Children's Books and Their Illustrators

by Gleeson White

"AN AMERICAN MAN AND WOMAN IN THEIR PROPER HABITS." ILLUSTRATION FROM "A MUSEUM FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND LADIES" (S. CROWDER. 1790)

To delight one of the least of these, to add a new joy to the crowded miracles of childhood, were no less worth doing than to leave a Sistine Chapel to astound a somewhat bored procession of tourists, or to have written a classic that sells by thousands and is possessed unread by all save an infinitesimal percentage of its owners.

When Randolph Caldecott died, a minor poet, unconsciously paraphrasing Garrick's epitaph, wrote: "For loss of him the laughter of the children will grow less." I quote the line from memory, perhaps incorrectly; if so, its author will, I feel sure, forgive the unintentional mangling. Did the laughter of the children grow less? Happily one can be quite sure it did not. So long as any inept draughtsman can scrawl a few lines which they accept as a symbol of an engine, an elephant or a pussy cat, so long will the great army of invaders who are our predestined conquerors be content to laugh anew at the request of any one, be he good or mediocre, who caters for them.

It is a pleasant and yet a saddening thought to remember that we were once recruits of this omnipotent army that wins always our lands and our treasures. Now, when grown up, whether we are millionaires or paupers, they have taken fortress by fortress with the treasures therein, our picture-books of one sort are theirs, and one must yield presently to the babies as they grow up, even our criticism, for they will make their own standards of worth and unworthiness despite all our efforts to control their verdict.

If we are conscious of being "up-to-date" in 1900, we may be quite sure that by 1925 we shall be ousted by a newer generation, and by 2000 forgotten. Long before even that, the children we now try to amuse or to educate, to defend at all costs, or to pray for as we never prayed before—they will be the masters. It is, then, not an ignoble thing to do one's very best to give our coming rulers a taste of the kingdom of art, to let them unconsciously discover that there is something outside common facts, intangible and not to be reduced to any rule, which may be a lasting pleasure to those who care to study it.

It is evident, as one glances back over the centuries, that the child occupies a new place in the world to-day. Excepting possibly certain royal infants, we do not find that great artists of the past addressed themselves to children. Are there any children's books illustrated by Dürer, Burgmair, Altdorfer, Jost Amman, or the little masters of Germany? Among the Florentine woodcuts do we find any designed for children? Did Rembrandt etch for them, or Jacob Beham prepare plates for their amusement? So far as I have searched, no single instance has rewarded me. It is true that the naïveté of much early work tempts one to believe that it was designed for babies. But the context shows that it was the unlettered adult, not the juvenile, who was addressed. As the designs, obviously prepared for children, begin to appear, they are almost entirely educational and by no means the work of the best artists of the period. Even when they come to be numerous, their object is seldom to amuse; they are didactic, and as a rule convey solemn warnings. The idea of a draughtsman of note setting himself deliberately to please a child would have been inconceivable not so many years ago. To be seen and not heard was the utmost demanded of the little ones even as late as the beginning of this century, when illustrated books designed especially for their instruction were not infrequent.

"THE WALLS OF BABYLON." ILLUSTRATION FROM "A MUSEUM FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN AND LADIES" (S. CROWDER. 1790)

As Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton pointed out in his charming essay, "The New Hero," which appeared in the English Illustrated Magazine (Dec. 1883), the child was neglected even by the art of literature until Shakespeare furnished portraits at once vivid, engaging, and true in Arthur and in Mamillus. In the same essay he goes on to say of the child—the new hero: