487. A Century of Art (1)

In June-July 1911, the Grafton Galleries were the venue for an exhibition sponsored by the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, curated by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. The run-up to and the festivities surrounding the coronation of George V and his wife Mary coincided with the opening days of the exhibition, which was therefore poorly attended and closed at a loss. Carfax & Co. published a booklet in which Ricketts published his 'personal observations'. Only the preface of A Century of Art 1810-1910 was reprinted in Ricketts's Pages on Art; the text of the other thirty pages was not.

Room I contained works by French artists. Room II contained paintings by Raeburn, Lawrence, Turner, followed by the Pre-Raphaelites. Paragraphs about the latter group of artists are presented below.

A Century of Art [by Charles Ricketts]

The end of the forties was to witness the advent of a new group of artists, since become famous as the Pre-Raphaelites. The consideration of this extraordinary school can be made here on some of the most typical specimens of their work. [...] 

Nadar, Eugène Delacroix (c. 1857)

Within its self-imposed conditions Pre-Raphaelitism might be described as the emphasis of the aspect of things which has become possible in an age whose eyesight had been modified by science. This ideal was in itself not far removed from  that of certain great Florentines, and a scrupulous study of the minutest facts had been continuous in the art of the primitive Flemings. Delacroix, who lived to see specimen works of the English Pre-Raphaelites and to praise them highly, was quick to receive the relation between the old art of Flanders and the new, dry English School, as it was then called. With that nimbleness and clearness of perception which seems characteristic of great Frenchmen, he recognised that if the earlier British School had in a sense developed upon the traditions of Rubens and Vandyck, who were Flemings, the new school had not swerved from the same Northern source of technical inspiration. Other elements escaped his analysis; these he rightly considered new; remained one other of which he could have no knowledge—i.e., the source of the imaginative impulse behind these works. If the church had inspired the Flemish primitives, a new religious fervour touched Pre-Raphaelitism also, but with the exception of Holman Hunt this was transitory, not essential to the success or character of the movement; it was perhaps merely a part of the improvised mediaeval scheme which Chatterton had played with, and in so doing brought English thought to a new knowledge of itself. Pre-Raphaelitism owes a debt to Keats; is has benefited by the poignant vision of nature which he has revealed during those few years in which he lived.

The love of analyses , the power to transmute facts into something more, the brilliant self-confidence of youth, its noble scrupulousness and feeling of wonder, can be found in Pre-Raphaelitism. Delacroix said of it, "This art is young and we in France are very old." 

William Holman Hunt,  'The Hireling Shepard' (1851)
[Manchester Art Gallery]
[Gnu Free Documentation License]

It was the influence of Keats that sweetened for a while the stubborn Protestant outlook of Holman Hunt, in whom the mystical fervour and sense of fact of a new John Bunyan seems once more among us. Beyond doubt, Hunt's example was a bracing one upon the school. His "Hireling Shepard" (No. 42) is perhaps his most typical or admirable work—it is a priceless specimen of British thought and art.

Ford Madox Brown, 'Waiting' (1851-1855)
[Walker Art Gallery]

He has been described as the conscience of the movement; he was certainly its founder. Late in life Madox Brown hugged the idea that to his early efforts should be ascribed the origin of Pre-Raphaelitism. Without Hunt and Rossetti, Madox Brown would never have painted pictures which one might consider Pre-Raphaelite; at the most he would have remained preoccupied with analogous efforts and experiments in Flanders and Germany to renounce ripe colour, free brush-work, and rich shadows. His "Christ washing the Feet of Peter" (No. 40), the exquisite little picture "Waiting" (No. 61), show him at his best and as a technical follower of Hunt. The more delicate  skill, the greater nimbleness and sensitiveness of eye and mind make of J.E. Millais the more constantly successful exponent of Pre-Raphaelitism in its first phase. The "Ferdinand and Ariel" (No. 48) is extreme in its tendencies; it is less important than the incomparable "Ophelia" or "The Carpenter's Shop;" less emotional in vision than "The Eve of St. Agnes" or the "Autumn Leaves." It is, however, typical of early Pre-Raphaelite tendencies; its is nearer Keats than Shakespeare, which is illustrates, nearer to Chatterton than to Keats, more wholly English in temper, since Italy counts in Shakespeare and Greece with Keats.

John Everett Millais, 'Ferdinand Lured by Ariel' (1850)
[Private Collection]

Under the influence of Rossetti, the greatest of them all, the new brotherhood was to achieve more than is compassed by Hunt in the "Hireling Shepherd," or by Millais in the "Ferdinand and Ariel." If their works are intense and passionate in their hold upon outward things, they are in a sense incidental. The central impulse is narrative, and with Hunt it is didactic.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Arthur's Tomb" (1860)
[Photo © Tate Gallery]

[Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)]

Rossetti brought to the movement a keener sense of design, which martials facts into a more memorable whole, and that tragic sense which is ever present in the finest poetic invention. With him the scientific conscience, which delighted Ruskin, was to loose[*] its hold upon the movement. Some of Rossetti's priceless water-colours exhibited here summaries that new combination of reality and imagination which always underlies the finest art. With Rossetti the balance may often have swerved too much towards the imaginative, the rarer half of art, and too little towards the study of nature; on this point I am unable  and unwilling to judge. The "Arthur's Tomb" (No. 44) is one of those priceless things which defy analysis. Part of its force may reside in what might seem at first sight the more whimsical part of it, endow the figure of Guinevere with greater reality—i.e., the traces of maturity and sensuality—and perhaps the lurching, questioning, and impassioned man with his tragic face might lose the pathos of contrast. The quaint details of the tomb, the grass like "new-cleft emeralds," the splashes of light and the green shadows from the leaves, add to the sense of vividness and to the sense of strangeness of the picture, to the sense of something poignant yet remote, like one's childhood. This visionary work has all the intensity of music, it tells of far-off tragic things, and of passion that passes, of beauty that endures, perhaps! Like music, it is at once ironic and compassionate. Out of this water-colour William Morris evolved his quaint and moving poem "King Arthur's Tomb."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "Lucrezia Borgia" (c.1867)
[Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery]

