In the Track of the Bookworm

VIII.

THE ILLUSTRATOR.

The popular notion of the Illustrator, as the term is used by the Book-Worm, is that he buys many valuable books containing pictures and spoils them by tearing the pictures out, and from them constructs another valuable book with pictures. We smile to read this in the newspapers. If it were strictly true it would be a very reprehensible practice. But generally the books compelled to surrender their prints to the Illustrator are good for nothing else. To lament over them is as foolish as to grieve over the grape-skins out of which has been pressed the luscious Johannisburger, or to mourn over the unsightly holes which the porcelain-potter has made in the clay-bank. Even among Book-Worms the Illustrator, or the “Grangerite,” as the term of reproach is, has come in for many hard knocks in recent years. John Hill Burton set the tune by his merry satire in “The Book-Hunter,” in which he portrays the Grangerite illustrating the pious Watts’ stanzas, beginning, “How doth the little busy bee.” In his first edition Mr. Burton mentioned among “great writers on bees,” whose portrait would be desirable, Aristarchus, meaning probably Aristomachus. This mistake is not corrected in the last edition, but the name is omitted altogether

Mr. Beverly Chew “drops into poetry” on the subject, and thus apostrophises the Grangerite:

“Ah, ruthless wight,
Think of the books you’ve turned to waste,
With patient skill.”

Mr. Henri Pere Du Bois thus describes the ordinary result: “Of one hundred books extended by the insertion of prints which were not made for them, ninety-nine are ruined; the hundredth book is no longer a book; it is a museum. An imperfect book, built with the spoils of a thousand books; a crazy quilt made of patches out of gowns of queens and scullions.” So Burton compares the Grangerite to Genghis Kahn. Mr. Lang declares the Grangerites are “book ghouls, and brood, like the obscene demons of Arabian superstition, over the fragments of the mighty dead.” I would like to show Mr. Lang how I have treated his “Letters to Dead Authors” and “Old Friends” by illustration. He would probably feel, with Æsop’s lawyer, that “circumstances alter cases,” although he says “no book deserves the honor”

So a reviewer in “The Nation” stigmatises Grangerism as “a vampire art, maiming when it does not murder” (I did not know that vampires “maim” their victims) “and incapable of rising beyond canibalism” (not that they feed on one another, but when critics get excited their metaphors are apt to become mixed)

“G. W. S.,” of the New York “Tribune,” speaks of the achievement of the Illustrators as “colossal vulgarities.” Mr. Percy Fitzgerald observes: “The pitiless Grangerite slaughters a book for a few pictures, just as an epicure has had a sheep killed for the sweetbread”

These are very choice hard words. There is much extravagance, but some justice in all this criticism. As a question of economics I do not find any great difference between a Book-worm who spends thousands of dollars in constructing one attractive book from several not attractive, and one who spends a thousand dollars in binding a book, or for an example of a famous old binder. If there is any difference it is in favor of the Grangerite, who improves the volume for the intelligent purposes of the reader, as against the other who merely caters to “the lust of the eye”

I am willing to concede that the Grangerite is sometimes guilty of some gross offenses against good taste and good sense. The worst of these is when he extends the text of the volume itself to a larger page in order to embrace large prints. This is grotesque, for it spoils the very book. He is also blamable when he squanders valuable prints and time and patience on mere book lumber, such as long rows of histories; and when he stuffs and crams his book; and when his pictures are not of the era of the events or of the time of life of the persons described; and when they are too large or too small to be in just proportion to the printed page; and when the book is so heavy and cumbersome that no one can handle it with comfort or convenience. Above all he is blamable, in my estimation, when he entrusts the selection of prints to an agent. Such agency is frequently very unsatisfactory, and at all events the Illustrator misses the sport of the hunt. Few men would entrust the furnishing or decorating of a house, the purchase of a horse, or the selection of a wife to a third person, and the delicate matter of choosing prints for a book is essentially one to be transacted in person. The danger of any other procedure in the case of a wife was illustrated by Cromwell’s agency for Henry Eighth in the affair of Anne of Cleves, the “Flanders mare.”

