631. Richard Le Galienne Remembers The Vale Press

The Romantic '90s by Richard Le Galienne is one of those memoirs that contains details whose reliability cannot be established. The book was published in 1926 by G.P. Putnam's Sons. By then, Le Gallienne, lived in the United States, and the 1890s were 25 years in the past.

Frederick Hollyer, portrait of Richard Le Galienne, c. 1890
[Collection V&A, London]

Le Gallienne, born in Liverpool in 1866, was the same age as Ricketts, whom he mentioned twice in his recollections, the second time as the designer of Lord de Tabley's 1893 collection of poems and the first time as the publisher of the Vale Press. It is that first passage that intrigues me.

Le Gallienne was the chief reader of The Bodley Head, and said that John Lane

was the first to apply to general publishing the new ideals in printing and binding that were already in the air, and which, before William Morris had started his Kelmscott Press, had found expression in such beautiful esoteric magazines as the Century Guild Hobby Horse, edited by Herbert P. Horne, Arthur Macmurdo and Selwyn Image, and the Dial, published under the joint editorship of Charles Ricketts and Charles H. Shannon, who were presently to start the Vale Press, one of the  earliest of those "private presses" that were just then coming into fashion, and the most influential of them all.

That last sentence is already intriguing. I know this holds true for the Netherlands: it was only after Morris's death that his influence in the Netherlands became greater than that of Ricketts and Shannon, who actually captured the imagination of the youngest generation of artists in the early 1890s. In Britain, by contrast, the influence of the Vale Press was initially very slight, and the works of the pre-Vale period were also often ridiculed.

Lane had the advantage of the coöperation of Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon in several of his early volumes [...]. There was a delightful aura of mystery about these early private presses, particularly about the Vale Press. Had Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon been alchemists, their operations could not have been veiled in a more thrilling secrecy, or the results awaited with more hushed expectancy; and specimen pages of any new book on which they were cloistrally engaged were shown privately by Lane to a favoured few as things sacrosanct, and occultly precious, with that reverent solemnity  which characterizes the true collector. The times were serous about Beauty.

I have to assume that the chronology is quite mixed up here.

The first book of the Vale Press dates from 1896 and Shannon did not collaborate on it. By that time, Ricketts was using Hacon & Ricketts as his business name, he employed staff to sell and ship the books and specimen pages really did not go to John Lane. They did, of course, for the period before that, when Lane was the publisher of books designed by Ricketts and Shannon, mainly for Oscar Wilde, but also for other authors such as Thomas Hardy.

So the facts do not add up, but intriguingly, the atmosphere of secrecy and popularity with which Ricketts's and Shannon's earlier editions were apparently surrounded remained distinctive, at least it was so memorialised a quarter of a century later. Over twenty-five years, facts had turned into myths.

630. Kathleen, Lady Kennet about Charles Shannon

Kathleen, Lady Kennet, posed for Shannon for several paintings, when she was still unmarried and known as Kathleen Bruce - see blog 628. Charles Ricketts: Statue by Kathleen Bruce (later Scott, later Lady Kennet).

Two years after her death in 1947, her second husband, Lord Kennet, published her memoirs: Self-Portrait of an Artist. From the Diaries and Memoirs of Lady Kennet, Kathleen Lady Scott (London, John Murray, 1949).

Kathleen Bruce, sitting for a portrait by Charles Shannon (1909) 

She reminisces about Charles Shannon in an account of her meeting with Captain Scott. She met Scott during a luncheon-party at Mabel Beardsley, and again, ten months afterwards, at a tea-party:

He suggested taking me home. I had not been going home; I had been going to dine in Soho with a gentle Academician, Charles Shannon, who was painting me. But without a second's hesitation I threw over my dining companion and announced myself ready to be taken home.

For ten months he was in her company, until work took him out of London.

I went back to my posing for Shannon and sat quietly hour after hour, wondering whether I could wrench myself from all my tumultuous friends and take this innocent rock as the father of my son for whom I had been searching.

"Kathleen," said Shannon, putting down his plate, "You don't love me at all to-day."

"But you've been working; you didn't want me to be chatty and interesting while you paint."

"You're not thinking about me or posing. You've got something on your mind. I know your face too well not to know that."

I smiled and was clam-like. Although this beautiful painter was thirty-eight, I was the first woman he had ever loved. I loved his work so deeply that we had become devoted friends. He painted portrait after portrait of me, and had success with them. They sold quickly for public galleries and one went to the Luxembourg. I loved sitting for him in the very exquisite surroundings of his lovely studio, and he taught me more than all the professors in Paris of design and harmony of line. There was quiet there and peace. I didn't want to ruffle that quiet content. What a lot of upheavals and severings I saw looming ahead. Yet quite clearly this healthy, fresh, decent, honest, rock-like naval officer was just exactly what I had been setting up in my mind as a contrast to my artists friends, as the thing I had been looking for. As I sat there in the quiet, temple-like studio, I made my decision.