The first design for the Llandaff triptych (No. 47) counts in the first line of Rossetti's early designs. The little "Borgia" (No. 46) shows also the painter's inventive faculties in their full flower. The larger version of this design at Kensington is later, and not entirely by his hand. The "Beatrice and Dante" (No. 43), the "Belle Dame Sans Merci" (No. 50), are each jewels of colour, design and invention. The admirable series of Rossetti's drawings in the End Gallery will further illustrate the period in his career when invention and a racy power of execution went together. For the most part all these works fall within the space of seven years; they typify what the French call "the School of Oxford" thereby indicating the second phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, when the influence of Rossetti became paramount on a younger generation made memorable by Burne-Jones and William Morris. A record of this charmed epoch can still be seen in the famous St. Frideswide window at Oxford. The two lovely panels (Nos. 39 and 52) are slightly later in date. If the colour is jewelled and almost toylike in the Oxford windows, here it is different in scheme, and we have instead dim, broken colours, the tomes of goblin woods and of tapestries seen in twilight. They are perfect specimens of narrative art tinged with that plaintive sweetness which Burne-Jones has brought to English art. The "Temperentia" (No. 41) and the "Caritas" (No. 49)  also revert in design to later Oxford windows. The broken golds and faded ivories of the "Temperentia" gleam on the golden wall with the effect of old cloth-of-gold or gold-dust; this singular gift, of which Burne-Jones had the secret, belongs to "The Depths of the Sea" (No. 45). In novelty of design, personality in workmanship, originality of aspect, it stands on a level which current criticism is perhaps powerless to analyse, since originality and personality have often to be allowed to countless works without one tithe of these qualities revealed by Burne-Jones—revealed, in fact, in varying degrees, by all these priceless Pre-Raphaelite pictures.

Edward Burne-Jones, "Temperentia" (1872)

Quoted from Charles Ricketts, A Century of Art 1810-1910. London, Carfax & Co., 1911, pp. 16-20. The catalogue does not contain a list of exhibited paintings, drawings and prints, nor does it contain illustrations. A separate list of the pictures was published by the Society: A Catalogue of the Pictures, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture at the Century of Art Exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers held at the Grafton Galleries, June and July, 1911. [A copy is in the National Art Library, V&A Museum, London: Historic Catalogues 200.B.208].

* Ricketts writes 'loose' for 'lose'.

486. Speaking Ephemera (3): Prospectus for The Dial No. 2 (1892)

The format of a prospectus often comes close to that of the book or periodical that it announces. But its size and scope can also provide an understanding of the intentions of the publisher. The prospectus for the second issue of The Dial may serve as an example, as it came in two different formats and the question is of course: why would a publisher, who has difficulty raising the money to print the magazine itself, bother to print two different prospectuses?

Prospectus for The Dial (1892): two copies: page [1]

The larger of the two sizes measures 29.3 cm by 18.7 cm - the periodical itself is slightly larger: 36,1 x 29,0 mm. The smaller size prospectus (approximately half the size) is 20,6 x 18,7 cm. Both are printed on the same machine-made paper, the larger one having vertical, the smaller one horizontal chain lines. (The paper of The Dial is heavier.) The texts and illustrations in both prospectuses are completely identical.

There are four pages: (1) announcement; (2) quotations from reviews of number 1 (1889), and the contents of No. 1 and No. 2; (3) a note on the woodcuts and lithographs ('not photographic reproductions'); and (4) advertisement of portfolios and books. 

Prospectus for The Dial (1892): two copies: page [2]-[3]

The inner pages of the prospectuses do show a difference: the inner margins (gutter) of page 2 and 3 measures 64 mm in the larger size prospectus, while the smaller size has an inner margin of 39 mm.

Prospectus for The Dial (1892): inner margins of two copies: page [2]-[3]

After printing the large sized prospectuses, the standing type was reimposed for a second print run in a smaller format. The forms have been made up with a lesser amount of furniture between the type-pages. 

Why?

It is obvious that cost was the most important factor. The smaller prospectuses cost only half as much paper; the shipping costs (envelopes and postage) would also be lower. Aesthetically, Ricketts will have preferred the more luxurious format; but since production of the second instalment of The Dial had already been delayed due to lack of money - Henry James Riley and Thomas Sturge Moore had to help financially - he will have quickly resigned himself to saving paper costs.

Probably, the smaller prospectus has the largest print run, but as both pieces of ephemera are extremely rare, it is difficult to determine.

485. The Smoker

Both Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon were heavy smokers and their friends also enjoyed smoking a cigarette. Oscar Wilde, for example, was a chain smoker.  

In 1896, Shannon made a lithograph called 'Le Fumeur' (The Smoker), a portrait of their friend the artist Reginald Savage. We see dark areas that may represent smoke, but their origins are unclear.

Charles Shannon, 'Le Fumeur' (1896)
[British Museum. Creative Commons License]

We do not know exactly what Shannon smoked, but around 1920, his tobacco stock may have included cigarettes of the De Reszke brand. This is what we learn from a 1920 advertisement in The Tatler in which he promotes the brand.

