I PROPOSE in this chapter to group together cer­tain spor­a­dic sup­pres­sions in lith­o­graphy, etching, wood-engraving, and pro­cess work. They are not suf­ficiently important each to demand a chapter to itself, nor do they fall into any particular categories as do the “Dickens,” “Hogarth,” and “Cruikshank” plates. At the same time each has an interest of its own, and is a footprint upon the byway of art with which we are concerned.

Fortunately for us the first of these cancelled illus­tra­tions is, at a time when we have but lately been celebrating the centenary of Senefelder’s great invention, lithography, of ex­traor­di­nary interest, for it was one of the earliest book illus­tra­tions produced in England by this method. The {150} volume in which it appears (if we are lucky enough to possess one of the first three hundred copies issued) is the Antiquities of Westminster, with two hundred and forty-six engravings by J. T. Smith.

The date of the volume is 1807—a fact which would at first sight seem to tell against our claim to be dealing with a pioneer English lithograph. We must, however, remember that a book of this kind took many years to produce, and that the pub­li­ca­tion of the illus­tra­tions was, in many cases, of necessity years later than their execution.

Lowndes oddly refers to the lithograph as the first “stone-plate” ever attempted, but in this he claims for it too great a distinction. To name no others, there was, we know, as early as 1803 a portfolio containing drawings by West, Fuseli, Barry, and Stothard issued as Specimens of Polyautography, by which term lithography was for a few years described, which contains lithographs dated 1801 and 1802.

The subject of the design here reproduced in facsimile is the inside of the Painted Chamber which was part of the Old Palace of Westminster. {151} The mural paintings which were discovered at the beginning of this century, after the removal of the tapestry hangings which are to be seen in the lithograph, were, it will scarcely be credited, promptly ordered by the authorities of the day to be “improved” away by a coat of whitewash because of their untidiness! And this although they were known to have been in existence since 1322, and although there were strong reasons for the belief even at that time that they were executed as early as the reign of Henry III.! Such an act of vandalism would be inconceivable were it not that we have learnt to look upon its like as so lamentably common.

The account of the preparation of the lithograph, and of the stone’s untimely fate, is fully set forth on pages 49 and 50 of the Antiquities. It is too long to quote in this place, but is well worth looking up by those who are interested in the history of this method. It is sufficient for our purpose to say that after three hundred impressions had been taken off, the stone was laid by for the night without care having been taken to keep it properly moist. The result was that {152} on the application of the ink balls in the morning they proved too tenacious, and on their removal were found to have torn up portions of the drawing from the stone. Consequently we have it that impressions of this, one of the first English lithographs, are exceedingly scarce, and are only to be found in the first three hundred copies of the book issued. This fact connotes the further result that the impressions of the etchings throughout the book in their earliest states are to be found in the copies containing the lithograph.

Before quitting this subject it should be stated that in “collating” this book we must bear in mind a very pretty quarrel which took place between the artist and J. S. Hawkins, who was largely responsible for the letterpress. As has been pointed out, the first 300 copies contained the “stone-plate.” But in only a very few copies is to be found the suppressed title-page bearing the name of John Sidney Hawkins, and the dedication to George III., signed “The Author.” These few copies contain the very earliest impressions of the plates. In the later copies the dedication is signed “John Thomas Smith,” and bound up {153} in most of these is found a “Vindication” by J. T. Smith in answer to “A Correct Statement and Vindication of the conduct of John Sidney Hawkins, Esq., F.A.S., towards Mr. John Thomas Smith, drawn up and published by Mr. Hawkins himself.” Lond. 1807, 8vo, p. 87. J. T. Smith’s answer was further replied to in another pamphlet by Hawkins dated 1808.

We will now turn from this specimen of lithography to a very remarkable example of the sister art of wood-engraving. (Vide Frontispiece.)

