38. Those vanished hours of the rich Vale

The poet Gordon Bottomley (1874-1948) admired Ricketts and Shannon and collected their works, which he donated to the Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery in Carlisle. He  dedicated one of his plays (Gruach) to Ricketts and Shannon and reprinted the dedicatory poem in a collection, Poems of thirty years (1925).

Earlier, Bottomley had written four poems 'after the design of Mr. C.H. Shannon, R.A.'. This referred to a lithograph, 'The white watch' (1894) that was listed by Ricketts in his Catalogue of Mr. Shannon's lithographs as number 27: 'Two girls sleep side by side lit by splashes of moonlight falling from a casement outside the picture. On the right a third girl in her night-shift looks out into the night. A small lantern is fastened to her wrist.'

Charles Shannon, 'The white watch', lithograph, 1894

The first two poems with the title 'The white watch' were published in Bottomley's book The gate of Smaragdus (1904), p. xii-xiii and p. lx-lxi. Only the first one was reprinted in his Poems of thirty years, with an additional sub-title, 'Opus Juvenis' (p. 47-50); the first line is: 'I do not know how I came here'. It was undated in The gate of Smaragdus, but dated in Poems: 1900. The second poem in The gate of Smaragdus is sub-titled 'Op. 24, No. 3' and here the first line reads: 'The lonely house was down large trees'. Three women are described:

They brooded many a faint design
Charles Shannon some day will divine
to paint if he lives long enough.

In Chambers of imagery (1907) Bottomley published two further poems with the same title. The first one (p. 14-18), sub-titled 'Opus 28. No. 3', began with the words: 'Apple boughs lie in the eaves'. It was reprinted in Poems (p. 41-44) and there dated: 1904. The last poem in this series had yet another sub-title, 'Opus 27. No. 2' (p. 31-33) and the opening line read: 'O lifeless garden of the moon'. It was reprinted in Poems (p. 45-47), also dated 1904. The opus numbers probably refer to the music of Frédéric Chopin.

Bottomley's play Gruach was dedicated to Ricketts and Shannon, and published in 1921, together with Britain's daughter. Paul Delaney pointed out that Ricketts asked Bottomley to use only initials ('To C.H.S. and C.S.R.'), 'so that the dedication would be obvious only to the initiated'. In the dedicatory poem, dated, 'August 16th, 1919', Bottomley remembered his visits to the artists in their house in The Vale, Chelsea, where he found 'assurance that romance is wisdom and truth'. The modern reader of Bottomley's poems will have to conjure up the patience, as the poet is slow in coming to the point. In the fourth part of his long poem, he expresses what he expects from art, and what he learned from Ricketts and Shannon, and in the fifth part he expresses his friendship and remembers the mutual friends from the 'Paragon' (Michael Field).

To C.H.S. and C.S.R.

Now, when my life is more than half consumed,
And my yet steady flame gathers its force
More to aspire before the vague, last flare
(That lightens nothing) gutters in the night-wind,
Upon the midway ridge of my short days
I turn; I would not know what is to come,
Down the far slope of the withdrawing wave;
I would remain at this conspiring height,
Whose upward motion seemed my own, and keep,
Keep mine the swift doscoveries of life,
The passionate, the unexpected moments
That now, as I look back, are all I have,
And I have longed for, all I have to lose,
All, all I shall regret when I must leave them.

And first, after the daily use of love
That is not to be told, the common joy
Of life shared with the natural, earth-born forces,
I think of him who from Italian seed
Was born an English man, him who renewed
By moody English ways, at English tension,
For English unilluminated hearts like mine,
The lost Italian vision, the passionate
Vitality of art more rich than life,
More real than the day's reality.
Before I knew his name and his great acts
Of true creation done on God's behalf,
Within himself the assurance of a God,
I lived in the stale darkness of my kind;
And it was his sole deed that I have known
The power of loveliness, the power of truth,
And of imagination that concentres
Life into more than one life ever gave.
By nameless lovers, lovers with great names,
By fabulous ladies dreamed and almost seen,
By Dante's lost love Beatrice and his own
More wonderful and more desireable
Lost love Elizabeth, created once
For him, and once by him in recollection;
And by his rarer light; I learned to live.

The first amazement as of a spirit seen,
When in the arts that man has perfected
Beauty is known, is not maintained. The past
Must be resumed in each of us, to each
Deliver its attainment and its hope;
But every man to his own generation
Nearer approaches than to father or child,
And apprehends more intimately by it
The reality of vision and life; and it
More certainly divines the truth of him:
And so, when I had turned the last bright page
Of that dead painter of a keener life,
And felt that the dark mirror of his vision
Was broken, and knew I should not see again
Any new shape of that mysterious beauty
(Which by a heart-ache still brings back my youth),
I kindled with more life because I came
Of the same miracle of enhanced life
Continued and renewed in acts of yours.