From The Tatler, 17 November 1920

In he 1880s Jacob Millhoff (1860?-1925) arrived in London to establish a cigarette company that allegedly produced a brand of tobacco that would not damage a singer's voice, not even that of the famous Polish opera singer Jean de Reszke (1850-1925), after whom Millhoff was allowed to name his brand. The "Reszke" was advertised as "The Aristocrat of Cigarettes".

Drawing by Reginald Edward Higgins
(The Tatler, 17 November 1920)

In 1920, the cigarette manufacturer developed a campaign published in luxury magazines such as The Tatler and Vogue. Published as a series called "A Man's Year", every month a new advertisement appeared with a specially made drawing of the artist Reginald Edward Higgins (1877-1933). The first episode appeared in February 1920. Below the image were recommendations from celebrities such as the painter Augustus John. Each time a place was shown where the cigarette was indispensable: "Henley", "The Highland", "The R.A." (The Royal Academy) "The Ritz", and finally "At Home". That tenth episode (November 1920) contained a recommendation by Charles Shannon A.R.A.

Shannon wrote:

I find 'De Reszke' Cigarettes excellent in every way. One could not wish for a better cigarette.

Anyone could have made the same point - Augustus John practically used the same words - so the question is whether Shannon really wrote this, or whether he wrote it as a thank-you note after receiving a free carton of cigarettes? And why did not his answer embellish the advertisement with the Royal Academy image?

[Thanks are due to John Aplin, who alerted me to the advertisement in The Tatler.]

484. Speaking Ephemera (2): Prospectus for Fair Rosamund: addendum

Last week's blog - Speaking Ephemera (1) - discussed the prospectus and order form for the Vale Press edition of Fair Rosamund by Michael Field, and while I was writing it I made a note of two matters that also needed to be discussed. (1) Who wrote those comments on this copy of the prospectus and (2) what is the everyday name of the publisher?

Who wrote the notes on prospectuses in 1896?

Handwritten note on a copy of the prospectus for Michael Field's Fair Rosamund (1896)

The first manager of the publishing house and of the shop they opened was Edward Le Breton Martin (Le Breton was his mother's maiden name). Born in Evesham in October 1873, he moved to London around 1894, and lived in Kensington, at 57, Longridge Road, trying to establish a career as a writer or journalist. His stories were published in Sylvia's Home Journal (August 1894) and Pearson's Magazine (from June 1896 onwards). His tenure at The Vale Press lasted until the summer when he went to work for a newspaper. Later, he lived in Richmond, published a few books, did talks on dialects, tobacco and literature for the radio in the 1920s, and died from an accident in 1944.

The manuscript note in red ink on the prospectus for Fair Rosamund is probably not Martin's. When Charles Holmes took over the position of manager, he met 'Macgregor, the pleasant efficient office-boy'. Apart from his surname, nothing is known about him. However, because the handwriting does not resemble Holmes's, it is most likely Macgregor who wrote it.

The name of the press

The prospectus from the summer of 1896 does not mention the name 'Vale Press'. The publishing house was officially called Hacon & Ricketts. The heading says:

THE VALE PUBLICATIONS | ISSUED FROM THE SIGN OF | THE DIAL BY HACON & RICK- | ETTS, 52, WARWICK STREET, REGENT STREET, W.

Prospectus for Michael Field's Fair Rosamund (1896)

That is quite a mouthful and three elements can be distinguished: the name of the publications, the name of the shop and the name of the publisher. 'The Vale Publications' - this is how the individual books were usually announced. At the Sign of the Dial: this is the address where the books could be viewed, purchased and from where they were sent to buyers. The publisher's official name was Hacon & Ricketts, after the founders of the company Llewellyn Hacon and Charles Ricketts.

The name 'Vale Press' is not mentioned at all, not even as a printer, because the books were printed under the direction of Ricketts at the Ballantyne Press.

This is why that particular note on a copy of the Fair Rosamund prospectus is so intriguing: it talks about the 'books issued from The Vale Press', indicating that 'The Vale Press' was its everyday name. But this name is not used in the prospectuses, catalogues, advertisements or colophons. 

It was a name for internal and intimate use, a name that linked it to the original address of Ricketts and Shannon in The Vale. As an address, 'The Vale' had been printed in books and prospectuses from the beginning, most conspicuously on the spine of Daphnis and Chloe (1893). The prospectus for this book mentions the address 'The Vale Chelsea SW', and the publisher 'C.H. Shannon'; on page one the announcement of the book is preceded by two - unexplained - initials 'V. P.' - their significance is not disclosed. Vale Press? Vale Publication?

This book, and the following one, were distributed by Elkin Mathews and John Lane.

Hero and Leander (1894) bears the initials VP on the spine, and, at the back of the book, a publisher's device of a rose, the initials VP and SR for Shannon and Ricketts. Again, VP goes without explanation. An early prospectus only mentions 'The Vale', the later four-page prospectus mentions: 'The Vale Publications'.

When Hacon & Ricketts went into business, so it seems, the name Vale Publications was the preferred name. The very first 'Notice' only reported the name of the shop 'at the sign of the Dial' and the lists that followed mentioned 'Messrs. Hacon and Ricketts' or variants thereof.

Prospectus for The Dial No. 2 (1892)

However, there is one very early exception that may indicate the dual meaning of VP - Vale Publication and Vale Press. This is the prospectus for the second number of The Dial in 1892. Again, the first page mentions the address 'The Vale Chelsea', but the advertisement on the last page announces four portfolios, and here we see the name 'Vale Press' for the first time. This prospectus was issued (probably) in January 1892.