In the April number 1896 of Good Words, I dealt with some bibliographical curiosities, one of which was the remarkable suppressed title-page in my possession here reproduced. My object on that occasion was to verify the fact of which I felt practically certain, that the book for which it was prepared had never come into being, and that therefore we had the curious anomaly of an elaborately engraved title-page wanting a book. Books wanting their engraved title-page are unfortunately common enough, owing to the barbarism of certain ruthless collectors. But a title-page not only wanting a book, but which {154} never had one, was as ex­traor­di­nary as the grin of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, which was left behind after its author had disappeared.

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice, “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life.”

But then Alice had never seen this title-page of a book by “Sholto Percy” which was never written, and of which Death in London was to have been the title. The wood-block is a very beautiful one, cut by Mason, no doubt Abraham John, who engraved Cruikshank’s illus­tra­tions to Tales of Humour and Gallantry.

“Sholto Percy” was the pen-name of Joseph Clinton Robertson, who, with Thomas Byerley, published the Percy Anecdotes, 1821–23. Their full pseudonyms were “Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mount Benger.” The anecdotes were published in forty-one parts, at half-a-crown a-piece, before the close of the year 1823, and, of these, two hundred and sixty thousand copies were sold during the four years of issue! What number subsequent editions {155} have run to it is impossible to conjecture. The title of the book had its origin from the Percy Coffee-House in Rathbone Place, which the collaborators frequented. They also compiled London, or Interesting Memorials of its Rise, Progress, and Present State. 3 vols. 1823.

In the dedication of this last work to George IV. we find facsimile signatures of the two “Brothers.” That of “Sholto Percy,” the author of the book which was evidently projected but never published, tallies with that on the title-page here reproduced. From the fact that Reuben’s signature is absent we gather that, for some reason or other, the collaboration had come to an end. At any rate nothing more is heard of the partnership, nor indeed was anything else published under one or other of these noms-de-plume. And although I received various communications from strangers upon the subject of the bibliographical curiosities dealt with in the Good Words article, no light was thrown upon this perplexing title-page. Suppressed, therefore, it doubtless was, because it had no reason to be anything else, and remains a rather pathetic memorial of the gifted {156} artist and the author whose projected enterprise was perchance cut short by one of the forms of the Dread Enemy here portrayed.

The block is worthy of careful scrutiny. The only impression in existence (as I believe it to be) and in my possession is beautifully printed on India paper. In it we find Bewick’s white line used with excellent effect. Behind the main panel the colossal form of Death is just visible, holding in either hand “Death in the Cup” and “Death in the Dish.” At the lower corners his skeleton feet are just visible, fixed on the Arctic and Antarctic portions of the Globe. At the top of the panel Death drags a wheel off the chariot which is making a dash from London to Gretna Green. Immediately below this is a nail-studded coffin from which hangs a pall inscribed with the words “Death in London.” This overhangs the central group, in which Death spectacled and seated on a tombstone at a desk supported by human thighs, with a human skull as footstool, receives despatches and directs his myrmidons. Supporting this central panel two skeletons hurl death-dealing darts, whilst below one skeleton {157} starves in prison, and another, crowned with straw, rages as a maniac.

On the right-hand border a skeleton highwayman, pistol in hand, awaits his victim, ignoring the gallows which is seen under the moon in the background, and ignorant of the noose already round his neck, manipulated by a skeleton hangman in the division above. On the left-hand border a somewhat cryptic design represents a skeleton toper surmounting a skeleton quack physician who sucks a cane and, with medicine bottle in hand, goes forth on his death-dealing mission.

At the base Death, in a deluge of wind and rain, overturns a sailing boat, and incidentally presses down a struggling victim with his foot. The whole effect is finely decorative, and far surpasses anything else of Seymour’s of which I have knowledge.

But we must not linger too long over each item of our promiscuous collection of cancelled illus­tra­tions.

I shall now bring to your notice a very rare coloured plate by Henry Alken, which, though not suppressed in the strictest sense, is yet {158} sufficiently relevant to the subject to admit of its inclusion in these papers. It was undoubtedly prepared for a book of which Alken was the illustrator, but, for some reason or other, although engraved, it was not included among the published plates.

