96. The Laurence Hodson sale

Bloomsbury in London offered in auction the collection of books of Laurence W. Hodson (1863-1933), a wealthy West Midlands brewery owner, collector and philanthropist. He was a friend, patron and admirer of William Morris, and commissioned many works to refurbish his family home, Compton Hall, in 1895. A founder of Birmingham University, he also was chairman of the Wolverhampton Art and Industrial Exhibition (1902), where works of Ricketts and Shannon were on view alongside other works of art. 

His collection of interior designs was auctioned in February. The April sale included works of the Kelmscott and Vale Presses.

Binding by Charles Ricketts for Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese (Vale Press, 1897)

Now that the sale is over, it is time to summarize the results, and the contents of the collection. There were early works by Ricketts and Shannon (The Dial, A House of Pomegranates, and the early Vale Press related Daphnis and Chloe and Hero and Leander), autograph letters by Ricketts and Shannon, and a series of fifteen lithographs by the latter.

The Vale Press books were described in lot 88 to 157, including both a vellum and a paper copy of many titles. There were 29 volumes printed on vellum, of which twenty-one copies were bound in leather after a special design by Ricketts. Eleven of these were bound in red leather, and ten in green. Seven volumes were bound, as issued, in white vellum. There were 86 volumes printed on paper. Of these, only two were specially bound after a design by Ricketts, both in white pigskin: a copy of John Suckling's Poems (1896) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets (1907). 

Opening the Vale Press book case, Hodson's first impression was more colourful (red, green, white) than that of most Vale Press collectors.

For the bindings of the vellum copies Ricketts started with red leather, but between 1899 and 1902 Hodson received copies in green leather. From that time on he settled for the original vellum bindings that were provided by the Vale Press for all vellum copies. The specially designed copies have the HR monogram (for Hacon and Ricketts) on the inside upper or lower cover. Most of these also feature the LH monogram of the collector on the upper cover. 

Monogram LH for Laurence Hodson (on a binding designed by Charles Ricketts)

A later binding, in green, has another monogram, with large, intertwined initials, designed by Ricketts.

Monogram LHO for Laurence Hodson (on a binding designed by Charles Ricketts)

Most specially commissioned bindings show the rectangular designs that we know of Ricketts, but included in the sale were two exceptional designs. One, for Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel, had a pattern of barley, cornflower, and leaves.

Charles Ricketts, binding (detail) for a vellum copy of The Blessed Damozel (Vale Press, 1898)

Another binding had a pattern of the LH monogram and an image of a bird and a leaf. This was executed in gold on a green leather binding for a vellum copy of Cellini's autobiography in two volumes.

Charles Ricketts, binding (detail) for a vellum copy of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (Vale Press, 1900)

The results for the vellum copies and for the special bindings were, as could probably be expected, with prices between £2000 and £11,000. The highest price was paid for the two volume set of Keats's poems. The Rossetti went for £8,500, as did the Cellini edition. Remarkably, the Tennyson set of two volumes - In Memoriam and Lyric Poems, both issued in 1900 - were separated over two lots (128 and 130), and while the first one was sold for £2,000, the second one remained unsold at auction. However, both volumes have now been offered for sale by Blackwell Rare Books (for £9,500).

A vellum copy, in a special green binding, of The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam (1901) contained a preparatory ink drawing for the binding design, and some rubbings of the tools: the monogram and bird/leaf image. This book, and many others, were shown by Hodson in the Wolverhampton Exhibition of 1902.

The ordinary paper copies, were sold for lower prices, between £140 and £500. Fourteen lots remained unsold. 

An exceptional collection was thus dispersed - one hundred years after the collector had amassed it. The Vale Press books alone fetched the amount of £93,680.

95. The bookplate for Gleeson White

The letters of John Gray to Félix Fénéon, which I reviewed last week (blog 94: A French correspondence), contain an interesting revelation about the bookplate that Ricketts designed for Gleeson White.

Gleeson White was born as Joseph William White in 1851, but he dropped his first names (they were identical to his father's) and added his mother's maiden name Gleeson. He moved from England to New York, where he edited the Art Amateur (1891-1892), then returned to London where he founded the journal The Studio (1893), which he also edited for about a year. He edited other journals as well (The Pageant, for example, for which Charles Shannon was the art editor). He died, after contracting typhoid fever, in 1898, at the age of 47.

In 1893 he published Practical Designing. A Handbook on the Preparation of Working Drawings. In it he reproduced a drawing by Ricketts, reproduced twice from the same process block. 

Charles Ricketts, 'Two blocks from the same original', in:  Practical Designing (1893, p. [180])

The drawing was reproduced in photo-lithography, and Gleeson White used the difference in the technical execution as an example of reduction in size of illustrations: 'The two blocks [...] show that the drawing must not always be held responsible for failure; as the first was reproduced by the same makers as the second'. The second one was 'a fairly accurate reduction keeping the correct colour and effect', while in the first one the whole image had become greyer.