Prospectus for The Dial No. 2 (1892)

In 1896, William Morris died, and the Kelmscott Press neared its closure. Perhaps, in conjunction with this event, the name Vale Press came the preferred name, not in official announcements, but in the press. In December 1896, Temple Scott published his essay 'Mr. Charles Ricketts and the Vale Press' in Bookselling. This interview with Charles Ricketts was followed by a bibliography of the 'Vale Press'. However, Ricketts did not mention the name 'Vale Press' in the published account of his interview (See a reprint of the interview in Everything for Art: Selected Writings, edited by Nicholas Frankel, 2014, pp. 333-341.)

Speaking of the publications, however, that name must always have been quoted, because early reviews in the newspapers also mention the Vale Press while the prospectuses did not. Even before the interview was published, an announcement of the first books in Bradley, His Book (November 1896) wrote about 'The Vale Press', and later reviews also mentioned the name Vale Press (for example The Athenaeum, 23 July 1898) that contained a review of: 'The Sacred Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist. (Vale Press.)'. Again, the book does not contain these words. 

Manuscript notes like the one on the Fair Rosamund prospectus may have helped to popularize the name Vale Press as a publisher comparable to the popular Kelmscott Press.

The name discrepancy persisted until the end. Ricketts's bibliography is officially called (title page and colophon): A Bibliography of the Books Issued by Hacon & Ricketts, but the labels on the spine and front cover read: Bibliography of the Vale Press, and in the text he alternately mentions Hacon & Ricketts, the Vale Press, Vale books. However, the early variant 'Vale Publications' had completely disappeared from his vocabulary.

483. Speaking Ephemera (1): Prospectus for Fair Rosamund

In his book British Private Press Prospectuses 1891-2001 David Butcher writes about the relevance of such ephemeral publications as prospectuses and publishers' lists. One of the aspects that he omits to mention is that prospectuses, for example from the Kelmscott and Vale Presses, contain information that cannot be found in the books themselves - in these cases, for example, the number of copies printed (see my essay 'A Number of Books' in Quaerendo).

Another neglected topic concerns the frequent occurrence of handwritten notes on the printed prospectuses, written in some cases by the publisher, and in others by dealers or collectors.

Prospectus/Order Form for Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897)

The annotations on prospectuses of the Vale Press are of particular significance because no archive of the press has been preserved. Sometimes they give an insight into the publishers' views on a new publication, as is the case with Michael Fields play Fair Rosamund. The authors received a copy in April 1897.

At least one copy of the prospectus contains a note in red ink at the bottom of the sheet:

This will be the last book issued from the Vale Press this Season; it is perhaps the most richly decorated book that Mr. Ricketts has hitherto designed.

Prospectus/Order Form for Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897)
[Private Collection]

Indeed, this edition was followed by a summer break and the following book, Vaughan's Sacred Poems was published in September 1897.

The second remark is more difficult to interpret: what does the publisher mean by the remark about 'the most richly decorated book'?

The decorations in this book comprise:

1. A patterned paper for the binding: buff-coloured paper, with a repetitive design of a rose and of a crowned dove pierced by an arrow, all printed in green [see blog #33 Patterned Papers (d: Bird, Arrow and Rose)];

2. Three initial letters (in two sizes);

3. An engraved border of rose branches, leaves, flowers, and rosehips (used twice); 

3. Paragraph marks, and printer's flowers (to a total of 362);

4. A colophon printed in the form of a rose;

5. Red ink (initials, stage directions, part of a line [p. iii] a selection of ornaments, part of the colophon). 

Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897): colophon

Most of the decorations can be found in the nine previous Vale Press books. Patterned papers had been designed for the Suckling and Drayton editions. Borders and initial letters had decorated most of these books, including borders printed in red (Landor, Arnold) and a colophon printed in red (Arnold). The editions of the poems of Suckling and Campion both contained far more initials than the Michael Field play. Some books included frontispieces (the Field book did not) - what made this book the most decorated book so far?

Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897): stage direction

The answer lies not so much in the decorations themselves, although the number of ornaments is immense and many times larger than in the earlier books. Nor does it lie so much with the new element, the stage directions that are printed in red. Nevertheless, the occurrence of red in this book is quite generous. 

Another invention was the shape of the colophon that was adapted to the theme that ran through the book: the rose. Ricketts had not previously made this kind of adjustment to the subject. Later, in another book, he would give a colophon the shape of a cross.

For the answer we have to go back to the beginning of the book. On page iii, in the prologue, Ricketts also printed two words in red in the text - and this is an exceptional intervention for this  designer. These words - Rosa Mundi - refer to the name of the main character, Fair Rosamund, and became the leitmotif for Ricketts's design: the rose. The rose is depicted on the patterned paper for the binding, in the borders for Act I and Act II, in the shape of the colophon, and in the exuberant red that jumps out throughout the book.

Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897): page [iii]

Why did Ricketts think this was his most decorated book? Undoubtedly, by constantly referring to the 'rose', meanwhile adhering to his strict designer's principles about the book as 'unit', he felt that this book was truly, and visibly so, designed as a whole. A 'Gesamtkunstwerk'.

482. A Birthday Gift from Charles Shannon & A Further Present (2)

This blog is a continuation of last week's contribution, and, again written by John Aplin.

Charles Ricketts, binding for Gordon Bottomley's
Poems of Thirty Years (1925)

A Further Present

Quite aside from generating the unexpected and much treasured birthday gift, 1924 also brought together the materials for an important retrospective collection of Bottomley’s poetry, a medium which by this time he had largely abandoned in favour of plays. It also saw a culminating moment in his relationship with both Ricketts and Shannon, for Poems of Thirty Years was the last of his books for which Ricketts designed a cover, whilst also including as a frontispiece a drawing by Shannon of the author specially undertaken in August 1924. 