We went out, I and the artist, to a Soho restaurant to dine. He took me home and came upstairs with me.

"Listen," I said, taking the lapels of his coat, "I'm going to marry someone."

The painter leant his back against the door.

"Whom?" he said. "Not X?"

"No, not X. You don't know him; he's not of our world at all. I'm sorry if you mind."

The gentle creature murmured, "You shouldn't be that; but I'll go home now."

And he moved hesitatingly downstairs.

Outside he walked blindly, with his head, I suppose, still swimming, and coming to the Sloane Street crossing walked straight into the traffic and under a bus. He was taken to St. George's Hospital. He was not killed, and I knew nothing about it till two days later, when it had become merely a funny little accident.

(Self-Portrait of an Artist, pp. 83-85)

Her memoirs contain a photograph of her sitting in Shannon's studio. Seated on a bench, her profile is shown in a mirror behind her; on the left are a statue and a fireplace.

629. An Unpublished Drawing for The Universal Review, 1889

Until the mid 1890s, Ricketts and Shannon out of necessity produced much work commissioned by magazines or publishers. For Harry Quilter's The Universal Review, Shannon did some drawings, and once they jointly produced the drawings for a story. This was 'Jezebel' by Julian Corbett, published in The Universal Review, vol. IV, No. 16 (August 1889).

Not all attempts led to publication and fees; some work remained in portfolio, and although Ricketts later destroyed his early work, scraps of it remained here and there. An example can be found in the collection of The British Museum. 

Charles Ricketts, design for a battle scene illustration (c.1889)
British Museum, London
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
[with permission of Leonie Sturge Moore and Charmian O'Neil]

The drawing, 19,7 x 15,2 cm, depicts a battle scene with a chariot and half-naked figures holding shields and weapons. The pen and ink drawing, touched with blue watercolour, was acquired in 1946 (museum number 1946,0209.45).

It is quite conceivable that this drawing was also made for the story 'Jezebel'. In the story, her husband and two sons are killed or injured in a religious battle, when Jezebel introduces the gods Astarté and Baal as alternatives to the Jahveh worshipped by 'fakeers' in Carmel and the mountains of Gilead. Eventually, enemy troops come to her palace to kill her.

The chariot of the assassin rolled into the court, and not one word did she deign to utter to mitigate the savage retribution of her foe. [...] Goaded to fury with her taunts, Jehu cried to the zenana eunuchs to cast her at his feet. In a moment the queen of all that was refined and gentle in her age was struggling helpless in their rough embraces.  In another she was dashed brutally into the court below.  Backwards and forwards in a frenzy of savage hate the felon captain drove his chariot across her mangled form, and then passed on to drink to the last dregs the blood of her husband's kin. (The Universal Review, vol. IV (1889) No. 16, page 563).

This is exactly the scene Ricketts has sketched: Jezebel's injured body lies in the foreground; with her right arm she fends off an assailant. It is a dramatic and violent scene, perhaps a little too much for Quilter's magazine.

The provenance of the drawing is somewhat vague, according to the British Museum's description, but it is fairly direct. The drawing was donated by Constance Rea. This was Constance Halford (1863-1952), an artist, who in 1907 had married the painter Cecil Rea. Constance was a sister of Mary Davis (born Halford), a great friend and patron of Ricketts and Shannon, as was her husband, Edmund Davis. Constance may have acquired the preliminary drawing from Ricketts, or perhaps from another friend, such as Thomas Sturge Moore.

628. Charles Ricketts: Statue by Kathleen Bruce (later Scott, later Lady Kennet)

In the first decade of twentieth century, the artist Kathleen Bruce made a statue portraying Charles Ricketts. The bronze was exhibited in 1908, and a copy was presented to the Leeds Art Gallery by Lord Kennet in 1949. 

Kathleen Scott, 'Charles Ricketts' (c.1908)
Collection: Leeds Art Gallery
[Creative Commons License]

The statue measures 32.5 x 10.5 x 14.5 cm.

It is an usual artist's portrait in the sense that Ricketts is depicted sitting, arms and legs crossed, bent slightly forward. He is not portrayed as an active sculptor or painter, does not stand in front of his easel, does not make any of his characteristic gestures with his ever-active hands, does not have a cigarette in his hand or in the corner of his mouth; he looks contemplative, but also somewhat defeated. In fact, when this portrait was done, Ricketts was quite depressed. His paintings did not satisfy him, and, worse, his companion, Charles Shannon, had fallen in love, again, with a woman. In 1903, Shannon had threatened to leave Ricketts and marry his model Hetty Deacon; in 1906, Shannon was infatuated by the sculptor Kathleen (Liz) Bruce (1878-1947) .