The complicated design of 'Igdrasil', the tree of life, was used by Gleeson White as a bookplate, and he had two different sizes of it. Both sizes seem to have been printed, not from the original block, but from a process-block. But the version that was used by White differed from the one that he illustrated in Practical Designing.

Charles Ricketts, 'Ex Libris Gleeson White' 

Interestingly, the bookplate has a line to that effect with the typical lettering of Ricketts, see for example the dot on the 'i' in White's name, which resembles an eye. The flower between 'Ex Libris' and the name is reminiscent of Ricketts's design for Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). The 'Ex Libris' line is lacking in the reproduction in Gleeson White's book of 1893.

There are two other remarkable differences. Firstly, the bookplate has no date, while the process-block illustration has a date in roman numerals: 1890. Secondly, the name 'Igdrasil' in the bookplate has been written in Ricketts's script, with a reversed 'd' and 'r', a typical mistake for a woodcutter. The same mistake was made in Ricketts's monogram, which is also in reverse.  For the reproduction in Practical Designing the monogram was still mirrored, but the title 'Igdrasil' had been rewritten, probably by the engraver of the process block. 

Gleeson White did not write that it was a bookplate, and some have argued that the image had originally been designed for the cover of the magazine Igdrasil, that was announced by the Magazine of Art, in June 1890, as the new magazine of the Ruskin Reading Guild. Had Ricketts been invited to design a cover for this? Perhaps, but the suggestion that he adapted the design for White's bookplate a few years later is now contradicted by a letter of John Gray. 

At the time, there was some confusion, and, indeed, the notion of a magazine was apparently diffused by Ricketts himself: 'Mr. Ricketts has chosen to lend me, as representative of his work, this design of his for the cover of Igdrasil', wrote Charles Harper in English Pen Artists of To-Day (1892). Harper's version of the image has no 'Ex Libris' line, but has the original Ricketts title of Igdrasil with the reversed 'd' and 'r'. It also lacks the date.

Charles Ricketts, 'Book-plate of Gleeson White', in: Egerton Castle, English Book-Plates (1892, p. 170)

Harper's book was published in February 1892. There is one other reproduction of the bookplate in the same year, in a book that Egerton Castle published in December 1892:  English Book-Plates. Castle quoted Ricketts's explanation of the bookplate's symbols, and also printed White's own comment. Castle introduced the image as 'the extraordinary-looking design made by Mr. Charles Ricketts for Mr. Gleeson White'. This reproduction has both the 'Ex Libris' line and the roman date. And it has the rewritten title 'Igdrasil' (not in Ricketts's hand). This version was also reproduced in Walter Hamilton's Dated Book-Plates of 1895. Curiously, the books about bookplates did not use the original block of the actual bookplate by Ricketts, but a later version. Several questions remain unanswered: who rewrote the title, who added the date? Perhaps, White used the original drawing for the reproduction, and not the printed specimen. The drawing may have been dated. However, it does not explain why the title was tampered with. 

Harper and, later, Walter von Zur Westen (in his book Exlibris (Bucheignerzeichen), published in 1901) faithfully reproduced Ricketts's bookplate as it was done for White, including the 'Ex Libris' line, omitting the year, and having the title in Ricketts's characteristic script.

Apart from the confusion over the reproductions, the changed title and the omission of the year, there is the question of dating the design. It was first published in 1892, as we have seen, by Castle and Harper. The Castle reproduction has the date 'mdcccxc' and this suggests that the design was done in 1890. The Harper reproduction has no date. This dating problem is related to the question of the original purpose of the design: was it a bookplate or a cover design. Maureen Watry (The Vale Press, 2004, p. 57) supposed that 'at some point during 1892 Ricketts's design, with the addition of his hand-drawn lettering, was adopted by White for use as a bookplate'.

But, perhaps, Ricketts was simply mistaken, when he told Harper that the design was done for the magazine Igdrasil. Two years had passed since he designed it, and these were very busy years filled with successful assignments, but also with abandoned projects. On the other hand, it could have been Harper who was mistaken, and simply assumed that Ricketts had designed it for this magazine.

From the correspondence of Gray and Fénéon we now know that, originally, in 1890, the design was done as a bookplate for Gleeson White. Gray wrote a first letter on 22 October 1890, enclosing a lithograph by Shannon and 'Deux bois de Ricketts le plus grand une enseigne (?) de livre le petit pour le papier lettre': a bookplate and a letterhead. The smaller one was also a bookplate. That Gray was talking about 'Igdrasil' became clear in a second letter of 20 November 1890. He wrote that the mystifying subject of the image originated from Nordic sagas, and that it was designed to ornate the books of Gleeson White: 'Il est destiné à orner les livres dans la collection d'un nommé Gleeson White, je suppose qu'on a cet habitude en France aussi'. 