Although intended for publication in 1924, the book was delayed until the beginning of 1925 because of the time taken by Emery Walker to prepare the photographic reproduction of Shannon's drawing. As Bottomley told his friends, Robert and Elisabeth Trevelyan (to whom he dedicated the volume), 'The book has been held up and has missed the Christmas market because nice old Emery Walker has been taking his dear delightful time over engraving Shannon's portrait (which was, however, worth waiting for); so the book cannot be out until the end of the Winter, and I half killed myself over the proofs for nothing' (12 December 1924, British Library Add MS 88957/1/90).

Charles Shannon, portrait of Gordon Bottomley (drawing),
frontispiece in Gordon Bottomley, Poems of Thirty Years (1925)

It is characteristic of Bottomley's close friendship with the two artists that both refused payment for their work (as Ricketts had similarly made a gift of the covers for each of the three previous volumes he had designed for him). Nonetheless, Shannon had at first been reluctant to undertake the job, simply because he had lost confidence in his portrait skills. But having finally agreed to make an attempt before he and Ricketts set out for a trip to Italy, resulting in Bottomley hurrying down for an overnight stay in London to sit for him, Shannon concluded that the experiment had paid off.

TOWNSHEND HOUSE, | ALBERT ROAD, | REGENTS PARK, N.W.8.
Sep. 11 1924.

My dear Bottomley,
Thanks for your kind letter. I wont hear of your paying anything for the drawing. I enjoyed doing it and it was excellent practice for me. It means that I shall take up portrait drawings again now that I have broken the Ice. The net result it that I have had an excellent model with nothing to pay. […] Excuse this hasty note written late at night & feeling very sleepy. Remember me very kindly to your wife. I hope she will like the drawing. Even if she doesn't I will forgive her.
Yrs always | Charles Shannon 

(Shannon to Bottomley, 11 September 1924. British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.)

Two days later Shannon reinforced his pleasure in having undertaken the challenge. 

The drawing is finished mounted & framed. I will send it up by the good Nicholls tomorrow to Constables. […] I think perhaps the lines I have added to the mount might be too heavy for the reproduction so I will leave it to the photographer to do the best he can. It would also mean further reduction to get properly into your page & this might be a disadvantage. I do hope it will be successful. The pink paper ought not to matter. The collotype maker will require the drawing for reference then the firm can despatch it to you. The whole affair has been a great pleasure to me & made me realize I can still do drawings from the head even after years.

(Shannon to Bottomley, 13 September 1924. British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.)

That he had seriously doubted his own competence is once again reinforced when he wrote to Emily Bottomley three months later, shortly before the book was finally about to be published. 

It was most kind of you to send me that very appreciative letter regarding your husband's portrait. I am very glad indeed that you both like it. It makes me feel quite young again for I really doubted my ability to do a decent drawing again after all these years. 

(Shannon to Emily Bottomley, 14 December 1924, British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.)

And yet, perhaps his own initial reservations were not entirely misplaced, because a number of Bottomley's friends had some reservations about Shannon's representation, and wondered whether he had quite captured the personality of the man whom they knew. One of Bottomley's more recent acquaintances, Walford Graham Robertson, admired the drawing 'as a Shannon but it isn't my you. […] That is, in a way, rather nice, because perhaps my you is my private property. Shannon's you gives me a general impression of nose. In my you the eyes have it – and the brow, & the way that the nose joins on between the eyes.' (12 January 1925, British Library Add MS 88957/1/77.) 

William Rothenstein, portrait of Gordon Bottomley,
published in William Rothenstein, Twenty-Four Portraits. Second Series (1923)

Lady Alix Egerton had similar reservations: 'Has the hand of Shannon lost its cunning, or his eye that he should so cut off the back of your head, to match his own. Can he be pleased with it himself? Are you? Is E[mily]?' (12 February 1925, British Library Add MS 88957/1/43). And J.A. Fuller-Maitland, the former music critic of The Times observed that 'I love your dear face as Shannon sees it, though the eyes are not nearly good enough' (22 February 1925, British Library Add MS 88957/1/49). However, Bottomley himself was entirely satisfied, or at least claimed that he was. 'I don’t agree with you about the portrait' (he wrote to Joan Fletcher, the wife of his oldest friend, Ben Fletcher, head of the Birmingham School of Art), 'for there seems a sensitive veracity about it to us which was probably a more fundamental thing to go for than the picturesqueness which your dear friendly innocent heart desired' (17 February 1925, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle).

It would not be the first time, nor the last, that Bottomley's overwhelming admiration for both Ricketts and Shannon occasionally distorted the objectivity and clear judgment which he usually brought to bear on new work, whether by artists or his fellow writers. But in the case of his two idols he would become hyper-sensitive to criticisms about their work – perhaps more so than he ever was to judgments about his own – a sign, no doubt, of an admiration close to hero-worship.

The last word can be left to Shannon himself, who wrote in thanks for a copy of the published book, in his own way as happy as Bottomley himself that the three friends could be united in a single work.

  

TOWNSHEND HOUSE, | ALBERT ROAD, | REGENTS PARK, N.W.8.
March 26 1925

My dear Bottomley,
I think I should have behaved better if I had not been so busy trying to finish a picture of Bacchus but now that I have put it on one side as impossible to complete in time I feel quite happy. I like your book of poems very much indeed & enjoyed reading over again old favourites. Ricketts will have written to you fully on the subject and he speaks with authority on these matters as he does on all others relating to the Arts. It makes a splendid book & I am very pleased to be associated with it indirectly. Any poet might be proud of it for a life's work but I also know that you have a lot more besides of the same quality ready to follow on. Ricketts' binding I think one of the best he has done and I believe he thinks so too. […] 

(British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.)

