Henry Blackburn

“ Wherever an English stage coachman may be seen he cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft or mystery. He has commonly a broad full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin ”

“ 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 illustrations 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. ”

“ Art is Long, Life is Short.
"My dear ——,—It is so long since I have heard from you that I have concluded that you must be very flourishing in every way. No news being good news, and no news lasting for so long a time, you must have a quiver full of good things. ”

“ The poor ill-used old fellow of a word then only finds friends amongst the lowly and the loyal; and if in course of time the usurping word, as he rolls by in his carriage and footmen, hears the former wearer of his honours come out from the passing pedestrians, he curls his proud lip, pulls up his haughty collar, distends his Grecian nose, and [Pg 189] wonders where vulgar people will go to—albeit this vulgar word is better born, and has a higher instep than the carriage word. ”

“ Yes, I have not forsaken those gay—though perhaps, to the heart yearning to be fetterless, irksome—scenes without finding that the world ever requires toil from those sons of labour who would be successful. ”

“ Of the numerous illustrations drawn by Caldecott in 1874 for Old Christmas, we may select as examples the young Oxonian leading out one of his maiden aunts at a dance on Christmas Eve; and "the fair Julia" in the intervals of dancing listening with apparent indifference to a song from her admirer; amusing herself the while by plucking to pieces a choice bouquet of hothouse flowers. ”

“ Such costumes and toilettes sweep the polished floor, such delicately-gloved fingers clutch the glittering coins—when they happen to win, and sometimes when they don't—such a clinking of money, as the croupiers mass the rakings. ”

“ Here was a comparatively unknown artist at work, revealing talent which in after years would delight the world.
But fortunately for his health and peace of mind, and also for his future career, the young artist, who two years before had given up a clerkship in a Manchester bank (a "certainty" of more than £100 a year) , was advised to refuse an engagement on the Pictorial World of £10 10s. a week, which, had it been carried out, would have done much to raise the fortunes of that newspaper. ”

“ As occasional contributor to an illustrated newspaper he was destined to be without a rival, as the columns of the London Graphic for many years have testified.
A Viennese Dog.
The humour and vivacity, the abandon, so to speak, exhibited in some of these early drawings, form a delightful episode in his early art career, and many will wonder, looking at the variety of movement and expression (in the drawing of the overloaded car, for instance) , that the artist should have been amongst us so long without more recognition. ”

“ Now human beings are a mystery to me, and taking them all round I think we may consider them a failure. If I do not understand anything that belongs to myself, how can I understand what belongeth to another? ”

“ Some of the large illustrations were produced by Dawson's "Typographic Etching" process. The drawings were made with a point on plates covered with a thin coating of wax, the artist's needle, as in etching, removing the wax and exposing the surface of the plate wherever a line was required in relief—"a fiendish process!" as Caldecott described it, but with which he succeeded in obtaining excellent results—better than any artist previously.
On the 7th of March, 1874, a new illustrated newspaper called the Pictorial World was started in London, of which the present writer was the art editor. ”

“ Their fault, however, if I may speak of faults, is not so much in subject as in style. You have chosen simple subjects, in which is no harm of course; but simple subjects in all kinds of art require a masterly hand to delineate them. ”

“ To the world at large and in the opinion of many critics, there was, in his Academy work of 1876, promise of an exceptionally successful career. Decorative design and modelling in relief were Caldecott's especial forte, and it is to be regretted that so few of these works remain to us. "The Horse Fair in Brittany," in the possession of the writer, is one of the few completed works of this character. He was not destined to be a prolific painter, although strongly urged at this time by members of the Royal Academy to devote his energies to painting. ”

“ It is interesting to note that Old Christmas was offered to, and declined by, one of the leading publishers in London; principally on the [Pg 110] ground that the illustrations were considered "inartistic, flippant and vulgar, and unworthy of the author of Old Christmas"! It was not until 1876 that the world discovered a new genius.
During the progress of the drawings for Old Christmas in 1874, Caldecott went with the writer to Brittany to make sketches for a new book; but the publication was postponed until after a more extended tour in 1878. ”

