Howard Pyle Didn’t Sleep Here

“Ruins of Old Post Tavern” by Howard Pyle (1879)

In the summer of 1879, two 26-year-olds set off to Maryland to gather data for an article on the Old National Pike. One was Liverpool-born writer William Henry Rideing, who would supply the text, and the other was artist Howard Pyle, who would illustrate it.

As documented in “The Old National Pike” (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1879), Rideing and Pyle’s westward journey began in Frederick, Maryland, and more or less ended about 125 miles in Cumberland. Incidentally, some better-informed historians have argued that that stretch of road wasn’t even a part of the National Pike, since Cumberland officially represented its eastern terminus - but that’s a debate for another time or place.

At any rate, in Frederick they hired a coach and driver to take them Cumberlandward, stopping here and there along the way so Rideing could interview people who knew the “Road” and its history, and so Pyle could draw the interviewees and old buildings.

Unfortunately, Pyle’s published illustrations of those buildings are, for the most part, vaguely titled, like his “Ruins of Old Post Tavern” (above). Rideing’s text, however, shows it to be the remains of the elusive “Mrs. Bevans’s” - where they had hoped to find a bed and a meal or two:

Between Hancock and Cumberland the road is almost deserted, and there is no tavern in over forty miles. We were told that we might find accommodations for the night at “Mrs. Bevans’s,” and as the day sped, and our horses showed the effects of toiling over mountain after mountain, Mrs. Bevans became a tremendous object of interest to us. Near sundown when the silent valleys were flooded with the golden light of the afternoon, it was evident that our team was unfit to go much farther; but no habitation was in sight, although from time to time we saw an abandoned toll-house or tavern, and once we met a freckled boy, who said it was about five miles to “Mrs. Bevans’s.” We continued on for over six miles, and then we met a freckled and angular man, who said “Mrs. Bevans’s” was about three miles farther. We labored over another mountain and down a rocky road, inclosed by the gloomy pines. At the foot, in a hollow, was a splendid old tavern, unroofed, moss-grown, windowless, and doorless. This was “Mrs. Bevans’s” in the past, and at one side of it, in contrast with its massive masonry, was a small cabin of two rooms, with some six or seven unappetizing children about the door; this was the “Mrs. Bevans’s” of the present. It was out of the question; the children took the edge off our hunger, and we urged the horses farther on, being informed that we would find a farm-house on the summit of the next mountain.

Since “Mrs. Bevans’s” was already a ruin in 1879, I thought that finding any subsequent trace of it was hopeless. But Thomas B. Searight, in his The Old Pike - A History of the National Road (1894), states:

At the foot of Town Hill, on the west side, Henry Bevans kept a tavern. It was a wagon stand, and likewise a station for one of the stage lines. The house stood on the north side of the road, and enjoyed a good trade.

Then after some more searching, I came across a photograph of the very same site, taken five years after the Rideing-Pyle trip by another pair of travellers, Thomas Dwight Biscoe (1840-1930) and his brother Walter Stanley Biscoe (1853-1933).

“Old ruin of a grand house near bottom of Town Ridge looking back on our road” (1884)

The photo (owned by Southern Methodist University, Central University Libraries, DeGolyer Library, where you can see a higher-resolution scan) is titled “Old ruin of a grand house near bottom of Town Ridge [sic] looking back on our road” and in parentheses “Bevansvill[e].”

To the left of the ruin is the same white-washed cabin Pyle depicted. And in the window and foreground we see, perhaps, a few of the same “unappetizing” children Rideing described.

The Song of Captain Kidd

In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day here is something from Howard Pyle.

“The Song of Captain Kidd” is, in fact, one of Pyle’s earliest known pirate pictures, and it’s one of eleven illustrations he made at the tender age of twenty-six for Lizzie W. Champney’s “Sea-Drift from a New England Port” which was published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for December 1879.

