"Could not draw a Lady!"
But in spite of his moving laughter, the period referred to in this chapter was the most serious and eventful in Caldecott's career; when a sense of beauty and fitness in design seemed to have been revealed to him, as it were, in a vision, and when his serious studies seemed to be bearing fruit for the first time; when he felt, as he never felt before, the responsibilities of his art and the want of severe training for his profession. Then—but not till then—did the lines of Punch "On the late Randolph Caldecott," written in February 1886, apply exactly:—
"Sure never pencil steeped in mirth
So closely kept to grace and beauty."
* * *
[CHAPTER VII.]
"OLD CHRISTMAS."
The "new departure" which Caldecott made in the summer of 1874 will be seen clearly marked in the next few pages, where, with the permission of the publishers, we have reproduced some characteristic drawings from Old Christmas.
"There was issued in 1876 by the Messrs. Macmillan" (writes Mr. William Clough, an old and intimate friend of Caldecott) "a book with illustrations that forcibly drew attention to the advent of a new exponent of the pictorial art. These pictures were of so entirely new a nature, and gave such a meaning and emphasis to the text, as to stir even callous bosoms by the graceful and pure creations of the artist's genius. Washington Irving's Old Christmas was made alive for us by a new interpreter, who brought grace of drawing with a dainty inventive genius to the delineation of English life in the last century."