“ Thus, his love of sport and fondness for rural pursuits, which never forsook him, were evidenced at an early age. His artistic instincts were also early developed, and many treasured [Pg 2] sketches, models of animals, &c., cut out of wood, were produced in Chester by the boy Caldecott.
Perhaps the best and most characteristic record of his early life is, that he and his brother were "two of the best boys in the school;" the genius that consists in "an infinite faculty for taking pains" having much to do with his after career of success. ”

“ I have now got a workshop, and I sometimes wish that I was a workman. Art is long: life isn't. Perhaps you are now careering round Schleswig or some other-where for a summer holiday. I shall probably go to France next month for a business and pleasure excursion. ”

“ To these somewhat tentative drawings he afterwards added to the series a diagram, six feet high, of the famous mad dog from one of his Picture Books, and another of the figure of a child running, reproduced above.
The discovery of a process by which a drawing [Pg 125] on paper in line, could be photographed and brought into relief, like a wood-block for printing at the type press, was not perfected in England until 1875, and did not come into general use until 1876; had it come a year or two earlier it would have had an important influence upon Caldecott's work. ”

“ Caldecott's studies with M. Dalou, the sculptor, in 1874, and the great proficiency he had already obtained in modelling in clay, enabled him to make several successful groups from his Brittany subjects.
On the Road Side, Brittany.
The bright-eyed stolid child in sabots at the roadside (one of the first of the quaint little figures that attracted his attention in Brittany) stands on [Pg 112] the writer's table in concrete presentment in clay; the model is not much larger than the sketch—the front, the profile, and the back view, each forming a separate and faithful study from life. ”

“ In the old tenth-century city of Goslar, Caldecott's pencil was never at rest. Taking a guide to save time (whose portrait he gives us, with a note of a [Pg 42] curious sixteenth-century street door) he explores from morning to night, choosing as subjects always "the life of the place."
Procession of the Sick.
"Drinking the waters at Goslar" in 1872 was a crude effort artistically, which may be contrasted with his sketches of the same scenes at Buxton in 1876, but the humour is irresistible. An extract from our diaries is necessary here to explain the illustration. ”

“ There is a legend that when the deluge blotted out man from most parts of the earth, the waters of the northern seas penetrated far into Germany, and that the enormous rock which forms the top of the Brocken formed a shelter and resting-place. ”

“ The humour is more robust, but never in after-work was more delightful, than in his rendering of the typical stage coachman. Until these illustrations came it had been said that Washington Irving's coachman stood out as a unique and matchless description of a character that has passed away. ”

“ The advance of the art of reproducing drawings in facsimile in a cheap form, suitable for printing at the type press like wood engravings, was attracting much attention in England in 1875, and at the writer's request Caldecott made a series of diagrams suggestive [Pg 121] of the power of line and of effects to be obtained by simple methods, to illustrate a paper read before the Society of Arts in London in March, 1875, on "The Art of Illustration." ”

“ Never, perhaps, in any book since Washington Irving's Old Christmas and Bracebridge Hall was the illustrator more in touch with the author than in North Italian Folk; but for some reason—probably because Caldecott's work and style had become identified with English people and their ways, both abroad and at home—the illustrations made little impression. The completeness of the pictures, and the local colour infused into them by the author, left little to be done ”

“ Dancing is not absolutely necessary to a man's welfare temporally or spiritually; so if you be a 'Wobbler,' wobble away and fear not, but see that thou wobblest with all thy might, then shall thy zeal compensate for lack of skill. ”

“ The slightest awkwardness of execution is noticed, and mars the simplicity of the whole. When a thrilling story is told, or a very interesting and novel operation described, faults of style are overlooked during the excitement of hearing or reading. ”

“ Wholesome as the England he loved so well. Manly, tolerant, and patient under suffering. None of the [Pg 207] 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 is clear from the above letter that Caldecott was conscious of the great change that was coming in his work in 1874. The suggestions of his friends that he should draw continually from familiar objects, and the hints he received from time to time that he "could not draw a lady," are ludicrously illustrated in two sketches to a Manchester friend who watched the progress of the artist with lively interest. ”