A NEW CHILD'S PLAY.*
IN this age of child-culture, there is nothing wonderful in the fact of good art being employed in the decoration and delinea- tion of nursery-rhymes, and one more such work runs a risk of attracting slight attention amongst the crowds of equally gor- geous, if not equally meritorious publications, and there is another reason why this New Child's Play might pass without the recognition which it deserves ; and that arises from the very name of the work. Child's Play ! How long it is since most of' us heard any such words? In truth, they are seldom now-a-days- on the lips of any one. The " child " seems almost a thing of the- past, belonging to a remote age, when belief in Jack-the-Giant- Killer and Cinderella were tangible facts, and even "Fee-fo-fum " * A 24ts Child's P:ay. By "B. V. B." London: Sampson Low and Co. was not to be doubted in the evening, when the nursery fire burnt low, and mysterious creakings and rattlings sounded from door or wainscoting. " Play " is dead, " recreation " has taken its lace —healthful and instructive recreation, with a box of toy models, or a collection of third-rate chemicals, of which the only certain quality is smell ; and so it seems to us that these quaint old rhymes, and quaint new illustrations, may perhaps find it difficult to gain friends amongst our young people, simply because they are "Child's Play," unadulterated with .science or history. And yet we very much doubt whether drawings like these, and fairy-tales of the old sort, such as those of Grimm, have not as necessary a function to fulfil in the education of the young, as if they were intermixed with any given quantity of useful matter, and laden with the most perfect of morals. More and more is it beginning to be felt that the imaginative qualities need free scope and encouragement, as well as the intellectual ; and if we had to name a series of books which have performed, or helped to perform, this task amongst children, we should point to those by "E. V. B." And we would beg our readers to remember that this series has now extended over a period of a quarter of a century. When Mrs. Boyle began in 1852 with her Child's Play, there were no such children's books as there are now. Rude wood- engravings, and ruder coloured prints, were considered good enough for the illustration of children's books, and even within the last fifteen years the majority of toy-volumes were illustrated in a thoroughly vulgar and conventional manner. So that this artist—and a thorough artist at heart she very certainly is—may fairly claim to have started at least one division of the progress in book-illustration, for from first to last she has never wearied of her childish audience, or worked, save through them, for the praise of their elders. In the dozen or so works which she is responsible for during the last five-and-twenty years, her illustrations have rarely been of more practical matters than old-fashioned fairy- tales, childish allegories, or simple rhymes, and so in all these she has easily kept the first place, and has at the present time scarcely a rival in her own peculiar field. What that field is, its merits and its shortcomings, and its difference from other work of a similar kind, we shall endeavour to show our readers, after say- ing a few words of the illustrations to this particular work, and comparing them with some of their predecessors.
• These illustrations are done by the heliotype process from the original drawings, but are, as far as we remember, not at all worthy reproductions of them. The originals were exhibited at the Dud- ley Gallery in the spring of last year, and possessed a delicacy of feeling and touch, which has somewhat evaporated in the course of reproduction.
There are sixteen drawings here, the originals all being done in brown ink with a pen, and their quality is somewhat variable. The illustrations to "Dickory, Dickory Dock, the Mouse ran up the Clock," and that to the New Year's Carol, "My Feet are Cauld," are distinctly and considerably better than the rest. In the first there is a free grace of action in the figure of the child opening the great clock-case, which could hardly have been greater, while the drawing of the old-fashioned clock is solid and good, and almost entirely free from a certain scratchiness which is notice- able in many of these latter drawings. For the second picture we have nothing but praise. In every way it is a gem. It re- presents a troop of small children singing in the early morning before the doorway of a very old-fashioned house in the Isle of Man, and is, we suppose, intended to represent a New Year's Day some hundred or so years ago. There is about the concep- tion and even the execution of this drawing, a simplicity and earnestness as well as beauty, which is peculiarly suited to the subject ; and as a matter of technical skill, the pen-and-ink work hereon may fairly challenge comparison with that of any living artist. Not that it is excessively minute, but that as far as it goes it appears to be absolutely right. The heavy timber of the old houses, the iron bolts, the plaster falling away in flakes from the brickwork beneath, the clothes of the children, the fur of the cat, and the round stones of the rough street, are all indicated beyond possibility of mistake, and yet with an ease and lightness of touch which comes very near to genius. The picture, moreover, is full of humour, and that of the most delicate kind. The little baby in its night-cap, leaning out of the diamond-paned window to hear the carol, the quiet attention of the old cat and inattention of the kitten, and the attitude of the little tiny boy who is helping to swell the chorus, are all in their way humorous in the extreme.