Then follows a long and detailed description of the image, done by heart:

A la partie inferieure le Chaos, tournant et s'agitant, ou l'on voit des cristaux, et des pierres durs dans ces volutes, à droite et à gauche le nuit et le jour, deux frères sous la même couverture. Du Chaos se leve l'arbre de vie avec ses branches fructifiants de toutes les formes de la vie animale et végétale des corails, des cactés, des porcs-épics etc; - je ne garde pas très justement le souvenir. Du coeur de chaos toute la longue de l'arbre monte une flamme dans lequel on trouve l'homme né dans cette flamme le suprême animal, végétable si vous voulez je n'en sais pas trop quelque part au milieu du dessin un arc-en-ciel. Voilà que je vous fatique de ce pénible inventaire.'

Ricketts's own description (quoted by Castle) reads as follows:

The tree of Creation (Igdrasil) [...] springs from a swirl of water and flame which breaks into little gems; the flame, continuing, flows through the trunk of the tree, which branches on each side into composite boughs suggesting the different plant kingdoms. This central flame envelopes the figure of man, placed in the mids of the tree in the action of awakening. The fruit on the eastern end of each bough represent in embryo the fish and water fowl, the reptile and creeping insects, the larger animals, and finally the creatures with wings. The rainbow shooting through the centre composition signifies the atmosphere; the two figures under one cloak in the lower part of the design represent night and day, i.e. the planets.

Castle doubted the relevance of the symbolism in a bookplate, but he also quoted Gleeson White, who reassured him that Igdrasil 'has always been a favourite symbol for Literature'.

Comparing the two descriptions, of Gray in 1890, and of Ricketts in 1892, we have to conclude that Gray had had a thorough look at the bookplate that he send on to his new friend in France. More importantly, his letter decides the debate about a possible other purpose for the design. From the start, it had been intended as a bookplate for Gleeson White.

[Revised, 30 January 2022.]

94. A French correspondence

The French publisher Du Lérot, éditeur, in Tusson, Charante, has published the letters of Félix Fénéon and John Gray in a small edition of 200 copies. The book, edited by Maurice Imbert and printed in 2010, reproduces on the cover a sketch by Gray of two students of the Scots College in Rome.

Cover of Félix Fénéon & John Gray, Correspondance (2010)

Félix Fénéon (1861-1941) was one of the early French contacts of John Gray, who approached him in the summer of 1890. Fénéon was 29 at the time, Gray only 24. However, Gray had already published an essay and a story in Ricketts and Shannon's journal The Dial in 1889, and he was about to publish a poem and an obituary during the following two months. Fénéon wrote about Gray to Francis Viélé-Griffin (1864-1937), editor of Les Entretiens Politiqies et Littéraires, and Gray was invited to contribute articles for the magazine. However, illness prevented his writing any pieces for it. 

Ricketts was also asked to contribute some of the woodcuts he had published in the first issue of The Dial, and he promised to do special drawings for Les Entretiens, but nothing came of this. Gray and Fénéon stayed in contact until 1913 (at least). Their letters have been kept in the John Rylands Library in Manchester (Fénéon's part of the correspondence) and in the Jean Paulhan foundation at IMEC (the letters by Gray), and are here published in full for the first time. Included are two pieces that Gray wrote for Fénéon's Revue Blanche, published in June 1897 and May 1898: a story and an obituary of Aubrey Beardsley (an English translation of the latter was edited by the Tragara Press in 1980).

Ricketts and Shannon were a lot on the mind of Gray in these years, who considered himself part of the 'Valistes', a name they invented to imitate the feeling of a school of artists that could rival with the modern movements in France. Gray suggested (16 April 1891) that the name was some sort of a joke, but he was dead serious about his future prospects as a writer, as we have seen. He tried to get published in France and in Holland, and he used his French contacts for a better knowledge of modern French poetry. He would become one of the earliest translators of Verlaine and Rimbaud in England.

Félix Fénéon

We know nothing about the young John Gray and the way he met the artists Ricketts and Shannon, and although these early letters do not reveal that much about their collaboration, their publication is a welcome addition to the Gray library. It still is an enigma how Ricketts and Shannon met John Gray, who quickly teamed up with them and Reginald Savage to write the texts for the first issue of The Dial. They must have been very fond of him. When the editor of the correspondence maintains that John Gray was 'le co-fondateur' of The Dial, we have to say that this is highly unlikely, and, certainly, there is no proof for it. The only named publisher of that first issue was Charles Shannon, while the editors were Shannon and Ricketts. It is a slip of the pen that I, perhaps, should not have mentioned, as I am pleased to see these letters of Fénéon and Gray in print. Price: €25.

93. Did not sleep last night

During the First World War Charles Ricketts was, as we have seen in blog number 89 (A costume correspondence), engaged in charity activities, and he wrote letters and post cards to several friends who were in the trenches in Flanders or France. His diary frequently mentions or describes disturbing events, such as air raids on London, or casualties at the front, or elsewhere.

