  1882 (continued) AND 1883 THE RUSKIN AND SEVERN FRIENDSHIP RIPENS—AT BRANTWOOD—‘THE ART OF ENGLAND’—RUSKIN’S ADVICE—KATE GREENAWAY’S FIRST ALMANACK—A GREENAWAY ‘BOOM’—MR. AUSTIN DOBSON. Ruskin, as has been seen, took the art of Kate Greenaway very seriously long before she became personally known to him, and it is evident, from the portion of a letter found amongst her papers, probably forwarded to her by the recipient, that he had some hesitation in opening the correspondence which began after the dinner with Stacy Marks. The fragment, which runs as follows, bears no indication either of the recipient’s name or of the occasion of the writing; but in all probability it was addressed to Mr. Stacy Marks himself, their common friend. It is a feeling of the same kind which keeps me from writing to Miss Greenaway—the oftener I look at her designs, the more I want a true and deep tone of colour,—and a harmony which should distinctly represent either sunshine, or shade, or true local colour.—I do not know how far with black outline this can be done but I would fain see it attempted. And also I want her to make more serious use of her talent—and show the lovely things that are, and the terrible which ought to be known instead of mere ugly nonsense, like that brown witch. J. R. A correspondence, however, ensued, which led up, on December 29, 1882, to this laconic but all-important entry in her diary: ‘Mr. Ruskin came. First time I ever saw him.’ His advent had been heralded by the following letter:— John Ruskin to Kate Greenaway 27th, Dec. 82. Dear Miss Greenaway—Friday will do delightfully for me,—even better than to-day—having been tired with Xmas letters and work. This is a lovely little book—all through—the New and Old Years are chiefly delightful to me. But I wish some of the children had bare feet—and that the shoes of the others weren’t quite so like mussel-shells. The drawing on my letter however is perfect! shoes and all—eyes and lips—unspeakable.—Ever your grateful and devoted J. Ruskin. From the first moment of their meeting a friendship sprang up which grew in strength and mutual appreciation until his death in 1900. Concerning this interesting first meeting Mrs. Arthur Severn writes:— I shall never forget his rapturous delight at first making her acquaintance!—and she was indeed one of the sweetest, kindest, and most gifted of women. Lily [Miss Severn] was devoted to her, and we often talk of her and deeply lament her loss. She loved nothing more here [at Coniston] than driving, and was almost childish in the delight it gave her, and with no fear of the horses—and yet she was so timid in other ways. Henceforth not only did Ruskin and Kate Greenaway constantly meet either at Hampstead or at Brantwood, where she paid him several delightful visits, but they carried on a spirited correspondence, which on his side certainly ran to five hundred letters, and on hers to probably double that number. For when, in 1888, illness compelled him to cease writing, Kate made it her kindly business to continue her frequent missives in order to add to the pleasures and relieve the monotony of a comparatively inactive old age. And in order to amuse and delight him, she illustrated nearly every letter with one sketch at least. A number of these little fancies of her pen have here been reproduced. Ruskin’s letters are full of allusions to his overworked condition, but while fully alive to the golden rule, ‘When you have too much to do, don’t do it,’ he never applied it to himself, and in the end he had to pay the penalty which Nature exacts. By the kindness of Mr. Ruskin’s executors and literary executors—Mrs. Arthur Severn, Mr. George Allen, and Mr. A. Wedderburn, K.C.—we are enabled to take a specified tithe of his side of the correspondence. In the main, his letters will be left to speak for themselves, for the discussion of the side-lights which they throw upon PrÆterita and other of his writings, interesting though it would be, would lead us too far astray. Miss Greenaway appears to have kept every scrap of Ruskin’s writing, and even treasured the numerous telegrams which he sent her on special occasions; for Ruskin loved the telegraph. He, on the other hand, observant of his own dictum in Sesame and Lilies—‘Our friends’ letters may be delightful or necessary to-day: whether worth keeping or not is to be considered’—seems to have destroyed all of hers save one, which were received prior to 1887. A large proportion of her letters, as has been said, are embellished with charming head-and tail-pieces, to which he makes constant allusion. In her diary for February 8, 1883, appears for the first time the entry ‘Birthday J. R.’ Henceforward the day is always so marked, and—a sacred memory to her—is so continued even after his death. In March she received an invitation to Coniston, and she wrote to Mrs. Severn, Ruskin’s cousin and adopted daughter, to accept. 11 Pemberton Gardens, Holloway, N., 8 March 1883. Dear Mrs. Severn—You are very very kind, and Mr. Ruskin is very very kind, and I look forward with very great pleasure to the time I shall pass with you.... And, please, you are not to make so much of me, for I am not in the least a frog Princess. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were, to emerge suddenly, brilliant and splendid? In May she paid her first visit to Brantwood, and found herself all at once plunged into an atmosphere of thought and art Kate Greenaway to Mrs. Evans It was all altered (my coming here) in such a hurry, and since I have been here I have had so little time, or I should have written sooner, but the days do go. After breakfast I am allowed (which is a great favour) to go into the study and see all sorts of beautiful things, with little talks and remarks from Mr. Ruskin as he writes; then we go drives, walks, or on the lake till tea-time. Then it is dinner-time; then he reads us something nice or talks in the most beautiful manner. Words can hardly say the sort of man he is—perfect—simply.... I do not know yet when I shall come home—they want me to stay a month, but I shall not stay nearly so long as that. And again: Everything is confused, I never know day or date. I’m always looking at books or pictures. I am absorbed into a new world altogether. I’m sorry to say it has turned so wet; we have to stay in and there are no more hills or lake or streams. I shall be up next week. I’m feeling very bad that I am not up now, but Mr. Ruskin wants me to stay, wants me to tell him things about colour, and puts it in such a way I can’t well leave, and the few days won’t make much difference. On her return home she writes to Miss Lily Evans:— My dear Lily—Enjoyments seem pouring in upon you—mine are over for a time—for you see I am home again, and it was so lovely up there, you can’t think. You know how I admire things—well I did such a lot. There was such lots to admire—such wild wide stretches of country and then such mountains—such mossy trees and stones—such a lake—such a shore—such pictures—such books—my mind was entirely content and satisfied, and I miss it all so much, and grumble and grumble like you did when you came home from Scarborough. Johnny was the worm that bore it for a while, then he turned, and said I just wanted taken to a road in the East End of London for a while—then I should have all the ridiculous nonsense knocked out of my head and look upon Hampstead And really you are coming out, dining out at the B.F.’s To meet the Prince and Princess Christian. Mrs. Jeune. At Home.————————Early. Quite fashionable! I think I’ll pass it on to you. You shall be K.G. for once, for you are coming out and growing up quite dreadfully. Where is Caroline now? [Miss Lily Evans’ favourite doll]. But it don’t matter, for you’re very like the old Lily after all. So good-bye, dear, with my dearest love. K.G. This year (1883) Ruskin accepted his second call to the Oxford Professorship, which had been interrupted in 1879 by ill-health, and forthwith he gave his first series of lectures on ‘The Art of England,’ already quoted from. The following extracts from letters to Kate dated ‘Oxford, 11th May ‘83’ and ‘Herne Hill, 17th May ‘83,’ hint at his forthcoming lecture on ‘Mrs. Allingham and Kate Greenaway.’ I only got here this afternoon out of Derbyshire, and found your lovely little note waiting and it made me partly happy—and partly sorry—but chiefly the first—for indeed I look forward to your working at Coniston without any acute sense of being tortured next time—when you really can get settled on those stones—(which are much better drawn than any you ever did before)—and I can stay to keep the cows in order! My old Chamouni guide told me once I was fit for nothing else. I can’t write a word but this to-night.—I’ll think over the drawing-cleaning; perhaps it will be safest to trust it only to you—there’s plenty of time, for your lecture isn’t till the 23rd,—we shall have had our tea long before that. I can’t part with the drawing to be india Rd [india-rubbered]—having them by me helps me so, and I’m going to put those which I show—(I’m only going to show what I speak of, to prevent carelessness in looking) under raised mounts which will quite hide soiled edges. I am very anxious to know what you have been thinking about—colour, and skies, since you got over the first indignation at my tyrannies!—and I’ve ever so much to say about the daughter of Heth The Scotch too is execrable—and all the younger folks are merely like bolsters in a pantomime—put there to be kicked or tumbled over. Black has some quiet sense of humour in more refined elements—but is merely clumsy in pantomime. So many thanks for the large print—but the next you choose must be cheerful. TWO GIRLS GOING TO SCHOOL. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of John Riley, Esq. On June 7th, he writes from Herne Hill:— You are not to put any more sugar-plums of sketches in your letters—as if they weren’t sweet enough without. Besides, I can’t have you wasting your time and wits in that scattered dew of fancy.