Pyle hand-lettered the title, but the rest of the text was typeset. The song isn’t the work of Champney, but was an “oldie” even in 1879 - and lo and behold there’s at least one site devoted to its history and where you can hear the tune. Pyle himself later wrote of it:

Maybe two hundred years have passed since Captain Kidd took his leave of the world at Execution Dock in London, yet even at this day, I suppose, seven or eight out of every ten people who read, remember at least a part of the famous ballad that has drifted down to us from that far away past - “The Song of Captain Kidd.”...

It is such popular songs as this more than almost anything else, that makes the name of an adventurer popular upon the lips and to the ears of the great public. So it is now that after 200 years, the name of Captain Kidd is that above all others suggestive of sea-roving, of the Black Roger, with its white skull and crossbones, of buried treasure, of death and of terror.

Now talk like pirates amongst yourselves.

Howard Pyle Slept Here, Part 3

Yes, Howard Pyle slept here. He also worked here, about ten years before this photograph was taken.

The address is (well, was) 788 Broadway at Tenth Street in New York City, right next to James Renwick’s Grace Church. Fleischmann’s Vienna Model Bakery was on the street level, and, as Pyle’s friend James Edward Kelly recalled: “The upper floors of the building were full of little artist studios, like tiny cocoons, in which young artists tried to work out their daydreams.”

Pyle moved from 1267 Broadway (at 32nd Street) and into Room 31 of 788 Broadway on or about November 1, 1878. He wrote to his mother two days later:

I have looked all over New York and have seen all the studios that are to be seen and am sure that I have one of the nicest, pleasantest rooms in the city. It has a fine north light and two side lights looking out on Broadway. It is only two blocks above Scribners’ office and I can now go down to Harpers’ and return in half an hour, instead of its taking me a half day to complete the journey and its business as formerly. There is steam heat in the room and running water and altogether it is very satisfactory. The rent asked for it last year was thirty-five dollars a month. I have got it for twenty-three, and an allowance for fixing it up, calcimining the walls, etc.

Another friend, artist William Henry Shelton, remembered in his 1918 history of the Salmagundi Club (which met on Friday nights at Science Hall on Eighth Street, opposite the Mercantile Library, from February 1878 to October 1879):

Howard Pyle was one of the popular members of that period when a member’s popularity depended largely on the quality of his work. He was usually too busy to attend the meetings, but it was only a step from Eighth Street to the studio building adjoining Grace Church, and a committee of one was frequently appointed to bring him down. Sometimes he would be found writing, but more often with a sheet of Whatman’s paper on his easel moving backward and forward before a wet drawing by the light of a student-lamp, and not to be disturbed or enticed from his work by threat or persuasion.

(In his 1927 history of the club, Shelton presented this slightly variant picture: “There was a tarrying place at Science Hall in Eighth Street when it was usually my job to entice Howard Pyle to the meeting from his studio next to Grace Church. He would be found with a kerosene lamp on the floor, stretching a sheet of Whatman paper, or otherwise engaged, and not to be enticed.”)

But Pyle didn’t remain there long: it seems that he only took out a six-month lease on place - from November 1, 1878, to May 1, 1879 - and left the city when it was up. At any rate, the New York Herald of May 12, 1879, reported that “Howard Pyle has gone to Wilmington, Del., we regret to hear, to stay.”

It’s interesting to note that Pyle’s posthumously-published short story, “Huntford’s Fair Nihilist” (Harper’s Monthly, June 1913), centers on a young artist, based on Pyle himself:

He had come to New York from a provincial city two years before, with a great deal of talent and some excellent letters of introduction.

His talents found him plenty of work, his letters of introduction admitted him into pleasant homes, and his poverty spurred him on to those vehement efforts that were afterward crowned with so great a success.

Huntford used to breakfast and lunch at the old Budapest Bakery, where they had the best coffee and rolls in New York.

It’s a short leap from the Vienna Bakery to the “Budapest Bakery.” And another character in the story, Frederick Vollmer, an old German “Heraldic Designer,” was likely an amalgam of Joseph Vollmering (1810-1887), the German-born painter, and one “Rudolph B. Irontraut,” heraldic artist (also German-born, c.1822), who were both at 788 Broadway when the 1880 U.S. Census was taken, just over a year after Pyle had left.

