In purely journalistic work, for which his powers seemed eminently fitted, he was never at home, his heart was not in it. Neither on _Punch_ nor on the _Graphic_ newspaper, would he have engaged to work regularly. He would do anything on an emergency to aid a friend--or a foe, if he had known one--but neither health nor inclination led him in that direction. And yet Caldecott, of all contemporary artists, owed his wide popularity to the wood engraver, to the maker of colour blocks, and to the printing press. No artist before him had such chances of dispersing facsimiles of daintily coloured ill.u.s.trations over the world. All this must be considered when his place in the century of artists is written.
Mr. Clough touches a true note in the following (from the _Manchester Quarterly_):--
"If the art, tender and true as it is, be not of the highest, yet the artist is expressed in his work as perhaps few others have been. Nothing to be regretted--all of the clearest--an open-air, pure life--a clean soul. Wholesome as the England he loved so well. Manly, tolerant, and patient under suffering. None of the friends he made did he let go.
No envy, malice, or uncharitableness spoiled him; no social flattery or fashionable success, made him forget those he had known in the early years."
Speaking generally of his friend Caldecott, whom he had known intimately in later years, Mr. Locker-Lampson (to whom we are indebted for the letters and sketches on pages 191, 192, and 199), writes:--
"It seems to me that Caldecott"s art was of a quality that appears about once in a century. It had delightful characteristics most happily blended. He had a delicate fancy, and his humour was as racy as it was refined. He had a keen sense of beauty, and, to sum up all, he had _charm_.
His old-world youths and maidens are perfect. The men are so simple and so manly, the maidens are so modest and so trustful: The latter remind one of the country girl in that quaint old ballad,
""He stopt and gave my cheek a pat, He told a tender tale, Then stole a kiss, but what of that?
"Twas Willie of the Dale!"
"Poor Caldecott! His friends were much attached to him. He had feelings, and ideas, and manners, which made him welcome in any society; but alas, all was trammelled, not obscured, by deplorably bad health."
These two criticisms--both coming from friends of the artist, but from different points of view--are worth setting side by side in a memoir.
A correspondent, writing from Manchester, sends the following interesting letter respecting places sketched by Caldecott in Cheshire and Shropshire and afterwards used in the ill.u.s.trations in his books.
"During occasional rambles in this and the neighbouring county of Chester, more especially in the neighbourhood of Whitchurch, I have been interested in the identification of some few of the original scenes pictured by Mr. Caldecott in his several published drawings. Thus:--
"Malpas Church, which occupies the summit of a gentle hill some six miles from Whitchurch, occurs frequently--as in a full page drawing in the _Graphic_ newspaper for Christmas, 1883; in _Babes in the Wood_, p. 19; in _Baby Bunting_, p.
20; and in _The Fox Jumps over the Parson"s Gate_, p. 5.
"The main street of Whitchurch is fairly pictured in the _Great Panjandrum_, p. 6, whilst the old porch of the Blue Bell portrayed on p. 28 of _Old Christmas_ is identical with that of the Bell Inn at Lushingham, situated some two miles from Whitchurch on the way to Malpas.
"Besides these I recognise in the "Old Stone-house, Lingborough Hall," in _Lob Lie-by-the-Fire_, p. 5, an accurate line-for-line sketch of Barton Hall, an ancient moated mansion which until quite recently stood within the parish of Eccles, four miles from Manchester.
"Lastly, a comparison of the ill.u.s.tration on p. 95 of _Old Christmas_, with one in last year"s volume of the _English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_, p. 466, shows that the picturesque nooks of Suss.e.x, equally with those of Kent and Chester, yielded their quota to the busy pencil we know so well."
About the year 1879 Caldecott became acquainted with Mrs. Ewing, which led to his making many ill.u.s.trations for her, such as the design for the cover of _Aunt Judy"s Magazine_, and notably the ill.u.s.trations to that "book of books" for boys, "_Jackanapes_," and to "_Daddy Darwin"s Dovecot_," and others.
Miss Gatty, in her memoir of Mrs. Ewing, says:--
"My sister was in London in June, 1879, and then made the acquaintance of Mr. Caldecott, for whose ill.u.s.trations she had unbounded admiration. This introduction led us to ask him (when _Jackanapes_ was still simmering in Julie"s brain) if he would supply a coloured ill.u.s.tration for it. But as the tale was only written a very short time before it appeared, and as the ill.u.s.tration was wanted early and colours take long to print, Julie could not send the story to be read, but asked Caldecott to draw her a picture to fit one of the scenes in it. The one she suggested was a fair-haired boy on a red-haired pony, thinking of one of her own nephews, a skilful seven-year-old rider who was accustomed to follow the hounds."
Looking back, but a few months only, at the pa.s.sing away of two such lives--the author of "_Jackanapes_" and the ill.u.s.trator of the "_Picture Books_" (of whom it was well said lately, "they have gone to Heaven together")--the loss seems incalculable.
In the history of the century, the best and purest books and the brightest pages ever placed before children will be recorded between 1878 and 1885; and no words would seem more in touch with the lives and aims of these lamented artists than a concluding sentence in _Jackanapes_, that--their works are "a heritage of heroic example and n.o.ble obligation."
The grace and beauty, and wealth of imagination in Caldecott"s work,--conspicuous to the end,--form a monument which few men in the history of ill.u.s.trative art have raised for themselves.
Here may end fittingly the memoir of his earlier work. At a future time more may be written, and many delightful reminiscences recorded, of the years from the time of his marriage on the 18th March, 1880, to his lamented death at St. Augustine, in Florida, on the 12th February, 1886; when--in the sympathetic lines which appeared in _Punch_ on the 27th February, 1886:--
"All that flow of fun, and all That fount of charm found in his fancy, Are stopped! Yet will he hold us thrall By his fine art"s sweet necromancy, Children and seniors many a year; For long "twill be ere a new-comer, Fireside or nursery holdeth dear As him whose life ceased in its summer."
THE END.