—You must really gather yourself into a real rivulet between banks in perspective—and reflect everything truly that you see. You absurd Kate to think I was tired of the drawings. I was only tired of seeing the corners unfinished—you’re nearly as bad as me, that way. Now be a good girl and draw some flowers that won’t look as if their leaves had been in curlpapers all night—and some more chairs than that one chair—with the shade all right and the legs all square—and then I’ll tell you what you must do next. Again on the 15th, from Oxford:— I’m thinking of you every day and a great part of the day long, whenever I get out into the fields, more and more anxious every day that you should resolve on a summer’s work of utter veracity—drawing—no matter what,—but as it is. I am certain all your imagination would expand afterwards, like—a rosebud. But especially I do want some children as they are,—and that you should be able to draw a pretty one without mittens, and that you should be more interested in phases of character. I want your exquisite feeling given to teach—not merely to amuse. Miss Alexander’s book I’m going to do a bit of ‘Kate’ glass—directly, for some English hall in fairyland. You’ll soon have proof of the lecture on you! On June 17th, he writes from Oxford:— What a lovely little bit of dark grounded grace! and the two prints are delicious—but the feet are getting too small. It’s delightful to me beyond telling that you do yourself feel the need of a time of obedience to the ‘everlasting Yea’ of Things.—What I meant by phases of character was—in painting, what Scott or Shakespeare gives in words,—the differences in loveliness which are endless in humanity. Those little girls who were playing at being in church must have been so different from little girls who were tormented by being at church. Illustration: On a Letter to Ruskin. Yes, it is very sad that I can’t get done here,—but there are three years of absence to redeem, and being allowed in my own department to have my own way entirely, it is a very stringent duty to do the best I can. And just think what the arrangements of a system of teaching in connection with a great University means, or should mean. I have mounted, for the present, 25 of the Mother Goose drawings beside the plates, and put them in a cabinet by themselves, among our loan series. People are immensely interested in them, and feel the difference between drawing and plate quite as you would like them to. Every drawing has its own sliding frame and glass so that they are absolutely safe, as far as handling is concerned. You must hear a little more about Miss A.’s before you see them; and I shall very soon have a proof of lecture for you. And from Brantwood on the 22nd:— What lovely, lovely things these are, that have come to-day—the tambourine and the looking out to sea.—But your own eyes ought to have been three times as big—on your eyes be it—and I don’t understand the doggie carrying the maulstick—because I’ve never seen you with a pet in a blue riband—and the first thing I should have done would have been to order the feather out of your hat!... It was nice, that, of the gentleman and friendship—and yet it wasn’t. How dogged the English are in thinking that you can’t praise anybody honestly. I got tired at Oxford and had to run down here for some rest—but shall be up again in a week or two and I hope in the mean time to get some things organised for engraving some of the line sketches At the end of June Monsieur Ernest Chesneau had written to Ruskin asking him for K. G.’s portrait and particulars of her life for an article in a French publication. Alluding to this he writes from Brantwood on July 4th, I kept the portrait till I could scarcely bear to part with it. But it’s gone to-day,—and I’ve wreaked my jealousy on M. Chesneau by three pages of abuse of the whole French nation and Academy. By this time enthusiastic admirers among foreign critics were many. There were M. ArsÈne Alexandre and M. Jules Girardin of Paris, Dr. Muther of Breslau, M. A. C. Loffelt, art-critic of the Dutch Journal, The Fatherland, and Dr. J. Zurcher of Amsterdam. And Karl Emich, Count of Leiningen-Westerburg, was among the keenest of them all. Even so Parisian a personage as Alexandre Dumas fils, who in 1881 had acquired one of her pictures, was sensitively responsive to her essentially English art. The agent through whom he purchased the drawing wrote to her:—‘Your talent is still more appreciated in Paris than in London. A proof of it is that all the imitations made of your works, which are sold here, have not any success in Paris at all, where something else but nice book-binding is required’—the suggestion being that, unlike the thick-headed Saxon, the artistic Gaul could discriminate unfailingly between the original and imitations—a two-edged compliment which Kate might appreciate as best she could. Ruskin was much concerned at Kate Greenaway’s occasional lack of the sense of form. He did not want her to study anatomy, but was for ever begging her in his letters to make studies from the nude figure as the only way. But on this matter she was stubborn: she had had enough of nude studies at her own studio and at Heatherley’s. Here are two of his numerous letters on the subject:— Brantwood [1883]. I’m beginning really to have hopes of you. This terrific sunset shows what a burden those red and yellow wafers have been on your —Then secondly,—I’m in great happiness to-day thinking that M. Chesneau must have got that lovely Kate this morning, and be in a state words won’t express the ecstasy of. Then thirdly—As we’ve got so far as taking off hats, I trust we may in time get to taking off just a little more—say, mittens—and then—perhaps—even—shoes!