STUDENT DAYS AND EARLY SUCCESS: EARLY PROMISE AND ART CLASSES—SOUTH KENSINGTON PRIZES—LADY BUTLER—DUDLEY GALLERY—REV. W. J. LOFTIE AND MESSRS. MARCUS WARD—‘AMATEUR THEATRICALS’—TOY-BOOKS AND FAIRY-TALES—PROGRESS.

In 1857 the whole of Great Britain, as has been said, was stirred to its depths by the terrible events which were taking place in India. People talked and thought of little else besides the Mutiny, and the papers, prominent among them the Illustrated London News, properly played up to the public’s dreadful hunger for literary and pictorial details. Many of the latter passed through the hands of Mr. Greenaway, and nothing was more natural than that Kate, with her inborn artistic capacity, should try her hand at expressing the sensations so aroused, pictorially. Here is her own memorandum on the subject, written on an isolated leaf of the autobiographic notes:—

At the time of the Indian Mutiny I was always drawing people escaping. I wish I had some of the old drawings, but they were nearly always done on a slate and rubbed off again. We knew all about it from the Illustrated London News, and the incident of the Highland woman who heard the bagpipes made a great impression on me. I could sit and think of the sepoys till I could be wild with terror, and I used sometimes to dream of them. But I was always drawing the ladies, nurses, and children escaping. Mine always escaped and were never taken.

Fortunately, Kate’s father and mother were not blind to the promise of these tentative efforts. The root of the matter they felt was in her, and the first opportunity must be taken of giving it a chance of growth and development. This opportunity was not long in coming, and by the time she was twelve years old her artistic education had already begun.

The first art class to which she went was that held at William Street, Clerkenwell, close to Claremont Square. A girl-cousin (one of the Thornes) was at that time being educated as a wood-engraver by Mr. John Greenaway, who sent his pupil to this evening class—a school in connection with the Science and Art Department (now the Board of Education). So that she should not go alone, his daughter was sent to bear her company; and Kate soon showed such undoubted signs of ability that it was decided her attendance should continue. She was soon promoted to the day class carried on by Miss Doidge, which was held at Miss Springet’s school at Canonbury House, also under the Science and Art Department, and Kate remained a member of it during its successive removals to St. George’s Hall, Barnsbury Street, and Myddleton Hall, close to the Greenaways’ dwelling. To Kate, Canonbury House was an ancient palace. It was an interesting old place, with beautiful moulded ceilings and a wonderful Jacobean fireplace, which is figured and described in Nelson’s History of Islington. It stood immediately behind Canonbury Tower, which was said to have been one of Queen Elizabeth’s innumerable hunting-boxes, and was popularly believed to have subterranean passages leading to Smithfield.

So satisfactory and encouraging was Kate’s progress—her first prize was gained when she was twelve years old—that in due time it was determined that she should make Art her profession, and she forthwith joined the chief school of the Art Department, then under Mr. R. Burchett, who soon formed a very high opinion of her talents and prospects. In 1861 she was awarded the bronze medal (local), Stage 10 A; in 1864 the ‘National,’ Stage 22; and in 1869 the silver (South Kensington), Stage 17 B.[3] The set of six tiles, here reproduced, display charming harmonies of colour. One is composed of olive-green and two different yellows on a slate-blue ground, while the flowers are outlined with white edges. In another, crimson-purple, russet-yellow, and blue are on a slate-grey ground; and in a third the grey-blue flowers are outlined with white, and grey-green, violet, purple, and yellow tell richly on a brown ground. The other schemes of colour are equally well combined, and the pattern designs are all good, and display a sense of grace and ability in line and arrangement.[4] In addition to the awards mentioned, Kate received many book prizes in lieu of medals to which she was later entitled. Here she worked for several years with great diligence and thoroughness, undaunted by difficulties and hardships such as fall to the lot of few students. Indeed, so eagerly industrious was she that at the same time she attended the Life Classes at Heatherley’s, and later on the newly opened London Slade School, then in charge of Professor Legros and his assistants.