His diary note for May 8, 1915, reads:

Did not sleep last night, thinking of Lusitania and poor Lane, who, to-day, is among the missing. Have been depressed and disturbed with burst of anger - near to tears at the thought of the danger to Venice. How will the world be able to look itself in the face when the war ends?

The New York Times reported the fate of the Lusitania

The Lusitania had sunk the day before in the waters of the Irish channel. A U-boat had fired torpedos, and there were two explosions noted by the captain before the ship went down in about 20 minutes. Sir Hugh Lane - born in 1875 and knighted at 33 - was among the casualties. Lane was an art dealer and collector, whose collection of impressionist paintings is now, for the greater part, housed in the Dublin City Gallery. He grew up in England, but regularly visited the house of his aunt Lady Gregory in Ireland. 

The threat to Venice that Ricketts reported was related to the Treaty of London, which had been signed on 26 April 1915. Italy joined the side of Allied countries hoping to gain parts of the Austrian-Hungarian empire close to Northern Italy. At the Italian Front battles were fought between 1915 and 1918. Strategic bombings by the Empire were few, but Ricketts's fears were not unfounded, as two frescoes by Tiepolo in the Chiesa degli Scalzi were damaged by bombs. The remains are now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia.

Lane was 'a very old friend' of Ricketts and Shannon (as Ricketts wrote to Rik Roland Holst in June 1915), but the friendship had only started in 1904, when Shannon was invited by Lane to participate in an exhibition in St Louis, Missouri. The exhibition was cancelled, and Shannon's paintings went to the Guildhall in London for an exhibition of Irish artists, after he had been assured by family members that there was a drop of Irish blood in his veins. Ricketts had no Irish roots whatsoever. Lane brought them buyers for their paintings. 'The Parable of the Vineyard', a painting by Ricketts that he donated to the gallery that Lane was planning at the time, is now in the Dublin City Gallery.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Parable of the Vineyard', oil on canvas,  c. 1912 (Photo: © Dublin City Gallery)

On 13 May 1915 Ricketts wrote in his diary that he noticed that thoughts about Lane and his tragic death were slipping into the past. But a short while later, other events brought them back to the foreground, when he had to report 'sad deaths among young soldier friends', such as Cyril Holland, the eldest son of Oscar Wilde, 'who was charming', and who died on 9 May 1915.

92. With the back to the viewer

A letter from the American artist Edward Gorey to Peter F. Neumeyer in Floating Worlds (published by Pomegranate in San Francisco, 2011) reminded me of Ricketts. I came upon this passage:

[Thank you] for the Gerard ter Borch "Cavalier". It put me in mind of a slightly curious idea I had for a visual anthology in which all the subjects would have their backs to the viewer; I have several Japanese prints of poets, and at least one of a puppy in this position, and I'm sure a quite respectable book could be got together from all times and places. What it would all be in aid of is another question (p. 130)

Gerard ter Borch, 'Man on Horsback, seen from behind' (drawing, 1625) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

In Floating Worlds a picture of the painting in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts shows a man on horseback, seen from behind. A sketch for this painting is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which after a long restoration project has recently reopened its doors to the public.

Ricketts's final illustration for Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx (1894) contains an unusual image of Christ. The original drawing for this illustration is in the Manchester City Galleries.

Charles Ricketts, 'Christ Crucified', original drawing (Manchester City Galleries)

Charles Ricketts, 'Christ Crucified', in Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx (1894)  (image from Connexions)

In Ricketts's image we see Christ crucified, but he has his back to the viewer, which is highly unusual. Although the crucifixion scene is surely one of the most depicted biblical scenes in the history of Western art, I haven't been able to find another image of it in this manner. Ricketts has stylized the scene, omitting the cross, so as to show the full back of Christ. The drawing illustrates the last lines of Wilde's poem:

Whose pallid burden, sick with pain, watches the world with wearied eyes,
And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps for every soul in vain.

The Ricketts illustration could have been part of Edward Gorey's visual anthology.

91. Letters to Cecil French

The Houghton Library acquired a group of letters and postcards by Ricketts and Shannon to Cecil French. The library's blog posted this message on 5 April (my colleague Marja Smolenaars drew my attention to the Harvard blog):

Last month Houghton Library acquired a small group of letters and postcards from Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) & Charles Shannon (1863-1937) to the Irish artist and collector Cecil French (1879-1953). These letters were acquired with the Louis Appell Jr. Fund for British Civilization because they are full of current affairs, news and gossip in the world of British art. These letters are now Houghton Library MS Eng 1738.

Ricketts and Shannon were artists and designers and founders of the Vale Press, one of the English private presses inspired by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press; Shannon’s portrait of William Butler Yeats hangs in the Houghton Library Reading Room.

Charles Ricketts, letter to Cecil French, 1923 (MS Eng 1738, © Houghton Library, Harvard University)

Cecil French from Dublin was trained as an artist at the Royal Academy Schools in London, but after a few years he decided that as an artist he could not compete with his Renaissance examples, and he became an art collector. His collection of more than 150 paintings went to the British Museum, The William Morris Gallery, and other institutions.