Upon the Dial of the vanished Vale
Were counted chosen fortunate hours alone;
And there began the invention and the mood
That by the shapes of colour and air and light
Has made a life men might begin to-day,
yet fit for a lovelier earth that is to be,
Out of the England that is here and now -
A region better than dreams, a drawn-lit state,
Wherein the daily Greece Theocritus
Through his half-open door in the same way
Shews us is mingled with succeeding life,
Siena, Avalon, and the Western place
Where Deirdre learned to move and look at men,
And with the garden of living ladies where
A silvery bearer of a cyclamen
Looked at her painter and shall be remembered
With the Gioconda; and in this state I found
Assurance that romance is wisdom and truth.
And in those vanished hours of the rich Vale
One in whose birth England and Italy
A second time had kissed was also known;
One who received my first enchanter's force
Of vision to create a keener life;
In whom the knowledge of materials
Leads to design as form leads into colour.
Wherever human days and acts have burned
By breeding and great race to salient height
Of suffering or rapture or quivering
Domination they are subject to his mind:
He has made manisfest the shape of Silence:
By beings that never were, centaur and sphinx,
He has made clear the composition of life,
The nature of vitality: and by him
I have understood that I desire from art
And from creation not repeated things
Of every day, not the mean content
Or discontentof average helpless souls,
Not passionate abstraction of loveliness,
But unmatched moments and exceptional deeds
And all that cannot happen every day
And rare experience of earth's chosen men
In which I cannot, by my intermitting
And narrow powers, share unless they are held
Sublimated and embodied in beauty.

Dear Masters, in the acknowledgement of debt
There may be grace; but not enough for payment.
I write your names before this meditation
On an old theme, a birthright of our race,
Because I have put theirin all that is mine;
And so I give it to you, as I would give
All that is mine to you, recognisance
Of what I owe and have no means to pay.
You love the arts so well that you preserve,
Within your treasure-house that seems to rise
In clarity and in tranquillity
Above the impermanence of time, true works
That still are less than those you do yourselves:
Content me by receiving this among them
For your own sake and that of certain dead -
And, most for the two friends of Paragon
Who sought perfection and achieved far more;
And by my poem's admittance recognise
The duty that I offer, I too your friend.

37. Patterned papers (e: A flowered paper)

Literature, in its 30 October 1897 issue, listed as a recent publication a new edition of the Vale Press: Henry Constable's Poems and sonnets. A later review (15 January 1898) mentioned the annotations to the text, which was edited by John Gray, as correct and austere. Type and paper were also mentioned, but, obviously, the editors of the academic journal thought these details of printing beneath them: 'We do not know whether it would be correct to say that it is printed in black letter; at any rate it is black lettery. The paper is rough and tough, a papier de luxe; and you might think from the look of the page that you were reading an old volume that had been sent to Messrs. Pullar and subjected to some cleansing process.' The reference is to Pullar's Dye Works in Perth.

The border for the first text page was later the subject of some comments, but the patterned paper for the cover was largely ignored. Charles Ricketts, who designed it, mentioned it in his Bibliography of the Vale Press: 'Bound in a flowered paper'.

Cover paper for Henry Constable, Poems and sonnets, designed by Charles Ricketts (1897)

It seems to be a repetitive design of a leaf and an acorn connected by a twisted curled stem, but a closer look reveals that the pattern is irregular, and although the small acorn device can usually be found at the lower part of a curl, in some places it has been omitted. 

Detail of cover paper for Henry Constable, Poems and sonnets (1897): the acorn in row 3, left, is omitted.

 In some parts of the design, there was hardly enough room for the acorns, and instead of being positioned at the bottom of the curly stem, they were placed to the left of the curl (see the image), again omitting one acorn due to lack of space.

Detail of cover paper for Henry Constable, Poems and sonnets (1897): the acorns in the upper row are placed to the left of the curved stem, or omitted; in the lower row they are placed at the lower end of the curve.

These tiny details (the image above is of an area of 50x20 mm) are responsible for the liveliness and individuality of the patterned paper; all rows - horizontally and diagonally - contain deviations and are not the straight lines they at first may appear to be. This can be seen in the light of the Arts and Crafts Movement's inclination for hand-crafted books, as opposed to the industrial production processes. Ricketts, however, used modern techniques whenever he thought them fit, as in this case: the design for the cover paper was first engraved in wood and then cast as an electrotype.

36. An artists' presentation copy

Some private collectors are open about their purchases, others not. Some have lended their most exclusive books for exhibitions, others keep them in a room, which even their intimates (if any) are forbidden to enter. There are collectors who have become famous during their life time, others disappear without a trace.

In New York, Sotheby's will sell the library of Jacques Levy on 20 April. The catalogue explains that this will be the first time that the collection can be seen by the public. Levy died more than 30 years ago, in 1980. He was born in Istanbul in 1905 - he shared the dates but possibly not the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Levy was 'educated in French schools', lived in New York, but travelled in Europe and South America. His eclectic collection was started in the 1940s. In 1948, for example, he acquired a copy of Oscar Wilde's The importance of being Earnest; this was one of only twelve copies on Japanese paper, bound in full vellum, with the author's dedication to Robert Ross.

Longus, Daphnis and Chloe, illustrated by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. London, The Bodley Head, 1893, p. 60-61.