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It has often been said of Kate Greenaway that she did not sufficiently draw from the nude, and, as will be seen later on, Professor Ruskin implored her to undertake this severer form of study, in order to correct and improve her figure drawing; and it has been too readily assumed that her training was lacking in this essential element of an artist’s academic education. As a matter of fact, Kate executed a vast number of careful studies from the figure, both at Heatherley’s and at a studio which she occupied with Miss Elizabeth Thompson (afterwards Lady Butler)—who, like Miss Helen Paterson (Mrs. William Allingham), was her fellow-student at South Kensington—and at her death between fifty and a hundred were still in existence. Many of them were in ‘the old South Kensington manner’—in pencil or chalk, plenty of stump-work, and heightening of the lights with white chalk: dull, uninspired things, excellent in proportion and construction, and not without use for the acquisition of knowledge of the human frame. There were also short-time sketches, but only a few of the chalk drawings have been preserved.

Of these student days Lady Butler kindly sends the following note:—

She and I were keen competitors in the Sketching Club competitions at South Kensington. She was a very quiet student, so that it is difficult to find anything striking to say of her. I have no letters of hers and no sketches. We were very good friends, she and I, in spite of our rivalry in the sketching club; and indeed so quiet and peaceable a student was necessarily liked, and she never, to my knowledge, gave trouble or offence to any one in the schools. I wish I could give you more material, but the character of the girl was such as to supply very little wherewith to make up a biographical sketch. I only knew her at the schools, not in her home life.

It may be added that Miss Thompson and Kate Greenaway were both such enthusiastic workers that they would bribe the custodian to lock them in when the other students were gone, so that they might put in overtime.

Such was the regularity and steady application of Kate’s eager student days. By the time she was twenty-two she was exhibiting at the old Dudley Gallery a water-colour drawing entitled ‘Kilmeny,’ illustrating a versified legend, and ‘six little drawings on wood’: the latter, as we shall see, fortunate enough to attract the attention of an excellent judge and discriminating editor. This was in the year 1868, and here, in the old Egyptian Hall, her work made its first public appearance. Then there came a series of small pictures in water-colour at the same gallery, in which she already gave evidence of the bent which her brush was to follow with such remarkable success.[5] Even then her fancy was leading her back to the quaintly picturesque costume which was in vogue at the close of the eighteenth century. Not that her enthusiasm for our grandmothers’ gowns at once tickled the fancy of the public. That was to come. Indeed, she herself was as yet only feeling her way, though with remarkable deliberation and thoroughness. No doubt it was in her first remunerative but anonymous work of designing valentines and Christmas cards that the possibilities which lay in childhood archaically, or at least quaintly, attired first presented themselves to her, but the goal was not to be reached without unstinted labour and active forethought. Her subsequent success rested upon the thoroughness with which she laid her foundations.[6] She did not merely pick up an old book of costumes and copy and adapt them second-hand to her own uses. She began from the very beginning, fashioning the dresses with her own hands and dressing up her models and lay-figures in order to realise the effects anew. She would not allow herself any satisfaction until her models lived and moved in her presence as their parents or grandparents had lived and moved in the previous century. Only then was she sure of her ground and could go forward with confidence.

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At the risk of slightly anticipating later events, there may be interpolated here the following facts, dealing mainly with her early work, kindly provided for our purposes by the Rev. W. J. Loftie, who has a legitimate source of pride in the fact that he was Kate Greenaway’s first outside employer: for work had already come to her through her father’s instrumentality.

