# The Story of the House of Cassell/Part 2, Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
FORTY YEARS OF ILLUSTRATION
Most people of a certain age remember the palmy days of the Magazine of Art, its literary brilliance under W. E. Henley, its artistic abundance under M. H. Spielmann. The germ of all this was Cassell's discovery of the public interest in pictures during the Great Exhibition and his development of the mechanical art of illustration. The great success of the Illustrated Exhibitor tempted Cassell to carry on the paper as a weekly. He enlarged its title to the Illustrated Exhibitor and Magazine of Art, which in 1853 was contracted to the Magazine of Art. Though it was the first paper to deal mainly with art subjects, it was not exclusively devoted to them, but included contributions on matters of general interest from such writers as the Howitts, Miss Meteyard ("Silverpen"), and James Hain Friswell. The first editor was Millard. He was assisted by Thomas Frost as sub-editor, one of whose "sub-editorial" duties was to translate the book on the old masters written by Charles Blanc! When Professor Wallace resigned the editorship of the "Popular Educator," Millard undertook to conduct both; but the Magazine of Art did not pay, and Cassell stopped it at the end of 1854. It was revived for a little while during the second Exhibition (1862), but otherwise lay dormant until 1878.
In the latter year the Paris International Exhibition was made the occasion for re-issuing it under the editorship of Mr. (afterwards Sir) A. J. R. Trendell, of the Science and Art Department, the first number appearing on April 25. It was published at sevenpence, in a small quarto size. It had, as was inevitable, a strong South Kensington flavour, among the early contributors ​being R. H. Soden Smith, the Keeper of the Art Library of the South Kensington Museum, Hungerford Pollen and George Wallis, as well as Sir Wyke Bayliss, Sydney Hodges, Henry Blackburn, Professor A. H. Church, Wilfrid Meynell ("John Oldcastle") and Mrs. Meynell, W. W. Fenn, and Leonard Montefiore. During the next three years other names were added—Alan Cole, "Leader Scott," Henry Holliday, Godfrey Turner, Lewis F. Day, Percy Fitzgerald, J. Forbes Robertson (father of Sir John Forbes Robertson) and Phipps Jackson; while original drawings were made by Sir John Millais, Randolph Caldecott, Percy Macquoid, W. H. J. Boot, and other artists of note.
Within three years the magazine was firmly established. The page was then enlarged and the price raised to a shilling. This change was demanded by the general desire for a more complete representation of the varied branches of art, and from this time forth the magazine became a review as well as a record of art, past and present. The circulation at once rose, and it was decided to include in each number a frontispiece consisting of an etching, a photogravure, or a steel plate. It was about this time that Herkomer designed his famous poster for the magazine. It represented the Genius of Art acting apparently as the tutelary divinity of the magazine, spreading its benefits among the eager public, while, in the background on a terrace of the Temple of Art, the Great Masters looked on with grave if languorous approval. The Rev. Eric Robertson, who succeeded Trendell as editor in 1881, had called in at the rooms of the Society of Arts one afternoon to hear part of a lecture by Herkomer upon some such subject as "Art for the Streets." A day or two thereafter, with the consent of Cassell's, he visited Herkomer at Bushey and suggested to him that he might design a large poster to advertise the Magazine of Art. He seized the idea at once, and covenanted to design the poster and procure the assistance of his father to engrave it on wood for the total sum of £70. Father and son ​attacked the subject lustily, doing much of the woodcutting with common jack-knives. The result was a contribution to the embellishment of hoardings which held its own for some years and was regarded as the first truly artistic English poster on a large scale, with the exception of Fred Walker's splendid advertisement for "The Woman in White." For the enlarged magazine Lewis Day designed a new wrapper, which won admiration as an extremely graceful piece of work.
This is but one indication of the spirit with which the magazine was run. Expense was scarcely considered in its production, and the Magazine of Art was, in fact, regarded as the "flag of the House." Gradually many new features were introduced, and, while absolutely independent in its criticism, it sought to interest the art lover and the art collector, to please while instructing "the man in the street," and to appeal to the student, not only by placing before him illustrations of modern art but also by reproducing the finest works of the Masters. One of the most popular contributors was an artist who had lost his sight, W. W. Fenn, already mentioned, author of "A Blind Man's Holiday." When he became blind his wife, a woman of trained discrimination, led her husband round the picture galleries, feeding his mind with accurate and sympathetic observations, which, interpreted by his own knowledge, enabled him to produce articles more welcome to the average reader than those of many a critic with eyes wide open.