During the years 1831–39 there appeared in The New Sporting Magazine, edited by R. Surtees, a series of sporting sketches of which “Mr. John Jorrocks” was the hero. These papers were collected and published in 1838 under the alliterative title of Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities, il­lus­trat­ed by “Phiz.” This volume was brought to the notice of Lockhart, who thereupon advised Surtees to try his hand at a sporting novel. The immediate result was Handley Cross. In 1843 a third edition of Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities appeared, with sixteen coloured plates after Henry Alken. The novels in the meantime were being issued with illus­tra­tions by Leech and “Phiz.” That the former has at this distance of time lost nothing of its popularity (rather, of course, on account of the illus­tra­tions than for the letterpress, which reads poorly enough now) is evidenced by {159} the fact that only the other day a copy fetched at public auction the remarkable sum of £20. One wonders what the bidding would have reached had the book been extra-il­lus­trat­ed with the unused illus­tra­tion of which it is here my purpose to treat.

Now we must be careful, in considering any work signed “Alken,” to bear in mind the fact mentioned by Mr. R. E. Graves in the Dictionary of National Biography, that although the fertility of Alken’s pencil was amazing, the idea of it might be fictitiously enhanced if the fact were not grasped that he left two or three sons—one of whom was also named Henry—all artists and all sporting artists, who have, since their father’s time, been incessantly painting, lithographing, aquatinting and etching for the sporting publishers and for private patrons of the turf.

But the original Henry Alken did his work between 1816 and 1831; hence it is clear that the illus­tra­tions to Jorrocks were the work of Henry the younger. And this is a point which should be emphasised for the guidance of the bibliomaniac, for it is the practice of many second-hand booksellers to lump all work by “Alken” under one head, from {160} ignorance possibly—in some cases I fear from unworthy motives. For it is the work of Henry Alken, the founder of the line, which is of greatest rarity and greatest merit, and to palm off work done by a namesake as work done by him is plain cheating. We remember the parallel case of George Cruikshank, who exposed a certain publisher, in a somewhat intemperate pamphlet afterwards suppressed, entitled A Popgun fired off by George Cruikshank, etc., etc. In that case the publisher had been guilty of the more than questionable proceeding of advertising certain “story-books” as “il­lus­trat­ed by Cruikshank,” which were in reality the work of George’s nephew, Percy, who, I fancy, would have been the last to concur in what was an undoubted attempt to mislead the public.28

Let it be clearly understood, then, that the plate which we here reproduce was the work of Henry Alken the younger. Though of little artistic merit, it is yet not unworthy of those which were published, and the reason of its {161} sup­pres­sion is difficult to fathom. The plate should be undoubtedly annexed, on its very rare appearance, by him who values his Jorrocks. This would make his copy, in the words of the second-hand booksellers, a “really desirable” one. Our re­pro­duc­tion is not quite the size of the original, which exactly tallies in size and shape with the published plates. The line of pub­li­ca­tion runs: “London, Published by R. Ackermann at his Eclipse Sporting Gallery, 191 Regent St. 1843.” The method employed in its production is a mixture of etching and aquatinting, and this impression has been coloured by hand with the brilliant tints which appealed to our sporting forebears. There need be no complaint about its lowness of tone. It would put to the blush the most versi-coloured of kaleidoscopes! To parody Dr. Johnson’s animadversion upon a certain ode, it would be just from the strict artistic standpoint to say, “Bolder colour and more timorous meaning, I think, were rarely brought together.”

So much for some unattached sup­pres­sions of the first half of the century. We will conclude {162} this chapter with certain cancelled plates of only yesterday.

