Words worth a thousand pictures
Mary Clive
VICTORIAN DELIGHTS by John Hadfield
Herbert Press, £12.95
Here comes another picture-book, this one devoted to some of the minor arts of the last century. My immediate reaction is to sigh. Perhaps I am wrong. Those of riper years who can remember when such things were merely 'old-fashioned' will flip over the pages somewhat impatiently, and the young who are already into Victoriana will call it stale buns; however, there must be plenty of people who have never given a thought to the everyday life of their fore- bears, and for them it could well be an easy and amusing introduction to a new interest or a new hobby.
There are 14 sections, each one dealing with a different artistic production, such as samplers, valentines, photographs of actresses, and, for a surprise, the illustra- tions to Sherlock Holmes. If you think that you know it all already my advice is, don't look at the pictures. Read the letterpress. John Hadfield is an enthusiast who for 24 years edited The Saturday Book, an annual compendium of curious odds and ends, and here, lightly and painlessly, he educates and entertains his readers; and I have to confess that most of what he has to say is new to me.
Superficially, one Victorian fashion- plate is very like another but Mr Hadfield points out their subtle nuances, tracing their descent from 18th-century French engraving, revealing that they were all drawn and hand-coloured in Paris, and discriminating between one artist and another. Feminists will be glad to learn that among the more accomplished artists were three sisters, Heloise Leloir, Anais Toudouze and Laure Noel, not forgetting Isabelle Toudouze, the daughter of AnaIs.
There was a male artist, however, who dominated the fashion-plate market for 50 years, during which he produced nearly 3,000 prints for-Le Moniteur de la Mode, all signed and numbered consecutively. They were 'syndicated' to magazines throughout the world, and in England were published in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, The Milliner and Dressmaker and other periodicals.
Jules David, of whose private life little is known, is notable not only for his industry and longevity, but for his originality . . . He liked to represent his figures against elabo- rate social backgrounds — garden-parties, salons, race-courses, by the seaside, going to the opera, engaged in archery or disporting themselves on swings. They therefore have the same social-historical value as the En- glish conversation pieces of the previous century.
Mr Hadfield tells us that the last hand- coloured fashion-plate appeared in 1899, after which mechanical printing took over, and he concludes by naming a couple of books which would be useful to anyone who wished to pursue the subject further. The other chapters are equally clear and informative and might well inspire a casual reader to become a collector. In any case they should enable one to look at the objects described with a more intelligent interest, as well as furnishing one with various items of abstruse information. Did you know that the first cigarette cards were produced in the USA in the mid-1870s, and that they depicted the Marquis of Lorne who was then the Governor-General of Canada, and that only two examples are now extant?
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