413. Ricketts and Shannon as Robert Ross's Characters (4)

When The Tribune announced that the writer Stephen Phillips (1864-1915) was working on a new play on Faust, Robert Ross answered with a version of his own: 'A Little Doctored Faust' (Masques & Phases, pp. 209-223). 

Ross starts with a quote from the dramatist:

Stephen Phillips

In the version of Faust which I am going to prepare there will be nothing spectacular, nothing to overshadow or intrude upon an immortal theme. As to how I shall treat the story, and as to the form in which it will be written, I am not yet sure—it may be a play in blank verse, or in prose with lyrics. 

Ross's prologue transports us to The British Museum where Phillips got a special room to work on his play, implying that he intended to use earlier plays about Faust. Indeed, Goethe, Marlowe and the composer Gounod join him there, and Phillips tells them:

Of course, I treat you as material
On which to work; but then I simplify
And purify the story for our stage.
The English stage is nothing if not pure.
For instance, we will not allow Salomé.

Wilde's Salomé was banned on the basis of an old law that prohibited the depiction of  Biblical characters on the stage - there were performances in Paris and some private ones in London, the first public performance took place in 1931. 

Faust (1908)

When Phillips's version of Faust was published two years later, in 1908, the title page mentioned a co-author, J. Comyns Carr, and the subtitle was: 'freely adapted from Goethe's dramatic poem'.

In 1906, Ross wrote his version that consisted of the British Library prologue - one remembers of course that Goethe's prologue to Faust was set 'In Heaven', - followed by two acts that are as compact as the introductory scene. The issue of authenticity is ridiculed:

Alexander. One of your lines strike my familiar spirit.
Surely, that does not come from Stephen Phillips.

Marlowe. No matter; I may quote from whom I will.
Shakespeare himself was not immaculate

And borrowed freely from a barren past.

But how barren was Philipps's past who could take his lines from the likes of Goethe and Marlowe? 

Act I brings us to Faust's Studio where Faust speaks to a servant, using Phillips's words:

Faust. If anybody calls, say I am out;
I must have time to see how I will act.
As to the form in which I shall be written,
I must decide whether in prose or verse.

Eugène Delacroix, 'Méphistophélès apparaisant à Faust' (from Goethe, Faust. Paris, Charles Motte, 1828)
[image: National Gallery of Victoria]

Mephisto enters and tells he is not impressed by the British audiences and their so-called love for the theatre.

Mephisto. The stage is now an auditorium,
And all the audiences are amateurs,
First-nighters at the bottom of their heart.
What do they care for drama in the least?
All that they need are complimentary stalls,
To know the leading actor, to be round
At dress rehearsals, or behind the scenes,
To hear the row the actor-manager
Had with the author or the leading lady,
Then to recount the story at the Garrick,
Where, lingering lovingly on kippered lies,
They babble over chestnuts and their punch
And stale round-table jests of years ago.

Mephisto and Faust agree to pay a visit to Lord and Lady Walpurge - she an 'intellectual', and:

The husband rich, dishonest, a collector
Of objets d’art, especially old masters.
He got his title for his promises
To England in the war; financed the raid

The party, says Ross, is not very sophisticated, attended by second-rate literary people, an Irish peer, and some well-known musicians. But then, the Princess Salomé is announced by the footman. He has misheard her name and announces her as:

'Er 'Ighness the Princess Swami.

A Lady Journalist, talking to Faust, remarks:

Fancy having that woman here. She is not recognised in any decent society, she is nothing but an adventuress; talks such bad French, too.

(Oscar Wilde had been criticised for his French when the first edition of the play was published.) But Faust answers that the Princess has many admirers in Germany.

Lady Journalist (hedging). I wonder where she gets her frocks? They must be worth a good deal.

Faust. From Ricketts and Shannon, if you want to know.

Lady Journalist. Dear Doctor, you know everything! Let me see: Ricketts and Shannon is that new place in Regent Street, rather like Lewis and Allenby’s, I suppose?

Faust. Yes, only different.

Lewis & Allenby, London (1866) [image: Victorian web]

Lewis and Allenby were famous silk mercers and retailers of ladies' clothing.