He was almost twenty years older than the good-looking, artistic woman of the world, who had nursed villagers in the Balkans, had studied sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art and at the Atelier Colarossi in Paris between 1901 and 1906, and had been a pupil of Rodin. She produced statues of Ricketts and Shannon, Max Beerbohm, Harley Granville Barker, George Bernard Shaw, among many others (images can be found on the Art UK website).

Kathleen Scott, 'Charles Shannon' (c.1910)
Collection: Leeds Art Gallery
[Creative Commons License]

Shannon's portrait is very similar, although he holds a paper or sketchbook.

Shortly after her relation with Shannon, in 1908, she married Robert Falcon Scott, the Polar explorer who died in the Antarctic in 1912. In 1922, she married Edward Hilton Young, later Baron Kennet of the Dene (thus becoming Lady Kennet). In her 1938 book Homage forty sculptures were illustrated, the portraits of Ricketts and Shannon were not included.

627. An Unopened Copy of A House of Pomegranates

A number of years after the first private presses were established - concentrating on William Morris's Kelmscott Press and the first generation after that - a peculiar craze arose around rarity of these books. This was the fashion of the untouched book, the book as it came from the bindery to the collector who did not cut open the sections, but left them unopened, untouched and thus unread. It was a kind of tribute to the ideal book, where the object had become more important than the text. 

Copies of private press books were subsequently promoted in the trade as 'unopened' and examples are rare, but sufficiently well known. The curious thing is that less rare books also sometimes turn up in unopened condition, giving them a unique appeal.

Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891)
Cover, designed by Charles Ricketts

Last month, an unopened copy of Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates was sold by Sotheby's in New York, hammer price $4,500, a substantial price for a not uncommon book that, dependent on the state and provenance, can be priced from around £500 to £2,500.

The Sotheby copy was in an excellent state: 'Original green linen backed cream boards stamped in pale red and gilt with designs by Ricketts, including a peacock, fountain, and a basket of pomegranates, spine gilt-lettered with a few small pomegranate designs, decorated endpapers; slight browning to edges, some minor spotting to lower board. Housed in custom case and folding chemise'. Moreover, this copy was 'Unopened'.

Unopened copies of this book are rare. There is one in the Norman Colbeck Collection at The University of British Columbia. Unopened copies were sold by Sotheby's in July 1925 and Hodgsons (1926) (both acquired by Quaritch), again, 'a slightly worn' copy by Sotheby's (1979) (acquired by Warrack & Perkins, obviously not this copy). There might be three or four unopened copies in all.

Originally said to be a children's book, but marketed as a luxury item, the publishers  had a thousand copies of the book printed, each priced at 21s. 

Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates (1891)
Copies of the first binding (left) and second binding (right)

There are two binding states of the book and the Sotheby copy belongs to the original binding state. It has a pale yellowish green spine and the boards are covered with greyish yellow cloth. The second binding state has a darker greyish green spine and light brown cloth boards. The plates by Charles Shannon have been pasted on white linen guards in the first binding state copies. For the second binding states paper guards were used for this. There are some more differences, but these suffice to identify copies.

The Sotheby copy not only displays the colour scheme of the first binding state, but also shows the insertion of the plates as called for in the first binding state.

This implies that an early buyer of the book, during Wilde's life time, and even during Wilde's pre-prison years, acquired a copy of the book, kept it closed, and never used a knife to cut open the folded sections. For a book like this, it is astonishing, and then to have survived in this condition for more than a hundred years. Unopened, commercially produced books - this is an under-researched book historical branch.

626. The Legend of The Sign of the Dial

In 1894, the collaboration of Hacon & Ricketts as a firm involved not only the foundation of a publishing house, for which new typefaces were designed and created, but also a small shop to sell books, wood-engravings and lithographs of Ricketts, Shannon and their circle, and to organise exhibitions of their art and works by admired masters and predecessors. The shop at 52 Warwick Street was opened in March 1896. 

On the inside, in front of the storefront window, hung a nameplate 'HACON & | RICKETTS'. There is a photograph showing this signboard, but it is too vague to see how the name was painted and who painted it. Since Ricketts was the firm's typographer it seems obvious that he did it, but not necessarily.

Charles Shannon, details of recto of signboard for The Sign of the Dial (1896)
[Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums]

A double-sided painted signboard hung from the facade. This was the work of Charles Shannon and it also contained the name of the firm, supplemented by that of the store on the recto side, below the names was a painting of two female figures. The woman on the left is leaning with an arm on a pedestal while reading a booklet; to her right, a woman kneels, turning her face away as she raises what appears to be a sprig of spring bluebell (a symbol of hope), to the reading woman; both are within a wicker hedge against a blue background.