To those who have not yet grasped the fact (cried aloud in the wilderness by Mr. Kipling) that our age is as romantic as any other if we only know how to regard matters, the fact will probably come as something of a surprise that the last decade of the nineteenth century has as surely its crop of “suppressed plates,” as have those ages which were, we choose to flatter ourselves, more brutal than our own. Less unmannerly in some respects doubtless we tend to become, and that perhaps is the very reason (paradoxical though it may sound) why we do not have to search in vain for “modern instances.” For now that Mrs. Grundy is sharper-eyed than she was (not­with­stand­ing her age), and the libel laws are more closely knit by precedents, slips which would have been treated as passing peccadilloes by our less squeamish forebears rise to the dignity of “copy” for the pressman, and form staple conversation for the insatiate tea-table.

And when we mention the late most five-o’clock and kind-hearted of artists, Mr. du Maurier, and {163} the still living most dainty limner of hoops and patches, Mr. Hugh Thomson, as the providers of century-end “cancelled illus­tra­tions,” we may be sure that the details will not be very scandalous, nor the outrages very shocking.

Not but that I was forced to go somewhat warily when originally recording the famous incident of du Maurier and the peccant illus­tra­tion of the “Two Apprentices” in Trilby, for was I not thereby involving myself with another, and greater, artist (very much alive indeed!), whose pen was only not mightier than his pencil because the latter was unsurpassable, but who might in turn pillory me in his gallery of artfully constructed Enemies?

It was indeed a topsy-turvy world which found the “Butterfly,” which is popularly supposed to end its life wriggling upon the pin of the “soaring human boy,” revenging itself upon humanity with epigrams that “stick for ever.”

Sad to relate, Whistler could never be brought to see du Maurier’s rather caustic “retaliation,” particulars of which are given below, in its proper proportions. Indeed, when I asked him to allow me to reproduce, as a pictorial curiosity, the {164} suppressed print of the “Two Apprentices,” which only the owners of Trilby, as it appeared in serial form, are now destined to possess, he informed me in the politest manner possible that my doing so would involve me in an expensive and uncomfortable correspondence with his solicitors. And what could not be done then cannot be done now, for reasons into which I need not enter. Nevertheless, to treat seriously a hyperbolical and exaggerated caricature as anything more than a legitimate response to a not altogether kindly sarcasm on the part of Mr. Whistler himself, appears to me now, as it appeared to me then, well-nigh incredible. No one looked upon “Joe Sibley” as a true likeness, either pictorially or verbally. It was written and read as a joke, part true, but mostly false, and so would have stood had it not been given undue importance by the correspondence in the Pall Mall Gazette. As a result, in book form “Joe Sibley” is wanting in that delightful gallery which contains “Durier,” Pygmalion to Trilby’s Galatea—a Galatea whose marble heart would never beat for him; “Vincent,” the great American oculist, “whose daughters are {165} so beautiful and accomplished that they spend their autumn holiday in refusing the matrimonial offers of the British aristocracy”; “The Greek,” who was christened Poluphoisboiospaleapologos Petrilopetrolicoconose “because his real name was thought much too long”; “Carnegie,” who “is now only a rural dean, and speaks the worst French I know, and speaks it wherever and whenever he can”; “Antony, the Swiss” (substituted for “Joe Sibley”); “Lorrimer,” who was so thoroughgoing in his worship of the immortals, Veronese, Tintoret and Co., and was “so persistent in voicing it, that he made them quite unpopular in the Place St. Anatole des Arts”; not to speak of “Dodor” and “l’Zouzou,” who were dis­tin­guished for being “les plus mauvais garniments of their respective regiments,” and the rest of Trilby’s delightful adorers. Why, it seems to me that to have obtained a niche in that pillory (forgive the mixing of metaphors), and to see the fun of a little exaggerated banter, and perchance learn a little lesson from it, would not be so very bad a fate after all. But I suppose it all depends on the point of view. {166}

As I say, I have by me a delightfully ironic missive from the late president of the Society of the Butterfly himself, acknowledging “the exceedingly amiable and flattering form of the playful request” contained in my letter, with a hint at the end that lawyers might look upon any re­pro­duc­tion of the forbidden matter as less than tolerable.

Alas! that it is so, and all I can do is to refer my readers to the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette for May 15 and 25, 1894, in which appeared Whistler’s two letters, and quote here the interview with du Maurier upon the matter. They form a curious commentary upon the “Gentle Art of Losing—Friends.”