Somewhere along the line he acquired an extraordinary copy of Ricketts' and Shannon's early masterpiece, Daphnis and Chloe, which was published for the artists by Mathews and Lane at the Bodley Head in June 1893. There are a few copies, in which Thomas Sturge Moore later ascribed the design of the individual wood-engravings to either Ricketts or Shannon. The Levy copy also has marginal pencilled notes to identify the artists, who divided between them the design of the illustrations, which were subsequently drawn on the wood by Ricketts and cut by Shannon. It took them about eleven months to finish the job.

The Levy copy has some unique selling points: the book is accompanied by a set of 27 proof impressions of the wood-engravings (on 26 sheets), 14 are signed by Ricketts, 10 by Shannon, and 2 sheets are signed 'C.H. Shannon & CR'. The provenance of this copy is known, as it was once owned by the New York banker and collector Joseph Manuel Andreini (1850-1932). Andreini was a member of the Grolier and Rowfant Clubs and one of his bookplates was designed by Lucien Pissarro whose Eragny Press books he bought at the time they appeared. He also collected Vale Press books, such as the volumes containing Chatterton's poems and Tennyson's lyric poems.

Before Andreini took hold of the copy, however, it was given by the artists to one of their publishers, (Charles) Elkin Mathews (1851-1921). The Levy copy has been inscribed on the front free endpaper by Shannon: 'To C Elkin Mathews May 19th 1893', and the inscription is also signed by Ricketts. Sturge Moore (to whom the book had been dedicated) also signed this copy. The dedication is dated almost three weeks prior to the publication date.

Who will be the next owner?

35. To V.F. from C.R.

Earlier this month, Paul Rassam sent us a pre-publication copy of his new catalogue 25: Late 19th & 20th century literature. Number 127 in this catalogue describes a copy of Lord de Tabley's Poems, dramatic & lyrical (1893) with a late dedication 'To V.F. from C.R., 1919'. The recipient's bookplate helps to identify 'V.F.' as Vivian Forbes (1891-1937).

Cover for Lord de Tabley, Poems, dramatic & lyrical (1893), designed by Charles Ricketts

Forbes was a young painter who, in 1915, had met his future lover, the painter Glyn Philpot (1884-1937), with whom he had a troublesome relation that ended when Philpot died in 1937 and Forbes, who depended on him for moral and financial support, killed himself. 

Plaque at Lansdowne House, erected by Greater London Council, 1979

Philpot's work was influenced by that of Ricketts and Shannon, and when the two older artists left Lansdowne House for Townshend House, Forbes and Philpot moved into their former flats and studios. Although Ricketts & Shannon and Forbes & Philpot knew each other, they never became close friends. They probably met in about 1918, and Ricketts took a liking for the lesser talented Forbes, about whom he wrote to Gordon Bottomley, 29 May 1919: 'The war caught him when hardly a man, and he is seeing Russian ballets, National Gallery pictures, and hearing Wagner or Chopin as novelties'. To Thomas Lowinsky, he had written, December 1918: 'We have taken a great liking to Forbes, the sensual beast who ate my strawberries at Chilham'. Ricketts and Shannon had a country retreat, the Keep of Chilham Castle in Kent, which had been purchased by their friend Edmund Davis. (*) The dedication by Ricketts in a copy of Lord de Tabley's book dates from these years of admiration for the young painter. It was offered by Paul Rassam in the Summer of 2011 at the Olympia Fair in London, the price has now been reduced to £650.


Dedication from Charles Ricketts to Marcus Behmer in Lord de Tabley's Poems, dramatic & lyrical (private collection)

Another dedication copy of the same book has no date in it, but mentions the full name of the recipient, another young artist: 'To Marcus Behmer, from his friend, Charles Ricketts'. Marcus Behmer was an admirer from Germany, who had lived in Paris and may have met Ricketts before the First World War. He wrote about Ricketts's designs for the Vale Press on several occasions.

Ricketts's dedications are usually as short as these two, omitting dates, or reducing names to initials. Longer and intimate dedications are rare.

(*) Paul Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A biography. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 314. Self-portrait taken from the letters & journals of Charles Ricketts, RA. London, Peter Davies, 1939, p. 308. See also: J.G.P. Delaney, Glyn Philpot. His life and art. Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, plate 8, for a portrait of Vivian Forbes painted by Glyn Philpot.

34. An original print

On 18 March, 1937 - 75 years ago - Charles Shannon died. Next week, an exhibition on printmaking 1893-1895 will include a lithograph by Shannon at the Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibition about L'estampe originale. Shannon's contribution to this important series of original prints was a lithograph of a woman and cats, 'La femme aux chats', also called 'La Biondina'. This lithograph was described in Ricketts's Vale Press Catalogue of Mr. Shannon's lithographs (1902) as number 24: 'Biondina. A replica of No. 3 in reverse, more forcible, however in effect and execution. About fifty proofs exists'.


Charles Shannon, 'Biondina', lithograph (1894)

Lithograph number 3 was printed in 1890 in an edition of 12 copies. It was called 'The fantastic dress': 'a woman in a wide skirt moves to the left towards a mirror. In the foreground is the indication of a sofa on which are two cats'. The lithograph was later, in 1893, published in a small series, called Early lithographs, of which only 8 copies were for sale.