The building, of course, is long gone, but Grace Church is still very much there. Some more details can be found here.

“The Robin’s Vesper”

The June 7, 1879, issue of Harper’s Weekly featured this full-page (12 x 8.9") illustrated poem titled “The Robin’s Vesper” by Howard Pyle. According to his younger sister, Katharine, this was one of the first things Pyle did after relocating from New York to Wilmington.

For the longest time I was under the impression that Pyle had left New York toward the end of 1879, but Katharine recalled that her brother’s “A Milkmaid’s Song” - published in Harper’s Weekly for July 19, 1879 - was also done shortly after his return to his hometown. Granted, Katharine’s not the most reliable witness, but fortunately we have at least two newspaper items that back her up: on May 12, 1879, the New York Herald lamented, “Howard Pyle has gone to Wilmington, Del., we regret to hear, to stay.” And the Art Interchange for May 28, 1879, noted, “Howard Pyle has left New York for good and is now living in Wilmington, Del.”

In the late 1870s through the early ’80s, Pyle made a couple of genre pictures such as this, akin to and almost contemporaneous with some of Winslow Homer’s studies, like Autumn and Peach Blossoms.

Pyle did the hand-lettering himself, too, and in case you find yourself tripping over his long s’s, here’s a transcription:

The Robin’s Vesper
by Howard Pyle

When shadows brood upon the hill,
And daylight draweth to a close;
When frogs pipe by the lowland rill,
Within the valley’s dim repose;
Then the small bird seeks her nest,
Swinging on the blossoming spray;
Only Robin doth not rest,
Singing to the dying day.
Sweet Robin!
Merry Robin!
So I’d have my Soul to be,
Singing clear
Thro’ the near
Shadow of Eternity.

The Press-Gang in New York

Not all of Howard Pyle’s illustrations just “fell off his brush” - I mean, where his concept was vivid enough that he could go straight from hurried thumbnail sketch (or 50, according to legend) to final art. Sometimes he had to do a little more homework. And although there are some relatively careful preliminary studies from his more mature period - like this one from 1902 - he probably made many more of them in his earlier years, when he was less sure of himself. Like this one, which comes from the Brandywine River Museum:

And this one, which was bound into a volume of Pyle’s collected illustrations:

Pyle made both in preparation of his illustration “The Press-Gang in New York” for “Old New York Coffee-Houses” by John Austin Stevens. Here it is as engraved by Smithwick and French, from Harper's New Monthly Magazine for March 1882:

Pyle had completed (and conveniently dated) the work over two years earlier, in December 1879. He was 26, then, living with his parents and siblings at 714 West Street in Wilmington, Delaware, and working in a studio rigged out on the top floor of the family house. He probably worked on this picture there and may have gotten his brothers, Cliff (22) and Walter (20), to pose for him (the second study suggests that he only had one model posing at a time, however).

Fortunately, Pyle’s original black and white gouache also survives in the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection at Yale University, where it’s called “At the Sign of the Griffin.”

That might be their title or one Pyle scribbled on the back, but in December 1880 the painting was exhibited as “The Press Gang” in the Salmagundi Sketch Club Black and White Exhibition at the Academy of Design in New York. The sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, by the way, wrote a letter complimenting Pyle on his work there. “I am happy that you found anything to give you satisfaction in my drawings [sic] in the Salmagundi,” Pyle replied. “I hear there are plenty of them and what they lack in quality may be made up in quantity - like New Jersey Champagne.”

Howard Pyle at Yale University

Howard Pyle crossed paths with Yale University a number of times during - and after - his lifetime. In 1903 he delivered the Anniversary Address at the School of Fine Arts; his pictures were exhibited there in 1903 and 1909; in 1905 he designed the bookplate for the Yale Club's library; and his two eldest sons, Theodore and Howard, Jr., were attending the college when he died in Italy. Several of Pyle's letters reside there now, as do some original works of art - and early ones at that - which can be seen here.

