DICKENS AND HIS ILLUSTRATORS.

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 127, 19 August 1927, Page 12

DICKENS AND HIS ILLUSTRATORS.

SOME QUAINT ERRORS. (Written for The Sun.] TO START a discussion, at the beginning of this article, on the work of the book-illustrator and ihe relative positions of himself and his author is something I am tempted to do, but will not. I want to write only of Dickens and his artists. But I may mention one or two othei names by way of introduction. One cannot think of Austin Dobson, but with the name of that charming writer there springs to mind Hugh Thomson’s. His delicate line has a perfect consonance with those old-world poems about Rosina. Beau Brocade, and Sir Dilberry Diddle. To Hugh Thomson as well as the Brocks the novels of Jane Austen and of the Brontes and the poems of Thomas Hood all owe a share of the affection in which they are held. Ralph Caldecott and Herbert Railton will live as long, I should say, as Washington Irving and Sir

Roger de Coverley; Abbey as long as Herrick, Frank Pape as long as James Branch Cabell. Perfect collaborators these, artist and writer in complete accord. But in Dickens’s day a realistic pictorial treatment of the text was the rule, not the suggestive and interpretative method of modern illustrators. An£ it is this very fact which renders more surprising the frequency of errors on the part of Phiz, Cattermole, and the rest. There is no lack of emotional harmony between the drawings of these men and the stories they accompany, in spite of the amusing mistakes: quite the contrary. But, where Dickens sends Phiz written directions about Dr Blimber’s Academy, “this great storehouse for the young mind,” and makes it plain that the Dr. takes 10 young gentlemen under his care, why does Phiz make the 10 into 17? Not always would the artist be entirely at fault- Very often he would be given, at short notice, only a rough idea of what was wanted, with few details; or be shown no more than a small part of the text from which to construct his drawing. Forgetfulness and inexperience would also account for mistakes. But there are numerous examples of unfamiliarity with the object drawn and others in which the text has been disregarded. The whole thing is really an absorbing subject of study. One may find in the .Vailima Letters some very amusing passages about Stevenson’s troubles with his illustrators; and there are Wilde’s well-known objections to some artist’s proposal to illustrate the Ballad of Reading Gaol. To take Cruikshank first. There is that drawing in “Sketches by Boz,” depicting the terrible moment when Horatio Sparkins, “the embodied idea of the young dukes and poetical exquisites,” is discovered to be merely Samuel Smith, a counter-jumper in the Tottenham Court Road. Dickens describes the emporium and adds: “There were dropsical figures of seven with little three-farthings in the corner. . . .” But Cruikshank makes the 72d into 7Jd, not being

draper enough, apparently, to know the effect of so terrible a reduction. In *oliver Twist,” where Fagin and his pupils are shown recovering Nancy, the girl is drawn a buxom creature: but the text says she was “pale and reduced from watching and privation.’ Again, Sikes, endeavouring to evade the mob on Jacob’s Island, is said to have had a rope over 35 feet long, and his dog to have laiu concealed until the end; but Cruikshank gives Sikes very short measure —about 15 feet not enough to reach the ground; while the dog is show Lin full view on the ridge of the roof, no parapet to hide behind being anywhere nearIn “Barnabv Rudge,” Cattermole’e drawing shows the murder at the Warren being done in bright daylight although in the book it is done in pitch darkness. In "The Old Curi osity Shop,” Phiz seats Mrs Jarley at her first meeting with Little Neil, not where she should be, on the of the caravan steps, but on the damp ground. The skating party at Dingley Dell is about the funniest of all Phiz’s, for there is not a skate to be seen! According to Dickens, when Kit and Barbara visit Astley’s, it is Barbara’s mother who beats the unbrtlla on the floor, but Phiz make.'