Portrait of Cecil French by William Shackleton, 1923 (from  Beyond Burne-Jones, The Cecil French Bequest Gallery)

He wrote a few essays about Ricketts, Shannon and their circle. His article 'The wood-engravings of Charles Ricketts' was published in The Print Collector’s Quarterly in July 1927.

90. Twelve Woodcuts by Lucien Pissarro (again)

Last year Bassenge Buchauktionen in Berlin-Grunewald offered for sale a portfolio with eleven out of Twelve Woodcuts by Lucien Pissarro. This set remained unsold for the estimate of €5000; the aftersale price was reduced to €4000, but now it has a slightly higher estimate of €4500. The problem with this copy is its incompleteness; it lacks one of the more outstanding woodcuts by Pissarro, namely 'Le tennis'.

My blog 64 Twelve (no: eleven) woodcuts traced the provenance of this set to a Dutch collection.

Lucien Pissarro, 'Floréal', woodcut from Twelve Woodcuts (1893)

Although incomplete, it is still a rarity, as the publishers - Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon - issued only twelve sets of the engravings. This copy will be auctioned on 20 April  and has been described as lot number 3581 in the catalogue, Moderne Literatur & Kunstdokumentation (which includes lots 3001 to 3859).

Note (23 April 2013): the lot has been sold for €3.500.

89. A Costume Correspondence

In a recent issue of Theatre Design & Technology (volume 49, Number 1, winter 2013), Margaret Mitchell published an article on 'A costume correspondence. The theatrical war effort of Charles Ricketts'. The text is available online on the Willard F. Bellman Digital Archives of TD&T. 

Margaret Mitchell is a costume and scenic designer and a professor of theatre arts at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, and her article is based on documents in the collection of the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. The Robert L.B. Tobin Theatre Arts Collection of the museum contains a box of letters and drawings by Ricketts to Penelope Wheeler, an actress, who (with Lena Ashwell) co-organized a war-time tour for wounded British and French soldiers and their medical staff.

Ricketts designed costumes for three Shakespeare plays, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, and Two Gentlemen of Verona, although the last play was never produced. The shows were staged in Le Havre in 1918. Ricketts started working on the designs in September 1917, and he had to design no less than fifty dresses. For economic reasons he designed interchanging parts for about twenty of those.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek has a doublet embroidered with grapes, squirrels, and butterflies; the Prince jewelled gloves. Shylock is terrific, Portia has a dress covered with mermaids, Jessica wears the Oriental garb of the Jewesses in Bellini and Carpaccio, I have introduced the striped dress of the Mass of Bolsena and Titian's Paduan frescoes, some persons have arabesques on their tights and gold wings on their hats. (Self-Portrait, 1939, p. 302-303)

Shannon agreed that these designs were among his best, but neither Ricketts nor Shannon saw any of the performances.

Charles Ricketts, letter to Penelope Wheeleer (Mc Nay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas)

The article describes the London costume trade and the changes it underwent during the First World War, when certain fabrics were hard to come by, costs were higher than before, and concerns over wigs and beards added to the difficulties. Margaret Mitchell writes:

Ricketts had four months to design and supervise the creation of the costumes. In addition to fabric shortages, money problems, and general wartime concerns and stresses, an incomplete cast during the building of the costumes forced Ricketts to design costumes that could be fit to a range of sizes and physical shapes. His letters indicate that he did not understand who would be playing some of the male roles or supernumeraries.

In December 1917, Ricketts wrote to Penelope Wheeler:

I have stencilled about 100 yards of stuff and I am in advanced state of senile decay.

Although Ricketts probably worked for no fee, seeing his effort as a way of supporting wartime charity, he insisted that the seamstresses were paid. In the first week of January 1918 the costumes were ready, and after Wheeler had inspected them at her home, they were packed and shipped to France. Ricketts wrote long notes for alterations, and instructions for the actors.

Among instructions for bow tying and jewelry wearing, Ricketts explains problems with the construction. He gives advice for makeup and hairdressing, and he also tries to troubleshoot fitting problems. He indicates a few surprises; he sent extra tights and extra green satin fabric for sashes, as well as a costume for a supernumerary not yet cast: "I have included a costume for a black page for Portia. I imagine you can steal or borrow a French child for the purpose."

After the war, the costumes were reused for other plays and performances. A summary of the importance of these wartime letters about costumes is given at the end of Margaret Mitchell's article:

The letters from Charles Ricketts to Penelope Wheeler provide a vivid window into the past. His handwriting gives us the pictures: the middle-ages designer is bent over the 100 yards of stenciling late at night; the designed furniture satin is not to be had; the manager/star does not provide enough money; the situation requires complicated touring logistics; the designer encounters the obstacles of inflation; stressed collaborators slam the door in the designer's face; the designer depends on the underpaid, overworked miracle worker who has it in her hands and mind to achieve the impossible; the designer is overcommitted, and swirling around him are lost friends, financial troubles, and a violent world in conflict facing an unknown future. Even so, Ricketts insists on the perfect hem, the precise height of the feather, the exacting spangle pattern, and the emotional and physical communion of actor and costume.