Of course artists were not always easy to please. For instance, when a proof of an engraving of one of William Linton's landscapes was, as a matter of courtesy, sent to him to ascertain whether he was satisfied with it, he testily replied that he had never painted such a subject. It was only after considerable toil that the history of the picture was traced and Linton, then a very old man, could be convinced that he had forgotten his legitimate offspring. Once satisfied about the pedigree of the picture, he warmly praised the reproduction.
W. E. HENLEY
​When Robertson was appointed Principal of the Lahore University and resigned his position, W. E. Henley was brought in as editor of the magazine.
Henley's succession marked another stage in advance. He quickly infused vitality into the magazine, not only by what he himself wrote but also by gathering around him a great company of eminent writers and artists, including R. L. Stevenson and his cousin R. A. M. Stevenson, Richard Jefferies, Sidney Colvin, Mandell Creighton, Andrew Lang, Austin Dobson, and Comyns Carr. The artistic was now separated from the literary editorship, and was undertaken by Mr. Edwin Bale. The pictorial section had become highly important, the quality of the wood engravings had immeasurably improved, there was much fine drawing and careful painting.
Mr. Bale said of Henley that he had a fine instinct in art matters, but "the Barbizon School was his ideal in painting, and Rodin his god in another branch of art." The extent to which he carried his partiality and allowed it to influence his magazine was well illustrated in a remark made to Mr. Bale by George Howard, afterwards Earl of Carlisle. He said he liked to see the magazine month by month, and if he came across a page that hadn't on it the name of Millet or Rodin he read it, but such pages were few. Henley was a strong personality, a born fighter. "If you did not like him because of his prejudices," said Mr. Bale, "you had to like him in spite of them. He was the best of comrades, would fight for all he was worth for his ideals, and was always the same good-natured, genial creature when the fight was done as before it began."
A new feature of the magazine under Henley's editorship was the publication of original verse, surrounded by a design suitable to the subject of the poem, and among the early contributors some names appeared which have since become notable. One of Henley's greatest gifts. which found still more scope in later years, when he became editor of the National Observer, was the insight ​which enabled him to discover budding genius. Besides securing R. L. Stevenson as a contributor, he sponsored his cousin, whose first efforts in art criticism appeared in the Magazine of Art. If Henley's antagonisms in art were not conducive to large circulation, nobody can doubt that he put his best work into every number. There is no need here to recall the tragedy of this "godlike being" hampered from youth by suffering and physical deformity, in spite of which he left so rich a legacy, not only in his own work but in that of others which saw the light largely through his generous encouragement.
Henley's successor as editor of the magazine in 1886 was Mr. Sidney C. Galpin, a son of Mr. T. D. Galpin, but in the course of a few months he was obliged by serious illness to give up the task. Then came Mr. M. H. Spielmann, who, with Mr. Arthur Fish for his assistant, controlled the destinies of the magazine for seventeen years, until, in fact, it was discontinued. Spielmann's editorship was not less distinguished, though more catholic, than Henley's. He prevailed upon many of the leading artists of the day to give public expression to their views on the art tendencies of the time. In this way Millais, G. F. Watts, J. W. North, J. T. Hodgson, Val Prinsep, Herkomer, Benjamin-Constant, and many other painters of note contributed articles of great value to students and art lovers. John Ruskin also was a contributor. Mr. Spielmann tells the story of Ruskin's essay on "The Black Arts":
​"In the autumn of 1887 Ruskin was in London, staying, as usual, at Morley's Hotel, Trafalgar Square, whence a two minutes' walk would carry him to the National Gallery. His window overlooked the gallery—'where the Turners are,' he said markedly; but not caring for the light, he sat with his back towards it, drawing himself up into one side of his chair with knees and feet together in his characteristic attitude. When I told him that the editorship of the Magazine of Art had just been confided to me, he clapped his hands and cried, 'Bravo! I'm so glad,' and immediately proposed to contribute an article to its pages. It was agreed that the article in question should appear in the January number, and that it should be followed by at least one other. Then he went off to Sandgate to recuperate, whence he wrote: 'When do you want your bit of pleasant writing? Did I say it would be pleasant? I have no confidence in that prospect. What I meant was that it would not be deliberately unpleasant; and I will further promise it shall not be technical. But I fear it will be done mostly in grisaille. I don't feel up to putting any sparkle in—nor colour, neither.' 'For one thing,' he wrote on another occasion—for he had now grown quite enthusiastic over the Magazine, and was offering a good deal of very acceptable advice—'I shall strongly urge the publication of continuous series of things, good or bad. Half the dullness of all art books is their being like specimen advertisement books instead of complete accounts of anything.' Then followed the announcement, 'I have finished the introductory paper; you will see it chats about a good many things.'"