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At the time of the first Black and White Exhibition (1868) at the Dudley Gallery, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, Mr. Loftie was editor of the People’s Magazine. He was much pleased with a frame of six drawings on wood, which were priced at £2: 2s., and he secured them at once. The artist’s name, he found, was ‘K. Greenaway,’ and he was given the address: Miss Kate Greenaway, Upper Street, Islington—a student at South Kensington. The drawings were equally divided between fairy scenes in outline and pictures of child life. He used them in the magazine as occasion allowed, and some of his leading contributors, Charles Eden, Robert Bateman, John Richard Green, who were charmed with their beauty, wrote little tales or verses to suit one or other, until three or four were disposed of. But he was puzzled about the rest, and eventually wrote to ask Miss Greenaway to tell him the subjects.[7] She called immediately at the office. She was very small, very dark, and seemed clever and sensible, with a certain impressive expression in her dark eyes that struck every one. Her visit led to further acquaintance, in which Mrs. Loftie shared, and she became a frequent visitor at 57, Upper Berkeley Street, where they then lived. The magazine soon came to an end, but Miss Greenaway was an artist who never disappointed her employers, and before long many opportunities occurred for recommending her. She had some work to do for Kronheim & Co. about that time, but—forgetting, apparently, her excellent achievement at South Kensington—she found a difficulty with colours. Like many beginners, she imagined that a sufficient number of bright colours made a bright-coloured picture, and being disappointed with the result, complained to Mr. Loftie. So he got the little manual of Colour-Harmony which was prepared by Redgrave for the South Kensington authorities and gave it to her. In the meanwhile Messrs. Marcus Ward of Belfast had consulted Mr. Loftie as to extending their business, and proposed to carry out a scheme he had laid before them some time before for issuing artistic Christmas cards and valentines in gold and colours. Miss Greenaway entered into the idea with great zest, but at first her designs were, as she said herself, gaudy. A little study of colour-harmony soon showed her where the fault lay, and she used to ask her friend to set her exercises in it—in primaries, or secondaries, or tertiaries, as the case might be. She derived extraordinary pleasure from studying the colour scale of such a picture as Van Eyck’s ‘Jean Arnolfini and his Wife’ in the National Gallery, or Gainsborough’s so-called ‘Blue Boy.’ It was only by incessant study of this kind earnestly pursued that she acquired the delicate and exquisite facility for figures and flowers in colour by which she soon became known. Meanwhile she drew constantly in black and white, and illustrated a child’s book, Topo, by Miss Blood, afterwards Lady Colin Campbell, which was published by Messrs. Ward and speedily went out of print. A volume of valentines, The Quiver of Love, was published about the same time, and contained specimens of colour-printing by the same firm after her drawings and those of Mr. Walter Crane[8].

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Miss Greenaway worked very hard at the production of the designs for birthday cards and valentines. They constantly improved in harmony of colour and delicacy of effect. A curious chance revealed to her the wonders of medieval illumination. Mr. Loftie was engaged at the time on a volume of topographical studies for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, and wanted a copy from the pages of the book of Benefactors of St. Albans Abbey—Nero, D. 7, in the MS. room at the British Museum. Mr. Thompson, better known as Sir E. Maunde Thompson, Principal Librarian, was head of the department, and showed her many of the treasures in his charge, and he arranged her seat and gave her every possible assistance. She undertook to make a coloured drawing of Abbot John of Berkhampstead wringing his hands, for Mr. Loftie’s book. Being still in want of work, this particular job, with its collateral advantages in learning, pleased her very much. Another lady who was copying an illuminated border was her next neighbour at the same table, and they seem to have made one another’s acquaintance on the occasion. In after years Miss Greenaway quaintly said ‘this was the first duchess she had ever met’—the late Duchess of Cleveland, Lord Rosebery’s mother, who was a notable artist, and who died only a few months before Miss Greenaway herself. As for the Abbot, the committee of the S.P.C.K. rejected him, and the picture passed into and remained in Mr. Loftie’s possession. It figured later in his London Afternoons (p. 110), as Miss Greenaway only a few days before her death gave him leave to make what use of it he pleased.

Her first great success was a valentine. It was designed for Messrs. Marcus Ward, whose London manager hardly recognised, her introducer thought, what a prize they had found. The rough proof of the drawing, in gold and colour, is both crude and inharmonious, but it has merits of delicacy and composition which account for the fact that the firm is said to have sold upwards of 25,000 copies of it in a few weeks. Her share of the profits was probably no more than £3. She painted many more on the same terms that year and the next, and was constantly improving in every way as she became better acquainted with her own powers and with the capabilities, at that time very slight, of printing in colour. ‘I have a beautiful design,’ says Mr. Loftie, ‘in the most delicate tints, for another valentine, which she brought me herself to show how much better she now understood harmony. It was unfinished, and in fact was never used by the firm. I need not go into the circumstances under which she severed her connection with them, but I well remember her remarkable good-temper and moderation. In the end it was for her benefit. Mr. Edmund Evans seized the chance, and eventually formed the partnership which subsisted for many years, till near the end of her life.’