Acknowledgements 
Extracts from correspondence are used with thanks to Scirard Lancelyn Green, literary executor for Gordon Bottomley, and to Leone Sturge-Moore and Charmian O’Neil, joint literary executors for Charles Shannon.

                                                                                                        John Aplin

481. A Birthday Gift from Charles Shannon & A Further Present (1)

This blog about a birthday present from Charles Shannon to Gordon Bottomley contains unpublished letters from both of them, and is contributed to 'Charles Ricketts & Charles Shannon' by John Aplin (see also his earlier blogs no. 450 and No. 476).

A Birthday Gift from Charles Shannon

Gordon Bottomley (1874-1948), the Yorkshire-born poet who led attempts to revive English poetic drama in the first half of the twentieth century, considered that one of the greatest privileges of his life was to gain the friendship of both Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts. He was familiar with their work well before they first met, partly through reproductions in magazines and periodicals, and also through The Pageant and The Dial, back numbers of which he hunted down and bought when he could afford them. 

Their auspicious first meeting occurred in June 1904, when Bottomley's always delicate health held up sufficiently for him to spend several weeks on a visit to London. His third collection of poetry, The Gate of Smaragdus (1904) had recently appeared. It was one of the last books taken on by Ernest Oldmeadow's ill-fated Unicorn Press, which ran into financial difficulties, whereupon Bottomley persuaded Elkin Mathews to act as his publisher, their bookplate being added to copies to supersede the printed 'at the sign of the Unicorn' title page.

Gordon Bottomley, The Gate of Smaragdus (1904)

Gordon Bottomley, The Gate of Smaragdus (1904)

Bottomley had inscribed and sent a copy of The Gate of Smaragdus to Ricketts and Shannon (two of his poems being inspired by Shannon's 'The White Watch' lithograph), as he would recall in an unpublished autobiographical chronology which he wrote towards the end of his life.

I had sent out sundry copies for my own personal reasons, and the first of these was to Ricketts, as in confession of a debt, and his friend Shannon on account of several of the poems being in celebration of one of his designs. Perhaps the actual inscription was to Shannon; but a repercussion to Ricketts was hoped for equally. An invitation to visit them followed, and the chief significance to me of that Spring in London lay in an afternoon and another evening spent in their treasure-house in the top flat of a tall block of studios opposite the side entrance to Holland Park Tube Station. Those who frequented it most called it the Palace. For nearly twenty years it was the first place to which my thoughts turned whenever there was any question of London – and my feet whenever I arrived in London: and there I found more understanding talk and wisdom about the study and practice of the arts than anywhere else throughout my life.
On that June afternoon [in 1907] a short, delicately made man answered the door-bell. I asked for Shannon: he replied 'I am sorry he is out – and I am about to join him: can I tell him your name?' When I gave it he flashed on me a look of kindly amusement and said 'Do come in. Your book interested us. I'm Ricketts.' For an hour and a half I listened to more brilliant talk than I had ever heard before, talk about poets, painters, music. He said suddenly 'Look at the time: I must go, Shannon will be annoyed. You must come again. You should be more in London, now you can do it: you have been too much alone. Let me go down with you.'
Friday was their evening for friends: when I attended on the Friday of a few weeks later I was quickly followed by Yeats and Florence Farr, the actress who was helping him in his experiments with the speaking of verse. Presently we discovered that all of us had been present that afternoon at what we supposed was to be the only performance of Maeterlinck's 'Pelléas et Melisande' by Sarah Bernhardt and Mrs Patrick Campbell – I standing in the pit, Yeats and his friend in the gallery, the others elsewhere. The occasion was memorable, but out of all the eager talk about it I can only remember Yeats saying 'An old woman has had to play Pelléas before I knew what a child he was.' The old woman was a revelation to me: that was the only time I ever heard her, and I still feel she was supreme over all I have known in the theatre: the golden voice was that of youth while she was Pelléas; her diction was better than music; her movements were more than beautiful, they were beauty itself.

[British Library Add MS 88957/3/1.]

For Bottomley, this was a transformative encounter, resulting in a correspondence which endured until Ricketts's death in 1931, by which time, of course, Shannon had already sustained the incapacitating injury which ended all opportunities for further letter-writing.

Over the years, Bottomley and his wife Emily would accumulate a discriminating art collection, in which works by the two men featured strongly. After their deaths, with the exception of just one or two paintings, the entire collection was presented to Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle. One of Shannon's paintings came to Bottomley by chance, as a surprise gift from the artist himself. In 1924, Bottomley reached the age of 50, and happened to receive a letter from Shannon on his birthday, 20 February, Shannon being unaware of the significance of the date. With the letter came a copy of the recently printed volume by Eric B. George, Charles Shannon (London: Ernest Benn, 1924), a volume in the Contemporary British Artists series, which included thirty-five illustrations as well as a short introductory essay on Shannon's work. Bottomley was delighted not only with the book, but by its chance arrival on his birthday.

THE SHEILING, | SILVERDALE, | CARNFORTH.
22nd. February 1924.

My dear Shannon,
You did not know you were sending me a present on my fiftieth birthday, did you? But you were, and there wasn't anything on that day that made me as happy as your book did: I had been disliking the idea of being fifty, and not finding any compensatory advantages in it, and it was so comforting and happyfying to forget all about it in this new and satisfying-as-ever purview of your work – and in the recollection of all the passion and ardour and vivid enhancement of life that you had stirred in me by these emanations of you in the thirty years that have gone since I put boyhood behind me.