Extract from Pall Mall Gazette, May 19, 1894.*

MR. WHISTLER AND MR. DU MAURIER THE “PUNCH” ARTIST’S ATTITUDE

Mr. George du Maurier, “hidden in Hampstead” as Mr. Whist­ler put it in his let­ter to us a day or two ago, was dis­covered by a Pall Mall Gazette reporter without the aid of any ex­ploring party yes­ter­day, when that rep­re­sen­ta­tive called to see what the famous Punch artist had to say in reply to Mr. Whistler. Mr. du Maurier was not disposed at first to vouchsafe any answer. “If a bargee insults one {167} in the street,” he said, “one can only pass on. One cannot stop and argue it out.” But on second thoughts Mr. du Maurier added a few words. “I should,” he said, “have avoided all reference to Mr. Whistler, or anything which could have been construed into reference to him, if I had imagined it would have pained him. I should have written privately to him to say so, if his letter had been less violent and less brutal. Certainly, in the character of Sibley, in my serial story Trilby I have drawn certain lines with Mr. Whistler in my mind. I thought that the reference to those matters would have recalled some of the good times we used to have in Paris in the old days. I thought that both with Mr. Whistler and with other ac­quain­tances I have similarly treated, pleasurable re­col­lec­tions would have been awakened. But he has taken the matter so terribly seriously. It is so unlike him.

* By kind permission of the Proprietor.

“You know of no reason why he should not have taken it all good-naturedly?”—“No. I thought it might have drawn from him something funny, something droll, to which I could have replied in kind. But, of course, a letter like his puts a reply out of the question. I think he must have been quite out of sorts to have allowed himself to get so angered.” “I believe Mr. Whistler has himself said things which the objects of them have not particularly relished!” “Why, he has gone about all his life in England making unkind remarks and publishing them. Here is a little book of his, The Gentle Art of making Enemies, and I am one of his victims. It is not very terrible what he says. It is rather droll. Listen! ‘Mr. du Maurier and Mr. Wilde, happening to meet in the rooms where Mr. Whistler was {168} holding his first exhibition of Venice jottings, the latter brought the two face to face, and, taking each by the arm, inquired, “I say, which one of you two invented the other, eh?”’ The obvious retort to that on my part would have been that if he did not take care I would invent him, but he had slipped away before either of us could get a word out. This is really too small a matter to refer to; but the explanation of this bit of drollery of Mr. Whistler’s is that it suggested that I was unknown until I began to draw Postlethwaite, the Æsthetic character, out of whom I got some fun. Postlethwaite was said to be Mr. Oscar Wilde, but the character was founded, not on one person at all, but a whole school. As a matter of fact, I had been drawing for Punch twenty years before the invention of Postlethwaite. However, that was Mr. Whistler’s little joke, and one would have thought that if he made jokes about me, he might have expected me to play the same game upon him without anticipating that I should hurt his feelings. Then Mr. Whistler implies that I am a foul friend, stating that I have thought a foul friend a finer fellow than an open enemy. I am neither his friend nor his enemy. I am a great admirer of his genius and his wit; but I cannot say that I could call myself his friend for thirty years past. We were intimate in the old days, but that is all. No, his whole letter is incomprehensible to me. Of course, he has been embittered through life, by reason of his genius not being recognised at its full value by the wide public, and it certainly has not. This cir­cum­stance, and possibly illness, may account for the leave he has taken of good manners. He talks of my pent-up envy and malice. I must ask you to believe that I am not {169} such a beast as that. I have no occasion either for malice or for envy, and, as I say, I should never have written even what I have, had I imagined it would give Mr. Whistler pain.”