Charles Shannon, details of recto of signboard for The Sign of the Dial (1896)
[Aberdeen Archives, Gallery and Museums]

The verso depicts a sun dial above the image of a grazing Pegasus near a half naked woman, both against the same background of hedge and sky.

The signboard is painted in oil on panel, 85,5 x 48,8 cm, and was purchased by the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums in 1949.

The text on the signboard reads:

HACON·&

RICKETTS.

THE·SIGN of

THE·DIAL.

[The characters 'O' and 'F' are intertwined]

Within each line, words are separated by a period (placed at half height), except in the third line where the last word is a ligature of the letters O and F. Each character is drawn separately, which is clearly demonstrated in lines 3 and 4 that both begin with the word THE, but the width of these words are different. In line four, the individual letters of the word THE are connected. Each line is aligned with both margins.

The lettering is totally different from that of The Dial magazine of which Shannon drew the first cover and Ricketts that of the other four issues. Ricketts would not have respected the rigorous separation between the lines and, for example, would have allowed the tail of the character R to continue with a graceful arc in the space below.

Looking again closely at the blurred photo of the store (Bookselling, 1896), it can be seen that the lines of the other signboard are filled out differently, although it is not clear where the ampersand is. Its authorship cannot be ascertained, but it may be that this sign was put up there right at the opening and Shannon's sign was a slightly later addition.

625. Dust Jackets and Their Replacements

Dust jackets are of interest to collectors today, not only because the book is complete (less naked) with the original dust jacket, but also because they add an element of art and design to the whole. 

This is particularly true of the early books designed by Charles Ricketts. Of these, the dust jackets are extremely rare, which can drive up the price of a copy considerably. Copies of The Picture of Dorian Gray in first edition with dust jacket can fetch amazing amounts. 

Dust jackets have therefore been targets of forgers since the invention of good photocopiers. 

Facsimile dust jacket for W.B. Yeats Essays (1924)

Nowadays, there are providers of replicas that clearly state that they are replicas. Even then, the replica is not printed on paper from the time itself, offers no more than an image of the original and does not feel the same.

One such supplier started as a collector who liked to see a more complete image of the book on his shelf. Mark Terry started Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC in 1995 and built it into a company that his sister and later his son also came to work for. Is there really a business model to be based on providing such copies? Are there really that many collectors who want to fold a replica dust jacket around their copy?

Their current archive consists of 60,000 scans, and the firm provides custom made copies: 'I can resize a jacket to fit any book. All I need is the height, width, and spine width of your book.'

By the way, all jackets state 'Facsimile Dust Jackets L.L.C.' on the front flap.

The collection can be searched, but does not give results for the name of Ricketts or Shannon. However, a few (anonymous) designs by Ricketts for the collected works of W.B. Yeats can be found: the design for Essays (1924), Early Poems and Stories (1925), and The Collected Plays of W.B. Yeats (1934).

Facsimile dust jacket for The Collected Plays of W.B. Yeats  (1934)

Because Ricketts's early dust jackets are so extremely rare, they are not available through this database.

624. Charles Ricketts about Marcus Behmer

Throughout his career, the German artist Marcus Behmer (1879-1958) has been engaged with Ricketts's work. 

The Insel Verlag edition of Goethe's West-Östlicher Divan (1910) was decorated by Behmer, and its opening pages distincly refer to the borders of Vale Press publications.

Early on Behmer seems to have seen works from the Vale Press and collected them. However, most of the books were lost in a bombing raid during World War II, and few survivals from his library are known to exist.

Dorothea Werner, portrait of Marcus Behmer, dated 1947
[Creative Commons Licence 3.0]

Little remains of the correspondence between Ricketts and Behmer either. However, the most recent catalogue on his oeuvre, Peter Christian Hall's Delphine in Offenbach. Marcus Behmer, Meister der kleinen Formate, published in 2018, quotes unpublished notes by Behmer on his work.

In 1927, Behmer wrote a four-page essay about 'Charles S. Ricketts (Vale Press). Eine Auswahl seiner Werke' for the exhibition catalogue Internationale Buchkunst Ausstellung Leipzig 1927. This was followed two years later by 'Bibliophile Shakespeare-Ausgaben' in Philobiblon (October 1929) that mentions Ricketts's Shakespeare editions, and in 1935 Behmer published his essay 'Charles Ricketts' in Buchkunst. Beiträge zur Entwicklung der graphischen Künste und der Kunst im Buche. With 10 pages and 28 illustrations, this was his most substantial piece on Ricketts.

Thanks to several publications, we knew what Behmer thought of Ricketts, but now we also hear what Ricketts thought of Behmer. (Ricketts himself never published anything about Behmer's work.)

Behmer considered his illustrations for Enno Littmann's Vom morgenländischen Floh (1925) his greatest achievement, adding that Ricketts greatly appreciated it.

Die späteren Bücher mit Radierungen sind übrigens mit ungewöhnlicher Sorgfalt "aufgebaut", aber dergleichen merkt kaum irgend jemand. So z.B. der sehr schmale und hohe Satzspiegel im Flohbuch, wo der untere Papierrand sehr schmal, der äussere aber sehr breit ist, eine ganz ungewöhnliche Form bei europäischen Büchern; ist von anscheinend niemand bemerkt worden; ausser von einem Mann wie Charles Ricketts, dem feinsten, nicht fachmännisch bornierten Kenner, der gleich empfand, dass dieser Seitenaufbau dem "morgenländischen" Geschmack - dem Titel des Buches entsprechend - angepasst war. 

(Letter to Gotthard Laske, 10 March 1929, in Delphine in Offenbach, p. 253) 

Translation:

The later books with etchings are, by the way, "constructed" with unusual care, but hardly anyone notices this. For example, the very narrow and high type area in the flea book, where the lower margin is very narrow, but the outer margin is very wide (a very unusual form in European books), has apparently not been noticed by anyone; except by a man like Charles Ricketts, the finest, not narrow-minded connoisseur, who immediately felt that this page layout was adapted to the "Oriental" taste - according to the title of the book.

Behmer's copyright is apparently very confusingly settled, therefor I can't show an image on this page, but plenty of images of the flea book can be found online at sites of antiquarian booksellers - if you want to sell it you may reproduce it, if you own it you are not allowed to do so.

623. A Portrait of John Westlake

Subscription: Renewal Necessary

Subscribers to this blog receiving weekly alerts have noticed that this Mailchimp service has been discontinued. If you still would like to receive notifications, please send me an email - the address is in the column to the right of the blog posts. 

A Portrait of John Westlake

Charles Shannon's subjects for paintings were not very diverse. There were many portraits (mostly commissions), there were idylls of the classical world (like 'The Wood Nymph' or 'The Infant Bacchus'), subjects taken from the Bible ('The Wise and Foolish Virgins'), and figures of women bathing ('The Morning Toilet') or swimming ('The Incoming Tide').

One of his commissioned portraits is that of John Westlake (1828-1913), lawyer and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1851 to 1860, he was a fellow of Trinity, publishing a treatise on international law. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1854, and co-founded the Working Men's College (1854) where he taught mathematics. In 1885, he was elected to Parliament and from 1888 to 1908 he was a professor of international law at Cambridge, and from 1900 to 1906 also a member of the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague.

Charles Shannon, portrait of John Westlake
[Location: Trinity College, Cambridge]

One can hardly imagine Shannon and Westlake having an engaging conversation during the sittings for this portrait that was finished in 1910, but perhaps they had more in common than we think as Westlake was married to an artist, Alice Hare (1842-1923), who also held a variety of social roles in education and health care, and, in 1887, was asked by Oscar Wilde to contribute to The Woman's World (which she did not).

Shannon's oil on canvas, 90 x 71 cm, was donated by subscribers to Trinity College, Cambridge.

Westlake, incidentally, had experience posing for painters. When he was a lot younger, he was portrayed by Lowes Cato Dickinson (1819-1908). This undated portrait, probably from the late 1850s, is an oil on canvas, 130 x 101.4 cm kept in the collection of the University College London Hospitals Arts Store. Dickinson was also a founder of the Working Men's College, and like Westlake a Christian Socialist.

Lowes Cato Dickinson, portrait of John Westlake, undated
[Location: University College London Hospitals Arts Store]

Another portrait, dated 1902, was done by Marianne Stokes (1855-1927), an Austrian painter who married the landscape painter Adrian Stokes, and exhibited widely in London. This is executed in egg tempera on panel, 19,1 x 13.3 cm.

Marianne Stokes, portrait of John Westlake, 1902
[Location: National Portrait Gallery]

A few years earlier, Westlake's wife Alice had done a portrait of him as well: an oil on panel, around 1896-1897, 33,7 x 26 cm.

Alice Westlake, portrait of John Westlake, 1896-1897
[Location: National Portrait Gallery]

The portrait by his wife is curiously the most official and a rather solemn image; the eyes and his smile in particular do not display the mild humour the other portraitists apparently experienced, although one has to say that Shannon's portrait seems to portray a rather tired but patient aged man.