I was happy too in the thought that you who have done them all are my friend and that you care about my play [Gruach] and have praised it. And it is splendid to have such an array of your fine things all in one cover: I cursed at intervals throughout the day because my adored Music Room, and the touchingly beautiful portrait of old Mrs. Dowdall aren't there – but I couldn't curse too much, for I was so grateful to find the Black Shirt and the Inverness Coat, which I had long wanted to have; and also the Golden Age, the Education of Bacchus, the Winter Night, the lovely lovely Vintage (which I didn’t know as a picture), the Incoming Tide, the Pursuit (which I brought away in my eyes from my last visit to you) and the drawings.

I am dejected you didn't write my name in the book: but I can ask you to do it when I come, can't I?

I like the man's eulogy: he says some of the right things. But he doesn't put in enough facts about the splendours and treasures you have made. […]
Your grateful and affectionate Gordon Bottomley. 

[British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.]

The triggered from Shannon a gesture of exceptional generosity.

TOWNSHEND HOUSE, | ALBERT ROAD, | REGENTS PARK, N.W.8.
March 17. 1924

My dear Bottomley
I was very much touched by your cry from the heart concerning the absence of the 'Music Room' or 'The Three Sisters' [this is the picture's alternative title] whichever you wish. I do hope when it arrives it will not disappoint you. It is now well on its way as a fiftieth birthday present. I know you will care for it and get it a piece of glass. I removed the glass as I thought it too dangerous for travelling. It has been out of view for years & it will greatly like to be cherished & taken into favour again. All pictures love admiration. It acts better than any varnish. It may look dark at first but so does twilight till you get accustomed to it & twilight is the subject of it.

With kindest regards & fifty more returns of the day, which I am sure you will see if you desire it. […]
Believe me

Yrs always

Charles Shannon. 

Ricketts has about finished St Joan. I hope it may last long enough for you to see. I think his part will be very good, perhaps he hasn't told you he is doing the Shaw play for London.

[British Library Add MS 88957/1/82]

Charles Shannon, 'The Music Room' (1904)
[Collection Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle]

Of course, Bottomley was overwhelmed by the gift, but certainly not at a loss for words.

THE SHEILING, | SILVERDALE, | CARNFORTH.
22nd. March 1924.

My dear Shannon,
Your card and your superb generosity left me wordless: such delight of astonishment cannot come to anyone often in a life-time, nor such a noble sympathy in a gift. I have always cherished the "Music Room" in my heart and been faithful to it; but I thought some millionaire had it long ago and it was lost to me for ever, and I am so grateful to the millionaires for not taking it and to you for keeping it out of their sight.

You know I love it and shall always cherish it and care for it: and you know I thank you with my whole being and with all the power I have for caring for beauty and the works of beauty. You have reconciled me to being fifty, which I had been finding unbearable. And Thank You also for wishing me fifty more birthdays: I should like to have them […] I should like to be 1742, for when I reached 1664 my plays would really begin to be pretty good. Up to now words do not serve me well enough: and to-day they will not serve me at all, when I want to tell you how proud I am that you have thought of me in this way, and how much more it means to me than public recognition and success to be so counted among your friends. I can only say I am grateful.
[…]
I had been hoping to tell you of the picture's safe arrival in this letter; but Carnforth is a tiresome place, and the railway people here are dilatory. It may come through during the week-end; but if you don't hear from me as to its turning up in a day or two, I shall beg you to send me particulars of how it was sent so that I can stir somebody at Carnforth. But I will not worry you or myself immediately, for if you despatched it by goods train it will not arrive quickly.

Your card brought so many things to my mind – the day we first saw it at Van Wisselingh's with the "Sea-Nymph" and Ricketts'[s] "Tobit" and "Vineyard" and a Legros woodland; and my hopelessness as I asked Van Wisselingh how much it was, and my greater hopelessness when he told me.

And then a day next year, and one of the first times of my going to the Palace. You were out with a bicycle, and when I arrived I found Ricketts with Hugh Lane and his sister. During tea Hugh Lane said "When is Shannon going to paint another picture as fine as The Bath of Venus?" Now I had never heard of Hugh Lane before, and didn't know who he was or that he had organised the exhibition of Irish Art at the Guildhall that Spring: so I jumped in with both feet and said in a rush and with nice youthful excitement "O, but he has! It is called 'The Music Room', and it is an exquisite masterpiece and quite as fine as the other one: it is at The Guildhall just now, but stupidly hung so that its delicacy can’t be properly seen; but you ought to go and see it." Then Hugh Lane talked of something else until tea was over; and then Ricketts took us to see the Tanagras in the satinwood cabinet, after which Hugh Lane and his sister went away. And then you came in, and Ricketts said "Lane has been saying foolish things about you; but Bottomley put him right and spoke very properly about the infamous way he has hung 'The Music Room' at the Guildhall."

And among my dismay I began to take comfort in the idea that perhaps my feet weren't in it after all.

So the dear picture always was a little mine in my heart and the nature of things, wasn't it?

P.S. I met Lane again a day or two afterward at The Guildhall: but he did not remember me.

I am so happy you approve of glass on pictures; for I am always uncomfortable for their surfaces to be bare. We will see to it at once when the picture arrives.

And we agree enthusiastically that pictures love admiration. It does help them to look their best, and they mellow under it.