88. The Great Worm revisited

John Gray's story 'The Great Worm' was published in the first number of The Dial, issued by Shannon and Ricketts from their house in The Vale. The short story describes the worm (in the last paragraph he is also called a dragon) as 'an unaffected beast', with 'four short crooked legs and two little wings', coloured 'white and gold', and having 'an exceedingly long tongue'.

This description is followed by a long scene in which the worm enters a city, and while he is examined in turn by a doorkeeper, a horseman, an officer, a surgeon-major, a philosopher, and a medical officer, the worm announces that he has come to enlist in the royal armies of the prince who rules the city. He is appointed a general. The next scene is shorter and describes how the worm, followed by the army, re-establishes the prince as the ruler in all his dominions. A longer scene follows, in which they reach a city that looks green, but turns blue. This city seems to be uninhabited, until a 'figure of silent whiteness' comes towards the worm and gives him a lily. He wears it to his heart, and during the night he is in agony, asking himself: 'Why am I a worm?'

Ah! it was too horrible; he remembered that he had been human.

The lily has taken root on his breast, and a few days later - they have resumed their journey - the worm dies. The story is followed by a short 'epilogue':

A poet lay in a white garden of lilies, shaping the images of his fancy, as the river ran through his trailing hair.
But in his garden a long worm shook himself after sleep; forgotten his face like a pearl, his beautiful eyes like a snake's, his breathing hair - all. He had complete reminiscences of a worm, and sought the deserts and ravines the dragon loves.

Illustration to 'The Great Worm', etched by Charles Ricketts (plate AE, in: The Dial, No. 1, 1889)

In blog number 84, 'A new interpretation of The Great Worm', I quoted earlier comments, and mentioned that Petra Clark of the University of Delaware published an article about this story in English Literature in Transition, 1880-1930 (volume 56, number 1, 2013). 

Gray's story was profusely illustrated by Charles Ricketts, with a vignette/initial at the beginning, a tailpiece at the end, an original colour lithograph, and an etching (reproduced in photography). However, it should be noted that there is a second contribution in this issue of The Dial in which a worm is one of the characters. This is a parody of a Wagner opera, called 'The Cup of Happiness'. For this Ricketts did a woodcut of a lady with a wormlike dragon, comprising an initial 'T'.

Illustration to 'The Cup of  Happiness', by Charles Ricketts (The Dial, No. 1, 1889, p. 27)

This is relevant, because it follows that Ricketts and Gray were working on a story about a worm simultaneously. We must question whether the illustrations for Gray's story were done before, during, or after Gray had submitted his story to Shannon and Ricketts. In the magazine this story and its illustrations are presented as a coherent cooperation. Surely, Ricketts must have read Gray's story before he could design the initial V and the tailpiece. But for the larger illustrations - the etching and the lithograph - we cannot be absolutely certain. It is, however, unlikely but not impossible, that Gray and Ricketts discussed the story and illustrations, while they were at work on them. In order to interpret the story, one has to find clues that may or may not be affirmed by the illustrations. Petra Clark avoids the pitfalls of interpreting an illustrated story:

Here, Ricketts's illustrations do not merely 'illustrate' Gray's story; instead, the aspects of "The Great Worm" that Ricketts chooses to portray tell us much about the ideas he wishes to comment upon, as does his exercise of editorial control in deciding where to place those images. Appearing as they do, in unexpected locations throughout the first number, his illustrations therefore "color" the reading of the content as a whole. These illustrations also force readers to see the Worm as Ricketts does - many pages before they encounter the story itself - since the first representation of this figure serves as the color frontispiece. (p. 35)

The colour lithograph depicts the lady with the lily opposite the white and golden worm in a green mountainous landscape (see blog 84).

Yet it is hard to [...] ignore the overtly phallic shape of the Worm's body or his cheeky grin (p. 36)

The story and the illustrations complement and contradict one another, says Clark, and they

engage in the discourses of gender, sexuality and aestheticism that characterize the Dial in general. (p. 37)

Clark points out that the epilogue is a small but important segment:

Here the poet and the story he crafts about the Worm become conflated: the poet imagines the Great Worm in particular and has the memories of a worm in general, insinuating that he is somehow implicitly tied to his artistic imaginings. (p. 39)