About the year 1879 Mr. Loftie met her one day at a private view in Bond Street. She was always very humble about herself. She was the very last person to recognise her own eminence, and was always, to the very end, keen to find out if any one could teach her anything or give her a hint or a valuable criticism. She was also very shy in general society, and inclined to be silent and to keep in the background. On this occasion, however, she received him laughing heartily. ‘The lady who has just left me,’ she said, ‘has been staying in the country and has been to see her cousins. I asked if they were growing up as pretty as they promised. “Yes,” she replied, “but they spoil their good looks, you know, by dressing in that absurd Kate Greenaway style”—quite forgetting that she was talking to me!’ Kate would often repeat the story with much zest.

On two subsequent occasions did she execute work for books in which Mr. Loftie was concerned. In 1879 he asked her for some suggestions for illustrations of Mr. and Lady Pollock’s Amateur Theatricals in his ‘Art at Home’ Series (Macmillan & Co.). She sent him half-a-dozen lovely sketches, of which only three were accepted by the publishers. The frontispiece, ‘Comedy,’ a charming drawing, was not well engraved. A tail-piece on p. 17 shows a slight but most graceful figure of a young girl in the most characteristic ‘Kate Greenaway’ costume. The third, less characteristic, is even more charming—‘Going on.’ Among the sketches was a ‘Tragedy,’ represented by a youthful Hamlet in black velvet holding a large turnip apparently to represent the skull of Yorick. This was never completed.

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Once again, in 1891, she made a drawing at Mr. Loftie’s instance. He was editing the fourth edition of the Orient Guide for Mr. J. G. S. Anderson, the Chairman of the Orient Line, who had lately, through his wife, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, M.D., made Miss Greenaway’s acquaintance. It was suggested that she might design a title-page for the guide, which she did with alacrity, refusing remuneration, and only stipulating for the return of her drawing. It was a charming border, consisting of twelve delightful little girls and two little boys, all ‘Kate Greenaway’ children, very dainty, but extraordinarily inappropriate for the title-page of a steamship company’s guide-book.

As soon as the introduction to Messrs. Marcus Ward was brought about, Kate Greenaway made a practice of consulting Mr. William Marcus Ward on the subject of her artistic and literary ambitions. In the matter of her drawing and painting she bowed to his expert opinion, unhesitatingly destroying her work when he told her that it was bad, and for years profited by his kindly advice; but when in the matter of her verses he told her that her efforts were ‘rubbish and without any poetic feeling,’ though she listened meekly enough, she reserved her opinion—as we shall see in the event, not without some measure of justification.

After working for the firm for six or seven years, during which time her designs were trump cards in their annual pack, she was advised by friends that the drawings ought to be returned to her after reproduction. This new departure, however, did not meet with her employers’ approval, and the connection ceased.

Amongst the early and unsigned work done for Messrs. Kronheim, who had a great colour-printing establishment in Shoe Lane, may be mentioned Diamonds and Toads, in ‘Aunt Louisa’s London Toy Books’ Series (published by Frederick Warne & Co.), containing six full-page unsigned drawings of no striking promise and crude in colour, the harshness mainly due, no doubt, to the rude methods of engraving and colour-printing for children then in vogue. Far better was the work done in the same style and for the same firm in 1871 for a series of ‘Nursery Toy Books’ (published by Gall & Inglis), amongst which may be mentioned, for the sake of the collector, The Fair One with Golden Locks, The Babes in the Wood, Blue Beard, Tom Thumb, Hop o’ my Thumb, Red Riding Hood, The Blue Bird, The White Cat, and Puss in Boots. In these the illustrations, remarkably well composed and drawn, rise somewhat above the level of children’s coloured books of the period. The figures were mainly studied from members of her own family. The letterpress consisted for the most part of translations from the Fairy Tales of Madame la Comtesse d’Aulnoy, the well-known author of the Memoirs and Voyages in Spain, who flourished at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Her fairy tales had been originally published in Amsterdam in eight little volumes, with thirty-three plates signed ‘S. F. inv. et sc.’—a set very different from the fanciful illustrations of Kate Greenaway.