In the next two pieces by Ross, 'Shavians from Superman' and 'Some Doctored Dilemma',  Ricketts and Shannon would, again, play a role.

[This modest series of Robert Ross blogs commemorates his birth 150 years ago.]

412. Ricketts and Shannon as Robert Ross's Characters (3)

Robert Ross frequently referred to his closest friends in his critical and prose pieces written for periodicals and newspapers and collected in Masques & Phases in 1909.

Robert Ross, Masques & Phases (1909)

In a review of an exhibition of the work of Holman Hunt at Leicester Galleries in 1906, he asserted that every critic invents his own brand of Pre-Raphaelitism and believes 'he knows the great secret'. Following Ruskin, Rossetti and Hall Caine tried their hand at definitions. However, even if these critical approaches would be helpful, Ross insists on examining the individual paintings, not the 'movement', and he finds that in almost all genres other painters were better than Holman Hunt. With his religious subjects, he complains, Hunt is the most popular of them all, 'a scapegoat sent out to wander by the dead seas of popularity', and he frames him as 'the missing link between art and popularity'. The painter William Richmond has 'brandished Excalibur in the form of a catalogue for Mr. Hunt's pictures'. Obviously, that was too much for Ross.

William Holman Hunt, 'Self-Portrait' (1867) [Uffizi Gallery]

At this point, the essay takes a turn and ends like a medieval story about a 'good knight and true', who, as a Knight for the Royal Academy of Art battles against modernism in its many forms.

Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the door cautiously, "Draw, caitiffs," he cries; "draw." "Perhaps they cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists," said a raven on the hill; and he flew away.
('Mr. Holman Hunt at the Leicester Galleries', p. 179-180).

Ricketts with shannon complications! As if 'rickets' disease is not worrying enough.

411. Ricketts and Shannon as Robert Ross's Characters (2)

Robert Ross - born 150 years ago - published art criticisms in several periodicals, and collected a few of them in a volume called Masques & Phases (London, Arthur L. Humphreys, 1909), a book that is difficult to find these days. However, the complete text is available online at Gutenberg.com.

Robert Ross, Masques & Phases (1909) [cover: detail]

A few weeks ago, I quoted a piece in which Ricketts made his appearance as a character, even one that wrote poetry. (See: Ricketts and Shannon as Robert Ross's Characters (1).)

A second time that either Ricketts or Shannon's name turns up in the book is in a column called 'Going Up Top' (pp. 116-124). It is based on the old game of making lists of excellent poets, politicians, etcetera. Ross writes:

During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very diverting house-party.  This peer, it will be remembered, is the well-known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in the submerged tenth.  Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and ladies’-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty.  In all, we were a hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy of the Petit Parisien relating the plebiscite for the greatest Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the Evening News list. The famous Pall Mall Gazette Academy of Forty was recalled with indifferent accuracy.  Conversation was flagging; our hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a p. 120variation of that most charming game, suck-pencil.

Lord and Lady Lyonesse - a name that evokes a sunken land from Arthurian legend as well as hosts that throw the best of parties - invite their guest to list the ten greatest living Englishmen, and when the votes are counted the guests have included the writers Marie Corelli and Rudyard Kipling, the newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe and the actor George Alexander, among others. 

Robert Ross, Masques & Phases (1909, page 122)

The list drawn up by Ross himself is quite different. From the general list, it only includes the name of Nortcliffe. His eminent men - no women indeed! - are mainly writers, six of them: H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Thomas Hardy, Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang, some of whom are intimate friends such as Reginald Turner. There is one physicist (Oliver Lodge) and one cardinal (Dom Gasquet), and, for an art critic, oddly enough, there is only one artist on his list. This, of course, is Charles Hazelwood Shannon.

The other guests are not familiar with the names of the physicist and the cardinal. Some believed that Lang had died long ago (he would die in 1912, three years after Masques & Phases was published). Only the one artist in the crowd knows the name of the painter Charles Shannon, the others assume that the portrait painter James Jubusa Shannon is intended.  