—and (for fairies) even—stockings—And—then— My dear Kate,—(see my third lecture sent you to-day)—it is absolutely necessary for you to be—now—sometimes, Classical.—I return you—though heartbrokenly (for the day)—one of those three sylphs, come this morning. Will you—(it’s all for your own good!) make her stand up, and then draw her for me without her hat—and, without her shoes,—(because of the heels) and without her mittens, and without her—frock and its frill? And let me see exactly how tall she is—and how— round. [Note written in pencil: ‘Do nothing of the kind. J. S.’] It will be so good of—and for—you—And to, and for—me. After finishing this letter, he has turned it over and written:— July 5th. Finished right side yesterday. That naughty Joan got hold of it—never mind her—you see, she doesn’t like the word ‘round’—that’s all. Who, conversant with Miss Greenaway’s work, can doubt that Ruskin’s advice was entirely right and sound? Ruskin to Kate Greenaway Brantwood, 10th July /83. You really are as good as gold—heavenly gold of the clouds, to be so patient—and to send me such lovely things—but I’ll try to make them of real use to you with the public.—The cloud fairies are LOVELY and I’ll have them put in a glass window the moment I’m sure of my workman.—(I’m waiting in great anxiety for the result of the first trial—I am not anxious about the colour—but about the drawing of the features and hair exactly right on the larger scale.) And so also the milkgirl, tidied the least bit about the feet, shall be glassed-in better than mirror. The sunset is a delight to me and all that you say of what you You ought to make notes of groups of children, and of more full faces than you-face-usually. The profile is besides conventional. I have never told you about Villette etc.—They are full of cleverness but are extremely harmful to you in their morbid excitement; and they are entirely third-rate as literature.—You should read nothing but Shakespeare, at present. —And—you should go to some watering place in August with fine sands, and draw no end of bare feet,—and—what else the Graces unveil in the train of the Sea Goddess. Again on the same subject he writes on the 26th, I want you to go to Boulogne and take a course of fishwives and wading children. And once more:— The dancing girls are delightful but you are getting a little mannered and I shall press you hard for sea study. No winter work will take its place. I want the blue of the sea for you and the running action of the bare feet. Ruskin to Kate Greenaway Brantwood, [Sept.] 6th, [1883]. What a lovely letter I’ve got this morning! I can’t but think that lake-pond must be a divine one I know between Dorking and St. Catherine’s, Guildford—the springs of it, and indeed any chalk springs at their rising, beat our rainfall streams all to mud, they are so celestially purified by their purgatory under the chalk. Also they are of green water! while ours are—purple!!! If only, some day next year you could come fresh to them with a sketch-book! But all you have been seeing is boundlessly helpful and good for you, and the motives of the sketches you send to-day are unsurpassable and I must have you carry them out when you get to work again. The news of Scarborough fills me with delight also. I shall probably then be at Abbotsford—and to get a little sketch from you at the breakfast table there! fancy! I hope my letter about the engraving will show you how I felt And in the same strain— 19th Sept. [1883]. Yes, I know well how tired you are, and I do hope you’ll play on the sands and do nothing but what the children do—all day long. As soon as you are yourself again I’ll tell you exactly what I want about the drawings. There was work enough for a week in that one of the girl with brown background, alone.—And you ought to do nothing but patches of colour with a brush big enough to tar a boat with for months to come. Then Fors Clavigera appeared embellished for the first time with a headpiece from Kate Greenaway’s pencil—a charming little girl watching the sun set across the sea. This was followed by a sweet and dainty little dancing maiden as headpiece to Letter 93, headpiece and tail-piece to Letter 94, headpiece to Letter 95, and full-page frontispiece to Letter 96. In the last-named a dancing babe of fortune leads by the hand a still more fascinating babe in rags—the rags and babe as clean and sweet as are all the rags and babes in K. G.’s child-Utopia—whilst a dainty lady tripping in the rear impartially scatters roses over them from a basket under her arm. The drawings in no way illustrated the text; they were wholly adventitious decorations. These are the only K. G. drawings published by Ruskin, saving those to Dame Wiggins, of which some account appears in the next chapter, although others were engraved. These last, or some of them, are included in the later volumes of the noble Library Edition of Ruskin’s works. The engravings in Fors were executed by Roffe. Their appearance on the printed page without any sign of a plate-mark is at first sight very puzzling, but this is accounted for by the extravagant size of the plates, which were, by Ruskin’s special orders, made larger than the page upon which they were destined to be printed. The only one of the ‘Letters’ in which Kate Greenaway is referred to by name is No. 94, ‘Retrospect.’ Ruskin is insisting upon the proper work for women, ‘scrubbing furniture, dusting walls, sweeping floors, making the beds, washing up the crockery, ditto the children, and whipping them when they want it, etc. etc.’ Then he goes on with advice as to plain work: Get Miss Stanley’s book, which gives you the elements of this work at Whitelands,—(I hope, however, to get Miss Greenaway to sketch us a pattern frock or two, instead of the trimmed water-butts of Miss Stanley’s present diagrams). In the following extract from a letter of November 12, he refers to the scheme which he had in his mind for reproducing her coloured work in a more satisfactory way than could be done by the printing press. K. G. was to make coloured drawings which were to be printed in outline and then coloured by hand in facsimile—a method frequently used, but nowhere so successfully on a large scale as in France. Ruskin himself had her engravings in some copies of Fors coloured by hand in this manner. On November 12th, he writes:— This maid of the muffin is beyond, beyond! I must engrave her for a lovely Fors on toasting forks. The colouring of Miss Primrose and all others must be done for a quite full and frank payment, enabling the colourist to count her day’s work as a comfortable and profitable one. Each must be done as attentively and perfectly—while as simply—as possible. It ought only to be part of the colourist’s day’s work—else it would be sickeningly monotonous—there will never be any pressure or hurry of her—the price being simply so much per score or hundred as she can deliver them. The next letter refers to Little Ann. Stacy Marks to Kate Greenaway Dec. 31, 1883. I won’t allow the year to pass away without thanking you for what is, I think, on the whole, I might say entirely, your best book. The drawing is better and I think there is more feeling for grace in the figures than in the earlier works. I have put it away carefully in my ‘Greenaway Collection’ where it will always be a valued item. Your work should be all the more popular after all Ruskin has said of it. He has dined with us once or twice before he left for Coniston and we have more than once talked of you. He is a singular and wayward genius. I tried to get him to admire Caldecott but it was no use—and he had not a word to say for Keene or Sambourne. The following extract from a letter of Ruskin’s dated ‘Brantwood, 26th December ‘83’ refers to the headpiece of Letter 93 of Fors:— I shan’t go to sleep over your note to-day. But I have no words any more than if I was asleep, to tell you how marvellous I think these drawings. No one has ever done anything equal to them in pure grace of movement—no one in exquisiteness of dainty design—I tremble now to ask you to draw in any other way. As for the gift of them, I had never such a treasure given me, in my life—but it is not for me only. I am sure that these drawings will be [valued] endlessly and everywhere if I can get them engraved the least rightly,—the sight of them alters one’s thoughts of all the world. The little beauty with the note, alone, would have made a Christmas for me. I hope you will like the use I’ve made of one of your little dance-maidens—I think her glory of simplicity comes well alone. The beginning of 1883 had seen the publication of Kate Greenaway’s first Almanack. Published at one shilling by George Routledge & Sons, and of course engraved and printed in colours by Mr. Edmund Evans, it achieved an enormous success, some 90,000 copies being sold in England, America, France, and Germany. It was succeeded by an almanack every year (with but one exception, 1896) until 1897, the last being published by Mr. Dent. The illustrations were printed on sheets with blank spaces for the letterpress, in which English, French, or German was inserted as the market demanded. There are various little conceits about these charming productions which are calculated to appeal to the ‘licquorish chapman of such wares’; so that complete sets of them already fetch respectable sums from the collectors of beautiful books, especially when they have not been divested of the paper envelopes or wrappers in which they were originally issued. THE OLD FARM-HOUSE. From a large water-colour drawing in the possession of Campbell S. Holberton, Esq. A Manchester bookseller who invested in three hundred copies had a startling experience. Almost within the week he was gratified to find that his stock was