  1898-1901 KATE GREENAWAY’S THIRD EXHIBITION—CORRESPONDENCE WITH JOHN RUSKIN, AND MR. AND MRS. STUART M. SAMUEL—HER VIEWS ON ART, RELIGION, AND BOOKS—PAINTING IN OIL—DEATH OF RUSKIN—ILLNESS AND DEATH OF KATE GREENAWAY—POSTHUMOUS EXHIBITION—THE KATE GREENAWAY MEMORIAL. Besides a visit to Lady Jeune, at whose house Kate again had the pleasure of meeting the Princess Christian and other royal ladies, the year 1898 was marked by only one event of any moment. This was the third exhibition of her pictures at the Fine Art Society’s Gallery, and she approached the ordeal with considerable misgivings. There was no need for apprehension, however. Out of one hundred and twenty-seven little pictures eloquent of her unbounded industry, sixty-six found purchasers, the total receipts reaching the sum of £1,024:16s. But the results did not satisfy her. After the opening day she wrote to Miss Dickinson:— Feb. 22, 1898. I’m so glad it is over. I hate having to talk to crowds of strangers, and then it is a very anxious time after working for it so long. At the Fine Art they say it will be successful; that always, if they sell as much as that on the Private View day, that it is all right—but I have very great doubts if it is so, and the large Pencil and Chalk drawings I fear do not take at all. The little ones sell, and the dressed-up babies. I’ve felt depressed about it and I hardly ever feel that unless there is a cause. It was so tiresome—the day people go to buy was such a horrid day of rain and sleet, and now to-day snow. Then there was coming another Exhibition of old mezzo-tints with a private view which they said would be so good for me as so many would be there, but now they have had an offer and sold the whole collection, so that won’t come off. They are going to have the Martian drawings Then they had a beautiful sage Flag to float outside, but when it came home they had only put one ‘e’ into my name and it had to go back to be altered. On a Letter to Miss Violet Dickinson. And three weeks later, in reply to ‘kind inquiries’ after the exhibition by her friend, she wrote in no better spirits:— 13 March 1898. No, the drawings are not nearly all sold. If more of the higher-priced ones were gone instead of the others it would not be so bad, but it takes a great number at only a few pounds each to make up anything like enough to pay. The Fine Art people say the East wind has kept people from going out and they have had so few people in and out in consequence—but I feel far more that my sort of drawing is not the drawing that is liked just now, and also that I am getting to be a thing of the past, though I have not arrived at those venerable years they seem to think fit to endow me with. Whether or not she had good reason to complain of the fickleness of the picture-buying public, certain it is that those who bought her pictures then have had no reason to repent of their bargains. BOOK-PLATE OF MISS VERA EVELYN SAMUEL. From the photogravure in colours in the possession of Stuart M. Samuel, Esq., M.P. In this year Miss Greenaway completed the book-plate she had undertaken to draw in colours for Mr. Stuart M. Samuel’s little daughter Vera; and so conscientious was she that although her price for it was only six pounds, she was occupied upon it on and off for two and a half years; and when her client sent her a much larger sum than was actually due, she insisted on returning to him the over-payment, while ‘feeling it so very kind.’ The pains she took were extraordinary—the child, the design, the introduction of the wreath of roses with the hovering bees (from Mr. Samuel’s own book-emblem), and the lettering, all received the utmost consideration. The lettering proved too much for her, as on the occasion when Ruskin so roundly trounced her; so she agreed to have the words designed for her by a professional letter-draughtsman for her to copy in her drawing. When it was finished she took the keenest interest in the reproduction, and she was highly flattered that Mr. Samuel decided to discard the ‘three-colour process’ and adopt the more precious but vastly more expensive photogravure on copper. In this case each separate impression is printed from a plate inked À la poupÉe—that is to say, the artist-printer inks the plate with the various coloured inks carefully matched to the tones of the drawing; so that, when the plate is passed through the press only one copy can be obtained from each printing, and the plate has to be inked again. A few impressions, therefore—say ten, or thereabouts—cost as much as the original drawing, but the result justifies the expenditure. The reproduction here given is not from the drawing itself, but is a three-colour reproduction from the printed impression which has often been mistaken for the original. The artist was delighted, and wrote—‘How much I should like to do a book like this, but I suppose it is fearfully expensive.... It is really beautifully done.’ In this letter she goes on to revert to her ill-health, and succeeding letters, in a like strain, led her friends to suspect the true cause of what she thought was ‘influenza.’ Thus, on the eve of staying at Cromer with Mr. and Mrs. Samuel, she writes—on the 15th of May 1900, after a recurrence of illness—‘Please forgive my not coming. I know you would have been a Vision in the Loveliest of Colours. I should so much like to come to tea again later on when I’m not so busy, and see you and some more First Editions.’ And again: ‘I hope you are quite well again. I am not yet. I suppose I’ve had influenza. I never felt so ill before.’ Then follows a series of letters full of hopes of future meeting, of acknowledgments of commissions given, and of gratitude for kindnesses received. The kindnesses, as was usual with her, she sought to return by the gift of little drawings to her hosts and their children, for although she loved attentions she never liked to feel the weight of indebtedness. She used to be a little nervous in making these presentations. On one occasion, when she made such a gift to one of the present writers and she was asked to As in the record of the immediately preceding years, so in that of 1898 we have to depend on letters, written in the main to Ruskin, for any intimate impression of her life and character. They abound in allusions to her hopes, fears, ambitions, enthusiasms, and perplexities, ethical and religious, her preferences in art and literature, her generous appreciation of the gifts of others and her modest estimate of her own. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Jan. 12, 1898. I went yesterday afternoon to see the Millais’ at the R.A. and I think them more wonderful than ever. It is splendid the impression of beauty and power—as you first step into the rooms. Do you know well ‘The Boyhood of Sir Walter Raleigh’? I think that boy’s face is the most beautiful I have ever seen—it makes me cry to look at it. Its expression is so intensely wonderful—so is ‘The Stowaway.’—But it is going from one masterpiece to another. Still there are some which do not appeal to me as much as others. The divine ‘Ophelia’ is there as divine as ever. People are making up to it. I have thought it the most wonderful picture ever since I first saw it. Then there is the girl’s face in ‘Yes!’—full of the most beautiful feeling—like the Huguenot girl.