Kit’s mother do it. Then there is the picture of Mr Jingle’s wonderful dog, Ponto. with Mr Jingle carrying the gun that has no lock. And in the drawing of Mr Pickwick’s arrest at Ipswich, the sedan chair is a ponderous affair about 12 feet high, and altogether too heavy for two men to lift. Maybe Phiz had never seen a sedan chair, as, at the time sedans were al-V-Ost extinct. In the scene in the Fleet Prison, wherein Pickwick meet' Jingle, broken down in health, Phi2 introduces Job Trotter, who does not appear in fact till the next ohapter In The Dark Road, representing Mr Carker's flight in the post chaise, the postilion has the reins in the wrong hand and the carriage has only two wheels, which, although the horses are going at a furious pace, are quite still. Of the off wheels there is nc sign at all. And so the errors mount up. Even John Leech is guilty, and Richard Doyle. Doyle shows only three bells instead of four to strike the quarter in the drawing of “The Chimes” in “The Christmas Books-” It might be convenient to conclude what I am afraid is developing into a mere cata logue with the essentially Dickensian drawing which Phiz made for David Copperfield. It shows David, now married, carving the joint for dinner. “I could not help wondering,” he says, “as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me, how it came to pass that our joints of mutton were of such extraordinary shape.” Perhaps Phiz could have explained. This erratic illustrator had given David not a leg of mutton, but a loin, to carve! Yet no one really minds these little variations from the text. We remember how Cervantes in one place makes the ass Dapple disappear in some mysterious way and how, a few lines further along—the miracle is not explained—we see Sancho mounted on his back again. We know it should not be; but, who cares? As with Cervantes, so with the Dickens drawingThey are so lovable, so true to the spirit of the genius who inspired them we accept them as they are and feel duly thankful. CAMDEN MORRISBY. Svdnav WORDS, COLOUR AND A THOUGHT OR TWO (Written lor THE SUN.) CURRIE’S essay is sore temptation to a vague and wandering mind, and I must keep myself to one, the most obvious, side of the subject —our names for the colours themselves. Of these “white” is, I think, the conspicuuous triumph, expressive equally (as you brighten or shade its diphthong) of damask naperies or Ophelia drowned. That was a perfect inspiration of some mop-headed Angle or Saxon; hut “black” was a failure as conspicuous. No artistic use, beyond a dry, castanet-like clapping, can be found for this unfortunate word. (Compare it with the splendid “noir,” or the only-less admirable “nero” and “negro” of Italy and Spain, or even with “schwartz”—unhandsome enough, but grave and mouth-filling). “Red,” also, is very poor; but “scarlet,” “crimson,” and “vermilion” take honoured places. “Pink” is insufferable for any finer sort of that hue, as apple-blossom, or maiden’s unaided blush; but it will do for “soft drinks” (enchanting phrase!), and for icecream portraits by Edwardian Royal Academicians. I think we should distinguish “gray”—all the cheerful kinds, like the dapple (or rockinghorse) and gent’s spring suitings—from “grey,” which is winter’s word. “Green” may serve for lush, succulent grass under noonday sun (that painful vulgarism), and for other unpleasant or dramatic kinds. But for the lyric gpeen of nursling plants, as for the shy and secret green that redeems too rarely the crudities of sunset—for these loveliest things we need a special term, and “vert” is indicated.

I promised not to divagate, but cannot resist a last word upon the jewelnames. What Is better than “pearl” (if the “r” he taken delicately), “beryl,” “chrysoprase,” tiger-eyed “topaz,” and fantastic, teasing “peridot”? “Ruby” begins with a proper richness, then tails oft' lamentably; the stone demands at least five mysterious and fiery syllables. “Diamond,” in spite of its very definite edges, is too good for the garish prose of that ornament. “Dymind,” a notunusual pronunciation, is far more suitable, and should be formally adopted. B. MINOR. Auckland. R.J.B.—TO MR. LEE (Written for THE SUN.) In his letter published in the Book Page of August 12 Mr. J. A. Lee, M.P., says that “the reader who could read Anderson’s 'Story-teller’s story,’ ‘The Triumph of the Egg,’ and ‘Winesburg,’ and fail to discern humour lacks discernment.” It is an old complaint, this, of Anderson’s drabness and dreariness; and “the reader” felt very unoriginal when he made it yet again. Does Mr. Lee employ the word “humour” iu some transcendental or Pickwickian sense? But no doubt there is plenty of normal humour and humanity in “A Story-teller’s Story” and “The Triumph of the Egg," which (to my shame) I have not read. And no doubt Mr. Lee has forgotten the distressing morbidity of most of the stories in “Winesburg," and has not read “Many Marriages.” In these there are passages which could only have been written (as I think) by a man whose comedic sense was dead, if it had ever lived. Take the bald, flat, uninflected dreadfulness of “Paper Pills” in “Winesburg.” And consider, for a moment, the amazing plot of “Many Marriages.” Webster, its hero, is a middle-aged manufacturer of washing-machines in a small town of Wisconsin. He falls in "love” with his typist, and decides to go away with her, leaving his colourless, prudish wife, and their daughter, a girl in her teens. So far, so good, shall we say? But now comes a scene which would be

nauseating if it were less absurd. Webster strips himself stark naked and, after posturing insanely before an image of tlie Virgin Mary, goes (still uude) to bis horrified wife and daughter, and explains to them why his marriage has been a failure; whereupon the wife commits suicide. That is all—but quite enough, you will agree, unless you are a very determined Anderson-fancier. This reader could not have finished the book without long intervals for refreshment and disinfection. Probably the member for Auckland East has a stronger stomach, and will find it merely amusing. Yet I am not an “enemy” of Sherwood Anderson. Much of Iris writing and his thought are utterly unsympathetic to me, hut I respect his sincerity, and admire his occasional touches of a fine, thwarted poetry.

I think that he might have been a very considerable writer, if he had been born and bred in Europe, not in a small town of the Middle West.

Mr. Lee speaks of Anderson as “recipient of the ‘Dial’ prize, and acknowledged great man of letters.” On another occasion the “Dial” prize (given each year by the “advanced” American review of that name) was awarded to T. S. Eliot for his poem, “The Waste Land.” I have not room to quote much of this, but here are some typical lines: While T teas fishing in the dull canal On a winter's evening round behind the gashouse , Musing upo)i the Icing my brother's wreck And on the king my father's death, before him. White bodies naked on the low, damp ground, And bones cast in a little, dry, damp garret. Battled by the rat's foot only, year to But at my back Jrom time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O, the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter, And on her daughter. They wash their feet in soda-water. El () ccs voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole i Perhaps, after all, the “Dial” prize is not quite so important as Mr. Lee would have us think. R.J.B. Postscript. —I may mention that I have read three other novels of Anderson —“Windy McPherson’s Son,” “Matching Men,” and “Poor White” —but some years ago, so that I remember them only vaguely, and perhaps erroneously, as powerful but crude and depressing books.