 96–7, 100, 103–6, 110–12 Turner, J. M. W. 32 Victoria and Albert Museum 152, 172 Victoria Press 4 Victorian Era Exhibition 4 Waterhouse, John William 13 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill 142, 149 Wilde, Oscar 195, 207, 219 Will-o’-the Wisp 180, 187 Woman’s Herald, The 3, 16 World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1893) 6, 7, 11, 17 Yeats, Jack Butler 258, 259, 260, 261, 266 Yeats, William Butler 14, 252 Yeldham, Charlotte 17, 154, 172 Yonge, Charlotte 21, 27, 28, 35–42, 43, 44

Plate 1  Eleanor Vere Boyle, Scene from Beauty and the Beast, c. 1875, No. 3

Plate 2  Eleanor Vere Boyle, Scene from Beauty and the Beast, c. 1875, No. 4

Plate 3  Eleanor Vere Boyle, Scene from Beauty and the Beast, c. 1875, No. 6

Plate 4  Marianne North, ‘59. A Brazilian Climbing Shrub and Humming Birds’

Plate 5  Marianne North, ‘570. Other Species of Pitcher Plants from Sarawak, Borneo’

Plate 6  Marianne North, ‘187. View of Both Falls of Niagara’

Plate 7  Restored Marianne North Gallery interior

Plate 8  Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon, ‘An Illustrated Comic Alphabet’, 1859: ‘A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog’

Plate 9  Edith Hume, Fisherwomen at Scheveningen, Holland, c. 1875

Plate 10  Amy Sawyer, ‘Poppy’, The Seasons, 1905

Plate 11  Jessie Marion King, Love’s Golden Dream, plate 10 in Seven Happy Days: A Series of Drawings by Jessie M. King with Quotations from John Davidson and Others, Christmas supplement to The Studio, Vol. 60, 1913

Plate 12  Pamela Colman Smith, Widdicombe Fair, 1899

Plate 13  Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Prince Siddartha’, The Green Sheaf, 4, 1903, p. 12

Plate 14  Pamela Colman Smith, ‘A Hymn in Praise of Neptune’, The Green Sheaf, 6, 1903, p. 13

Plate 15  Pamela Colman Smith, ‘Eventide’, The Green Sheaf, 3, 1903, p. 5

Plate 16  Olive Allen, two of five designs for menu cards, c. 1908, presumed unpublished. The other designs depict a scarecrow dressed like a suffragist (two copies) and a homely-looking suffragette eating her boxed lunch while chained to No. 10 Downing St (a reference to actual protests in 1908)