—How he painted those children!—Angels of Beauty. He is really a marvel.... I should like to have a sort of little packing case made that I could put drawings into and send backwards and forwards for you to see—sometimes—only perhaps you wouldn’t like them. If you would it would be rather nice—a very narrow flat box always ready. I fear the exhibition won’t be in the least successful; there seems to me to be very few pictures sell now—or a person is popular just for a little time. And there’s so much fad over art—if you like the new things they say you are modern. I say Art isn’t modern: new or old in a way. It is like summer is summer—spicy is spicy, and Art is Art, for as long as the world is—isn’t that true? However, they have woke up to the ‘Ophelia’ so I forgive them a good deal. But I can’t help feeling boiling over with rage when I read the criticisms in some of the papers—so utterly ignorant; and then people who don’t know are guided by this. I daresay you will say, ‘But what do the people who don’t know matter?’—They don’t—but it is depressing. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Jan. 26, 1898. I wish people would care about what I do more now. This Millais Exhibition has rather woke them up. They got to think Leighton was a poor feeble being and Millais nowhere before the New Art, but I’m rather amused to hear the different talk now.—And then Poynter and Richmond, to my great joy, have been going for them in their addresses. For a great many years now I have thought the ‘Ophelia’ the greatest picture of modern times and I still think so. They have unfortunately hung the children being saved from the fire next to it, which was not a wise choice, as the red of the fire one is, of course, very trying to those nearest it—but oh, they ARE all wonderful. Jan. 27. I have been to see the Rossettis again to-day for a little change, for I was too tired for anything. I like the small water-colours more and more. The colours are so wonderful. I feel I do such weak things and think strong ones, and it is dreadfully tiresome. I do want to do something nice—beautiful—like I feel—like I see in my mind, and there I am trammelled by technical shortcomings. I will never begin a lot of things together again because then you can’t do new ideas or try different ways of work, and I always could only do one thing at once. I live in the one thing and think about it, and it’s like a real thing or place for the time. Even now, the moment I’m doing a new drawing the morning rushes by—I’m so happy, so interested, I only feel the tiredness when I can’t go on because it is too late or too dark. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Feb. 2, 1898. I am reading some pretty stories translated from the French of Madame Darmesteter, but I fancy some of the historical ones are rendered a great deal more unhistorical, and your sympathy is expected from a point of view that you can’t (or I can’t) give, if I think it out. But I am much more puzzled the longer I live as to what is right and wrong. I don’t mean for myself. The rules I knew as a child are still good for me—I still think those right. But it’s other people’s minds seem to me so strangely mixed up till I feel, why don’t people settle It seems to me to be so unjust, often, for there to be two laws about a thing. I often ask people but I never learn—every one seems vague and says—‘Oh well, if you do right you have your own self-respect’; but it seems to me more than that. It is right to do one thing—wrong to do another; at least, isn’t this true? Kate Greenaway to Ruskin March 29, 1898. I long to be at work painting May-trees. There are such beauties on the Heath only they are black instead of grey, or else they twist about beautifully. May-trees have such sharp curves, don’t they, grow at right angles, in a way, instead of curves? I like it so much. Do you know them in Hatfield Park? They are the greyest, oldest trees I have ever seen. May-trees don’t grow about that way at Witley. The May is all in the hedges, not growing on the commons in single trees. Yet it must be very much the same sort of sandy soil that is on the Heath, and Witley is nearly all uncultivated land. I always look with envy at the May-tree Burne-Jones painted in ‘Merlin and Vivien’:—it is so wonderful. In the following letter she describes her visit to Lady Jeune at Arlington Manor, Newbury:— Kate Greenaway to Ruskin April 14, 1898. I feel rather low to leave Lady Jeune, she is so dear and kind. I can’t tell you how kind she is to every one, and Madeline Stanley, the daughter, is so beautiful and so kind and so very unselfish. She played Lady Teazle and she was a dream of loveliness, and, I thought, acted it in so refined a manner. I felt considerably out of it all but they were all very nice people and I did them pictures—I hope gave them a little pleasure in compensation for their kindness to me.... I went off for two or three little quiet walks by myself on the Common; it was a fascination complete—a great joy. It made me wild with delight to see it all—the yellow of the gorse and the brilliant green and orange of the mosses, and the deep blue of the sky. Also, I grieve to say it, and you will be shocked to think it of me, but those three lovely sirens were rather depressing—one felt so different, one was of no account. There was Miss Millard;—black curly hair and deep, deep grey eyes, and sweet pink cheeks. There was Lady Dorothy FitzClarence with red-gold hair and eyes like—was it Viola? (‘her eyes are green as glass, and so are mine’);—eyes the greenest (or greyest) of things blue, and bluest of things grey—cheeks the colour of a pink pale China rose, red lips and creamy complexion. Then came that beautiful, that dearest siren of them all—Madeline Stanley—who is so dear one could only rejoice in her altogether. But think of poor me! I used to say to Lady Jeune, ‘Oh, let me come away with you, away from these sirens, the air is full of them.’ No wonder the poor young men thirsted for the stage-manager’s blood, who took the lion’s share of the beautiful sirens. They vowed such vengeance I told them I thought it very unfair, but they assured me their injuries were great. KATE GREENAWAY BEFORE THE FATES. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of Mrs. Arthur Severn. In another letter on the same occasion she writes, ‘I am a crow amongst beautiful birds.’ Kate Greenaway to Lady Maria Ponsonby April 19, 1898. It was lovely at Newbury—there is a common there just edging the grounds tenanted by sweet little woolly white lambs—such pictures, with wide-open anemones and blackthorn bushes. It made me so very happy to walk about there and look at things. There was acting going on and the house was filled with young men and women, so I felt considerably out of it. But they were really most of them very nice to me, and the three girls were dreams of beauty. Madeline Stanley is so beautiful and not modern; she is so very dear and kind—I think her perfection. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin April 20, 1898. To-morrow is the New Gallery Private View, but there won’t be anything to look at like the Rossettis. How I should like to live always in a room with two or three Rossettis on the walls. You live in a great many places at once, don’t you, when you have beautiful pictures hanging on your walls? You lift up your eyes and you are away in a new land in a moment. I should find it hard to choose if I were allowed the choice of twelve pictures. I would have had one of the Briar Rose pictures, Then what else! The beautiful Luini Lady with the jasmine wreath and green gauzy veil and the divine smile. I’m reading the Diary of Grant Duff; it is so very interesting and full of such funny pictures. I was rather interested last night, after I had been writing about the twelve pictures, to find he talks of choosing twelve, but his choices are not mine—and I’ve not chosen my twelve, and besides perhaps my twelve are far away where I shall never see them—I have seen so few. On a Letter to Ruskin. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin May 27, 1898. I wish I did not have to make any money. I would like to work very hard but in a different way so that I was more free to do what I liked, and it is so difficult now I am no longer at all the fashion. I say fashion, for that is the right word, that is all it is to a great many people. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin July 6, 1898. Isn’t it curious how one can like good things so much and not do them? I do love one figure or a number put into a little space with just room for what they are doing. I don’t think figures ever look well with large spaces of background. I know how fascinated I was by that one of Rossetti’s—the Princess of Sabra drawing the lot. For one thing, my mind runs to ornament or decoration in a way, though it has to be natural forms, like foxgloves or vine-leaves. I can’t like a flower or leaf I invent, though I often love those I see done. On a letter to Ruskin Kate Greenaway to Ruskin July 14, 1898. I went to see the Guildhall pictures yesterday afternoon, but I can’t help it, I like the English ones best. They are splendidly done but—they don’t take me. I do like Bastien-Lepage and Millet and Meissonier—I don’t think I’ve got sympathy with French art, it is somehow too artificial. Perhaps I’m very, very wrong but—I can’t help it, I feel so. I went one day to the Gallery of International Art. Some things I liked but the greater number I felt wrong and not clever, and some I felt loathsome. That is a strong word but I feel it. Shannon does fine portraits. I think his pictures of girls are perfect, I like them so very much. Two days later she wrote to Miss Dickinson: ‘I went to see the pictures at the International. Some are so funny. I laughed till the tears really came. It is art gone mad.’ Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Newhaven Court, Cromer, August 26, 1898. There is a very, very pretty girl sitting opposite doing French. She is occasionally extremely impertinent to me—I tell her I am going to tell you. She says she would like to see you, and she likes your face and she sends you her love. This is Miss Maud Locker-Lampson, looking so lovely in a purple and green dress like a wild hyacinth. You would so love all these nice dear children—they are so nice—so good-looking. And there is something else you would like—the loveliest tiny grey kitten, such a sweet. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Sept. 1, 1898. Isn’t it a pity more people do not love things?—The beautiful things of the world are so little to so many; they go for drives where all they look upon is so lovely and they care not one bit, but long to get home again as quickly as possible. I can’t tell why it is people are always trying to convert me. They seem to look upon me as always such a ready subject, and really there is not a more fixed belief than I possess—I have thought the same way ever since I have had the power to think at all. How is it possible that I should change? I know I shall not. If there is a God who made all the wonderful things in this world, surely He would require some worship of those also, but I can’t help thinking of a power so much greater than all that altogether—a power that the best in us reaches to only. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Sept. 16, 1898. I’m reading a book that makes me so unhappy—I hate it—I totally disapprove of it, yet I want to read it to the end to know what it is like. I feel all the time how wretched I should be if I had a mind like the man who wrote this book. How curious it is the way people think—the difference of how they think—how curious they are in the narrowness of their—shall I say—vision? And there goes on the wonderful world all the time, with its wonders hidden to, and uncared for by, so many. How is it that I have got to think the caring for Nature and Art of all kinds a real religion? I never can, never shall see it is more religious to sit in a hot church trying to listen to a commonplace sermon than looking at a beautiful sky, or the waves How dreadful that sordid idea of a God is with the mind getting more and more morbid and frightened. Why was the world made then? and everything so wonderful and beautiful? She recounts how somebody, who had felt it a duty to attempt to convert her, had said, ‘“You can’t sit on that sofa for five minutes without feeling steeped in sin”; and I said, “I often sit on it, and I don’t feel like that; if I did I should try hard not to do wrong things.” And so I would!’ Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Oct. 26, 1898. How curiously days come back to you, or rather, live for ever in your life—never go out of it, as if the impression was so great it could never go away again. I could tell you so many such. One is so often present I think I must tell that one now. Go and stand in a shady lane—at least, a wide country road—with high hedges, and wide grassy places at the sides. The hedges are all hawthorns blossoming; in the grass grow great patches of speedwell, stitchwort, and daisies. You look through gates into fields full of buttercups, and the whole of it is filled with sunlight. For I said it was shady only because the hedges were high. Now do you see my little picture, and me a little dark girl in a pink frock and hat, looking about at things a good deal, and thoughts filled up with such wonderful things—everything seeming wonderful, and life to go on for ever just as it was. What a beautiful long time a day was! Filled with time—— Kate Greenaway to Ruskin 7 Nov. 1898. I am reading a strange French Play. I should like to see it acted—Cyrano de Bergerac. I feel it would be very taking when played. It is so strange all the great things are a sacrifice. The thing that appeals supremely seems to me always that. Yet how sad it should be, for to the one it means desolation. It is a strange world this. How queer it all is, isn’t it? living at all—and our motives and things matter, and liking beautiful things, and all the while really not knowing anything about the Vital Part of it—the Before and the After. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Nov. 1898. Oh, so foggy again! No seeing to paint or draw. I hope it will soon leave off this, but it always is so about Lord Mayor’s day. It is nearly always an accompaniment, isn’t it? I saw the people going home the other day with those long papers of the Show. Do you remember them? How fascinating they used to be to me! how wonderful they seemed! Did you like them? I have only seen Lord Mayor’s Show once. I would like to see it again. I hope they will never give it up. I do so wish we had a few more processions, and I’d like to revive all the old May-days, Jacks-in-the-Green, and May-poles—then Morris dancers, all of them. I’ve seen Morris dancers once only but they looked so nice with their sticks and ribbons. I wish I had something very nice to send you on this foggy day. I want to go to the Fine Art this afternoon to see Alfred East’s drawings. One will have to look at them by gas-light for the fog is so dense. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Dec. 27, 1898. It really is fatal to me to have to do anything in a hurry, I must have a quiet time. I can do just as much work or more if only I don’t feel I’ve got to make haste—a sort of Dutch temperament—no, it is really nervousness—comes in. Look at dear Rover! There’s a calm life—nothing at all to bother about except to try to get more of the things he likes. Such, presumably, as two chops instead of the one which, every day of his spoiled life, Kate had grilled for him. And he might eat the cakes and fancy biscuits at tea-time if he chose to commandeer them. The inevitable result of such high living was occasional illness and veterinary attentions. The following are extracts from undated letters of this year:— Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Dear Rover is, I am sorry to say, getting fatter again, after all the trouble we have taken to make him thin. He is evidently meant to be stout. One thing now, he never will go alone. We always have to be with him. Once he would go for long walks by himself. They are quite different, like people, when once you get to know them. THE FABLE OF THE GIRL AND HER MILK PAIL. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of W. Finch, Esq. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin I have just heard from Joanie that you spent your day in the drawing-room yesterday—so you would see the Burne-Jones’ and the Hunts. How slowly the Hunts have dawned on me—but it is a comfort they have dawned, isn’t it???? Ah, you say, WHAT a benighted being, what a little Heathen! to have been so long. Rover is Indisposed and has to be Bandaged. On a Letter to Ruskin. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin What a fuss there has been about Sir Herbert Kitchener!—I like it.—He must have felt it was very nice for people to be so glad. I like a great deal made of people who do things. In the same strain she had written of another hero to Miss Dickinson the year before:— I’m very much impressed by Lord Roberts’ Indian book. I met him many years ago at a children’s party at Lady Jeune’s. She told us we were rival attractions and the little Princes and Princesses couldn’t make up their minds which of us they wanted to see most. He was brave—so were the others; they were a brave and noble lot. It seems too wonderful as you read to think how people can be like that, going to certain death—to the suffering of anguish. It feels to me too much to take—too much to accept—but it’s beautiful. In 1899 Kate Greenaway devoted herself seriously to the painting of portraits in oil colours, and her letters of this year are full of the difficulties which beset her and her indomitable determination to master the mysteries of the new medium. Again and again we find her bewailing—‘I wish I could paint and not do smooth sticky things’—‘I can draw a little but I can’t paint’—‘Isn’t it too bad—too bad—how much I can admire and—how little I can do.’ In March she said good-bye with a heavy heart to her friends the Tennysons, on Lord Tennyson’s departure to take up the Governorship of South Australia. They were destined never to meet again. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Jan. 3, 1899. I’m not doing drawings that at all interest me just now. They are just single figures of children which I always spoil by the backgrounds. I never can put a background into a painting of a single figure, while in a drawing there isn’t the least difficulty. Perhaps I don’t trouble about the reality in the drawing. I put things just where I want them, not, possibly, as they ought to go. And that seems to me the difficulty of full-length portraits. It is all quite easy with just a head or half length. It is funny the background should be the difficulty. The most modern way is to have a highly done-out background and a figure lost in mist, but I don’t see this. So I can’t take refuge there. Miss Greenaway’s difficulty with backgrounds is that shared by every artist, more or less. G. F. Watts, R.A., used to quote Rubens, who said that ‘the man who can paint a background can paint a portrait.’ Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Jan. 11, 1899. What dismal books people do write! I have just been reading a story by Hardy called The Woodlanders, so spoilt by coarseness and unnaturalness. I say spoilt by this, for there are parts of it so beautiful—all the descriptions of the country and the cider-making—it is all so well described you really feel there. The end of the book is simply Hateful. I hated to think his mind could make it end so. Did you ever read any of his books? so many people now seem to me to make things unnatural—it is a curious thing to think so, but I’m sure it is that they do—and the natural is so much greater. They like things odd—eccentric. She never missed an opportunity of seeing Burne-Jones’s pictures. Here are two of a hundred instances:— Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Jan. 19, 1899. I am going to-day to see the Burne-Jones drawings at the Burlington Club. His drawings are so beautiful. I do wish you could see the large painting of King Arthur at Avalon. How you would like to have it to look at for a time! I should like to have it for a week hung opposite to me that I might know it all—every bit. How tired one would get of some paintings if one gazed upon them for a week—as tired as one often gets of one’s own. I fear it is conceited but there are a very few drawings—little ones of my own—that I do not get tired of, though I do of most of them. Saturday. I went to see the Burne-Jones drawings yesterday. They are very lovely. There are two or three I would like to have, but indeed there is not one I would not, but there are two or three I would love to possess—a procession with such lovely young girls in it. The studies for the pictures are so beautiful—the chalk and pencil drawings. He draws such beautiful faces; and I like his later drawings often better than his earlier ones. He certainly had not gone off, except perhaps in colour—but that was a phase. He had grown to like colder colour, brown and cold grey, which I did not always like, preferring the beautiful colouring of the ‘Chant d’Amour’ and ‘Venus Vinctrix.’ But then, I like colour so much. Well, the world is Coloured, so are people. I see colour higher than things uncoloured for that reason. On a Letter to Ruskin. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Feb. 21, 1899. I told you, didn’t I, that I was going to try if I could do portraits of children? I don’t at all like it. I don’t feel near strong enough for Kate Greenaway to Ruskin March 8, 1899. The summer exhibitions now are never interesting. The poor artists can’t afford to paint good pictures. No one will buy them. I think it is very sad and such a pity—the sort of thing that’s taken now—cheap, of course, that comes first—then comes the picture if you can call it so (I often don’t). The colours are daubed on in great smears and dashes. The drawing has gone—anywhere but to the picture—at a distance it looks like something but close you can’t see anything. Now I hate pictures that don’t look right close. Sometimes the colour of them is good, powerful, and strong, but—so was Millais, and with all else, it ought to be added, the more and more do I grow to think Millais wonderful. To me there is no question he is greatest. People quarrel with me because I think him greater than Watts, but, is it conceited to say?—I know he is. And Watts himself says so also. Ah! if I could paint like Millais! then, then you’d see a proud person indeed. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin March 17, 1899. My little model has taken to say such funny things lately. She said yesterday some one had an illness that went in at his head and came out at his feet. She also was talking of a little sister being ill and I said, ‘Perhaps she is cutting a tooth.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘she always cuts her teeth with bronchitis.’ ... It inspires me so much to see good paintings though I don’t think you can ever tell how they are done, or at least I can’t. I often think that when I am painting myself no one would guess I did that, or that, the look is all. You may do a thing quite another way from the elaborate theory. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin March 23, 1899. I make such awful beings in oil—you would be amused, but—I’m going on till I emerge—I’m going to emerge, I’m so interested but SO STUPID. The paint all runs away, and the big brushes! But think of the fine point I’ve passed my life with! I knew where I was going then. Why, trying to draw with a pencil with no point is nothing to it. But, as I said, I’m going to emerge—in the end—triumphant—????—but that appears to be a considerable long way off yet.... I should like to paint Spring one day. I see it all.... If I could Paint in Oil, you see, I could do it,—don’t you see? or do you smile? You would if you saw the Painting in Oil. I sit and laugh at it. My little model says—‘Oh, I don’t think it’s so bad’—and tells other people I don’t get into a mess. Upon which they say, ‘That’s odd.’ I was rather touched by her assumption of my triumphant progress. You like her for it—don’t you? Ah, well, I’m going to do lovely little girls and boys by and by. I am. THE MUFF (UNFINISHED). From the experimental oil painting in the possession of John Greenaway, Esq. On the same subject she wrote to Miss Dickinson on April 24: ‘I am more enthralled than ever by the oil paint, which begins to go where I want it instead of where it wants to go itself.’ At the Exhibition of the Home Art Industries at the Albert Hall she has an amusing contretemps. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin May 9, 1899. Then the Princess Louise came and I was introduced to her. She is so pretty and looks so young. I actually remembered to curtsey (which I always forget), and I was just congratulating myself on having behaved properly, when all my money rolled out of my purse on to the ground. The Princess laughed and picked it up. Wasn’t it nice of her? Something always happens to me. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin May 17, 1899. I am improving now in my oil-painting. I begin to make the flesh look like flesh and no longer white and chalky. I like doing it so much and if only the models would not talk so much!—But how they talk! and if you stop them talking they gape and make such ugly faces! Some one was telling me that Sir Joshua Reynolds, to stop his sitters’ talking, had a glass put up so that they could see him working. I think of adopting that plan. You can’t think what you are doing while you have to listen. I can’t see why they want to talk so and never think. How funny it would be to have a mind that never liked to be alone with its own thoughts—very dreadful I should find it. I get to feel very tired and miserable if I can’t have any time to be quiet in. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin May 31, 1899. You can’t think how funny it is—but finding the power of oil-painting now, my curious mind is wishing to see, and seeing, all subjects large; it seems as if my long-ago and ever-constant wish—to paint a life-size hedge—might now be realised. What a divine thing to do! A life-sized girl in the front and then the large foxgloves and wild roses, and strawberries on the ground. I should be lost in my picture. I should have to have a stool that moved up and carried me about over my picture. All the same I should not wonder if I do do a life-size thing! Perhaps I have hopes of the capacity of oil paint that won’t be realised, but it is nice to get a medium to work in that does what you want more at once. I don’t like small oil things half as much as water-colours—but I do lose the go of things in water-colours. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin June 7, 1899. I went to the Tate Gallery the other afternoon, and somehow I didn’t like it—much. It is a beautiful Gallery, but somehow tomb-like—and my dearest-loved of English pictures, Millais’ ‘Ophelia,’ doesn’t look its best there. Now I feel this picture ought to have a gallery that suits it exactly! but perhaps some other time I may go and like it ever so much. As it was, I grieve to say, the entrance was what I liked best, going out and coming in. There’s the beautiful river and the boats and the opposite shore of wharves and buildings, and I felt how nice it must be at Venice to come out and find the sea—I do like Kate Greenaway to Ruskin June 22, 1899. The air is scented with the hay—everywhere—and the wilderness of the garden has fallen before a very hard-working young gardener. I loved it all overgrown, but the gardener told me when he saw it he could not come again, he felt so depressed. Queer, isn’t it, how differently people feel? It is very fresh and flowery at this moment. The rain has brought out the flowers. There are roses, white peonies, purple irises, large herbaceous poppies, lupins, syringa, marigolds, foxgloves, delphiniums, and campanulas, and day lilies, and many others. It is the garden’s best moment, and it is summery and not that frightful heat which is too much for me. Do get Elizabeth and her German Garden. It [suggests] Alfred Austin’s garden books but it is amusing and pretty.... I am depressed often when I can’t do this new painting as I like. I take a rush on and think every difficulty is over—when I find myself suddenly plunged deeper than ever in things that won’t come right—but they’ve got to—they don’t know that, but it is so—I’m not going to be beaten. I can see loveliness surely. My fingers have got to learn to do what my eyes wish—they will have to—so there it is. I see such colour and I can’t find a paint to make it. In water-colour I It poured with rain here yesterday. I hope this may make the gardener less depressed when he contemplates our weeds. Poor weeds—fine tall fresh green thistles and docks spreading out their leaves in lovely curves. I’m sorry for all the things that are not much wanted on this earth.