Shannon, all too often, was approached by people who wanted him to paint their portraits, only to withdraw the assignment after discovering their error. The wrong Shannon!

When this piece was published in Masques & Phases Shannon wrote to Ross:

Your book is too delightful. I don't get much chance of seeing it because Ricketts is generally curled up on the sofa convulsed with laughter.
[Letter from Charles Shannon to Robert Ross, 13 October 1909, published in: Robert Ross. Friend of Friends, 1952, page 167].

410. The Ricketts Medal by Alphonse Legros

At Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, in a furniture sale on 14 May, one lot contained medals depicting the artists G.F. Watts and Charles Ricketts. Both medals were designed by Alphonse Legros. The first one was gilded and quite large (8.5 cm diameter), the second one was a cast bronze medal 'with brown patina' (6 cm diameter). The set was estimated at £600-800, and fetched £1,125 (buyer's premium included).

Alphonse Legros, 'Charles Ricketts' [medal, 1897]

The Ricketts medal dates from 1897. The front shows the artist in profile, the reverse depicts a woodcutter, axe raised, chopping a tree. 

How many copies of this medal were made is unclear. However, Philip Attwood, in his catalogue Artistic Circles (1992) stated that this kind of medal was expensive and issued in 'small editions' (page 11).

409. A Unique Copy of Ricketts's Dell'Arte Della Stampa

Last Saturday, auction house Hesse in Hamburg dispersed part of the personal collection of the book designer Hans (Giovanni) Mardersteig, including a range of his own publications that were issued under the name Officina Bodoni. Some of these books have escaped good descriptions in official Officina Bodoni bibliographies, as can be concluded from the two copies of Carlo Ricketts, Dell'arte della stampa (1926). 

Carlo Ricketts, Dell'arte della stampa (1926)

This Italian translation of Ricketts's Defence of the Art of Printing (1899) - the name of the translator is unknown - was printed for the Officina Bodoni by the Stabilimenti Grafici Mondadori in Verona in only 125 copies, all on Fabriano paper. They were numbered from 1 to 125 and bound in half vellum.

Carlo Ricketts, Dell'arte della stampa (1926)

However, one of the copies in this auction is not numbered, but lettered: 'E', and this is one of at least five, and perhaps more copies that were kept by the publisher, or, perhaps, given to the author.

Carlo Ricketts, Dell'arte della stampa (1926):
Mardersteig's copy on Japanese paper

Another copy of the same book was an exceptional one, printed on Japanese paper, especially for Mardersteig himself, and bound in leather. Even the Officina Bodoni's own bibliographies and exhibition catalogues didn't mention these lettered copies, let alone the one copy printed on a different deluxe paper. 

Other deluxe editions in this auction were recorded, for example in the 1979 catalogue by Giovanni Mardersteig, Die Officina Bodoni. Das Werk einer Handpresse 1923-1977 published by the Maximilian-Gesellschaft in Hamburg. According to this bibliography the 1932 Ovidius edition was issued in an edition of three copies on vellum and 120 on Magnani paper. Likewise, Plato's Crito was issued in an edition of 480 copies, of which five deluxe copies on Japanese paper. One of those was sold at the Hesse auction. This was the 'Printers copy', formerly owned by Frederic Warde. It was sold for €2600.

Neither the lettered edition of Ricketts, nor the unique copy on Japanese paper is mentioned in Mardersteig's bibliography. They were sold for €380 (lettered copy) and €2600 (Japanese paper). 

Carlo Ricketts, Dell'arte della stampa (1926)

These books in the Hesse auction came from the grandson of Mardersteig. Most of Mardersteig's collection has remained intact in Italy.

408. Ricketts and Shannon as Robert Ross's Characters (1)

On the 24th of this month, Robert (Baldwin) Ross's 150th birth anniversary will be commemorated with a Robert Ross Celebration Dinner in London's Savile Club. He was born on 25 May 1869, and died in October 1918. Ross, a Canadian art dealer, art critic, and journalist, is mainly remembered for his relationship with Oscar Wilde. Eight years after the death of the author, Ross published a first edition of his collected works, restoring Wilde's literary reputation.