“Do you contemplate deleting the character of Sibley when you publish in volume form?” “If I had a word or sign of regret from Mr. Whistler for the savage things he says in his letter I might consider that. I did what I did in a playful spirit of retaliation for this little gibe about me in his book. A man so sensitive as Mr. Whistler now seems to be should beware how he goes about joking of others. I had no idea of taking any notice of Mr. Whistler’s letter, but since you have come and asked me I say that if I had known it would have given pain and brought such a torrent of abuse upon me, I should have denied myself the little luxury of the playful retaliation in which I indulged.”30

Let me then here put it on record that Trilby in book form is not only innocent of “Joe Sibley” and the “cut” of the “Two Apprentices” but is in other respects far inferior to its serial issue. The illus­tra­tions have been greatly reduced, and in the process have lost much of their charm. There was, however, a large-paper edition of the novel published in 1895, containing the same number of {170} illus­tra­tions as the small-paper, together with “facsimiles of the pencil studies.” This is the most desirable edition outside Harper’s. The ideal form is, of course, the serial issue extracted from the Magazine and bound up, “Joe Sibley,” the suppressed “cut” and all.

This, then, is all that must be said about the “suppressed plate,” which is so rigidly put under hatches that it must not even be paraded, on this occasion only, with its fellows. “When the sleeper wakes,” perchance, and copyright is out, a cheap edition of this present volume, with the suppressed block inserted, will be published, and our children’s children will marvel.31

The whole episode is a nice commentary upon Mr. George Meredith’s distinction between Irony and Humour. “If,” says he, “instead of falling foul of the ridiculous person with a satiric rod, to make him writhe and shriek aloud, you prefer to sting him under a semi-caress, by which he shall in his anguish be rendered dubious whether indeed anything has hurt him, you are an engine of {171} Irony.” But “if you laugh all round him, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you and yours to your neighbour, spare him as little as you shun him, pity him as much as you expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.”

In conclusion, it may be interesting to record the fact that no communication passed between du Maurier and Whistler upon the subject, other than that which appeared in print.

So much for the episode of the suppressed Trilby illus­tra­tion, which, as we have seen, was complicated by personal con­sid­er­ations.

Let us now turn our attention for a moment to a charming little tailpiece which has fallen a victim, not to the susceptibilities of an individual, but to an undue con­sid­er­ation for the feelings of that most living of Tom Morton’s creations, Mrs. Grundy. It is to be found in the first edition of the immortal Vicar of Wakefield as pictured by Mr. Hugh Thomson. And in, entering our protest against the deference which has in this instance been shown to prudishness, we must at the same time admiringly recognise the spirit by {172} which the action has been prompted. The “young person” no doubt succeeds on occasion in rendering us a little ridiculous. At the same time we must not forget that to her we largely owe our immunity from what would often shock even the moral olfactories of her elders.

Surely, however, the tender morals which could bear to read of Thornhill’s attempted seduction of Olivia could not logically find offence in the {173} charming little conceit, which by its sup­pres­sion has rendered a first edition of the Vicar, as il­lus­trat­ed by Mr. Hugh Thomson, an allurement to the modern MÆcenas.

Unlike Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, il­lus­trat­ed by the same artist, after the first edition of which certain drawings also disappeared, but without others being substituted in the later editions, the first edition of the Thomson Vicar of Wakefield, dated 1890, which was published both on small and large paper, contains the same number of illus­tra­tions as those which succeeded it. This, of course, is because in this instance the type was not reset, and so it was obligatory to substitute an illus­tra­tion for that which was suppressed.

The tailpiece, here reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. Thomson and Messrs. Macmillan, only appears on page 95 of the issues of 1890.

After that date we have a drawing which, though a pretty enough little picture of Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs (I love, like the Vicar himself, to give the whole name), is to my mind far inferior to that {174} which seems to have given offence to some extraordinarily constructed purists.

Mr. Austin Dobson, to whom we are indebted for the enlightening Prefatory account, in this volume, of the more important il­lus­trat­ed editions of the Vicar, tells me that he has an impression that the immediate cause of the disappearance of the peccant tailpiece was a certain objection raised by a reviewer in the Spectator. In justice, however, to that organ I must at once put it on record that I can find no trace of its having so demeaned itself.