Ricketts's contribution to the same issue of L'estampe originale (album VII) was a woodcut, which was not well received: the wood engraving (89 x 94 mm) was printed in black on Japan paper (197 x 240 mm) and mounted on a larger sheet (433 x 596 mm). It was signed in pencil, lower right: C Ricketts. A blindstamp designed by Alexandra Charpentier for L’Estampe originale was embossed on the bottom left of the mounting sheet. Ricketts depicted a loggia to the left with a group of people, and to the right is a dragon on the roof. This engraving is known in France as 'Inondation', and in Great Britain as 'Deluge'.

Charles Ricketts, 'Inondation', or, 'Deluge', wood-engraving (1893)

The exhibition in Minneapolis will be on show from Saturday, March 24, 2012 to Sunday, December 9, 2012.

33. Patterned papers (d: Bird, arrow, and rose)

Ricketts published four plays by 'Michael Field' (his friends Edith Cooper and Katharine Bradley), the first of which was Fair Rosamund. This was not a new text, it had originally been issued (twice) in 1884, but for the Vale Press edition the authors revised the text before and during printing, demanding more proofs than Ricketts cared to give them. As they had published a dozen books and he was only a 'young' publisher, they insisted on deciding how many proofs were necessary, and wanted to have a say in the design of the book. Ricketts's revenge was to be secretive about the cover, and when they asked if they would like it, he responded: 'I shall be immensely wounded & unforgiving, if you do not'. (*)

'Bird, arrow, and rose', patterned paper for Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897)

The authors received a copy on 14 April 1897, and a month later their diary carried this note: 'It is partly green as the summer peascod with creamy rose-trellis, the roses crowned with briar-thorns & under them fat doves transfixed with arrows as thoroughly as St. Sebastian'. This was another instance of Ricketts's revenge; he had consciously fattened the doves, while he usually did the opposite: he was famous for his elongated art nouveau figures. 'The half-binding is of mist-like blue, flecked with leaves & shapes in brownish purple - the most restless effect ever produced by a volume. The green is sharp, the design complex. The whole binding seems the result of the first spasm of the Spring that is to release Oscar on the imagination of Ricketts'. [Oscar Wilde was released from prison on 19 May 1897.] The diary entry continued: 'But the doves! - sentimental, revolting... We suffer inexpressibly. The relation of cover & book does not exist; there is nothing of our beloved Rosamund in this Valentine symbol, so obvious, so unlovely'. (**)

Patterned paper for the spine of Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897)

While the authors denied a link between the text and the patterned paper for the binding, several scholars have pointed out that Ricketts carefully took elements from the story for his imagery. Susan Ashbrook, for example, contended: 'The decorations of the binding include a diagonally repeating motif of a dove with a Plantaganet crown over its head, pierced through the breast by an arrow, against a trellis of roses. The symbolism is clearly that of innocence destroyed through love, with the arrow doing double-duty as a symbol of love and death. The rose is an obvious allusion to Rosamund. At the close of the play the king says to the dead body of his mistress: "A Rosa Mundi, thou | That were to the king a tender sweet brier-rose, | They've shed thy petals".'

Patterned paper for the boards of Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897)

Legend has it that Rosamund Clifford, a mistress of King Henry II (1133-1189), had to hide in a hunting lodge at Woodstock, which was surrounded by a maze, or with roses, as she was threatened by the Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. There are many stories surrounding Rosamund's hiding place and her death, but no indisputable facts are available. Rosamund was known as The Fair Rosamund or The Rose of the World, and became the subject of many poems and stories.

Dove, signed 'CR', patterned paper for Michael Field, Fair Rosamund (1897) [detail]

Ricketts signed the paper with his monogram CR on the rump of one of the doves (it was repeated on the back cover), clearly establishing the design as his own, regardless of the author's opinion. It should be noted that there are two patterned papers, one for the spine, and one for the boards. The first design of petals and dots alternated with roses and leaves is printed in red on blue paper. The second paper is printed in green on buff coloured paper; this is a complicated design, with several diagonals: the arrows pointing to the left cross the trellis going from left to right. The doves are fixed to the lines of the trellis - forming an angle of 60 degrees. However, the doves form a pattern of their own on a line that forms an angle of 30 degrees. The roses, also, have been clustered along these lines in different angles.

A combination of two patterned papers, printed in red and green, was also applied for a later Vale Press edition: The Rowley poems of Thomas Chatterton (1898).

(*) Diary of Michael Field, 18 February 1897.
(**) Ivor C. Treby, The Michael Field catalogue. A book of lists. London, De Blackland Press,  1998, p. 34; Diary of Michael Field, 23 March 1897, quoted after Paul Delaney, 'Book Design. A nineteenth-century revival', in: The connoisseur, August 1978, p. 282-289.

(***) Susan Ashbrook: The private press movement in Britain 1890-1914. Boston, Boston University Graduate School, 1991, p. 154.

32. Frequent cycle-rides

Thomas Sturge Moore wrote about his friend Charles Shannon in a catalogue for P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., who in their Bond Street premises held a commemorative 'Exhibition of the lithographs of the late Charles Shannon, R.A.', from 20 January to 3 February 1938. Moore's foreword described Shannon as 'very handsome', with 'an energetic sturdiness' and an eye 'full of mockery'. Shannon could work very fast, a lithograph, such as 'The modeller', a portrait of Thomas Sturge Moore, would take ('final touches, and all') little over an hour.