But when it is properly done, it seems to me that the very best thing the Book-Worm ever does is to illustrate his books, because this insures his reading them, at least with his fingers. Not always, for a certain chronicler of collections of privately illustrated books in this country narrates, how “relying upon the index” of a book, which he illustrated, he inserted a portrait of Sam Johnson, the famous, whereas “the text called for Sam Johnson, an eccentric dramatic writer,” etc. His binder, he says, laughed at him for being ignorant that there “two Sam Johnsons” (there are four in the biographical dictionaries, one of whom was an early president of King’s College in New York). But if done personally and conscientiously it is a means of valuable culture. As one of the oldest survivors of the genus Illustrator in this country, I have thus assumed to offer an apology and defense for my much berated kind. And now let me make a few suggestions as to what seems to me the most suitable mode of the pursuit.

In illustrating there seem to be two methods, which may be described as the literal or realistic, and imaginative. The first consists simply in the insertion of portraits, views and scenes appropriate to the text. A pleasing variety may be imparted to this method by substituting for a mere portrait a scene in the life of the celebrity in question For example, if Charles V. and Titian are mentioned together, it would be interesting to insert a picture representing the historical incident of the emperor picking up and handing the artist a brush which he had dropped—and one will have an interesting hunt to find it. But I am more an adherent of the romantic school, which finds excellent play in the illustration of poetry. For example, in the poem, “Ennui,” in “The Croakers,” for the line, “The fiend, the fiend is on me still,” I found, after a search of some years, a picture of an imp sitting on the breast of a man in bed with the gout. In the same stanza are the lines, “Like a cruel cat, that sucks a child to death,” and for this I have a print from a children’s magazine, of a cat squatting on the breast of a child in a cradle. Now I would like “a Madagascar bat,” which rhymes to “cat” in the poem. “And like a tom-cat dies by inches,” is illustrated by a picture of a cat caught by the paw in a steel trap. “Simon” was “a gentleman of color,” the favorite pastry cook and caterer of New York half a century ago—before the days of Mr. Ward McAllister. “The Croaker” advises him to “buy an eye-glass and become a dandy and a gentleman.” This is illustrated by a rare and fine print of a colored gentleman, dressed in breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled shirt, scanning an overdressed lady of African descent through an eye-glass. “The ups and downs of politics” is illustrated by a Cruikshank print, the upper part of which shows a party making an ascension in a balloon and the lower part a party making a descent in a diving-bell, and entitled “the ups and downs of life.” To illustrate the phrase, “seeing the elephant,” take the print of Pyrrhus trying to frighten his captive, Fabricus, by suddenly drawing the curtains of his tent and showing him an elephant with his trunk raised in a baggage-smashing attitude. For “The Croakers” there are apt illustrations also of the following queer subjects: Korah, Dathan and Abiram; Miss Atropos, shut up your Scissors; Albany’s two Steeples high in Air, Reading Cobbett’s Register, Bony in His Prison Isle, Giant Wife, Beauty and The Beast, Fly Market, Tammany Hall, The Dove from Noah’s Ark, Rome Saved by Geese, CÆsar Offered a Crown, CÆsar Crossing the Rubicon, Dick Ricker’s Bust, Sancho in His Island Reigning, The Wisest of Wild Fowl, Reynold’ Beer House, A Mummy, A Chimney Sweep, The Arab’s Wind, Pygmalion, Danae, Highland Chieftain with His Tail On, Nightmare, Shaking Quakers, Polony’s Crazy Daughter, Bubble-Blowing, First Pair of Breeches, Banquo’s Ghost, Press Gang, Fair Lady With the Bandaged Eye, A Warrior Leaning on His Sword, A Warrior’s Tomb, A Duel, and A Street Flirtation.