In both illustrations [the initial and the lithograph] the Worm rears its head as though in a state of arousal produced by the voluptuous nude woman before him. When this imagery of arousal is translated into the Epilogue, the poet's sexual excitement would instead be seen to stem from the "images of his fancy" that he has shaped, as though artistic creation is stimulating to the artist's "masculinity" in more ways than one. By linking the story's Worm and the Epilogue's poet in these ways, Gray simultaneously emphasizes the quixotic effeteness and the virile productive power of the Worm/poet as an artist, while Ricketts's illustrations of the Great Worm further poke fun at these contradictory attributes of the male artist. (p. 39-40)

Clark points out that during the Aesthetic Movement, Britain's imperial strength was at its summit, glorifying virility, and bringing about a 'cult of masculinity'. The Worm's volunteering for service may be seen as an act of manliness. Clark also points out that Ricketts omits certain aspects from his images, thus isolating the lady with the lily and the worm:

In both images, the Worm and the woman therefore come face each other in a much more dramatic and erotic fashion than the equivalent scene in Gray's story might suggest. (p. 46)

Clark links the lily to a symbolism of homosexuality.

One might once again refer to the fact that, after the Worm's death, the tale turns to the suspiciously languid figure of the poet of the Epilogue. The emphasis, then, is less on death than on "orgasmic ecstasy" (p. 48)

The conclusion is that

one of the extra-artistic aims of the Dial is to reimagine aesthetic or even homosexual masculinity as an alternative to the "heteronormative, masculine image of the artist," but not to take itself too seriously in the process. (p. 48)

A few loose ends in Petra Clarks interpretation should be pointed out. Firstly, Clark mentions that Ricketts did three illustrations for the story, and she ignores the tailpiece that illustrates the important Epilogue.

Tailpiece for 'The Great Worm', by Charles Ricketts (The Dial, No. 1, 1889, p. 18)

The reclining female figure once again contradicts the masculinity of the poet in the epilogue.

Another point is the appearance of the poet laureate in the story. After the worm has accepted the post of general, and after he has been examined by the medical officer, there is a short scene in which the poet comes to the fore:

This would have ended the formalities, had not the court poet found an opportunity to commence reciting the worm's military antecedents.
- Is that that man again? asked the prince; I abolish the office. The laureate ceased.

The poet laureate at the time was, of course, Alfred Lord Tennyson, whose poems had glorified the Victorian ideals, famously in 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. Tennyson was at the end of his life when Gray wrote his story; he would die in 1892. It is not completely clear why Gray inserted this passage about the poet laureate in a story that equaled the worm to a poet. However, the poet laureate glorifies militarism, and is immediately sacked. He is the kind of poet that Gray did not want to be.

87. Nothing

Indicators of influenza activity across the Netherlands show that influenza is circulating, and as I am now one of its victims, this week's blog comes to nothing but a quote:

April 8 [1915]
Like Louis XVI, who records 'rien' in his diary on the tragic days of the Revolution and his trial, I have nothing to say.
(Self-Portrait taken from the Letters & Journals of Charles Ricketts, R.A., 1939, p. 237)

Dust-jacket for Self-Portrait taken from the Letters & Journals of Charles Ricketts, R.A. (1939)

86. The Man with a Yellow Glove

Bonhams in New Bond Street, London, issued a catalogue for their auction of 8 May, when the third part of The Roy Davids Collection of poetical manuscripts and portraits of poets will be on sale.

Davids owned one or two manuscripts of almost all important English poets, and he also collected portraits, photographs, drawings, engravings, and a few paintings. One of the items in the sale is a large portrait of the poet and artist Thomas Sturge Moore (75x67 cm) by Charles Shannon.

Charles Shannon, 'The Man with a Yellow Glove'

This portrait is known as 'The Man with the Yellow Glove' and it was awarded a gold medal at the International Exhibition at the 'Glaspalaste', the Royal Chrystal Palace, in Munich, in 1897. This was one in a series of exhibitions of the Munich 'Secession' for which Franz von Stuck had designed the poster.

Franz von Stuck, Poster of the 7th International Art Exhibition, Munich

Shannon had sent one other painting to Munich, 'A Wounded Amazon'. When the portrait of Moore was returned, Shannon wrote in his diary that it was 'rather too black', and that it seemed to be 'more dark than when it went'.

Around the same time, Shannon finished a self-portrait and a portrait of Ricketts, having similar titles: 'The Man in a Black Shirt' and 'The Man in the Inverness Cape', now both at the National Portrait Gallery.

The portrait of Thomas Sturge Moore in its original matt gold frame formerly belonged to Colin Franklin (1923), a writer, bibliographer, book-collector and antiquarian bookseller, before it passed into the collection of Roy Davids. Davids was a writer of biographies of members of parliament, before he came to work for Sotheby's as a cataloguer of manuscripts. He worked for the auction house from 1970 until twenty years later, when he started his own business as a manuscript dealer (the Roy Davids Ltd. website has not been updated since 2007). Since 2005, Davids has been selling his collection in parts, not because 'he has shrugged off the collecting bug, nor is he close to death' (as was written on Paul Fraser Collectibles), but 'partly because I have to do something with it', as Davids says in a video presentation. He believes that the manuscripts should return to the market. 