When the article arrived it had no title, and, as the press was waiting, a telegram was dispatched to Ruskin asking him to supply the omission. The characteristic reply came: "I never compose by telegram, but call it 'The Black Arts,' if you like." A subsequent letter of confirmation supplied as a sub-title, "A Reverie in the Strand"; and after protesting against the telegram, which "always makes me think somebody's dead," he replied ​to a question as to the amount owing to him for the article: "You are indebted to me a penny a line; no more and no less. Of course, counted twopence through the double columns." Later letters contain further counsel and criticisms in respect to the Magazine of Art, and details of the articles which were to follow the first. They were to bear chiefly on "body-colour Turners," as a contrast to the introductory letter, and on "pure composition, as far as I can without being tiresome; and there will be something about skies and trees, and I'll undertake that the drawings I send shall be presentable, and not cost much in representing." But a period of indisposition followed, during which he subscribed himself: "And I'm ever your cross old J. R." Another spell of illness made him again seek complete rest, upon which it would have been cruel to break in. And so his intended series of papers remained incomplete, and "The Black Arts" remains as much a fragment of an intended whole as "Proserpina," "Our Fathers have told Us," and even "Præterita" itself.
In his coming-of-age article Mr. Spielmann expressed himself with cautious hopefulness about the future of the magazine. "What," he remarked, "is to be the degree of its prosperity in the future—what, indeed, is to be the term of its existence—depends wholly upon the encouragement and support awarded to it by the public. To deserve this support will, of course, continue to be the object, and as a good deal more than merely commercial considerations and business interest are involved in the publication and editing of the magazine, it is confidently hoped that practical encouragement will not be denied." The hope was not realized. The publishers' expectations were not excessive: they would have been content to continue the magazine if it had made a quite moderate return. It failed to do so, and in 1904 the editor, in a dignified valedictory notice, said farewell to his readers, as well as to the public and the critics who had "taken a kindly interest in the fortunes of the magazine" ​throughout the seventeen years during which he had controlled it. "In the course of that period," he said, "the magazine has sought not only to serve the interests of Art and artists, and of all art-lovers, and to maintain a high level of taste—in accordance with its traditions ever since its foundation in 1878—but also to take a line in art politics, independent, healthy and just, at a time when a section of the Art public were showing a tendency to be swept too far away. Its maintenance of principles has laid it open to the threat of more than one action for libel, but before a firm attitude these menaces came to nothing; and now, the Editor believes, the magazine has none but friends who will regard its discontinuance, or change, with friendly regret. To them he ventures to express a sympathetic farewell, and to those who have helped in so many ways to raise the standard to which it has attained, the most cordial and appreciative thanks."
The success of "process" reproductions and the cheapness of method compared with the older form of reproduction had led, in 1888, to the inauguration of a supplement to the Magazine of Art, under the title of "Royal Academy Pictures" consisting of process reproductions of the chief works in the annual exhibition at Burlington House. It was a great success, and it continued to be published for years after the Magazine of Art passed out of existence—until, in fact, it was superseded by an "official" publication in 1916.
An attempt in 1893 to popularize the chief pictures shown at the annual exhibitions on the Continent was not a success. "European Pictures" was published in 1893 and 1894 and was then discontinued. The Continental Art of that day excited little popular interest here.
It would have been impossible to attempt the Magazine of Art without the plant and organization for the production of printed pictures which had sprung out of John Cassell's early experiments. Before the magazine assumed its later form, and then alongside it, there grew up a great ​Art Department, equipped with every new appliance for illustration as it came forward. In the beginnings of art work at Cassell's the editor of each periodical or serial made his own arrangements for illustrations. The multiplication of the work as time went on made this method cumbrous. There was a transition stage when one of the editors was appointed to be the medium of communication between the artists and the editorial rooms. Finally, an Art Director was chosen and a separate department constituted under his control.