—And long ago, I loved docks; we used to play with the seeds and pretend it was tea. We used to have a tea-shop and weigh it out and sell it for tea. Perhaps docks do not mean that for any one else in the world—like the purple mallow and the seeds I used to call cheeses, sweet little flat green things, do you know? Kate Greenaway to Ruskin July 25, 1899. Dear Rover’s pride has had a fall. There are two swans have come to live on the White Stone pond, and Rover goes and swims there on his way home. Johnny said he could see the people round the pond laughing, and when he got up to it there was Rover swimming about as if the pond belonged to him, while the swans who thought it belonged to them were fluttering their wings and craning their necks. Rover still remained unconcerned and imperturbable, when one of the swans took hold of his tail and pulled it! This did vanquish Rover, who left the pond hurriedly amidst the derisive laughter of the bystanders. He has some nice friendly swans on the other pond who swim up and down with him. I suppose he thought all swans were alike. I am curious to know if he goes in to-day.... Dear Rover stood firm and did go in. Johnny saw him quite unconcerned swimming about with the swans flapping about at the back. Now don’t you think this was much to his credit? I only hope they won’t peck him! Kate Greenaway to Mrs. Edmund Evans Dear Mrs. Evans—You don’t know how I feel that I don’t get time to write—you must think it horrid—but I have so many things to do because I can’t afford to pay for them being done, and my little leisure bit of time is taken up writing to Mr. Ruskin every week—for now he can’t go out, or often do things that mean so much to him. Then I am trying to do children’s portraits life-size—in oils; this means giving up a lot of time to practising, a year possibly, and making no money. Then I’ve the house to see to and my dresses and needlework and trying to write my life—as you will, I think, see there is a good deal more than a day’s work in each day. I want to come and see you very much but I fear I can’t before the autumn—then I shall try. I have wanted rather to go somewhere quite by myself to the sea to try to get on with my book. I might come near you, if not to stay with you. I hope you like Ventnor and that it suits Mr. Evans. THE STICK FIRE. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of Harry J. Veitch, Esq. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Sept. 1899. Do you know, I’ve had a great deal of pleasure out of oak branches and acorns—what a lovely green they are! One day walking by the sea, I saw a little bit of lovely emerald green on the sand. When I looked to see what it was there were two acorns! shining and looking so brilliant. I could not have thought a small thing could show so much colour. I go on liking things more and more, seeing them more and more beautiful. Don’t you think it is a great possession to be able to get so much joy out of things that are always there to give it, and do not change? What a great pity my hands are not clever enough to do what my mind and eyes see, but there it is! Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Nov. 7, 1899. There are not any very good children’s books about just now that I have seen. The rage for copying mine seems over, so I suppose some one will soon step to the front with something new. Children often don’t care a bit about the books people think they will, and I think they often like grown-up books—at any rate I did. From the Kenny Meadows pictures to Shakespeare I learnt all the plays when I was very young indeed. It is curious how much pictures can tell you—like the plays without words. I suppose I asked a good deal about them and was told, and read little bits Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Nov. 26, 1899. I am rather liking red and blue just now. I suppose it is the winter makes all faint colours look so pale. I like the strong warm colours of scarlet—it is nice to do. I always like painting fur, which I think is rather curious, for I don’t like painting hair and never do it well. Rembrandt painted hair so beautifully—the portrait of Saskia with the fair hair hanging down was so beautifully done; I did envy that. Then Correggio also—do you remember Cupid’s curls? so lovely; and some of Sir Joshua’s, the Angels’ heads—their hair is done so wonderfully. Fair hair is more difficult to paint than dark; I spoil mine by getting the darks too dark in it, so losing the fair colour of it, though I do think it is easier in oils than in water-colours. TWO AT A STILE. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of Mrs. Levy. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Dec. 5, 1899. There is going to be an exhibition for children at the Fine Art—the Private View is on Saturday—but I think it is very likely the children won’t appreciate it. I often notice that they don’t at all care for what grown-up people think they will. For one thing, they like something that excites their imagination—a very real thing mixed up with a great unreality like Blue Beard. How I used to be thrilled by ‘Sister Ann, Sister Ann,’ done by the servants in the agonised voice of Blue Beard’s wife, and I could hardly breathe when the stains would not come off the key.—Those wonderful little books they used to sell in coloured covers, a penny and a halfpenny each—they were condensed and dramatic. They are spoilt now by their profuseness. I never cared so much for Jack the Giant-Killer, or Jack and the Beanstalk, or Tom Thumb, as I did for The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast. I did not like Puss in Boots as well either. Of course they were all deeply fascinating, but the three pretty ones I liked best. It would be curious to do a book of them from one’s remembrance of them in one’s early thoughts. I know my Blue Beard people were not dressed as Turks then. On a Letter to Ruskin. Kate Greenaway to Ruskin Dec. 13, 1899. It has been so dark lately, I’m quite afraid to do my things. For a dark day does so much harm—just spoils everything. I’m getting quite used to oil now, but I still make out things too much, especially the lines round the eyelids. It is a pity, but I always have that tendency and this dark weather makes it worse. I hope I may get out of it in time—but I may never. Dear Rover has hurt his foot and is quite sulky because Johnny has gone out this evening. He expects us always to be at home now. You will say to yourself, why does she write such silly letters to me just now? and they are. It is my mind has got too much in it—more than it can hold. Now you will say, ‘Oh, I don’t think her mind has On Saturday, the 20th January 1900, the following entry which says so little, but meant so much to Kate Greenaway, appears in her diary—‘Mr. Ruskin died to-day at 2.30 in the afternoon from influenza.’ For him there could be no regret that the ‘black archwaygate had swung open to the glittering fields of freedom,’ but for those left behind it would be hard to say by how much the world was the poorer. It was not characteristic of her to say much when she felt most deeply. It was Mr. Stuart Samuel who broke the news to her. ‘On Sunday,’ she wrote to Mrs. Evans, ‘some people came in and said they had seen from the papers he was dead. I didn’t believe it, but the next morning I got letters from Brantwood.’ Then on the following day she wrote in her trouble:— Kate Greenaway to Mr. M. H. Spielmann 22 January 1900. I’m dreadfully sorry about Mr. Ruskin’s death. It was a great shock. I only heard from Mrs. Severn on Saturday morning; she said then he had influenza, but they did not think of any danger. I’ve heard again to-day—they only knew there was any fear of it being fatal between 10 and 11 Saturday morning. He died at half-past 2, entirely painlessly all through. I feel it very much, for he was a great friend—and there is no one else like him. Soon she came round to talk it over and open her heart to this correspondent, who had known Ruskin, too, and loved him well. And it will be observed that up to his death, never in her letters to Ruskin did she write a word about her own ill-health, lest she should distress one for whom she had so affectionate and unselfish a friendship. STUDY FROM LIFE. Illustration (‘Ronald’s Clock’) in ‘Littledom Castle,’ by Mrs. M. H. Spielmann, (G. Routledge & Sons.) Miss Greenaway was now invited by the Royal Commission to contribute as a British artist to the Water-Colour and Black-and-White of the Paris Exhibition of 1900, when it was hoped that she would repeat her success of eleven years before. She had written to Ruskin that she was ‘too busy to take any trouble over it,’ and to a friend to whom she paid the compliment of coming for occasional counsel, she wrote as follows, after due deliberation:— Kate Greenaway to Mr. M. H. Spielmann I have decided not to send to the Paris Exhibition. I have nothing good enough and I don’t know who has my things—I can’t think of anything I would like to send. I feel pencil drawings look so very pale when they get placed with strong coloured things. Don’t you think it better not to send unless you send your best? There was no time to do anything, and I did not want to leave the oil work. To her question there could be only one answer, and the artist was unrepresented at Paris. The state of her health was now giving serious anxiety to her friends. She certainly had undertaken and was able to carry to completion the illustrations to The April Baby’s Book of Tunes, by the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden, which was published towards the end of the year, but signs of failing power were only too evident. The April Baby illustrations, which were reproduced by chromolithography in place of Mr. Evans’s wood-engraving, to which admirers of her work had become accustomed, though charming enough and in harmony with the spirit of the book, are inferior to Mr. Evans’s interpretations, and add not much to her reputation. A curious fact connected with them is recorded in the following letter received by us from the delightful and exhilarating author:— In answer to your letter I can only tell you that I did not, unfortunately, know Miss Kate Greenaway personally, and that while she was illustrating the April Baby’s Book of Tunes we only occasionally wrote to each other about it. I felt quite sure that her pictures would be charming and did not like to bother her with letters full of my own crude ideas. It was odd that, though she had never seen the babies or their photographs, her pictures were so much like what the babies were at that time that I have often been asked whether she had sketched them from life. Her letters were exceedingly kind, and one of the April Baby’s most The Author of ‘Elizabeth and her German Garden.’ That she now rather shrank from undertaking work of this kind we have already seen from the letter written to Mr. M. H. Spielmann, who, as a friend of some years’ standing, asked her if she would be disposed to illustrate one of his wife’s stories which were appearing in Little Folks, and were afterwards published in book form. In the event, the book, which contains brilliant drawings by several leading black-and-white artists of the day, was not lacking in two from the pencil of Kate Greenaway. At the same time her letters are sadly eloquent of her failing health:— Kate Greenaway to Mrs. M. H. Spielmann 11 Jan. 1901. It is so long since I have seen you—so long since I have been. It has not been my fault. I have not been well enough. I seem to have been ill all the year. I had a long illness all the autumn which I am not yet recovered from—and then colds so bad they have been illnesses.... I have seen no one hardly and done so little work. I’m so sorry when I don’t work. For the time so soon goes and I always have so much I want to do, and just now there are so many beautiful pictures to go and see.... I hope you will believe that though I have not been to see you I have often thought of you and wished to see you. WAITING. From a coloured chalk drawing in the possession of the Hon. Gerald Ponsonby. Ruskin’s birthday was on the 8th of February. On the first anniversary of it a year after his death, Kate wrote to Mrs. Severn:— 39, Frognal, Hampstead, N.W., 7 February 1901. My dearest Joanie—To-morrow is a sad day again. How I always wish I had done so much, much more. And I should have if life had not been so difficult to me of late years.... If it would get warmer I could get out; then I should get stronger. As it is I take everything I can. This is the little programme: medicine, 9 times a day; beef tea, 8 times; port wine, champagne, brandy and soda, eggs and milk. I’m all day at it. Can I do more? Am I not a victim? My dearest love to you. Your loving Katie. A few days later she writes to Mrs. Spielmann:— ... I am really, I think, getting much better now, and when I have been away I hope I may return to my usual self. I have never been well enough to go to see you though I have often wished to. Since this time last year there has only been one month (June) without the doctor coming. I have felt it so trying being ill so long. Yet in spite of her illness it must not be supposed that Kate’s desire for industry ever flagged for a moment. She was full of schemes for books—not merely projected schemes, but plans fully matured, first sketches made, and pages fully ‘set-out.’ There was a book of ‘sonnets’ of her own—(she called them sonnets, though not all of them were in sonnet form)—plaintive, dreamy, and frequently a little morbid; and the water-colour drawings to these are occasionally quite or almost complete. The water-colour sketch called ‘Dead,’ here reproduced, is one of these. Then there was a new Blake’s Songs of Innocence, to be published at a shilling net, each song with at least one drawing; this was so fully worked out that for certain of the designs several sketches were made. No fewer than twenty-two sketches were designed for a volume of Nursery Rhymes; there are fourteen to Baby’s DÉbut; and twelve and four respectively to Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen and What the Moon Saw. And, finally, A Book of Girls was to be illustrated with six of her daintiest pictures. A brave programme, surely, with sketches made, ready to be carried into execution; but publishers were doubtful, their enterprise declined, and offers were so little generous, that the schemes were not pursued. Several friends sought to remove the discouragement under Then, in August of 1901, Miss Greenaway was offered the post of editor of a new Magazine for children at a handsome salary, but she refused it, not only because she felt her strength unequal to so exacting an undertaking, but also because she doubted whether she possessed the necessary qualifications. But sadly enough for the many who loved her the first of these reasons was all too cogent, for only three short months were to pass before ‘finis’ was to be written both to work and life. A fortnight before she had written to Mrs. Stuart Samuel from Cromer:— I’ve been very ill—acute muscular rheumatism—horribly painful. I am now, I hope, getting better. It has been so in my mind the wish to write to you. You were so kind, it felt ungrateful to disappear in silence....