exhausted. Subsequently he was visited by a would-be purchaser who tendered three pence for as many copies. In response he protested that the selling price was one shilling apiece, when his customer informed him that the book was selling at that moment in Piccadilly—Piccadilly, Manchester—at the price of one penny. And enquiry not only proved the statement to be correct but also elicited the fact that the books in question were the property of this very bookseller, the rapid disappearance of whose stock had been primarily due not to sales but to theft. It has been said—let us admit, with a little exaggeration—that Kate Greenaway dressed the children of two continents. In such measure as it is true, this was mainly due to the fact that her almanacks found a regular sale in France, from which America and Europe so largely take their cue in feminine matters sartorial. There was now a Greenaway boom, just as we have since seen a Trilby boom, and amongst other amusing compliments this year a firm of shoemakers approached the artist with a request to allow them to christen a special boot for children which they were putting on the market ‘The Kate Greenaway Shoe.’ Inasmuch as feet were rather a weak point with her, the application may well have proved a little disconcerting. Towards the end of the year a proposal was afoot that Miss Greenaway should issue a volume of selected poems, with illustrations from her pencil, and Mrs. Severn proffered her aid, if it were desired, in making the choice. To this amiable offer her friend replied:— Kate Greenaway to Mrs. Arthur Severn 11 Pemberton Gardens, Holloway, N., 29th Dec. 1883. My dear Mrs. Severn— ... And now about the book suggestion. Such a book is thought of, even planned out; and it rested between the choice of that and one other to be the next year’s book. The other one was decided, as we thought the poetry book would be the best last. But I’ll talk to you about it, and please don’t say anything about it till I’ve seen you. I don’t want it known that I’m going to do a poetry book. It is an understood thing that I do NOT mention the names of any book going to be done till it is brought out—and this book is to be poems of my own selection. I can only do those K. G. This was followed, a little more than a month later, by a further note on the subject:— Kate Greenaway to Mrs. Arthur Severn 11 Pemberton Gardens, Holloway, N., 2nd Feb. 1884. Dearest Mrs. Severn—The verses have come in safety—one or two are quite new to me, and would be exactly what I’d like to put in. They are all nice, but I doubt if in some cases the copyrights could be obtained, and some of them are a little too much about children. Children, I find, like to know about other things—or what other children did—but not about children in an abstract sort of way. That belongs to older people. I wonder if you remember what poem you liked best when you were a child? I can remember, well, some I liked,—‘How Horatius kept the Bridge’—I used to love that. Then ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus,’ ‘The Pied Piper,’ ‘The Rope Walk,’ ‘The Thoughts of Youth.’ But I’m afraid I had a great many loves—indeed, and so I do now. I find something to like in most things. With love, and hoping soon to see you,—Yours sincerely, K. G. Home-Beauty. Poem by Austin Dobson. Drawing by Kate Greenaway. Reduced from the Magazine of Art, 1883, by permission of the publishers, Messrs. Cassell & Co.] In the summer of 1883 a charming collaboration took place in the pages of the Magazine of Art (which was then under the editorship of W. E. Henley) between Kate Greenaway and a poet in whose tender, exquisite, and dainty art she took infinite delight—Mr. Austin Dobson. Earlier in the year an article in that magazine on ‘Art in the Nursery’ had paid homage to the work of Miss Greenaway, along with that of Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Miss Lizzie Lawson, and M. Ernest Griset. But Kate is the heroine of the band, and the ‘peculiar quality of cherubic dowdiness’ of her youngsters, the winsomeness of the babies’ solemn flirtation under an immense umbrella, and similar fascinating scenes, received the appreciation that was their due. Then in a number of the magazine that contained contributions by Robert Louis Stevenson, Cosmo Monkhouse, Leader Scott, Mr. W. C. Brownell, and others, Kate Greenaway contributed her charming page-drawing in which Mr. Austin Dobson’s equally delicious verses were set. The drawing, here reproduced, naturally suffers greatly from the necessary reduction in size: lines are thickened, the exquisite drawing of faces, of eyes and mouths and dimpled chins, and the dainty gradations of the pencil strokes, are inevitably impaired if not lost. But the grace of the composition, the pretty grouping, the sweet childish attitudes, remain intact; and the verses, written in in our reproduction by Mr. Dobson’s own hand, though here too small in scale to be easily read, match the design in playful elegance. They run as follows:— HOME-BEAUTY ‘Mine be a cot,’ for the hours of play, O Art of the Household! Men may prate |
|