Though he was not the first Art Director, the man under whom the department began to assume its modern proportions and importance was Mr. Edwin Bale, R.I. When the demand for illustrations had become so great that the existing arrangements broke down, Galpin asked Mr. Sparkes, the Principal of the School of Art at South Kensington, to give some of his time to the firm and inaugurate an adequate art control. This he was unable to do, but he advised Galpin to see Mr. Bale. His pictures were then filling Mr. Bale's thoughts and his time, and no idea of joining a business house had entered his head. At the moment v/hen Galpin called, at the end of March, 1883, he was showing to a party of friends his work for the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute, almost ready to be sent off to the exhibitions. Galpin joined in the inspection of the pictures, and afterwards, in the studio, made his proposal. In a week or two Mr. Bale called at La Belle Sauvage, and was formally asked to give the firm the benefit of his "art, taste, and judgment" as superintendent of the Art Department. Being then unprepared to give up his private work as a painter, he offered to attend at the Yard two days a week for three months as an experiment. Before the first month was up he was in practical control, and at the end of six months was so satisfied with his pleasant work that he entered into an agreement for a term of years, which ultimately extended to a quarter of a century. Mr. Bale was, indeed, an ideal Art Director, and he himself was perfectly suited with a ​post which kept him in touch with his artist friends on the one hand, and on the other afforded him experience of the business world of which the artist usually knows so little. He was elected to the Board in 1886.
When he took charge, wood engraving was the great agent of the illustrator. Line engraving on steel and copper was passing away, although it was far from dead, and photogravure was making its appearance. All colour work was still done by lithography. Colour pictures did not commonly appear in magazines or books; they were reserved mostly for large presentation plates, such as those issued with Christmas numbers. For this work chromo-lithography held a very strong position.
Attempts were being made in the 'eighties to provide illustrations by cheap processes, mainly of line drawings on zinc, and of this movement Paris was the centre; but wood engraving was still supreme for illustration. England stood very high in comparison with other countries for the quality of its work, and all the great engravers did work for the House of Cassell. Moreover, the House had on the premises a large staff of its own, under the direction of Mr. Klinkicht, himself a first-rate engraver, for it would have been impossible to commission artists to turn out the quantity of blocks required each month. The great engravers were artists who could not, or would not, commit themselves to finish work to a date; they would only work when they felt the impulse, and publishing houses had to wait upon their moods to an extent that the present generation could not understand. It was largely this uncertainty as to the completion of blocks that gave the incentive to the development of process work of all kinds which ultimately eliminated the artist engraver. The tendency to illustrate topical events worked in the same direction: drawings had to be produced in haste and to time. There were various processes for reproducing pen-and-ink work, or "line drawings" as they are called technically, but the great ​desideratum was a means for the rapid engraving of drawings, pictures and photographs in light and shade. Messrs. Goupil, of Paris, were perhaps the first to introduce such a system, but it was Meisenbach's process, coming a little later, which worked the revolution. In all the variety of its forms, it has retained even to this day the name of the inventor; the "half-tone" process is still sometimes called the "Meisenbach" process. He it was who made a commercial possibility of something which had been hitherto an interesting chemical and mechanical curiosity. The advances since his time have been many and great, but they have not always gone in the direction of improved quality. At first it was possible to get a process block made in a fortnight, then in a week, then in two or three days. Now, if need be, one can be obtained in an hour or two.
In the 'eighties it was customary in the House to allow a month for the production of a wood-engraving for a magazine—a fortnight for the drawing, and a fortnight for the cutting of the drawing on the wood. As the drawing was done directly on the wood block, the act of engraving cut it all away, and if the engraver scamped his work nothing was easier than to attribute the fault to the artist. It was therefore a great advantage when the photograph came into the field, for by its aid a drawing made on paper could be transferred to the wood block. This device put an end to the method of drawing on the wood itself. It possessed the further advantage of saving the drawing, which could now be permanently preserved and was valuable for reference as the engraver proceeded with his task. Among the most successful of the draughtsmen on wood were men whose names figure prominently on the roll of the Royal Academy—Fred Walker, Sir Hubert Herkomer, Sir Luke Fildes, Sir Edward Poynter, J. W. North, Henry Woods, W. F. Yeames, and Sir John Gilbert, while other distinguished artists were George du Maurier, A. B. Houghton, and George Friswell. All these contributed to Cassell's publications.
​The House was turning out such a number of illustrations every month that the stock of wood blocks and electrotypes numbered hundreds of thousands. This led to the compilation of a catalogue containing a print of every illustration owned by the House. It was a gigantic undertaking, and years were occupied in carrying it out. A vast stock of original drawings by artists, including men of the highest eminence, was accumulated every year, and annual sale exhibitions of the best of them were held, first in a room at La Belle Sauvage Yard, and later on in the Hall of the Cutlers' Company in Warwick Lane.