622. Costume Designs at Auction

Peter Farley, a theatre designer, international exhibition curator, writer and teacher, died last year [read his obituary in The Guardian] and this week Bonhams sells items from his collection, including four costume design drawings by Charles Ricketts.

Bonhams' sale today (on 5 July) also includes designs by Leon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, while a watercolour/gouache drawing by Glyn Philpot ('Le Trayas') will be in next week's sale (12 July).

The Ricketts lots are 131 and 132, each comprising two framed costume designs, 31.1 x 21.9 cm.

Charles Ricketts, costume design, undated

For which play(s) these sketches in watercolour and pencil were done is not stated. The drawings show no written directions in Ricketts's hand, but one of them is signed with his initials. Two of the drawings illustrate servants, carrying a small dish or vessel, another depicts warriors or guards, carrying a sword or spear, and one depicts a masked dancer wearing snake-like gloves.

Charles Ricketts, costume design, undated

As usual, Ricketts twice sketched two costumes for minor roles on a single sheet, and the four drawings show six costumes in all. The estimate for each set of two drawings is £2,000 to £3,000. 

Charles Ricketts, costume design, undated, signed: 'CR'

The drawings were sold for £3,200, including premium (lot 131), and £2,432 including premium (lot 132).

621. The 2023 Alphabet: Z

Z is for 

The Bard of the Dimbovitza

Hélène Vacaresco, The Bard of the Dimbovitza.
Designed by Charles Ricketts
(detail of spine of second edition, 1892)

At the time Ricketts was designing book covers and title pages for commercial publishers such as James R. Osgood & Co, he created a design for Hélène Vacaresco's first series of poems, The Bard of the Dimbovitza, 'collected from the peasants' as the title page proudly stated and translated from Romanian by Carmen Sylva and Alma Strettel. The first edition appeared in 1891 in a tan cloth binding and in a parchment-bound deluxe edition. Later editions and the second volume were executed in green cloth.

Hélène Vacaresco,
The Bard of the Dimbovitza.
Designed by Charles Ricketts
(spine of deluxe edition, 1891)

For the spine, a brass plate was made after a drawing by Ricketts. None of the lettering on the spine was set in lead type, but designed by Ricketts, and stamped from a plate. 

This can be observed, for instance, in the difference between characters that should have been identical, such as 'T' in THE', which is sans serif, while in  'VITZA' it has serifs.  Then again, the 'Z' next to the second 'T' has no serifs. The length of the tail of 'R' in the title is slightly less exuberant than that in the author's name. These characters have not been typeset. 

It is one of the few times Ricketts had to design the letter Z for a title - as an initial it does not appear in his oeuvre.

Hélène Vacaresco, The Bard of the Dimbovitza.
First Series and Second Series
Designed by Charles Ricketts
(spines editions dated 1892)

When the second series was published - seen here in a later printing next to a later printing of the first series - the plate for the spine had to be altered and space was made for the designation 'Second Series' by replacing the word 'THE' at the top, and, in fact, the entire section above the author's name has been revised to create space. (Thanks are due to Martin Steenson, Books & Things, London, for his observation.) The lower part of the plate remained untouched. This was done by a professional at the bindery, as was the custom at the time. Ricketts was not called in to make this change after the first series was published. The short dash between 'VITZA' and the series designation is inconsistent with Ricketts's design ideas.

Publishers did not want to spend money on such changes and while authors and publishers could complain about copyright violations, for artists, this right simply did not exist.

An Index to the 2017-2023 Alphabet:

A - 286. The 2017 Alphabet: A

B - 289. The 2017 Alphabet: B

C - 291. The 2017 Alphabet: C

D - 301. The 2017 Alphabet: D

E - 303. The 2017 Alphabet: E

F - 305. The 2017 Alphabet: F

G - 306. The 2017 Alphabet: G

H - 307. The 2017 Alphabet: H

I - 309. The 2017 Alphabet: I 

J - 310. The 2017 Alphabet: J

K - 313. The 2017 Alphabet: K

L - 314. The 2017 Alphabet: L

M - 316. The 2017 Alphabet: M

N - 320. The 2017 Alphabet: N

O - 321. The 2017 Alphabet: O

P - 334. The 2017 Alphabet: P

Q - 335. The 2017 Alphabet: Q

R - 338. The 2018 Alphabet: R

S - 345. The 2018 Alphabet: S

T - 381. The 2018 Alphabet: T

T - 382. The 2018 Alphabet: T [a special celebratory installment]

U - 385. The 2018 Alphabet: U

V - 386. The 2018 Alphabet: V

W - 390. The 2019 Alphabet: W

X - 619. The 2023 Alphabet: X

Y - 620. The 2023 Alphabet: Y

Z - 621. The 2023 Alphabet: Z

& - 397. The 2019 Alphabet: &

620. The 2023 Alphabet: Y

 Y is for 

You must wake and call me early

Initial 'Y' in Alfred Tennyson, Lyric Poems (Vale Press, 1900)

Ricketts designed two different initials 'Y', the first one, done for Daphnis and Chloe (1893) was also used in the Vale Press Keats edition in 1898. 