As the charm of illustrating consists in the hunt for the prints, so the latter method is the more engrossing because the game is the more difficult to run down. Portraits, views and scenes are plenty, but to find them properly adaptable is frequently difficult. Some things which one would suppose readily procurable are really hard to find. For example, it was a weary chase to get a treadmill, and so of a drum-major, although the latter is now not uncommon: and although I know it exists, I have not attained unto a bastinado. Sirens and mermaids are rather retiring, and when Vedder depicted the Sea-Serpent he conferred a boon on Illustrators. “God’s Scales,” in which the mendicant weighs down the rich man, is a rarity. Milton leaving his card on Galileo in prison is among my wants, although I have seen it

As to scarce portraits, let me sing a song of

THE SHY PORTRAITS.

Oh, why do you elude me so—
Ye portraits that so long I’ve sought?
That somewhere ye exist, I know—
Indifferent, good, and good for naught.
Lucrezia, of the poisoned cup,
Why do you shrink away by stealth?
To view your “mug” with you I’d sup,
And even dare to drink your health.
Oh! why so coy, Godiva fair?
You’re covered by your shining tresses,
And I would promise not to stare
At sheerest of go-diving dresses.
Come out, old Bluebeard; don’t be shy!
You’re not so bad as Froude’s great hero;
Xantippe, fear no law gone by
When scolds were ducked in ponds at zero.
Not mealy-mouthed was Mrs. Behn,
And prudish was satiric Jane,
But equally they both shun men,
As if they bore the mark of Cain.
George Barrington, you may return
To country which you “left for good;”
Psalmanazar, I would not spurn
Your language when ’twas understood.
Jean Grolier, you left many books—
They come so dear I must ignore ’em—
But there’s no evidence of your looks
For us surviving “amicorum.”
This country’s overrun by grangers—
I’m ignorant of their christian names
But my afflicted eyes are strangers
To one I want whom men call James.
There’s Heber, man of many books—
You’re far more modest than the Bishop;
I’m curious to learn your looks,
And care for nothing shown at his shop.
And oh! that wondrous, pattern child!
His truthfulness, no one can match it;
Dear little George! I’m almost wild
To find a wood-cut of his hatchet.
Show forth your face, Anonymous,
Whose name is in the books I con
Most frequently; so famous thus,
Will you not come to me anon?

By way of jest I have inserted an anonymous portrait opposite an anonymous poem, and was once gravely asked by an absent-minded friend if it really was the portrait of the author. One however will probably look in vain for portraits of “Quatorze” and “Quinze,” for which a print seller of New York once had an inquiry, and I have been told of a collector who returned Arlington because of the cut on his nose, and Ogle because of his damaged eye. But there is more sport in hunting for a dodo than a rabbit

It is also a pleasant thing to lay a picture occasionally in a book without setting out to illustrate it regularly, so that it may break upon one as a surprise when he takes up the book years afterward. It is a grateful surprise to find in Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” a casual print from Roger’s “Italy,” and in Hamerton’s books some sporadic etchings by Rembrandt or Hayden. It is like discovering an unexpected “quarter” in the pocket of an old waistcoat. For example, in “With Thackeray in America,” Mr. Eyre Crowe tells how the second number of the first edition of “The Newcomes” came to the author when he was in Paris, and how he found fault with Doyle’s illustration of the games of the Charterhouse boys. He says: “The peccant accessory which roused the wrath of the writer was the group of two boys playing at marbles on the left of the spectator. ‘Why,’ said the irate author, ‘they would as soon thought of cutting off their heads as play marbles at the Charterhouse!’ This woodcut was, I noticed, suppressed altogether in subsequent editions.” Now in my copy—not being the possessor of the first edition—I have made a reference to Mr. Crowe’s passage, and supplied the suppressed cut from an early American copy which cost me twenty-five cents. How many of the first edition men know of the interesting fact narrated by Mr. Crowe? The Illustrator ought always at least to insert the portrait of the author whenever it has been omitted by the publisher