Robert Ross, Masques and Phases (1909)

In 1909 Ross published a series of essays and reviews, Masques and Phases, that ran into several reprints. Ricketts and Shannon figure in some of them, as characters in short plays that comment upon Bernard Shaw's latest dramas, The Doctor's Dilemma (staged in 1906, parodied by Ross in February 1907) and Man and Superman (1902, elaborated by Ross in June 1907). However, the first appearance of both men was in Ross's review of a new edition of Swinburne's William Blake. A Critical Study: 'Swinblake. A Prophetic Book. With Home Zarathrusts'.

Ross's narrator recounts:

We came to a printing-house and found William Morris reverting to type and transmitting art to the middle classes.

‘The great Tragedy of Topsy’s life,’ said Theodormon, ‘is that he converted the middle classes to art and socialism, but he never touched the unbending Tories of the proletariat or the smart set.  You would have thought, on homœopathic principles, that cretonne would appeal to cretins.’

‘Vale, vale,’ cried Charles Ricketts from the interior.

I was rather vexed, as I wanted to ask Ricketts his opinions about various things and people and to see his wonderful collection.  Shannon, however, presented me with a lithograph and a copy of ‘Memorable Fancies,’ by C. R.

How sweet I roamed from school to school,
   But I attached myself to none;
I sat upon my ancient Dial
   And watched the other artists’ fun.

Will Rothenstein can guard the faith,
   Safe for the Academic fold;
’Twas very wise of William Strang,
   What need have I of Chantrey’s gold?

p. 95Let the old masters be my share,
   And let them fall on B. B.’s corn;
Let the Uffizi take to Steer—
   What do I care for Herbert Horne

Or the stately Holmes of England,
   Whose glories never fade;
The Constable of Burlington,
   Who holds the Oxford Slade.

It’s Titian here and Titian there,
   And come to have a look;
But ‘thanks of course Giorgione,’
   With Mr. Herbert Cook.

For MacColl is an intellectual thing,
   And Hugh P. Lane keeps Dublin awake,
And Fry to New York has taken wing,
   And Charles Holroyd has got the cake.

Robert Ross, Masques and Phases (1909, pages 94-95)

This is the only poem that Ricketts was said to have written; he kept himself to reviews, art criticism, and prose. This poem mentions almost everyone that counted in the contemporary art world - and included many friends and enemies of Ricketts; Ross, of course, was friends with most of them. 'Vale' refers to the Vale Press, the 'dial' to the magazine The Dial.

After this brief meeting, the narrator doesn't mention Ricketts anymore. 

However, the narrator asks his guide after the whereabouts of John Addington Symonds, the author of A Problem in Greek Ethics, a title that Ross changes into one that reminds us of John Keats's poetry: An Ode on Grecian Urning, the proceeds of which were destined for the Arts and Krafts Ebbing Guild, a contamination of the Arts and Crafts Society and Richard von Kraft-Ebing, the German psychiatrist whose definition of homosexuality was based on the idea of a 'sexual inversion' of the brain. Symonds's Problem has been called 'perhaps the most exhaustive eulogy of Greek love'. This openly display of homosexual inside jokes was not without danger at the time; yet, published without problems. The writings by Ross were taken as literary playfulness in the manner of Max Beerbohm. In comparison to Ross, Ricketts was a closed book.

407. An Exhibition of Famous Woodcut Illustrations

For some of the early shows at Hacon's & Ricketts's shop 'The Sign of the Dial', it has proved difficult to establish dates. The exhibition of Famous Woodcut Illustrations of the Fifteenth & Early Sixteenth Centuries is one of those. In my checklist (1996) and in my bibliography of Ricketts's publications (2015), I assumed that 1898 was correct, even though Maureen Watry, in her book about Ricketts listed it as a 1897 catalogue. There seemed to be no diary notes, letters, or other documentary evidence available.

Famous Woodcut Illustrations of the Fifteenth & Early Sixteenth Centuries (1897)

However, the growing number of digitised newspapers has now given us that proof. The Glasgow Herald of 5 April 1897 published a short descriptive review of this exhibition that can definitely be dated: 25 March to 24 April 1897.