This is far the best picture in the book ; and after this comes, we think, the illustration to "Little Miss Muffet," and "Cuckoo, Cuckoo, tell me true." In the first of these we would especially
call our readers' attention to the drawing of the wild strawberry and the Dandelion-puff. The great point in the second is the in- tense gravity and earnestness of the little girl's face as she puts to the cuckoo the momentous question of how long she shall" unmarried pine." No. XI., "The Craw's killed the Pussy, 0 !" is a drawing of a somewhat similar kind to the "New-Year's Carol," but very in- ferior in work, and somewhat confused in light and shade. Here the penmanship is coarse and inexpressive in comparison with the first-named picture, in fact, seems done anyhow, to get rid of the drawing. That is one of the great faults of some of the drawings in this book ; they might so easily have been better. There is no doubt about it. The faults are, with one great exception, the faults of haste, or else carelessness ; at least, we are unable to account otherwise for such work as that on the body of the child in the last drawing in the book. The great fault, as we have suggested elsewhere, is that the children are evidently drawn chiefly from imagination, and so are very frequently quite out of drawing,- The work on the leaves and flowers, wherever it is in the least care- ful, is simply beautiful, and can hardly be praised too highly, for it is that accurate flower-drawing which yet preserves all the essential characteristics of fine art, and is true to nature in form and growth, and yet not simply a servile copy,—that is to say, it represents leaves and flowers, not photographically accurate, but artistically accurate, seizes the inside spirit as well as the out- side form.
If we had to institute a comparison between this and the author's previous works, it would be, we fear, on the whole not altogether to the advantage of the present book. We have ex- amined carefully the series of works which Mrs. Boyle has pro- duced, and are inclined to think that the period of her greatest excellence was between 1866 and 1870,—that is to say, from the publication of In the Fir-Wood to that of A Dream-Book, in- cluding during that period the Story without an End, which, if not the best (which is possible), is certainly the most popular of all her works. In the drawings of that time the artist seemed to work herself out in every picture. It is hardly possible to glance over the dream-book without seeing that every drawing in it has been carried as far as it was possible, and it is equally difficult to look at this work and think the same. It is true that it is to some extent a freer and bolder style of work, but as one of the greatest merits of "E. V. B." 's drawing is its delicacy of feeling, we cannot help thinking that the loss is greater than the gain.. Knowing that an artist can draw tree-trunks as but one person in. ten thousand can, we feel defrauded when she substitutes com- paratively coarse work, for the Durer-like penmanship of former times. Again, on the whole, this work means less than its prede- cessors. It has not as much raison d'être as they bad, has beeiz made with less feeling, and is consequently less successful., Re- membering the three drawings of the child left to spend a lonely Christmas in his home, remembering the pathos of the little figure leaning on the bannister over the empty staircase to say good-bye to those below, the desolation of the next picture, where he is sitting on the stairs alone, and the beauty of tender memory and affection in the third, as he stands by the Christmas- tree, which he has laden with little gifts for those whom he loves ; remembering these pictures, we feel that an artist who has done such work as that, should give us something a little stronger than these motiveless illustrations, beautiful enough though many of them are.
One word before we conclude, as to the special characteristics of Mrs. Boyle's work. It is true that all her hooka are children's books, that in nearly all of them children constitute the chief interest. And yet it seems to us that it is no less certain that these works appeal almost more strongly to the grown-up person than to the child. Children in them are not the noisy, mischiev- ous little mortals which they are usually represented ; naughty Tommy and judicious Caroline do not form the hero and heroine of any of the illustrations or texts, but it is rather an impersonal childhood which is illustrated. Curiosity, and wonder, and simple- hearted innocence, and fearless joy, and quaint fancies,—these are the primary characteristics of "E. V. B." 's children ; and on her part, we may add to these grace of movement and a certain depth of feeling which we can hardly call anything but religious, though. it is a religion without a creed. This is, however, nowhere so apparent, as in the Story without an End, of which it is a question whether Canove's writing or "E. V. B." 's illustration. is the more beautiful. Another point which is noticable almost all her pictures, and, as far as we can remember, in those of no other child-painters, is that her children have never any one "to look after them." They are almost invariably alone, whether in field, grove, or town, face to face with nature. We
have no space to write a disquisition on the inner meaning of these books, even if it came within our province to do so. All we have endeavoured to do was to give our readers some alight idea of the leading qualities of the designs.
It would be an interesting study to trace back to its source the spirit which animates these pictures in the medimval art of Albrecht Durer, but it is one for which we have not space in this notice, nor to mark the varying influence which English pre- Raphaelitism seems to have had over the artist's mind. It is in- deed work which cannot be referred to a definite class, for in the midst of the most sternly faithful of the drawings we come upon work which seems only referable to the renaissance spirit, and which seems absolutely opposed to the surrounding portions. In conclusion, we would express our hopes that "E. V. B." will in her next book give us more imaginative drawings in colour, and illustrations of themes more worthy of her talent than nursery- rhymes.
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