Second: What to illustrate. The Illustrator should not be an imitator or follower, but should strive after an unhackneyed subject. A man is not apt to marry the woman who flings herself at his head; he loves the excitement of courting; and so there is not much amusement in utilizing common pictures, but the charm consists in hunting for scarce ones. It is very natural to tread in others’ tracks, and easy, because the market affords plenty of material for the common subjects. Shakespeare and Walton and Boswell’s Johnson, and a few other things of that sort, have been done to death, and there is fairer scope in something else. Biographies of Painters, Elia’s Essays, Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medici” and “Urn Burial,” “Childe Harold,” Horace, Virgil, the Life of Bayard, or of Vittoria Colonna, or Philip Sidney, and Sappho are charming subjects, and not too common. A ponderous or voluminous work lends itself less conveniently to the purpose than a small book in one or two volumes. Great quartos and folios are mere mausoleums or repositories for expensive prints, too huge to handle, and too extensive for any one ever to look through, and therefore they afford little pleasure to the owners or their guests. An illustrated Shakespeare in thirty volumes is theoretically a very grand object, but I should never have the heart to open it, and as for histories, I should as soon think of illustrating a dictionary. Walton is a lovely subject, but I would adopt a small copy and keep it within two or three volumes. After all there is nothing so charming as a single little illustrated volume, like “Ballads of Books,” compiled by Brander Matthews; Andrew Lang’s “Letters to Dead Authors,” or “Old Friends,” Friswell’s “Varia,” the “Book of Death,” “Melodies and Madrigals,” “The Book of Rubies,” Winter’s “Shakespeare’s England.”

A gentleman who published, a good many years ago, a monograph of privately illustrated books in this country, spoke of the work that I had done in this field, and criticised me for my “apparent want of method,” “eccentricity,” “madness,” “vagaries,” “omnivorousness,” and “lack of speciality or system,” and finally, although he blamed me for having illustrated pretty much everything, he also blamed me for not having illustrated any “biographical works.” This criticism seems not only inconsistent, but without basis, for one man may not dictate to another what he shall prefer to illustrate for his own amusement, any more than what sort of a house or pictures he shall buy or what complexion or stature his wife shall have. The author also did me the honor to spell my name wrong, and did the famous Greek amatory poet the honor of mentioning among my illustrated work, “Odes to Anacreon.” Would that I could find that book!

I offer these suggestions with diffidence, and with no intention to impose my taste upon others

If the Illustrator can get or make something absolutely unique he is a fortunate man. For example, I know one, stigmatized as eccentric, who has illustrated a printed catalogue of his own library with portraits of the authors, copies of prints in the books, and duplicates of engraved title-pages; also one who has illustrated a collection in print or in manuscript of his own poems; also one who has illustrated a Life of Hercules, written by himself, printed by one of his own family, and adorned with prints from antique gems and other subjects; and even a lawyer who has illustrated a law book written by himself, in which he has found place for prints so diverse and apparently out of keeping as Jonah and the whale, John Brown, a man pacing the floor in a nightgown with a crying baby, a “darkey” shot in a melon-patch, an elephant on the rampage, Cupid, Hudibras writing a letter, Joanna Southcote, Launce and his dog, a dog catching a boy going over a wall, Dr. Watts, Robinson Crusoe, Barnum in the form of a hum-bug, Jacob Hall the rope dancer, Lord Mayor’s procession, Raphael discoursing to Adam, gathering sea-weed, Artemus Ward, a whale ashore, a barber-shop, Gilpin’s ride, King Lear, St. Lawrence on his gridiron, Charles Lamb, Terpsichore, and a child tumbling into a well. The owner of such a book may be sure that it is unique, as the man was certain his coat of arms was genuine, because he made it himself

Third: the Illustrator should not be in a hurry.

There are three singular things about the hunt for pictures. One is, the moment you have your book bound, no matter how many years you may have waited, some rare picture you wanted is sure to turn up. Hence the reluctance of the Illustrator to commit himself to binding, a reluctance only paralleled by that of the lover to marry the woman he had courted for ten years, because then he would have no place to spend his evenings. (I have had books “in hand” for twenty years).