Few drawings are made to-day as compared with twenty years ago. The photographer has generally taken the place of the draughtsman, except for the illustration of stories, although there is still a distinct place left for him in furnishing illustrations for medical and other scientific works and in producing diagrammatic illustrations such as those in the "New Popular Educator" and in Mr. Wells's "Outline of History." Not often, either, do artists now make pilgrimages to draw sights and scenes afar. But in the pre-process days the House sent two men to the other side of the world to make drawings for "Picturesque Australasia," while to illustrate "The Picturesque Mediterranean" a staff of the best landscape painters, which included John MacWhirter, Sir Alfred East, Charles W. Wyllie, and W. H. J. Boot, was commissioned to make drawings of scenes in the midland sea. To-day, it is to be feared, the extra charm which drawing gives to an illustration is little appreciated, and scarcely anyone thinks of having a sketch made of any natural object or subject which can be rendered by photography. The variety and individuality of the old illustration have given place to excellences of a different sort. But for many people any mechanical "realism" secured by photography was dearly bought by the sacrifice of the qualities of temperament, taste, and skill that the older style of illustration exploited.
​The half-tone process developed slowly. Its first methods and results were coarse. The "screen" (the device employed for breaking up the surface of the drawing by criss-cross lines for rephotographing, which is the earlier stage of process work) was obtained by placing netting over the drawing. In later years sheets of closely ruled cross-lines were photographed and the resulting negatives used as screens. But ultimately Mr. Levy, of Philadelphia, invented a machine for ruling sheets of glass with a diamond. The machine worked automatically, and would rule screens containing three hundred lines to the inch. These diamond-ruled screens gave such a clear result that soon they revolutionized the process trade.
The cross-lined screen came to be used also for photogravure. This form of reproduction was introduced by a firm at Lancaster under the name of Rembrandt photogravure, which is an application of the lined screen to the production of an intaglio plate. The most important part of the business, however, was the machine which printed the plates. Prior to this invention photogravure plates were printed by hand like etchings, and only a very few copies per hour could be turned out, but the machine now introduced printed the plates at a rate of hundreds per hour, and thus photogravure, with its always acceptable rich brown shadings, became popular for frontispiece and other pictures in the better class of magazines and books. Of this new form of illustration the House, under Mr. Bale's guidance, took full advantage.
The last great development of process work was the invention of colour printing from blocks instead of from drawings on stone—lithography. Colour in magazine and cheap-book illustration had been always difficult to provide. Lithography had been its chief source of supply, but it was not possible with fewer than nine or ten printings to produce any sense of fullness of colour. The large colour supplements to Christmas numbers had had as many as twenty to twenty-five printings, each from a different stone. The wood-block printing, introduced by ​Mr. Edward Evans, had supplied a little colour work, but this required the engraving of a separate wood block for each printing, and it was only, therefore, a very partial solution of the difficulty.
Next a method was devised whereby it was possible, by the introduction of screens of coloured glass between the object to be photographed and the negative, to photograph the colour value of the three primary colours separately. Blocks were then made by the ordinary half-tone process from each of the negatives, and, these blocks being printed one over the other, in yellow, red, and blue, a combination is produced which very well represents the colour of the original. The method was invented by Dr. Vogel, in Germany—or, rather, it was patented by Dr. Vogel, but, unfortunately for the patent, it had been described previously in an English journal by Mr. Ives, a well-known American worker in process. The making of colour blocks was eagerly taken up in America, and it was a certain specimen of American work which stimulated effort in the same direction on this side. Mr. Bale still has a copy of that print, and well remembers showing it to Farlow Wilson, the printing manager. It was stated to be the result of three printings on a flat bed machine, and it was as full in colour as a lithograph of fifteen to twenty printings. It seemed to be the death-knell of lithography, though lithographers, not believing that such an effect had been obtained by means so simple, scoffed. They were wrong. At the same time the problem was not yet solved in England. True, it was now possible to make colour blocks, and very good ones, but it was not easy to get good results from them. The English block-maker made the blocks, but the English printer could not print them. Accurate "register" to prevent overlapping of colour was indispensable, and English machines were not rigid enough to give this accuracy. For some time the results were so poor that several firms which experimented with the prints abandoned the effort as impracticable. At this point Mr. Bale made up his mind to go to America ​to see if he could find any printing machine that could succeed where English machines had failed.
