# Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work/Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR
Peter Pan and Alice
‘Let us say about five o’clock on Thursday as that day suits you. I shall expect you then at Leinster Corner, which is the first house past Lancaster Gate in the Bayswater Rd. It’s round the corner.
‘Yours sincerely, J. M. Barrie’
Rackham worked steadily on the book for the next year, making many sketches in Kensington Gardens, and then wrote to propose another meeting at which he could show the author his finished pictures. He found Barrie pre-occupied by the illness of his friend Arthur Llewelyn Davies:
‘I am so much at present with a friend who is dangerously ill that I have not seen my letters till now, so kindly excuse this delay in answering. I want so much to see the pictures, and thank you heartily for your letter. Could you come on Wednesday about six o’clock? I shall be here if this suits you.
‘Yours sincerely, J. M. Barrie’
‘He would sit on a wet rock and fish all day.’ Rip Van Winkle, 1905: a drawing of 1904.
‘The sheep shearing nowadays is done where I put the cross (behind the cottage at that point.) Fairies Basin south of Baby Walk.
‘I haven’t seen a dummy book but H. & S. sent me some specimen pictures which I liked hugely.
‘Yours sincerely, J. M. Barrie’
In the next two letters Barrie referred to the exhibition of Rackham’s Peter Pan pictures at the Leicester Galleries:
‘Unfortunately I am going out of town Sat$^y$ till Monday, otherwise I shd have accepted your invitation with much pleasure. However I have accepted a proposal from the Gallery to go in & see the pictures before the opening day. May it all be a great triumph for you.
‘Yours sincerely, J. M. Barrie’
‘A company of odd-looking persons playing at ninepins.’ Rip Van Winkle: a drawing of 1904.
‘Yours most sincerely, J. M. Barrie’
‘Old Mr Salford was a crab-apple of an old gentleman who wandered all day in the Gardens.’ Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, 1906 (by courtesy of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd).
The Peter Pan book was a landmark in the life of Rackham’s nephew, Walter Starkie, who writes of it:
‘The Serpentine is a lovely lake, and there is a drowned forest at the bottom of it.’ Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (by courtesy of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd).
When he married, Rackham was earning considerably less than a thousand pounds annually, but he soon reached and passed that figure, and from 1907 onwards his eared income fluctuated for many years between £1,500 and £3,500. In one remarkable year (1920) he earned £7,000. He soon found that he could rely on heavy royalties from his books, and also that he could sell his originals at good prices, especially if they were in colour (it proved worth while for him to add colour to his black-and-white drawings for this purpose). He was able to save and he invested his savings carefully; while his steady support of the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution showed that he was always mindful of those less fortunate than himself.
Above, the house at 16 Chalcot Gardens, Hampstead, with Rackham on a balcony: a photograph taken in autumn 1913. Below, Houghton House, near Arundel; Rackham’s studio is on the left of the picture.
‘I’ll fetch you ladies a chair apiece’ … The quintessence of all charwomanhood. W.B., 1894.
‘“Preposterous!” cried Solomon in a rage.’ Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (by courtesy of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd).
‘It seems to me like a piece of exceedingly bad taste, to say nothing of its unfairness. … Of course, you were prepared for everyone to say that no one could ever approach Tenniel etc. – they always do in such a case – but it seems to me that if comparisons – always “odorous” – must be drawn, they might be done decently. I should like too, to say how much I personally like your drawings. I would not have missed them in spite of all that Tenniel has had to say on the subject. …”
Brock’s opinion coincided with the general verdict on Rackham’s Alice. He has certainly made the greatest impression of all Tenniel’s multitude of successors. The Rackham volume is still in print with Heinemann (1960) and the illustrations have appeared in American, French and German editions (see pages 77 and 79). The drawings were successfully shown at the Leicester Galleries. Nevertheless, Rackham was somewhat shaken and disappointed by the adverse criticism he received, and he did not proceed to illustrate Through The Looking-Glass, although Macmillan (Lewis Carroll’s original publishers) offered in 1907 to produce his illustrations of the Looking-Glass before the copyright had expired, in a uniform edition with Heinemann’s Alice – a remarkable gesture of confidence.
‘Fairies never say, “We feel happy”: what they say is, “We feel dancey”’ Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (by courtesy of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd).
The Blackwall tunnel: ‘our artist equipped for the tunnel’. A self-portrait of 1894.
‘A Mad Tea Party.’ Alice’s Adeventures in Wonderland, 1907.
William de Morgan, in a letter to Rackham, described his Midsummer-Night’s Dream as ‘the most splendid illustrated work of the century, so far’. Rackham’s success with books of this kind was now beginning to attract competitors, one of whom was Edmund Dulac whose drawings for The Tempest followed Rackham’s Dream drawings at the Leicester Galleries in 1908. Rackham’s junior by fifteen years, Dulac had no doubt been influenced by him, but his art was in contrast to Rackham’s in several respects. Dulac’s inspiration was primarily oriental, better suited to the Arabian Nights than to Shakespeare, while Rackham belonged to the Western, even the nordic world; Dulac’s emphasis lay in colour harmonies, while Rackham’s was in line, to which he skilfully added colour washes of transparent tints – a method well suited to reproduction and virtually a personal invention of his own. The appearance of two such gifted artists in this special field gave English illustrated books a world-wide reputation in the years before the First World War.
‘The Queen turned angrily away from him and said to the Knave, “Turn them over.” ’ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1907.
Rackham had become a public figure. Writers, well-known and less well-known, continually invited him to illustrate their works; but, as his time was pledged for years ahead, they were usually disappointed. He was now the father of a small daughter, Barbara, born in 1908, and the descendant of schoolmasters spoke out to insist that children deserved only the best in art. The Daily Mirror (24th November 1908) printed photographs of ugly dolls that Rackham had condemned and of pretty dolls that he had approved, and showed a photograph of him and Barbara with a toy rabbit that he thought ‘very good’. Later he gave an American encyclopaedia, The Junior Book of Authors (1934), his credo in the matter of children’s art:
‘Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?’ A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, 1908.
* A letter from Rackham, 26 October 1909.
‘He came to the house when I was a small girl and my parents were out. As usual, he was at once given a sketchbook and paints, and, as usual, asked what he was to draw. Just then my mother came back from a funeral, heard the question and said, “Anything but a funeral”. So Arthur Rackham started with an ant in the bottom left-hand corner of the page, went on to a large area of cobblestones, put in some feet (because the ant must have something to look at), and then the bodies above the feet – two lugubrious figures in black. Then he apologised that it was turning into a funeral and, last of all, put in the little parson in the distance, closing the gates of the cemetery. The result is a most treasured possession. …’
‘Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.’ A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, 1908.
‘Oscar’, and Miss Marie Tempest. Two drawings from W.B., 11 January 1895.