Charles Shannon, 'The modeller', lithograph, 1891: a portrait of Thomas Sturge Moore 

Shannon had his own lithographic press and Moore would help him with the printing, however, they shared other interests:

When I came to help him with the press, he would sometimes propose a cycle-ride, and we would set out from 8 Spring Terrace, Richmond, through Leatherhead, always alighting to admire the old bridge, on through Dorking and Guildford, where the second hand shops would be visited to discover satin-wood, not yet "the rage," so that fine pieces could be picked up cheaply. Or we went to Hampton Court, and he would examine the Titian intently, as though he had never seen anyting like it before. "The fresh eye is the seeing eye; the eye that thinks it knows all about it only recognizes, never discovers."

Titian, 'Portrait of a man (known as Alessandro de Medici)' in Hampton Court (from: Charles Ricketts, Titian, 1910, plate xxxvi)

Apparently, Moore had learned to cycle early in 1896 on the bicycle of his friend the sculptor Henry Poole, and Poole and Moore went on a cycling tour in France later that year. 'His mother begged him not to venture into the heavy traffic of London and enclosed newspaper cuttings of cycling accidents, Uncle Appia sent messages warning of the dangers of the roads in France, even Uncle George in Jersey, a cyclist himself, wrote urging extreme caution'. His father 'offered a loan for the purchase of a thoroughly reliable machine'. Moore was prone to accidents, he pulled off the handlebars on one occasion and injured his knee on another, but eventually he became 'a hardy long-distance cyclist'. From Shannon's London address to Guildford, for example, was about 20 miles. In 1898, on a stay in Broadstairs, he taught Shannon how to master the bicycle.(*)

Moore and Shannon made frequent long cycling trips, such as those to Wells and Marlborough (April 1901) and to Salisbury, Glastonbury and Winchester (August 1901). Paul Delaney wrote:

Not long after this Shannon began to teach Ricketts to ride a bicycle. The old machine that had served to teach Sturge Moore and Shannon was passed on to him. With his haste and impatience he had no more aptitude for the bicycle than the piano, but perhaps he minded not being included when his two friends went off their frequent cycling trips. He certainly missed Shannon. When Ricketts was "wicked", Shannon used to threaten to go off cycling with Sturge Moore. On his first lesson, in July 1901, Ricketts did "unexpectedly well", and in August he was still "improving wonderfully". Shannon even bought  him a new bicycle. But by October the next year the bicycle was for sale and Ricketts's cycling was over: "I collapsed with nervous exhaustion at Cambridge", he told the Fields, "& I fear shed tears upon the Trumpington Road & for the first time the bike has passed into history." From then on, when Shannon "biked", Ricketts "trained". Shannon cycled and played ping-pong or tennis but the only exercise Ricketts took was walking.'(**)



Advertisment for cycles (1901)



Illustration from Isabel Marks, Fancy cycling (1901)

(*) Sylvia Legge, Affectionate cousins. T. Sturge Moore and Marie Appia. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 94, 134.
(**) J.G.P. Delaney, Charles Ricketts. A biography. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 156-157.

31. The tale of the rabbit

A wide range of animals was depicted in drawings, lithographs, woodcuts and paintings by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, including geese, a stag, a bear, fishes, doves, seagulls, dogs and cats, pigs, mice, bulls, peacocks, dolphins, hares, mammoths, and rabbits. Some of these could be observed in woods or parks.

Two hares, drawn by Charles Ricketts (from Atalanta, June 1890, p. [545])

In his diary Ricketts wrote, 13 May 1901 (Self-Portrait 1939, p. 56):

In the Park an exquisite thing occurred: a young rabbit plunged, not into a hole, at the sight of me, but into the bole of a may-tree. There I tickled him, meaning to take him out, till I feared, from the palpitating of his flanks, that he might faint or die; so I stood off, to see him escape. This, however, he would not do, so I plucked up courage and lifted him out by the scruff of his neck from the dark inner hole where he had been hiding his face. I remember the fantastic sensation of his loose soft skin and huge startled eyes before he escaped into the bracken shoots, to look back at the enemy.

'Spring', a tailpiece (detail) (from The magazine of art, April 1891, p. 204)

A tailpiece, 'Spring', drawn in 1891 for The magazine of art illustrates a child with his playmate, a rabbit.

30. A copy for reference

Most private press publications go without a personal inscription by the author and buyers have not written their opinions between the lines or in the margins of these expensive books. However, there are exceptions. A copy of a Dutch private press book by Geerten Gossaert, Experimenten, was heavily annotated by his mistress, the poet Annie Salomons, in preparation for a lecture about his work. This copy is now in the National library of the Netherlands.

Note, in pencil, in a copy of The Kingis Quair (1903)

Only a small number of Vale Press books have inscriptions by the authors or editors. Copies with inscriptions by former owners turn up now and then, but copies with annotations by readers are more rare. A short inscription is found in a privately owned copy of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland. Underneath the colophon a German reader has pencilled a note on the type:

'King's Fount
by Charles Ricketts
Vale Press 1903
laut Encycl. S. 149'

This reference ('according to the encyclopaedia, page 149') perhaps indicates that the owner collected books for their typography and design, and not so much for the text, and there is no note on the author, although the book seems to have been read all through (all quires have been cut open). Of course, the note may have been written by a dealer. Whatever the case, the writer left no trace - there is no name, bookplate, note on provenance, or inserted letter.