As a matter of fact I have reason to believe that suggestions were made by certain persons who arrogate to themselves a sort of private proprietorship in the “fine old English novel” and the “fine old English caricature” that the little tailpiece was in rather bad taste, and that the artist, rather than allow the slightest grounds for such an imputation to exist, hastened to remove the offender, and substituted one that was irreproachable. Personally I grieve to think that there should be any one in existence with a moral digestion so dyspeptic as to discover the least coarseness or ill-flavour in {175} this dainty little fancy, And though the artist, we may be sure, has not troubled himself unduly about the insinuation, I cannot but feel indignant that even a hint of indecorousness should be made against one who, above all others, has kept his pencil free from any taint of unworthiness. However, it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and we are fain to congratulate ourselves upon thus being enabled to enrol Mr. Hugh Thomson in a brotherhood which he certainly will not repudiate.

Passing allusion has been made above to certain illus­tra­tions which also disappeared from Mr. Outram Tristram’s very readable book Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, il­lus­trat­ed by Mr. Hugh Thomson and Mr. Herbert Railton, after the first edition of that very charming volume was exhausted. It had been my intention to reproduce these cancelled drawings here, but I have since come to the conclusion that it would be little short of an outrage to perpetuate what would be cruelly unrep­re­sen­ta­tive of Mr. Hugh Thomson’s work. So far as the artist himself is concerned no obstacle is raised, for he writes {176} to me in the most generous way, “‘Calling for the Squire’s Mailbag’ was withdrawn for the same reason as ‘Wild Darrell’ (viz. because it was not considered sufficiently good). I should like to withdraw scores of other drawings. However, one cannot help oneself. It is not very pleasant to have these reproduced again, but I quite understand the motive of your book, and should be very churlish indeed to put any obstacle in your way.” This seems to me so nobly altruistic an attitude that I feel I should be lacking in mannerliness were I to take advantage of it.

It will be enough merely to draw attention to facts which will be of interest to those who possess one or other of the editions of this book.

First and foremost then, take down your copy and note whether the number of the illus­tra­tions is 216 or 219. Happy as you are if you possess the latter, twice happy will you be if the former be yours, for in this case you will be the owner, not only of a first edition, not only of an edition containing the cancelled illus­tra­tions, but also of the edition from which the best idea of the beauty of the original drawings may be got. And for this {177} reason, that in all but this, the 1888 edition, the re­pro­duc­tions have been greatly reduced in size. Of course we are here concerned with the cancelled pictures, “Wild Darrell” on page 43 and “Calling for the Squire’s Mailbag” on page 311, but we must remember that their chief value lies in their being the guarantees of our having an editio princeps. So we have it that in this instance as in the case of Trilby the earliest issues have the double charm of satisfying at the same time our taste for the beautiful and our appetite for the curious. Unlike the case of Trilby, however, we have here no romantic cir­cum­stances such as appeal to the true bibliomaniac. The cancellation is merely the result of a laudable determination on the part of the artist and his publisher to eliminate such illus­tra­tions as they do not consider altogether exemplary. Incidentally of course their action enhances, in the eyes of the bibliomaniac, the value of those copies which they rightly consider marred by their inclusion. But this is no business of theirs. They are not concerned with diseased humanity but with the poor sane public for whom they cater. {178}

The above remarks apply of course to many minor sup­pres­sions of the same kind. There is, to take one example, the well-known case of Curmer’s 1838 edition of Paul et Virginie and La ChaumiÈre Indienne superbly il­lus­trat­ed by Meissonier, Tony Johannot, Huet, and others. This book is a standing compliment to British wood-engraving of the day, for, though published in Paris by a French publisher, by far the larger number of the blocks were entrusted to Samuel Williams, Orrin Smith, and other British hands. In the earliest issue appears on page 418 the wood-engraving of “La Bonne Femme.” Engraved by Lavoignat after Meissonier it was suppressed in later issues probably because of its ugliness, whether the fault of artist or engraver I know not. At any rate the engraver was not one of the British contingent.