Up to the year 1871 it is not possible to be very precise as to Kate’s progress towards the overwhelming popularity which she was so soon to win. But from that time onwards her systematic keeping of accounts enables us to be definite. Besides the work done for Messrs. Kronheim, for which she was paid £36, we have the entry, ‘Happy Wretched Family,’ 10s.; ‘Tracts’ (apparently for the Religious Tract Society), £2: 5s.; and commissions for a Mr. Sheers and Mr. Griffith,[9] £24: 10s.; the year’s takings amounting to something over £70.

The preceding year she had been represented at the Dudley Gallery by a water-colour drawing entitled ‘Apple-Blossom—A Spring Idyll’; and in Suffolk Street, for the first time, by another entitled ‘A Peeper,’ representing children at play. In 1871 too, as we have seen from Mr. Loftie’s note, she was designing Christmas cards for Messrs. Marcus Ward of Belfast. In these drawings she adopted the style of dress which she had seen as a child about the farm at Rolleston, where there was a survival of costumes which had long since disappeared from the towns and more ‘progressive’ villages and country districts, adapting them to her purpose and filling her wardrobes with frocks, bonnets, and jackets and other garments, partly conjured up from memory and partly invented. She soon began to discover that she was creating a vogue. She felt their quaintness and charm herself, and was hardly surprised that others found them equally attractive. And notwithstanding some doubts thrown by her father, artist though he was, upon her wisdom in proceeding upon these lines, she determined to persist, and events proved her instinct to be right. Fortunately, her friend Mr. Stacy Marks, R.A., at the moment of crisis gave her strong support, and in the face of universal opposition urged her to continue in the path on which she had entered.

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In 1872 she was designing yellow-back covers for Mr. Edmund Evans, of whom much will be heard later.[10] At the same time she was doing more work for Kronheim, she found her way into the Illustrated London News, and she sold her pictures at the Dudley Gallery for something like £20.

By 1873, doubtless through the influence of her father, who at that time was doing much work for Messrs. Cassell, Petter, & Galpin, Kate made her first appearance in Little Folks, for which, as well as for other publications of the firm, she executed innumerable dainty and characteristic drawings. This, of course, was mostly journeyman’s work, and she was hampered by having to express other people’s ideas pictorially. She never excelled as an illustrator, and it was not till she had a free hand that she did herself full justice. It was, however, an excellent school wherein to test her powers and to gain the experience which led her eventually to ‘find herself.’ In many of these wood-engravings it is interesting to notice the joint signature ‘K. Greenaway, del.,’ and ‘J. Greenaway, sc.’ She disliked being bound by another person’s imagination, and her aversion to ‘mere illustration’ remained with her to the end. As late as February 1900, when she was asked if she would make a drawing to a story by Mrs. M. H. Spielmann, she wrote: ‘It would rather depend if I saw my way to making a good illustration. I’m a very tiresome person and do things sometimes very badly. I should, if I could, like to do it very much, especially as it is Mrs. Spielmann’s. I’ve not made any drawings for illustration for so long, and now I’ve just taken a book to do!’[11]

In this same year (1873) her pictures at the Dudley and Suffolk Street Galleries found a market, and ‘A Fern Gatherer,’ at the Royal Manchester Institution, was bought by Mr. John Lomax for fifteen guineas. The following year (1874) her gross earnings were £120, and she realised that she was progressing steadily in public favour.