A smaller initial 'Y' appeared in Milton's Early Poems in 1896, and was used in several other Vale Press books. Its final appearance was in the edition of Tennyson's lyric poems, published at the end of 1900.

It is a five-line floral initial with twirling stems and small flowers.

619. The 2023 Alphabet: X

Years ago I started a series on initials and letters that Charles Ricketts designed for illustrations, for commissioned books or for his Vale Press editions and we almost got to the end, but I could not find any examples for X and the series was temporarily suspended. 

Initial X designed
by Charles Ricketts

I had overlooked the specially designed enlarged initials based on the Avon Type used for the title-pages of his 39 volume Shakespeare edition from 1900 tot 1903 as well as for the identically executed single-volume edition of Doctor Faustus by Marlowe. These series of initials came in two sizes that were combined on the title-pages. The larger ones were also used to introduce the first text line of each play. 

X is for

A Most Pleasant and Excellent Conceited Comedy of Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor

William Shakespaere, A Most Pleasant and Excellent Conceited Comedy
of Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor (Vale Press, 1902)

The Avon Type was specially designed for the Shakespeare so that the lines were less wide and the pages could contain more text.

The title-pages always contain only the title, however short or long. In the case of the Sonnets or Doctor Faustus, not even a single line was filled, but Ricketts refrained from decorations on these pages, as they were followed (two pages later) by two opening pages containing both the publisher's device and a decorated text page, the latter with a border that differed for the three types of plays (tragedies, comedies and histories).

But he did do something else that would raise eyebrows and showed that the criticism of his early title-pages would not stop him from carrying out such practices in a different way. As we saw in A.L. Cotton's criticism [read blog 616. Ricketts and an Attack on Him by a 'Fool'], he had in the past used a peculiar alternation of capitals and lowercase letters on opening pages. However, Cotton praised the restraint in the decorations of the Shakespeare volumes. Did he overlook the title-pages or did he consider the combination of two formats of initials on the purely typographical pages to be according to the rules?

William Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice
(Vale Press, 1902)

On these title-pages, we see idiosyncratic word breaks, the letters of one word are often in two sizes, even names are not sacred - like that of FALSTAFf - and quite often two smaller characters are placed on top of each other, or one is placed above an asterisk.

This was not necessary, of course; with careful measuring and drawing, the titles could also have been set in smaller initials only. Even the larger initials would have fit, although this would have resulted in many more hyphenations. As is often the case, we do not know what Ricketts's thoughts on this were. But I assume both regular solutions would have seemed uninventive and boring to him.

What is clear is that he also saw these pages as decorations, and let's face it: everyone pretty much knew these titles by heart. A single key word - Hamlet, Othello, merry, merchant - sufficed.

618. Charles Shannon's Studio in 1920

Shortly before and after World War I, Ricketts and Shannon were occasionally surrounded by film crews and were, as Ricketts wrote, 'cinema'd'. But they were also frequently photographed. One such photo appeared in the 1 May 1920 instalment of The Sphere.

'Mr. Charles Shannon, A.R.A., in his Studio in Holland Park'
(The Sphere, 1 May 1920, p. 125)

Shannon poses with a brush pointing at an oil painting - he was working on a large version of 'The Convalescent'. The canvas is positioned at an angle in the studio , making the scene somewhat difficult to perceive, not least because immediately behind it is a framed painting with a portrait of a lady.

The painting was acquired by Kojiro Matsukata and probably destroyed when his London warehouse went up into flames. [Read blog 363 about the Matsukata collection.]

Luckily, in 1924, the painting had been photographed; see plate 25 in Charles Shannon (London, Ernest Benn, 1924).

Charles Shannon, 'The Convalescent'

(Thanks are due to John Aplin for finding the studio photograph.)

617. A Collector-Friend, William Arthur Pye

On 6 November 1933, the collection of 'the late W.A. Pye. Esq.' came under the hammer at Sotheby & Co in London: 131 lots, including over a page of Vale Press books.

Catalogue of Printed Books
(Sotheby & Co., 6-8 November 1933)

How William A. Pye got into collecting Vale Press editions is not known, nor when he met Ricketts, but in December 1903 he was among the group of sixty guests who came to admire Ricketts's and Shannon's newly decorated rooms and studios - about a year and a half after the artists had moved into Lansdowne House.