Another is, when you have found your rare picture you are pretty certain to find one or two duplicates. Prints, like accidents or crimes, seem to come in cycles and schools. I have known a man to search in vain in thirty print-shops in London, and coming home find what he wanted in a New York print-shop, and two copies at that. The third is, that you are continually coming very near the object without quite attaining it. Thus one may get Lady Godiva alone, and the effigy of Peeping Tom on the corner of an old house at Coventry, but to procure the whole scene is, so far as I know, out of the question. It would seem that Mr. Anthony Comstock has put his ban on it. So one will find it difficult to get “God’s scales,” in which wealth and poverty are weighed against each other, but I have had other scales thrust at me, such as those in which the emblems of love are weighed against those of religion, and a king against a beggar, but even the latter is not the precise thing, for in these days there are poor kings and rich beggars

One opinion in which all illustrators agree seems sound, and that is, that photographs are not to be tolerated. Photography is the most misrepresentative of arts. But an exception may be indulged in the case of those few celebrities who are too modest to allow themselves to be engraved, and of whom photography furnishes the only portraiture A photographic copy of a rare portrait in oil is also admissible. Some also exclude wood-cuts. I am not such a purist as that. They are frequently the only means of illustrating a subject, and small and fine wood-cuts form charming head and tail pieces and marginal adornments. One who eschews wood-cuts must forego such interesting little subjects as Washington and his little hatchet, God’s scales, the skeleton in the closet, and many of those which I have particularized I flatter myself that I have made the margins of a good many books very interesting by means of small wood-cuts, of which our modern magazines provide an abundant and exquisite supply. These furnish a copious source of specific illustration.

With their zeal illustrators are sometimes apt to be anachronistic. Every book ought to be illustrated in the spirit and costume of its time. The book should not be stuffed too full of prints; let a better proportion be preserved between the text and the illustrations than Falstaff observed between his bread and his sack. The prints should not be so numerous as to cause the text to be forgotten, as in the case of a tedious sermon

Probably nearly every collector expects that his treasures will be dispersed at his death, if not sooner. But it is a serious question to the illustrator, what will become of these precious objects upon which he has spent so much time, thought and labor, and for which he has expended so much money. He never cares and rarely knows, and if he knows he never tells, how much they have cost, but he may always be certain that they will never fetch their cost. Let us not indulge in any false dreams on this subject. The time may have been when prints were cheap and when the illustrator may have been able to make himself whole or even reap a profit, but that day I believe has gone by One can hardly expect that his family will care for these things; the son generally thinks the Book-Worm a bore, and the wife of one’s bosom and the daughter of one’s heart usually affect more interest than they feel, and if they kept such objects would do so from a sense of duty alone, as the ancient Romans preserved the cinerary urns of their ancestors. For myself, I have often imagined my grandson listlessly turning over one of my favorite illustrated volumes, and saying, “What a funny old duffer grandad must have been!” Such a book-club, as the “Grolier,” of New York, is a fortunate avenue of escape from these evils. There one might deposit at least some of his peculiar treasures, certain that they would receive good care, be regarded with permanent interest, and keep alive his memory.

To augment his books by inserting prints is ordinarily just the one thing which the Book-Worm can do to render them in a deeper sense his own, and to gain for himself a peculiar proprietorship in them. Generally he cannot himself bind them, but by this means he may render himself a coadjutor of the author, and place himself on equal terms with the printer and the binder

After he has illustrated a favorite book once, it is an enjoyable occupation for the Book-Worm to do it over again, in a different spirit and with different pictures. “Second thoughts are best,” it has been said, and I have more than once improved my subject by a second treatment

There is another form of illustration, of which I have not spoken, and that is the insertion of clippings from magazines and newspapers in the fly leaves. Sometimes these are of intense interest. My own Dickens, Thackeray and Hawthorne, in particular have their porticoes and posterms plentifully supplied with material of this sort The latest contribution of this kind is to “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and consists in the information that a western American “land-shark” has recently swindled people by selling them swamp-lots, attractively depicted on a map and named Eden In my Pepys I have laid Mr. Lang’s recent letter to the diarist. So on a fly leaf of Hawthorne’s Life it is pleasing to see a cut of his little red house at Lenox, now destroyed by fire.

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