Famous Woodcut Illustrations of the Fifteenth & Early Sixteenth Centuries (1897)

The exact dates are taken from a copy of the invitation on which the dates were written in ink by the shop's assistant (collection of The Bodleian Library).

The review - part of 'The World of Art’, in Glasgow Herald, 5 April 1897, p. 7 - reads as follows:

Messrs. Hacon & Ricketts have gathered together a small but very choice exhibition in their little gallery at The Sign of the Dial, in Warwick Street, where also may be seen examples of their very beautiful printed books. The exhibition consists of about two score of woodcut illustrations by famous masters of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a period of rapid development and great output in this particular branch of art. The earliest shown woodcut dates from the middle of the fifteenth century, and is from – the probably Dutch – block-book “Canticum Canticorum,” and there are fine examples from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” 1497; Petrarch’s “Trionfi,” 1499, &c. By the German masters there are woodcuts from Dürer’s “Life of the Virgin,” 1505; “The Little Passion,” 1510; “The Great Passion,” 150, and his earlier work the “Apocalypse.” Also examples of Holbein’s “Dance of Death” and “The Old Testament,” Burgkmair’s “The Wise King,” and “Praxis Criminis”, by Geofroy Tory, 1541.

Famous Woodcut Illustrations of the Fifteenth & Early Sixteenth Centuries (1897)

406. Go in One Day to Van Wisselingh's "Dutch Gallery"

James McNeill Whistler wrote hundreds of letters. On 20 March 1901, he posted a letter in Ajaccio, destined for London where his sister-in-law Rosalind Birnie Philip would open it sometime later to read his instructions:

Go in one day to Van Wisselinghs “Dutch Gallery”. There is an exhibition of C.H. Shannon’s drawings pastels etc.. Get a catalogue and post -

(See Letters of J. McN. Whistler 1855-1903; A.M. Whistler, 1829-1881, online at the University of Glasgow website.)

A text-only catalogue, printed in Vale type, had been issued by the Dutch Gallery, 14 Brook Street. It listed 73 drawings (studies, mostly in chalk or silverpoint), pastels, lithographs and woodcuts.

Charles Shannon, 'The Toilet' (lithograph) [National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1914]

The exhibition was favourably reviewed by Roger Fry in The Athenaeum (23 March 1901), who stated that the show was 'as rare as it is delightful':

His imagery is unconditioned by time and place. He combines and recombines into a succession of harmonious designs a few elemental motives. The relaxed forms of leisurely torsos, the rhythmic movement of bare limbs seen against an expanse of sea, figures draped in vague impersonal costume moving slowly in a dim chamber - these, and such as these, are the whole material of his art.

[...]

It will be seen, then, that Mr. Shannon sets before himself a most difficult task: he resolutely refuses all those aspects of life which fascinate our curiosity or involve the interests and passions of every day; he will gratify us only in so far as he can reveal and we can accept ideas of pure visual beauty, almost as pure and as unconditioned as the ideas of music.

Fry noted that 'a certain grasp of structural form' was lacking, and 'a more permeating imaginative investigation of the relations of the parts in a possible three-dimensional space' could be hoped for in future works by this 'distinguished' artist. He singled out some studies for 'Shell-Gatherers' as evidence of Shannon's investigative nature.

Charles Shannon, 'Shell-Gatherers' (lithograph, 1894)
[British Museum]

On 6 April Whistler, still on the Island of Corsica, had received a report, or several letters, from his sister-in-law, and he answered: 

I have had all the results of your expeditions - The Galleries - and the tea parties - and the various descents upon the town! -- Shannon's catalogue & the rest of it! all excellent! and very prettily done - together with wise & most apt remarks upon the occasions - which I enjoyed in my Island! - Napoléons - & mine! -

405. Who Edited Marlowe?

In May 1903, the Vale Press published Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus. The colophon mentioned that this volume was edited by John Masefield - he was only 24 at the time. However, in his bibliography of the press, Charles Ricketts stated that the volume had been edited by Thomas Sturge Moore who also edited the multi-volume Vale Press Shakespeare edition. Therefore, the question is: who edited Marlowe?