William A. Pye

William Arthur Pye was born in Exeter in 1852, the son of assistant organist and composer Kellow J. Pye, who gave up his music career to become a partner of a wine merchant firm, Reid, Pye, Campbell and Hall, in London. 

The young William Pye studied at Magdalen College School in Oxford before he too left for the City and went to work as a wine merchant.

He married Margaret Thompson Kidston and they had seven children including the bookbinder Sybil Pye and the artist Ethel Pye. They lived at Priest Hill, a house in Limpsfield, Surrey.

Pye was a great lover of flowers and the Priest Hall gardens were constructed after his design, while he was a successful exhibitor at local shows. He became a Fellow of the Horticultural Society, and a promotor of the Exted and Limpsfield Gardeners Association. He regularly sent special flowers to Ricketts.

Pye died on 2 June 1933.

Pye's artistic circles

Pye developed a passion for collecting oriental and contemporary art. Perhaps that is why he met young Laurence Binyon in the Print Room of the British Museum. Binyon - whose mother had died in 1892 and whose father lived in the north of the United Kingdom - was taken into William Pye's domestic circle after they met in 1895. He became a regular weekend guest in Limpsfield (and earlier in Lee, where the Pye family initially lived).

Nearby lived some families who gave access to modern literary circles: Sydney and Margaret Olivier and Edward and Constance Garnett whose children joined a group around Rupert Brooke that became known as the Neo-Pagans.

Meanwhile, the artists of the Vale also came into their sights. Binyon introduced his friend Thomas Sturge Moore to the Pye family. Sturge Moore, in turn, introduced Pye to Charles Ricketts and to the poets 'Michael Field'. In their diary Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper noted:

Tommy brings his good friend Pye to see us. We are all friends at once – Pye only knows & admires our work in the Vale Editions – He loves Marcia in the Race of Leaves. He delights in the “wide-open” beginning of Julia, but finds the speeches too level throughout. He hates the Fairies in Fair Rosamund. When we laugh at the idea of so strange a bird as an admirer, he is grieved at the mocking note – grieved & a little fired. He is small as Watts-Dunton – but the face is like a Jap. drawing; in itself not easy to look at; but he is good, ringingly intelligent, more than adequately emotional – very fine in emotional sympathy with creative art.

[Michael Field, Journal, 24 May 1903]

Sybil and Ethel Pye were involved in theatrical schemes leading to the 1901 inauguration of the Literary Theatre Club for which William Pye acted as business manager. The club was followed by the equally short-lived Masquers Society before, in 1905, the Literary Theatre Society was founded - Ricketts, Binyon, Moore, William Pye, May Morris and others were part of the group that would, for instance, stage Oscar Wilde's Salome.

Charles Ricketts, 'The Resurrection' (c. 1900-1903)

Pye's collection

Exactly what the contents of Pye's art collection were is difficult to determine. He owned two paintings by Ricketts, 'The Resurrection' and 'Medea', and two bronzes (one of which was 'Herodias and Salome'). 

His book collection will not have been taken to Sotheby's in its entirety after his death. After all, his daughters also had literary interests and one of his books ended up in Neo-Pagan David Garnett's collection. This copy of Michael Field's The World at Auction was probably given to Garnett by Pye himself (or one of his relatives).

The book collection consisted of presentation copies from Laurence Binyon and T. Sturge Moore to Pye, first editions of Rupert Brooke's poems, art publications including L'Art japonais (1883) and Ricketts's The Prado and its Masterpieces (1904). Most of these books contain Pye's bookplate with the motto 'Veritas sine timore' (Truth without fear), designed by Thomas Sturge Moore.

Thomas Sturge Moore, bookplate for William A. Pye

A special section covered private press books: Daniel Press (Binyon's Poems, 1895); the Doves Press (four editions including The Bible in five volumes); the Eragny Press (thirteen books); the Kelmscott Press (ten editions including four texts by William Morris) and the Vale Press (the largest section containing fifty-nine publications in eighty-three volumes).

Pye did not own a complete run of the Vale Press: some important books such as The Parables and Keats's Poems were missing, for example. Michael Field's The World at Auction was not part of the auction, but the other three Vale Press editions of their plays were present: Fair Rosamund, The Race of Leaves and Julia Domna. Pye also possessed a copy of the pre-Vale Daphnis and Chloe and some Wilde books designed by Ricketts. 

Three of his Vale Press books were later owned by the eminent collector John Roland Abbey: Daphnis and Chloe (1893) [Abbey owned several copies of this book], John Milton's Early Poems (1896) and The Kingis Quair (1903).

It would be wrong to claim that William Pye formed his collection around his friendships, - his interests were too broad for that - but it is true that the work of friends occupied a valued place in his collections, as it did in his life.