Anyway, the most important 'handwriting' in private press books can be ascribed to Time. The title label on the front cover for example has brown stains for which the glue may be blamed.

Title label for The Kingis Quair (1903)

29. The beautiful forehead

In the December 1896 issue of Bookselling, Temple Scott published an interview with Charles Ricketts, from which this quote is taken:

No. 52, Warwick Street, Regent Street, W. (from: Bookselling, December 1896, p. 506)

One Saturday afternoon, in the late spring of the present year [1896], we entered a little green-painted shop in a side street leading from under one of the archways of Regent Street into the regions of bric-à-brac and Wardour Street. The shop had not then, as it has now, its swinging white and gold painted "Sign of the Dial." Within, and behind a tiny counter, was seated on a high chair a pale and slight man. This was our first introduction to Mr. Charles Ricketts. We have often been to the little shop since; but we shall never forget that Saturday afternoon. We had a cup of tea, seated in a tiny back room; and soon friends came to drink tea with us. The talk turned on many things, but chiefly on matters related to art - and the pale man with the beautiful forehead talked liked one inspired. Saturday afternoon, we found out later, was receiving day at 52, Warwick Street. The other days of the week Mr Ricketts spends working at home, somewhere in Chelsea.

Signboard 'At the sign of the Dial' (855x488 mm)

See: Temple Scott, 'Mr. Charles Ricketts and the Vale Press', in: Bookselling, II (1896), December, p. [501]-512 (quote on p. 502).
For the signboard see Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums (the signboard was purchased from Amarylis Robichaud, widow of Llewellyn Hacon, 1949).

28. Two limited editions

Limited editions of books from the nineties only had a statement of limitation in the edition in question: for example, the ordinary edition of Lord de Tabley's Poems, dramatic and lyrical (1893) stated on the page preceding the frontispiece: 'This Edition is limited to Six Hundred Copies'. Another hundred copies were bound in vellum and they had a different limitation statement: 'This Edition is limited to One Hundred Copies' - neither Edition mentioned the other one. The advertisements in Elkin Mathews & John Lane's List of new and forthcoming books (1893) did not reveal all that much: 'A limited number on Japanese paper'. This practice underlines the exclusivity of the more limited edition - if you did not have access to it, you would be unaware of its existence. 

This kind of editorial secrecy has also been applied to books about Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, of which I will give two examples. In 1972, L'Art ancien of Zurich published bulletin 25: A collection of books designed by Charles Ricketts. Shortly after the bibliography went to press, the collection was sold to John Paul Getty II (1932-2003). The colophon (facing the title page) mentioned: '500 copies of this catalogue have been printed : this is no :' Many copies were not numbered, and ordinary copies do not mention that, besides an edition in blue paper wrappers, there was an edition in half cloth. A true Ricketts collector, of course, has copies of both editions.


From top to bottom: Catalpa Press catalogue (limited edition and ordinary edition) and L'art ancien catalogue (bound copy and copy in wrappers)

Another semi-secret de-luxe edition was published by the Catalpa Press in 1985. The ordinary plain paper edition of the Catalogue of the works of Charles Ricketts RA from the collection of Gordon Bottomley, written by Michael Richard Barclay, has no statement of limitation. However, fifty copies were printed on Conqueror paper - making the book twice as thick - and these have a handwritten limitation statement on the first fly-leaf: 'No. [..] of 50 Copies', bearing the author's signature underneath. Recently, Ian Hodgkins & Co. Ltd. described a copy of this edition on their website.

27. Patterned papers (c: The ship)

For the cover of Fifty songs by Thomas Campion, published February 1897, Charles Ricketts designed a decorated paper that, in his bibliography of 1904, was labelled: 'the ship'. It was inspired by the last poem in the selection, 'A hymn in praise of Neptune', although it only made reference to 'the waves' (line 2). Ships are not mentioned in the poem, while 'Neptune's diadem' (line 10), 'Tritons' (line 11), 'Sea-nimphs' (line 15) and 'Syrens' (line 16) were ignored by Ricketts in his repetitive design of a sailing ship, wave-lines and wave-crests: 'a soft grey-blue ground which is decorated with rows of small sailboats riding gently swelling waves, indicated by a single undulated line'.(*)

'The ship', patterned paper for Thomas Campion, Fifty songs (1897)

This decorated paper stands out among the others, as it is one of only two that were signed by Ricketts; his initials 'CR' appear in a sail - once on the front cover and once on the back cover.

'The ship', patterned paper for Thomas Campion, Fifty songs (1897): detail with initials CR.

The designs were engraved on wood, 'from which they were printed in repeating patterns and then cast as electrotypes'.(**) Some proofs for the cover paper exist, and were described in a catalogue of Clare Warrack and Geoffrey Perkins in 1977: Short List Fifteen. The Vale Press. Trial settings, cover papers, labels, notices, prospectuses, book lists, occasional publications set in Vale type and Vale Press editions. One of the proofs showed two versions, with manuscript notes beneath each proof: 'old one' and 'new one', referring to the blocks. The block sizes were 249x160 mm and 244x159 mm. The dimensions of the paper on the front cover of the finished book are 234x120 mm.