—Your affectionate Kate Greenaway. And again, ten days before she passed away: ‘I should love a drive when I’m well enough. I will write and tell you how I get on; then, if you will, take me one day. With my love.’ But the end came, at 39, Frognal, on November 6th. The privacy she wished for in life was observed at her death; only a few friends attended in the Chapel of the Cremation Society’s Cemetery at Woking, on November 12th; fewer still on the day following, when the casket was quietly interred at Hampstead At the news of her passing a chorus of eulogy and regret went up from the press. Writers and critics, English and American, French and German, vied with one another to do honour to the memory of one who had spent her life in spreading joy and beauty about her without the faintest taint of vulgarity, without the slightest hint of aught but what was pure and delicate, joyous and refined. Tender and respectful, admiring and grateful, saddened with the note of heartfelt sorrow, these tributes one and all bore witness to the beauty of her life and work. Of them all none touches a sweeter and a truer chord than the farewell homage of her friend, Mr. Austin Dobson: K. G. Farewell, kind heart. And if there be Clean-souled, clear-eyed, unspoiled, discreet, For a few years preceding her death Kate Greenaway had occupied herself much with trying to express her feelings in artless and simple verse. In 1896 we find her writing to Miss Dickinson with her customary pluck and energy:— Each night when I go to bed I read a little bit of Browning—they are so wonderful—each time I read one I like it better than ever. That fires me with ambition to try to write something, and I do try, and they won’t come good; isn’t it hateful of them to be so poor and weak? But I’m going to try more than ever, and I’m going to try other things too if only I can keep well. I do mean to try and do a little more in my life. I’m not content, for I have not yet expressed myself. It’s such a queer feeling, that longing to express yourself and not finding a means or way—yet it goads you on and won’t let you rest. The following sonnet, a characteristic and appropriate example, was written when she already felt the coldness of the advancing shadow, and it may be accepted as reflecting her own view of the Great Hereafter:— When I am dead, and all of you stand round No more the inexplicable soul in this strange mortal body, What beauteous land may I be wandering in Why, Heaven’s blue skies may shine above my head In the year following Kate Greenaway’s death, a fourth Exhibition of her works was held at the Fine Art Society’s Gallery. These were in no sense ‘the remaining works of an artist lately deceased,’ as auctioneers’ catalogues commonly have it, nor yet was it a memorial exhibition. It was, like those of 1891, 1894, and 1898, the result of labour undertaken with the definite purpose of showing what she could accomplish, and of claiming once again the suffrages of the collector. The only difference—a difference that weighed upon every visitor to the Gallery—was that the hand which had produced them was now stiff and the gentle heart by which they were inspired had ceased to beat. The most important pictures sold were ‘Little Girl in Purple,’ ‘Little Girl in Blue and White,’ ‘Visitors,’ ‘Boy with Basket of Apples,’ ‘Procession of Girls with Roses,’ ‘Little Girl in Red Pelisse,’ ‘Procession of Girls with Flowers,’ ‘The Doorway,’ ‘Doubts,’ ‘Girl in Orange Dress (seated),’ unfinished, ‘Cottage with Children,’ ‘Girl seated by a Rose Tree,’ ‘Strawberries,’ ‘Children passing through the Apple Trees,’ ‘Susan and Mary and Emily, with their sweet round mouths sing Ha! ha! ha,’ and ‘A Little Girl in Big Hat with Basket of Roses.’ In a table case were also exhibited a selection from the illustrated letters written by Kate to John Ruskin, from which many of the thumb-nail sketches reproduced in this book are taken. Sketch-Design for the Plate affixed above the Kate Greenaway Cot in the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Designed by Mrs. Arthur Lasenby Liberty. For the sake of those who have not enjoyed the privilege of seeing any of her original work it should be mentioned that in the Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum there are ten of her water-colour drawings, among them illustrations to the Language of Flowers, Little Ann, and the Almanacks, while in the Picture Gallery at this time of writing hang ‘P peeped in it,’ an illustration for A Apple Pie, one of the illustrations for A Day in a Child’s Life, and ‘Three Girls in White.’ Although such a one as Kate Greenaway is scarcely likely to be forgotten, a movement was quickly set on foot by some of her friends in order to perpetuate her memory in some appropriately practical fashion, and a committee was formed ‘for the purpose of promoting a scheme which will secure a fitting memorial to the late Kate Greenaway, who filled so distinctive a place in the Art world, and whose charming treatment of child-life endeared her to every home in the Empire.’ The committee consisted of Lady Dorothy Nevill (at whose house the meetings were held), Lady Maria Ponsonby, Lady Victoria Herbert, Lady Fremantle, Lady Jeune (Lady St. Helier), Mrs. Locker-Lampson, Miss Meresia Nevill, Mr. Arthur À Beckett, Sir William Agnew, Sir George Birdwood, Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Harold Hartley, Mr. M. H. Spielmann, Sir Arthur Trendell (hon. secretary), Sir Thomas Wardle (chairman), and Sir Aston Webb, with Mr. Arthur L. Liberty as hon. treasurer. The amount of the subscriptions collected—to which Sir Squire Bancroft largely added by his fine reading in St. James’s Hall of The Christmas Carol—reached £949, which when the expenses were deducted left the sum of £779. It was decided to endow a cot in the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children—a form of memorial which would assuredly have appealed most strongly to Kate Greenaway herself, supposing it possible that so modest a person would have agreed to or authorised any memorial at all. In due course the purpose of the committee was carried into effect; and a dedication plate, designed by Mrs. Liberty, is now affixed above a little bed. And when the little ones who lie sick in the hospital ward ask the meaning of the plate upon the wall they are told of one who in spite of much physical weakness and suffering devoted herself whole-heartedly to bringing happiness and delight into the lives of others, particularly of children. SPRING TIME. From a water-colour drawing in the possession of Henry Silver, Esq. |
|