Spines of Shakespeare's Richard III and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Vale Press, 1903)

There are no Vale Press archives extant; we will have to examine other sources for evidence. The Vale Shakespeare had been issued in green linen bindings stamped in blind after a design by Ricketts. Doctor Faustus, executed in the same style of binding, was printed on the same paper bearing the mermaid watermark, the text being set from the same type (Avon). 

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Vale Press, 1903)

In his bibliography Ricketts wrote:

This Volume was edited by T. Sturge Moore, and printed uniform with the volumes of Shakespeare, the border used being that of the Tragedies.

Colophon of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (Vale Press, 1903)

The colophon of the book itself stated:

This edition of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe has been seen through the press by John Masefield.

Charles Holmes, the Vale Press's manager, had met John Masefield early on, and in his memoirs Self & Partners (Mostly Self) (1936), he mentioned Masefield once, in a chapter about a regular dining group at Roche's in Old Compton Street:

I particularly recall one evening when [Laurence] Binyon brought in a tall, bronzed young man in blue serge, with a grave quiet manner, whom he introduced to us as John Masefield the sailor-poet.
(p. 188)

Masefield remained unmentioned in his chapter about the Vale Press that alluded to quarrels with Sturge Moore over the proofs for the Shakespeare volumes. There is no written testimony (in print or in manuscript) that links Sturge Moore to the Marlowe volume, other than Ricketts's bibliography.

Colophon of Shakespeare's Richard III (Vale Press 1903)

Each volume of the Vale Shakespeare had an almost identical colophon, for which standing type could be used, switching only the lines that contain the title and the year of publication. However, there were slight alterations (the first volume, for example, included information on the Avon type). 

The two vertically placed decorative leaves that conclude the first part of the colophon (it continued at the bottom of the page stating the names of the publishers) were absent in the Marlowe volume, that, although issued simultaneously, was not part of the Shakespeare series. The lists of books that advertised the Vale Press volumes didn't mention the name of the editor. A Final List of Books to be Issued by Messrs. Hacon & Ricketts (1902) announced the book as 'the only book besides the Shakespeare printed in the Avon fount', and a Special Notice dated January 1903 stated: 'Non-subscribers to the Shak[e]speare may obtain Copies of this book, provided their orders are received before Feb. 1, 1903.' All copies were sold before the end of June.

Masefield was a young, but prolific writer, who by 1903 had published a book of poetry, an anonymous introduction in the catalogue of the Wolverhampton Art and Industrial Exhibition, 1902, and his edition of Poems by John Keats was to be published in September 1903. Moreover, he had published more than fifty prose fragments, poems and book reviews in newspapers and magazines such as The Tatler, The Speaker, The Pall Mall Magazine and The Academy.

Masefield was an up-and-coming man, and an acquaintance of the Vale Press coterie: Laurence Binyon had met him first at Yeats's house, in February 1901, went out of his way to get him commissions, and introduced him to Holmes (and others); Ricketts and Shannon were both very much involved in the 1902 Wolverhampton exhibition for which Masefield acted as secretary - which meant they corresponded and met at several occasions; Masefield, Ricketts and Shannon would be collaborators for the 1903 magazine The Venture; and Masefield was a member of a group of stage writers around W.B. Yeats, and the Marlowe edition aimed to financially support this group that was called - not officially, but in this colophon - the Romantic Stage Players. Several names were used for the stage initiatives, such as the Theatre Society for Romantic Drama, and The Masquers, - and Yeats was anxious that the money would be lost to his dramatic efforts - but when the Literary Theatre Club came into existence, the money raised with the publication of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus went to them.

The colophon of the book wouldn't have mentioned Masefield's name if he had not been involved in the editorial process. It was the only Vale Press book that contained his name. Masefield, as early as 1906, would claim the work as his in a listing of his work (see Philip W. Errington's John Masefield. The "Great Auk" of English Literature. A Bibliography, 2004, p. 576). Ricketts (not a bibliographer by training) simply made a mistake in his bibliography (not his only one). 