Lucien Pissarro finished printing the paper in December 1896, and when stock of bound copies of the book (issued in 210 copies) had run out in 1899, he printed an additional hundred on a slightly different paper.(**) Perhaps these two binding editions can be distinguished from each other by the placement of the spine label, which for the first batch of copies was closer to the top (c. 9 mm) than for the later batch (24 mm).

This book and other Vale Press books were on show in 1899 at an international exhibition of book design in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Museum in Krefeld, and Rudolf Kautzsch wrote about the decorated papers of the Vale Press in the Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde (1899), that some of them had 'recht hübschen Papierbände', and: 'Die in der Farbe sehr anspruchlosen Papiere zeigen reizvolle Musters diagonal zum Format verläuft'. The design for the Campion was not  placed diagonally as most of the others were.

The paper was reprinted in grey for Gordon Bottomley's A stage for poetry (1948), but this paper does not show Ricketts's initials on the sail.

Back cover of Gordon Bottomley, A stage for poetry (1948)

(*) Susan Ashbrook, The private press movement in Britain 1890-1914. Boston, Boston University Graduate School, 1991, p. 150-151.
(**) Maureen Watry, The Vale Press. Charles Ricketts, a publisher in earnest. New Castle, DE, Oak Knoll Press; London, The British Library, 2004, p. 58, 125.

26. Universal Disdain

Julian Corbett's story 'Jezebel' in The Universal Review of 15 August 1889 was illustrated by Ricketts and Shannon, who divided the four illustrations between them, and added an initial, signed by both. The pen drawings, reproduced as process illustrations, were received in the press with disdain.

Initial T, signed by Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon for The Universal Review, August 1889

The Spectator (24 August 1889) noted about The Universal Review that 'it is necessary to speak first of the pictures, for they are always its chief feature'. The illustrations in the August issue were 'most remarkable', however: 'Clever, affected, and ugly are perhaps the words that express them best. There is a certain parade of Phoenician archaeology in some of the drawings; but it can hardly be said that the artists have very successfully managed their Sidonian local colour.'

Charles Ricketts, 'Astarté', in The Universal Review, August 1889

Two years later, Typo, a Monthly Record and Review (April 1891) lamented: 'The Universal Review is no more. It had much in its favor'. Typo was published at the other side of the planet, in Wellington, New Zealand, where The Universal Review was appreciated: 'Original in style, superbly printed, edited by an able art critic' - Harry Quilter was The Universal Review's editor - 'it ought certainly to have succeeded', however, the illustrations of Ricketts and Shannon were singled out for scorn: Typo ascertained that 'the "crank" element was too strong. It was too French for the English taste'. A story 'like Corbett's  "Jezebel", illustrated with art (?) works by Ricketts and Shannon, were enough to kill the strongest periodical ever offered to British readers'.

Note the question mark after 'art'. New Zealanders, posing as 'British readers', posing as art connoisseurs...

25. Contact addresses

Ricketts lived and worked in London on several addresses:

1882-1887:
164 Kennington Park Road, Kennington, S.E
[Shannon joined Ricketts in 1886]


164, Kennington Park Road

1887-1888:
12a Edith Terrace, Edith Grove, Brompton
 

12A, Edith Terrace

1888-1894:
No. 2, the Vale, King's Road, Chelsea
[from September? 1888]

1894-1898:
31 Beaufort Street, Chelsea 
[from October 1894]

1898-1902:
8 Spring Terrace, Richmond
[from March 1898]

1902-1923:
Lansdowne House, Lansdowne Road, Holland Park  
[from 8 May 1902]

Lansdowne House (1905)

1923-1931:
Townshend House, Albert Road, Regents Park
[from 23 May 1923]

After Ricketts had died on 7 October 1931, Shannon lived in Townshend House until 24 June 1933. He then moved to 21 Kew Gardens Road.



24. Why Shannon?

The title of this blog has been changed from 'Charles Ricketts' to 'Charles Ricketts & Charles Shannon' - it goes without saying that the name of Charles Shannon keeps popping up in stories about Ricketts. I could have added 'and their circle', as the names of their close friends, such as Michael Field, Lucien Pissarro, Richard Roland Holst, and Oscar Wilde, also frequently appear in these texts, and future entries will as a matter of course mention other friends as well: John Gray, Thomas Sturge Moore, Laurence Binyon, W. Llewellyn Hacon, Charles Holmes, Gordon Bottomley, J.W. Gleeson White, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, Selwyn Image - and there are many others.

It is appropriate to dedicate this first instalment of the year 2012, and the first blog under the new title to Ricketts's partner Charles Shannon. The question is: Why Shannon?

Although Charles Shannon was primarily known for his lithographs and paintings, in the eighteen-nineties he showed a versatility that was comparable to that of Ricketts. He was a teacher at the Croydon Art School, he published magazine illustrations in the eighteen-eighties and supplied four illustrations for Oscar Wilde's A House of Pomegranates; together with Ricketts he designed and cut the wood-engravings for Daphnis and Chloe and Hero and Leander, he was an art editor for The Pageant (1896-1897), and he did the ruling for Ricketts's book work (as Ricketts was 'a fool with a ruler').