America had for long been the home of good printing. When the stream of emigration first set in a large number of the most capable printers in England went to the States, carrying with them the best English traditions. These were the men who established the reputation of the States for good printing. They were backed by the inventive genius of America in the production of machinery. Mr. Bale went up and down the States until he found at Chicago a machine which, though not quite ready for the market, appeared to possess all the requisites for accurate registration. The best printing establishments in the States were already lodging orders for it. He brought back the specifications, and the board of directors gave an order for three machines—the first Miehle machines which came to England. They have since become so popular that a company has been formed in England for their manufacture. Their chief characteristic is their rigidity and solidity, which gives the "hair-line register" promised by the makers.
The House of Cassell now had the blocks and the machines to print them, and the moment was ripe for Mr. Bale to press forward his scheme for "The Nation's Pictures," a serial to contain representative paintings from all the metropolitan and provincial galleries belonging to the Government and the municipalities. He made the selection personally, travelling through the country in the winter months for the purpose. "The Nation's Pictures," the first important example of process work in colour, was a great success, both technically and commercially, and naturally it found many imitators. Its technical merit was largely due to the fact that every picture was photographed direct from the original, and that the proofs were carefully compared with the paintings, a process involving great trouble and expense.
Sir J. E. MILLAIS Sir LUKE FILDES K.C.V.O. R.A
​most important pictures in British and Continental galleries have become accessible to the public.
The development of direct colour photography has also played an important part in the art of illustration, particularly in connexion with "Nature Study" work. Although the problem of securing a contact colour-print from an autochrome negative has yet to be solved, its successful reproduction by means of the three-colour process is an accomplished fact. The wonderful plates of wild flowers secured by the late Mr. Essenhigh Corke, of wild birds by Mr. Richard Kearton, and of under-water life by Dr. Francis Ward have revolutionized the illustration of natural history text-books.
The artists of eminence who have contributed to the publications of the House are legion. Of one of them. Sir John Millais, Mr. Bale records a characteristic reminiscence. "About thirty years ago," he writes, "the House published some songs composed by Henry Leslie. They were originally in two volumes, and Millais, who was an intimate friend of Leslie's, suggested to him that he should put the two small volumes into one and add a few more new songs to give fresh interest to the work, and promised that when this should be done he would design a frontispiece for the volume. After a time Leslie wrote to Sir John to say that he had taken his advice, the new book was ready, and now for the promised frontispiece. It happened that Millais was just at that moment very much pressed with work and could not give the time to make a new drawing, but he invited his friend to go to his house and look over such things as he had and see if there was anything that would answer his purpose, generously adding that he would be welcome to anything he saw.
"Mr. Leslie came to me asking me to go over with him to Millais's house, as he was no judge of what would be suitable for a frontispiece. I knew Sir John very well, and was delighted to get the opportunity of looking through unknown sketches and drawings. We went early ​one morning, so early that Millais was still at breakfast, and we were shown into the studio. In a few minutes he came in with a cap on his head filling his morning pipe, as well as he could with both hands full of letters. He began in his bluff manner, after a curt good morning, with 'Look here, boys, a man wrote me from—I think it was from Manchester—and asked me what I would charge to go down to his place and paint his wife's portrait; she was an invalid and could not travel. I wrote him that I never went out of my studio to paint portraits, and anyone wanting me to paint them must come to me. He wrote back that I hadn't answered his question, what I would charge to go there and paint the portrait. Thinking to put him off by asking a huge price, I wrote back mentioning £2,000. Now look here'—and he showed us the letter, which was simply, 'Dear Sir John,—Please come.' 'And now,' said Millais, 'the Press bullies me because I paint portraits instead of subject pictures.'
"We found a beautiful pen-and-ink drawing on the walls of the staircase, which I carried off; and it ultimately made the frontispiece to the volume 'Little Songs for Me to Sing.'"
The late W. H. J. Boot, vice-president of the Royal Society of British Artists and an honoured member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, was for twenty years, beginning in 1873, a constant contributor to the publications of the House. He attributed his entire success as an artist to reading a book published by John Cassell entitled "The History of the Painters of all Nations." It came out in fortnightly and monthly parts, and gave a short biography of the world's famous artists and a reproduction of their pictures. Mr. Boot was but a child at the time, but the aspiration of the artist was in him, and these personal records gave him courage to induce his parents to let him take up the study of art as his life work. While "Picturesque Europe" and other works of the same series were being produced Mr. Boot paid several visits to the Continent to make drawings for ​them, and highly praised the consideration and liberality of the firm on each occasion.
As the illustrated magazines and papers issued by the House multiplied a veritable school of black-and-white artists arose, and up to 1890 Cassell's was practically the only firm covering that special development of modern art.