At the time of publication, Masefield's name was mentioned (based on the book's colophon no doubt) in the Publisher's Weekly of 4 July 1903, in a message about the new publications of John Lane (co-distributor the Vale Press books in America): 'they announce another Vale Press volume, Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus," which has been seen through the press by John Masefield, and decorated by Charles Ricketts, under whose supervision the book has been printed for the benefit of The Romantic Stage Players. There will be only two more volumes of the Vale Press, after which the Press will suspend operations.' 

And there is a particular copy of the book to be considered. The book appeared in May - the British Library copy is stamped '25 May 03' - and Masefield's own copy bears a presentation to his wife, dated 8 June 1903. That private copy would probably not have been dedicated by him, had he not been the editor. 

Inscription by John Masefield to his wife, and Masefield's posthumous book label
in his copy of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus (private collection)

It can safely be said that Masefield edited the Vale Press edition of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. There is no evidence of the contrary.

404. Shannon's Prices for Portraits

In November 1901, Robert Ross - the manager of Carfax Gallery - asked Charles Shannon to quote him prices for portraits; Shannon's answer wasn't serious:

With regard to my prices for portraits:

I charge:
                    250 to 300 for 1/2 length of ugly people.
                    200 to 250 for beautiful ones.
                    Full length life size fat man 400 guineas.
                       "         "        "     "    thin man 350    " 

Charles Shannon, 'Souvenir of an International Ball (Portrait of Miss Kathleen Bruce)' (1907)
[Cleveland Museum of Art]

The letter was published by Margery Ross in Robert Ross. Friend of Friends. Letters to Robert Ross, Art Critic and Writer, together with extracts from his published articles (London, Jonathan Cape, 1952, page 72).

403. Vellum Copies of the Vale Press Cellini Edition (3)

Earlier, I have written about the vellum copies of the Vale Press edition of The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (see particularly the second blog: 199. Vellum Copies of the Vale Press Cellini Edition).

We can now add another vellum copy to the list, located at Houghton Library, Harvard. In an essay about bookbindings for Country Life (March 1928), E.H.M. Cox wrote:

Finally, we come to the particularly bold decoration designed by Mr. Philpot on the Life of Benvenuto Cellini: translated by John Addington Symonds, two volumes, imperial 8vo, one of ten copies printed on vellum by the Vale Press in 1900. In this the symbolism is especially cleverly worked out with the lightning of his fiery career and the dagger. This binding is carried out in blue niger morocco, and is extremely successful.

For the life of Cellini, see Wikipedia. The binding was ordered by collector Harold Wilmerding Bell (1885-1947), whose books are now at Houghton Library. 

Vale Press edition of Cellini (1900), volume 1:
binding designed by Glyn Philpot

The binding's designer was Glyn Philpot (1884-1937), a painter, who sometimes digressed and designed costumes and interiors, painted murals, and worked at sculptures. At the start of his career he imitated book designs by Charles Ricketts. Bookbinding came much later, during the 1920s, and it seems that all of his binding designs were done for books owned by Bell, who himself designed some bindings for books in his collection.

In his biography of Philpot, Paul Delaney mentioned these bindings in passing; other publications about Philpot do not. There is only this fugitive article by E.H.M. Cox, published with the vague title 'Some Fine Modern Bookbindings', accompanied by eight illustrations of bindings, five of which were designed by Philpot, while all were executed by the London firm of Robert Riviere and Sons. 

Philpot's designs were for books printed by the Doves Press, the Ashendene Press, the Eragny Press, and the Vale Press.

The Bell copy went to the Houghton Library in 1948 as part of his bequest (accession number is *47-712 F). Philpot signed both volumes of this copy that was printed on vellum.

[Thanks are due to Susan Halpert, Reference Librarian, Houghton Library].

402. A 1916 Sphinx Drawing by Charles Ricketts

On 22 March, Princeton University Library has published a blog about a book illustration by Charles Ricketts that 'does not seem to fit any published project', as the Graphic Arts Curator Julie Mellby wrote to me. (See the Graphic Arts blog.)