The first part of the Davids collection was sold in 2005, the second part in March 2011, the third part will be on sale on 8 May 2013.

Note: The painting was sold for £4,550 inc. premium and tax.

85. March 18, 1937

Seventy-six years ago, on 18 March, 1937, Charles Shannon died. A year later, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co in London devoted an exhibition to his lithographs. In the catalogue, Thomas Sturge Moore wrote about his sitting for a portrait in 1896. He recalled Shannon's eye for quality and their frequent cycle-riding adventures. He especially remembered Shannon's 'energetic sturdiness'.

Images of a number of lithographs by Charles Shannon are available online. His first experiment in lithography, dated 1889, depicts 'The Vale in Snow'. The image is provided by the British Library. We barely see the house of Ricketts and Shannon on this lithograph of which only eight copies seem to have been made.

Charles Shannon, 'The Vale in Snow', lithograph, 1889 (British Library)

Shannon's self-portrait, and his portrait of Ricketts, are now in the Portrait Gallery in London. More paintings by Shannon can be seen on the website of the BBC. 

Charles Shannon, 'Girl Bathers in a Boat', painting, c. 1905-1910 (Hammersmith Archives and Local History Centre)

84. A new interpretation of The Great Worm

Until recently, John Gray's story 'The Great Worm', which was published in the first issue of The Dial in 1889, was not taken seriously. Gray's biographer wrote:

It is a story of a dragon who dies from unrequited love; its silliness is so precisely balanced with pathos, its parody by bemused self-parody (the worm turns out to be the dreamer of the tale), that one must suspend judgment about its success. The risks alone are worth reading of it, as if a rococo artist had painted (say, in gold and white) one of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. (Jerusha Hull McCormack, John Gray. Poet, Dandy, and Priest, 1991, p. 25).

Charles Ricketts, vignette and initial for John Gray's story 'The Great Worm', in The Dial, 1889, p. 14.

Earlier, Richard Harold Quinn wrote a thesis on The Dial in which the story was relevated:

'The great Worm' is best described as a dream vision, but it is clearly one of the most curious of its type. Asleep in a garden of lilies, a poet sees a gold and white worm, an 'unaffected beast', who lived 'somewhere in the belly of one of those mountain ranges in Central Asia, with a name as ragged as its silhouette.' Having offered his services to the prince of the region, the worm is sent out at the head of an army to establish order among wavering subjects. The expedition goes well until an unnamed 'figure of silent whiteness,' the inhabitant of a glorious city, offers the worm a lily, which he then wears on his breast. That night he is heard to moan 'Why am I a worm?' And within days, the lily having taking root, he is dead. 
Faced with the task of interpreting 'The Great Worm,' one is tempted by allegorical possibilities (the dragon of evil defeated by purity; sin destroyed by Holy Church) and even by Symbolist possibilities (the mysteriousness of the worm's identity and motives; the metaphysical suggestiveness of the lily and the 'figure of silent whiteness'). On the other hand, to quote Alexandra Zaina, 'it seems unlikely that this story was meant to be taken seriously.' (Richard Harold Quinn, Charles Ricketts and The Dial, 1977, p. 112-113)

But why not take the story seriously? The Dial was a serious attempt to ventilate new ideas about art, and one of its editors - Ricketts - considered it worthwhile to devote no less than four illustrations to this story: a vignette/initial at the beginning, a tailpiece at the end, a colour lithograph and an etching.

Charles Ricketts, illustration to 'The Great Worm', lithograph, in The Dial, 1889, plate AA.

Another later commentator, C.N. Pondrom, wrote: 

Much of the original literary contents of the  periodical show an affinity with the pseudo-medieval, fantastic, misty literature associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement, and in this sense, as well as in the frequency and excellence of illustration, the Dial is a clear successor to the Germ. Examples of this affinity may be seen in the Charles Ricketts' short story 'The cup of Happiness' and John Gray's parable 'The Great Worm'. (Cyrena Norman Pondrom, English Literary Periodicals 1885-1918, 1966, p. 74). 

A new interpretation was published earlier this year in English Literature in Transition, 1880-1930, volume 56 (2013) 1, p. 33-50: Petra Clark's essay 'Bitextuality, Sexuality, and the Male Aesthete in The Dial: "Not through an orthodox channel"'. Petra Clark is a Lasner Research Assistant at the University of Delaware, where I met her during my visit in February.

Her essay is firmly rooted in modern research theories, inspired by such scholars as Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Elaine Showalter, and Dennis Denisoff. Clark's sometimes witty interpretation focuses on the sexual imagery in the story, and likens the worm's physique to the male sexual organ.

the varied representations of masculinity and the blatant sexual (and arguably homoerotic) imagery it contains have been largely overlooked, as well as how these factors contribute to the notion of the artist that the Dial seems to be constructing.

More about this study in blog no. 88: 'The Great Worm revisited'.