Kate was now a person of some importance in the Greenaway establishment. Not only had she adopted a profession, but she was making that profession pay, and the time was coming when she felt that there should be some tangible sign, at least so far as she was concerned, of the improvement in their fortunes. It was a cause of profound gratification to her mother, who, by dint of thrift and self-sacrifice and devotion amounting almost to heroism, had been enabled to realise her ambition to educate each of her children to the greatest advantage. Her eldest daughter was sent to the Royal Academy of Music; her son to the Royal College of Chemistry; and Kate to South Kensington and Heatherley’s. All of them were on the high-road to success, and a sense of satisfaction and good-humour permeated the household.

Good-humour, indeed, was characteristic of Kate, and to this sweetness of disposition and thoughtfulness for others she owed not a little of her success. Artists’ grown-up models are often difficult enough to manage, but child-models are apt to prove exasperating; and it was due only to her infinite tact and unwearying resourcefulness in inventing amusements and distractions for her little sitters that she coaxed them into good temper and into displaying the charm which she was so successful in reproducing.

During the last year or two spent in Islington, Kate rented near by a room which she fitted up as a studio, but about 1873 or 1874 she and her father between them bought the lease of a house in Pemberton Gardens, where the family lived till 1885.

Her friend Mrs. Miller writes of her at this period: ‘She was then as ever gentle, patient, industrious, exquisitely sensitive, extraordinarily humorous, while under and over it all was an indomitable will. I always remember one little remark she made to me once when we were walking from her home in Islington to a little room she had taken as a studio (her first) in a side street. It was wet and miserable, the streets vulgar and sordid. “Never mind,” she said, “I shall soon be in the spring.” The first primrose she drew upon the sheet before her would place her in another world. She loved all sorts of street music, and once said to me, “The moment I hear a band, I am in fairyland.”’

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In 1874 Kate Greenaway illustrated a little volume of fairy stories, issued in coloured boards by Griffith & Farran, entitled Fairy Gifts; or A Wallet of Wonders. It was written by Kathleen Knox, the author of Father Time’s Story-Book, and contained four full-page and seven small woodcuts, engraved by John Greenaway. The more important illustrations are prettily composed, while revealing a fine taste in witches and apparitions; and the small sketches are daintily touched in. It was Kate’s first appearance on any title-page. There was nothing remarkable in the little volume, yet it met with considerable popular favour. The first edition consisted of 2,000 copies; in 1880 it was reprinted to the extent of half as many. In 1882 a cheap edition of 5,000 copies was issued, and later in the year this large number was repeated. To what extent the artist shared in the success does not appear.

The year 1875, so far as earnings were concerned, was a lean year, and introduced the names of no new clients. This does not indicate that her activity was any the less than the year before. Indeed, we must remember that in the life of the artist results, so far as monetary reward is concerned, represent previous rather than contemporaneous activity, for payment is made certainly after the work is sold, and in the case of work for the press as often as not after publication. In the following year (1876) her earnings again ran into £200, her water-colour drawing at the Dudley being sold for twenty guineas, and her two black-and-white drawings for ten guineas the pair. But the crowning event of this year was the publication by Mr. Marcus Ward of the volume mentioned by Mr. Loftie, entitled ‘The Quiver of Love, a Collection of Valentines, Ancient and Modern, with Illustrations in Colours from Drawings by Walter Crane and K. Greenaway.’ All the designs had already been published separately. The verses were mainly from the pen of Mr. Loftie himself, although he is modest enough not to claim them in his notes.

None of the illustrations in this volume is signed, but the following are the productions of Kate Greenaway: (1) The Frontispiece; (2) the illustration to ‘Do I love you?’ by Julia Goddard; (3) that to ‘The Surprise,’ anonymous; and (4) that to ‘Disdain,’ by F. R. It would have been difficult to arrive at their authorship without unexceptionable evidence, had not Mr. Walter Crane identified his part in the publication. Probably, had not Kate Greenaway’s name appeared on the title-page, it would scarcely have occurred to any one, even to those best acquainted with her work, that she had had any hand in the production at all. The volume is merely interesting as a curiosity. It is not surprising to learn that the republication in permanent form, with his name attached, of ephemeral and unsigned work executed for the butterfly existence of a valentine, did not commend itself to Mr. Crane; and to neither artist did any profit accrue.

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