Cover for the first issue of The Dial (1889)

They started a magazine of their own, The Dial, the first issue of which appeared in August 1889, and announced: 'This number is published by C.H. Shannon, The Vale, King's Road, Chelsea, S.W., from whom copies can be obtained; price seven shillings and sixpence'. Shannon was the publisher, not Ricketts, who was deemed too unpractical for the job. The Dial famously brought them the friendship of Oscar Wilde, who saw to it that Ricketts was to design most of his books, including The Picture of Dorian Gray, Intentions, and The Sphinx, and these designs encouraged his publishers to give more assignments to Ricketts.

Ricketts's versatility is shown in Charles Ricketts, R.A. (1933), which contains illustrations of costume and stage designs (8), woodcuts (10), oil paintings (15), sculptures (7), pen drawings for book illustrations (11), lithographs (2), a bookbinding design, and a locket. A similar book on Shannon in a series of monographs on 'Contemporary British Artists' (1924) had only illustrations of oil paintings (29) and drawings (6). His lithographs, magazine illustrations and woodcuts were not represented, nor were the four binding designs he did for the plays of Oscar Wilde.

Charles Shannon, cover for Oscar Wilde's TheIimportance of Being Earnest (1899)

In 1893 Wilde suggested that Shannon should design the binding for his society comedies, starting with Lady Windermere's Fan. In advertisements these were described as having 'a specially designed Title-page and binding to each volume by Charles Shannon'. Although Shannon had been involved in five book design projects (all in collaboration with Ricketts), Ricketts on the other hand had designed illustrations or covers for sixteen books. The contract that agreed to have the designs done by Shannon, stipulated that two other books should be designed by Charles Ricketts and Aubrey Beardsley who had attracted far more attention as book designers than Shannon. So, why Shannon?

The question has not been raised before, not even in Josephine M. Guy and Ian Small's fascinating Oscar Wilde's Profession (2000), which assembled all details about production, contracts and payments. I think that Wilde made the choice for Shannon, because he did not want the other designers to influence the sales of the plays. Wilde and his publishers intended the books with designs by Ricketts and Beardsley to be exclusive, and the print-runs were accordingly small, while the prices were high. The comedies, however, were intended for a wider audience: the prices were more moderate and the print-runs were doubled. Shannon was, possibly, hired to deliver less eccentric designs.

Charles Shannon, floral design for the cover of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan (1893)

Charles Shannon, mirrored version of the floral design for the cover of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (1899)

Wilde went to the house in The Vale to discuss the book design and his thoughts will have been of importance to Shannon, who afterwards wrote to John Lane (probably in July 1893) that 'Oscar called tonight' and agreed to the prices of the ordinary and special editions. For the advertisements Lane could use Shannon's description ('In a binding & title page specially designed by Charles Shannon'), but it was obvious that Wilde influenced the design of the series of comedies, as 'Oscar is averse to the idea of their being all bound in the same cover', and on the other hand, that Shannon would not only become involved in the design of the binding and the title page; he would also supervise the printing. Lane was told, that as soon as the copy was ready, Shannon would take it to 'the Ballantyne' (the printers of Lady Windermere's Fan).(*) In fact, Shannon designed the volume, the dimensions, the page setting and the floral ornaments for the cover, although the contract only mentioned a cover design. Wilde asked John Lane (May 1893) to 'have some pages set up for Shannon to see - or ask him to choose type'. In June he wrote to Charles Ricketts: 'Tell Shannon I am quite charmed with the setting of Lady Windermere - it looks delightful and is exquisitely placed'.(**) We may suppose that the next play, A Woman of No Importance, was also to his liking.

Charles Shannon, floral design for the cover of Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance (1894)

Charles Shannon, floral design for the cover of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (1899)

Ricketts must have liked them too, but it is unclear to what extent he was involved in the designs, as up to that point, Shannon's book designs had all been done in collaboration with Ricketts. When Ricketts designed the cover for The Pageant - the first issue appeared in December 1895; Wilde had been convicted and sent to prison during the summer - he used the same material, the same colour and the same pattern of small floral designs. This could be interpreted as a statement, either of his authorship of the binding designs for Wilde's plays, or, and this is more likely, as a joint statement by Ricketts and Shannon, which was meant to publicly show their sympathy for Wilde by publishing a magazine that had the same kind of binding design, and the same colour, as the books of Oscar Wilde.

Obviously, Wilde was pleased with the Shannon designs for his plays, which cannot be said of Ricketts's design for The Sphinx or Beardsley's design for Salomé, which he disliked. After his release from prison, he asked Ricketts to design one book cover (again, an exclusive edition, for The Ballad of Reading Goal), which he detested, and he was anxious to have Shannon design the book covers for his last two society comedies, The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, even though Shannon had designed no other books in the years between 1894 and 1899, as he devoted himself to lithography and painting, and had just embarked on a career as a portrait painter.

(*) James G. Nelson, The Early Nineties. A View from the Bodley Head. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 244.
(**) The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis. London, Fourth Estate, 2000, p. 565-566.
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