I can't tell whether to be glad or not that Ricketts is doing Shaw's play or not. On the whole I think I'm happy about it, for I wanted to see a medieval play done by Ricketts; but I am jealous too. One of my griefs always is that I have never seen any of Ricketts'[s] stage-work – and it is for me as much as for anybody in the world: but I WILL see "St. Joan" unless I am paralysed. Believe me your affectionate and grateful

Gordon Bottomley.

[British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.]

A few days later, he was able to announce the safe arrival of the painting.

The Sheiling Silverdale nr. Carnforth.
27th. March 1924.

O My Dear Shannon,
It is quite true. All you wrote to me really has happened, in spite of the initial improbability of anybody in this world having such good fortune as mine. I rejoice to tell you that It has arrived safely: It came yesterday afternoon, and I prowled round and round It until I fell into bed quite spent.

It is just as heavenly fair as it always was: It felt a little disconsolate at the indignities of the journey, but a change passed through it soon after it was disentangled from the packing case, and it had not been long in the dark wainscoted warm room before it began to revive visibly. It was glowing and looking content and at home before bed-time, and I really believe It is going to be happy and even radiant here. I believe It will feel still more comfortable and entirely at ease as soon as It gets Its glass.

The first impression of twenty one years ago has always remained with me – strengthened perhaps by the photograph and half-tones – of something silvery grey. But here among brown wood It looks warm and rich and luscious and fundamentally made of colour – as if the years had mellowed and ripened It. And always it goes straight to my heart as it did at first, and I don't think anything is ever going to make me happier than the still almost incredible delight of living with it and having it with me as long as I am conscious of this world and its loveliness.

We shall want you to see it here someday.

Believe me your affectionate and grateful

G.B. 

[British Library Add MS 88957/1/82.]

Gordon and Emily Bottomley took an intense on-going pleasure in the many art works carefully chosen and hung in their Silverdale house, which visitors rightly regarded as their simple shrine to beauty. The special circumstances of acquisition relating to each work contributed to the almost tangible sense of wholesome contentment which came from being in the presence of beautiful things. One of the last things Bottomley undertook before his death in 1948 was a hand-written descriptive catalogue of the works hanging on the walls of the The Sheiling (now at Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle), and the page devoted to 'The Music Room', which hung in his drawing room, gives an important account of the painting’s provenance, Bottomley’s first encounter with it, and evidence of his remarkably accurate visual memory.

Gordon Bottomley,

'An Account of Paintings and some other works of art, at The Sheiling, Silverdale, Carnforth,

in the possession of Emily and Gordon Bottomley: as at the New Year, 1947'

[Collection Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle]

Gift of the Artist
The Music Room.
Oil-painting: C.H. Shannon R.A. (1902-3.)

Van Wisselingh’s Gallery: 1903. (Brook Street: Hanover Square.)
The final, definitive version of this subject.

This was the first picture I set eyes on, the first morning I was ever in London (aet. 29.). It hung in the centre of the main wall of the far room. In the centre was Whistler's half-length portrait of a school-girl holding a violin. On the right, balancing in size and tone C.H. Shannon's The Fisherman and The Mermaid (which went into the Pickford Waller collection.)

The present picture was afterward so much exhibited on the Continent that the frame was worn out, and the picture laid aside. Shannon knew of my early admiration of the picture, and presented it to me on my fiftieth birthday. G.B.

He afterward painted a small replica in oils, in full colour, about the size of our pastel, to be given to Mrs. Patrick Campbell when she was sitting to him for her round portrait, standing by a piano. When Shannon told me this, he added "But she misbehaved"…

On the previous page of this catalogue, Bottomley provides a description of 'our pastel', another version of 'The Music Room', which also came from Shannon.

The Music Room.
C.H. Shannon R.A: Pastel.

The First treatment in colour of the lithograph design called The Sisters: and evidently the basis of the large and important oil version of this subject on this wall also. Note: the mouse in the lithograph disappears in both the later designs.

                                                                                            John Aplin

[To be continued.]

480. Inspired by Dürer?

Last week's blog about An Emblem for Borgia discussed the image Ricketts designed for Michael Field's play Borgia (1905). What I did not touch upon was the iconographic inspiration for this emblem. Not that we know any details about direct examples for this image. The peculiar symbol of Fortuna as a winged wheel rolling downhill, only slightly held back by a hand, allows comparison with woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer.

Charles Ricketts, emblem for Borgia (1905)

Ricketts's drawing from 1905 consists of four elements: a sphere, a wing, a hand and a slope. Of all the famous depictions of the instability of destiny, those of Dürer are perhaps best suited to be juxtaposed with those of Ricketts.

Albrecht Dürer, 'Nemesis' (1501-1502)
[Metropolitan Museum, New York]

'Nemesis' is a good starting point for comparison. It shows the female figure of Fortuna above a landscape. Two elements from Rickets's drawing are the outspread wings attached to her back, and the sphere under her feet. This print, known as 'The Great Fortune', has a predecessor, which is called 'Fortuna (The Little Fortune)' and dates from 1495-1496. 

Albrecht Dürer, 'Fortuna' (1495-1496): detail
[Metropolitan Museum, New York]

A detail of this shows the sphere with both feet balancing on top of it. The way in which one foot is draped over the sphere is reminiscent of the hand on Ricketts's drawing. The shadow (on the left side of the sphere) suggests movement, although drawn in a completely different way than in Ricketts's drawing.

Albrecht Dürer, 'The Wheel of Fortune' (detail),
in Sebastian Brant, Das Narrenschiff (1494)

An example of a hand drawn by Dürer can be found in his illustration of the wheel of fortune in Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschiff (1494). I would not suggest that Ricketts relied on his memories of Dürer's prints for this 1905 emblem, but the eclectic artist clearly worked in a long tradition for which he held the highest regard.