The drawing is in style with Ricketts's later drawings, apart from one detail: this drawing is dated: 1916. This is not only unusual - Ricketts's drawings for Beyond the Threshold for example were not dated, nor were his series of drawings for Poems in Prose and a similar series inspired by Wilde's The Sphinx that the artist undertook in 1920s - this drawing predates these drawings by five to ten years.

Charles Ricketts, drawing dated 1916 (Princeton University Library, Graphic Arts)

Is this another Sphinx drawing by Ricketts, or not? The double-lined border, the details in the architecture and landscape, and even the colouring are in style with these later drawings, but the subject of the sphinx had been explored by Ricketts long before, the sphinx being a subject for symbolist painters all over Europe, and especially for Ricketts's example Gustave Moreau. An early drawing of the sphinx, 'Oedipus and the Sphinx', modelled after a drawing by J.A.D. Ingres was bought from Ricketts by Frederic Leighton, and later was reproduced in The Pageant.

The Princeton drawing bears a date and the artist's monogram 'CR', but not a title. It could be called 'Silence', after the bronze sculpture with that name that Ricketts had finished around ten years earlier (now at the Andrews Clark Memorial Library). The fingers pointing to the closed lips suggest the same title 'Silence'. The figure is that of the winged Hermes, who not only is the messenger of the gods, or the conductor of souls into the afterlife, but is also associated with rhetorics and pleading.

The figure of Hermes stands on a stone block next to a skull that belongs to a victim of the sphinx. To the right side of the face of Hermes is the statue of the sphinx on a pedestal. The empty space (half of the image) suggests great height in a steep mountain area.

The date 1916 is puzzling. However, I think there may be an answer for which we have to combine letters from Ricketts to Robert Ross, and a note in his diaries concerning the Red Cross Sale at Christie's. The book and manuscript committee for this sale was chaired by Edmund Gosse. Contributions were to be sent in by the end of February 1916, and the auction took place over several weeks in April.

Initially, Ricketts thought of sending in his copy of Wilde's The Sphinx, as he mentioned to Ross:

Do you think my suggestion would be acceptable at the moment and make money for the Red Cross Sale if I sent up my signed copy of The Sphinx (not the edition de luxe) the dedication is quite simple, to C. Ricketts etc. and without the comments by Oscar I have in the Poems and the Intentions.
[Letter to Robert Ross, February 1916, see Robert Ross, Friend of Friends (1952), p, 281].

In the end he withdrew the book, and the Wilde letters that were to accompany it, but meanwhile he had been working on some drawings. First of all, there was a vellum envelope that was to hold the Wilde letters. 

His diary note, as presented in Self-Portrait (1939, p. 254), reads: 

Drew the vellum envelope for the Oscar Wilde letter. Found the vellum at first trying; and I actually squinted with application like a child with its tongue out, and found afterwards that the seat of my breeches was quite moist. After all, the work came more easily than I had anticipated.

Ross and Shannon objected to selling this at auction, Ricketts already had his doubts, and the valuation of a bookseller distressed him, so he backed off. But there was more, and that concerned the 'drawings' he had been making:

Probably a touch of sentiment enters into the selfish reasons for my retention of the signed Sphinx – the other signed books are so much less my books. Possibly a certain coldness on the part of Holmes and Binyon when I showed them the vellum drawings helped also. 

[Letter to Robert Ross, February 1916, see Robert Ross, Friend of Friends (1952), p, 284].

The puzzling element here is the word 'vellum'. The Princeton drawing is on paper. Obviously, Ricketts would have made several sketches for the design he wanted to draw on vellum, a material that prompts the artist to use all his skills. The whereabouts of these vellum drawings is unknown. The Princeton drawing may have been one of the preparatory drawings. The colouring may or may not date from the same year; the addition of the monogram seems to imply that Ricketts considered this to be a finished drawing, or that he prepared this drawing for presentation. 

Charles Ricketts, drawing dated 1916 (Princeton University Library, Graphic Arts)

We can't be certain, but the date 1916 does relate to drawings by Ricketts that were directly associated with Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx, drawings that were not intended for a proposed new edition of the book, but were made with the 1916 Red Cross Sale in mind. The copy, the letters, and the decorated envelope could be anywhere now.