Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work/Chapter 8

by Derek Hudson

CHAPTER EIGHT

Epilogue

nder the shadow of the opening of the Second World War, Rackham’s death received less attention in the Press than it would have done at another time. The obituary notice in The Times described him as ‘one of the most eminent book illustrators of his day’ with ‘a special place in the hearts of children’, and contrasted his belief in ‘the sacrosanct quality of the text’ with an ‘unmistakable personal idiosyncrasy’. ‘His genius had something of the Gothic flavour … his line was in the last degree sensitive.’

In December 1939, the memorial exhibition at the Leicester Galleries brought together examples of Rackham’s finest work from his best period, together with several of his landscapes and the majority of the principal drawings for Poe’s Tales, Peer Gynt, and The Wind in the Willows. The writer of the introductory note in the catalogue was excusably a partisan. He removed the guarded qualification of The Times’ obituarist and made no bones about describing Arthur Rackham as ‘the most eminent book illustrator of his day’.

The Wind in the Willows, with Rackham’s last illustrations, was published in New York by the Limited Editions Club in 1940. On this volume Bruce Rogers, greatest of American book designers, lavished all his skill. The drawings were not generally known in England until Methuen published a popular edition at a guinea in 1950, omitting a few of the plates, including the frontispiece in which Toad, disguised as a washerwoman, attempts to bargain with the booking-clerk at the railway station – a clerk who bears an unmistakable resemblance to Arthur Rackham. The Methuen volume received a warm recognition that was all the more spontaneous because the drawings came to most people as a complete surprise.

Rackham’s will, drawn up in favour of his wife and daughter, was proved at nearly £25,000. Mrs Rackham did not long survive her husband. She died in March 1941, aged seventy-three.

As Rackham’s death occurred in the early days of the war, it proved impossible to fulfil his wish for cremation at Golders Green because the undertakers, fearful of air raids that did not happen, refused to venture into London. His funeral therefore took place at Croydon. When Mrs Rackham died, heavy air raids were such everyday occurrences that no objections were raised. Edyth Rackham was cremated at Golders Green, and her ashes were then scattered with her husband’s in the Garden of Remembrance there.

 

Since his death Rackham’s prestige in the book-collectors’ market has been fully maintained. It is understandable that such a prolific illustrator, who kept up a remarkably high standard of achievement over a very long period, should have become a focus of interest.

The series of de-luxe signed editions, originally published at two or three guineas, sold consistently well on publication and have appreciated considerably in value amongst collectors. Current prices (1960) range from £5 to £30 according to scarcity and popularity; there were, for example, only 250 copies of the first of the series, Rip Van Winkle in 1905, while 1100 copies of the de-luxe Alice were issued in 1907 (the average size of the signed editions was about 500 copies). Although prices have inevitably fluctuated according to the changing economic situation, the general trend has been upward, and these handsome books have always found favour.

There is, however, plenty of opportunity for the Rackham collector outside this expensive field. Apart from the de-luxe series, there are the unlimited editions of the same works, of which the first impressions, sought by collectors, have also appreciated in value in similar proportions; and there are many other books illustrated by Rackham which were never issued in special limited editions. Then there are books including illustrations by Rackham amongst others by different artists; these may often be found by assiduous searchers, to their advantage, lurking unsuspected on bookshop shelves.

The enthusiast who cares to go even further can look for the many periodicals published during Rackham’s early professional years which contain his illustrations for stories and articles, sometimes in his characteristic manner and sometimes far from it. In journals from Little Folks to The Ladies’ Field his fine line may be recognized. Often his initials identify the work, but the drawings are not always signed, and a need for detective ingenuity creeps in when one encounters the initials of another ‘A.R.’ who was a block-maker and not an illustrator.

Altogether, the hunt for books illustrated by Rackham has already provided much pleasure for those who are disposed to take it up, and may well provide a great deal more, whatever the current prices may happen to be (and they will always vary according to the circumstances of a sale and the condition of the book). It might be mentioned that the Peter Pan Portfolio (1912), containing twelve enlarged plates of illustrations in the 1906 Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, is something of a freak in the Rackham bibliography. High prices have been paid for it, because it is scarce, and because the plates can be resold separately, but the Portfolio is a law unto itself and no reliable guide to the Rackham market.

These Peter Pan prints should perhaps rank with Rackham’s original drawings as examples of his decorative work, rather than with his books. Rackham is one of the few English illustrators whose originals have sold readily. When he wrote a note to accompany his will, in 1934, concerning the relatively small number of his drawings still in his possession, Rackham was depressed at the state of the art market. ‘But the better drawings may well find buyers by degrees,’ he said, ‘the smaller ones not infrequently to book-collectors, rather than picture-buyers. For some years, I have found that a nett price of about £50 as an average (say from £30 to £60 – rarely more) is a possible price for the more important drawings, while smaller and less important drawings are sold at £15 to £30.’ This position had not materially altered in 1960.

 

Rackham has had many imitators; but they have lacked his finesse and imaginative power; he remains unique. Max Reinhardt admitted his debt to Rackham’s Midsummer-Night’s Dream drawings in his production of the play, and, whether or not Rackham can be proved to have influenced Walt Disney – as, considering Rackham’s American popularity, seems most likely – he undoubtedly anticipated his work. What of his effect on more serious artists? The influence of Rackham was felt most deeply in England by children who grew up during the first quarter of this century in those upper- and middle-class homes where his books were chiefly treasured. Two such sons of professional men were Graham Sutherland and John Piper, both born in 1903 and both educated at Epsom College. In this connection Sutherland’s pre-occupation with trees and their roots could be significant; one could see it as part of the general subconscious influence of Rackham’s art which has remained with all who knew it as children.

