Recently I reread all the catalogues of Claire Warrack & Geoffrey Perkins who offered mainly British and continental books from the 1880s-1920s, including many by and about the Vale coterie, including letters, ephemera publications and prints.
One of these catalogues (Catalogue Sixty-one issued in 1987) includes a description of Paul Verlaine's Romances sans paroles, an 1887 reprint. The provenance of this copy is fascinating. Charles Ricketts wrote on the title page: 'Cs Ricketts | The Vale | His Book'.
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Charles Ricketts, ownership entry and drawings in Paul Verlaine, Romances sand paroles (1877) [© With permission of the executors of the Charles Ricketts estate, Leonie Sturge-Moore and Charmain O'Neil] |
He gave this copy to John Gray, who had translated some poems by Verlaine, and who added his own bookplate with several Latin phrases such as 'E Bibliotheca' 'Domine Tu' and 'Omnia Nosti'. A later owner was A.J.A. Symons whose Brick House bookplate was pasted on the free endpaper, and there is a note by the famous dealer George Sims.
But the point is the first leaf of the book on which Ricketts wrote his name. In fact, he did more than that, he added two original pen drawings in india ink. The bottom one of these is a small decoration, but the other is an important drawing.
This drawing is related to several drawings Ricketts made for Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates, and a tentative assumption would be that the drawing dates from 1891. It is not the central figure we recognise from other images, as the sad harlequin does not appear in Wilde's book; it is the writhing thorn branches that recur in several drawings, for example on page 23 where 'the young king' is compared to Christ.
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| Charles Ricketts, illustration for Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891, p. 23) |
Wilde's young king wore a 'leathern tunic' and a 'rough sheepskin cloak' and when his page asks him 'but where is thy crown?', he 'plucked a spray of wild briar', and 'made a circlet of it, and set it on his own head' (pp. 20-21). In the book illustration he is seen on the back.
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| Charles Ricketts, decoration for Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891, p. 59) |
For the book Ricketts also designed several roundel devices, some of which were used a few times. This device of a rose, a heart and thorny rose branches was used solely on page 59.
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| Charles Ricketts, illustration for Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891, p. 149) |
Even more thorny branches are depicted in an illustration for Wilde's story 'The Star-Child'. This illustration of the star-child and the hare in a trap (p. 149) is signed by Ricketts: 'CR inv et del.'
In the case of this book by Wilde, attention is often focused solely on Shannon's plates (because of their technique and its partly unsuccessful execution in Paris), but Ricketts' illustrations are worth a closer look, if only because they can be divided into six types (excluding the decorative binding). There are decorative endpapers, chapter devices, illustrations, marginal circular devices, pomegranate ornaments and initials.
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| Charles Ricketts, original drawing in a copy of Paul Verlaine, Romances sand paroles (1877) |
The words in the original drawing 'J'ai planté un arbre d'amour' do not refer to a line by Verlaine, but to the first line of the 18th ballad by François Villon: 'J’ay ung arbre de la plante d’amours'.
The whereabouts of Verlaine's book with Ricketts's drawings is unknown.