It would be idle to deny that Rackham has detractors, who fail to distinguish between the Master and his imitators and competitors, who mock at ‘Fairies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden’, and who associate him, most unfairly, with terracotta gnomes outside seaside bungalows. This prejudice cannot, it is submitted, survive an acquaintance with the width and range of his accomplishment, as demonstrated, however imperfectly, between the covers of this book.

That he has suffered from the diminishing acceptance of fairies in a disillusioned world is obvious. To those who consider them to be as imperishable and as necessary as folk-lore itself, Rackham is a valiant figure, for he, more than anyone, has kept the fairy world alive for children in the twentieth century. In an interview with James Milne (The Book Monthly, 1918–19), Rackham admitted that he saw fairy tales as ‘general truths, rather than particular truths. True to human nature and human ways of considering human experience, sifted and transmuted till they become truer than truth, essence’. He had ‘no use for the flimsy representation of spiritual realities’. Whether an artist believed in his fairy or not, Rackham knew that ‘he must make it as real as if he did’, as real as the tree the fairy is sitting on, or the mist around the tree.

If Rackham’s fairies dance lightly out of the range of criticism, this does not mean that all his work is beyond criticism; we find heroic mythological figures who would obviously have been at home in the Edwardian Academy, and we find a degree of archness here and there among the Arcadian idylls; the humour of long noses can be exaggerated. But where much is offered, much can be forgiven. Rackham’s work, though part of its strength is in detail, has a Shakespearean breadth and truth to nature. We know without being told, what is the fact – that this artist was a great reader, especially of the English classics; that for a Londoner, his knowledge of natural history was extensive and peculiar; that he observed the whole world of nature as a practising artist, with a sketch-book in his pocket.

Though Rackham sometimes appears to tread the verge of caricature, he was too gentle in himself, and too poetic, to make a caricaturist. His sphere is rather that of the lovable grotesque; A. S. Hartrick has seen him as the descendant of the English Medieval mural painters who decorated our country churches and brought a touch of humour to the portrayal of the ‘Harrowings of Hell’ and the Seven Deadly Sins. There is a famous cartoon by Raemakers, of the 1914–18 War, which shows figures representing the Allies cutting down a tree bearing the anguished features of the Kaiser. This political comment would have been too direct for Rackham. His personified trees (e.g. see pages 8 and 99) humorously suggest the mysteries of nature rather than any criticism of humanity. They are conceived in the spirit of T.E. Hulme’s lines:

‘With a courtly bow the bent tree sighed,
May I present you to my friend the sun?’

Rackham was a craftsman through and through. It is significant that a scrapbook that he kept in his last years contains cuttings of an article ‘Back to Workmanship’ by C. E. Montague, and of a report of a lecture by Charles Morgan, ‘A Defence of Story-Telling’. He was a vigorous and perhaps too stubborn advocate of water-colour. But then, as he once wrote in an article,^[1] ‘From the first day when I was given, as all little boys are, a shilling paint-box … from that day, when I first put my water-colour brush in my mouth, and was told I mustn’t, this craft has been my constant companion. … Looking back I have one long memory of holidays and never one without my faithful friend.’

Would the application of psychological analysis assist our appreciation of Rackham’s drawings? A correspondent has told the present writer, in an interesting letter, that he believed Rackham’s future standing would be high and that it would be based on the ‘symbolic content’ of his work as well as on its artistic merit. Whether this would be a fruitful approach to the work of a busy illustrator continually employed on commissioned subjects, not all of his own choosing, may be thought doubtful. It is one thing to demonstrate the symbolism of a fairy-tale, which may plausibly be done, and another thing to use that information to psycho-analyse the illustrator. As a man’s character is always reflected in his work, we must be aware that Rackham’s sensitivity and the sweep of his imagination were both unusual. This biographical sketch presents the cheerful, methodical artist whom ‘all men knew’, but allows the psychologists to have their say elsewhere.

In assessing Rackham’s place as an illustrator, there is no need to make extravagant claims, no need to match him against the great Victorians (though it might be mentioned that his subject-matter was healthier than Beardsley’s and his imaginative range wider than Tenniel’s). Despite the German influences, Rackham’s work remained utterly English in spirit. Succeeding and supplanting Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Walter Crane, Rackham possessed the ability and the thoroughness required to make the most of the new methods of reproduction that became available to him, and the genius to make his drawings immediately distinctive and worthwhile – as effective, indeed, on the walls of a room as between the covers of a book. His reward has been not only a world-wide reputation but the affection felt by a multitude, young and old, for the ‘Beloved Enchanter’, ‘Le Peintre Sorcier’.

Appendixes

A non-free image has been removed from this page.

Silhouette chapter-head from The Wind in the Willows.

A decorative drawing which suggests the influence of Beardsley: endpaper design for Shooting, 1902 (the Haddon Hall Library Edition).

1. In The Old Water-Colour Society’s Club Eleventh Annual Volume, 1934.