And, in looking the Yale page over, I see that the works aren't very well identified. So here's more:

"At the Sign of the Griffin" was published with the title "The Press-Gang in New York" in Harper's Monthly for March 1882. It is one of three Pyle illustrations for the article "Old New York Coffee Houses" by John Austin Stevens. He painted it at the end of 1879.

"He Stops at the Sign of the Weathervane" illustrated Pyle's own poem "Tilghman's Ride from Yorktown to Pennsylvania" in Harper's Monthly for November 1881. The original probably dates from that year.

"The Dunkers - Going to Meeting," although published (without "The Dunkers" in the title) in the October 1889 issue of Harper's Monthly, was painted some nine years earlier, when Pyle initially prepared his article "A Peculiar People" following his November 1880 visit to Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

"Avary Sells His Jewels" was featured for Pyle's article "Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main" in Harper's Monthly for September 1887. I'm pretty sure Pyle painted this in early 1887 - maybe late 1886.

"An Old Government Toll Gate with Westward Bound Express" appeared in Harper's Monthly for November 1879. It was one of a dozen illustrations Pyle made for William Henry Rideing's "The Old National Pike." The two men travelled along the pike earlier in 1879 (which I mentioned in this post).

And "Isaac Walton" and "Richard de Bury Tutoring Young Edward III" are etchings made by William Henry Warren Bicknell after paintings by Howard Pyle for the Bibliophile Society in 1903.

The Dance of the Veterans

“The Dance of the Veterans,” an unsigned wood engraving measuring 9.2 x 6.1 inches, appeared in Harper’s Weekly for July 26, 1879. The credit reads “Drawn by Howard Pyle from a sketch by Louis Joutel.”

Just as a few of Pyle’s early magazine contributions were redrawn by more experienced illustrators, here Pyle seems to have done the same for the young artist and entomologist, Louis Hippolyte Joutel (1858-1916). While it is difficult to tell where Joutel ends and Pyle begins in this piece, the treatment of the peripheral characters in particular is consistent with Pyle’s style of the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Here is the text which accompanied the picture:

DANCE OF VETERANS

Among the pleasant incidents of the National Holiday was the reunion of the surviving veterans of the war of 1812 at the Sturtevant House, in this city [at Broadway and 29th Street, New York]. Eight deaths during the past year have reduced the venerable band to fourteen, consisting of the following gentlemen: General Dally, commander of the corps, aged eighty-five; Charles Coombs, aged eighty-eight; Jacob Van Nostrand, aged eighty-six; William Tway, aged eighty-one; Thomas Megson, aged eighty-one; George Crygier, aged eighty-six; David Lopez, aged ninety-one; Barnabas Allen, aged eighty-seven; Samuel Ryckman, aged eighty-seven; Parmenas Doxey, aged eighty-eight; Elijah P. Jenks, aged seventy-eight; Thomas Stewart, aged eighty; Gardiner P. Lillibridge, aged eighty-seven. The adopted Adjutant of the corps is Mr. J. Gould Warner, a young man of about fifty. Among the visitors on this occasion were John Scott, a Continental soldier, “presumably,” says the New York World, “one hundred and twenty, but as sprightly as any of the other boys,” and Miss Sarah Scott Stafford, aged seventy-eight, a daughter of Lieutenant Stafford, who jumped overboard and saved the flag of the frigate Bonhomme Richard, but received a cutlass wound while doing it that eventually resulted in his death. She brought the old flag with her, and a musket and sabre which belonged to her father.

After the generous repast provided by the Messrs. Leland, a quadrille set was formed in one of the reception-rooms. Major Crowley led Miss Randolph to the floor, followed by General Dally with Miss Berg, Mr. Coombs with Miss Dunn, and Mr. Lopez with Miss Smith. When the quadrille was over, Major Crowley and Mr. Coombs gave a stirring exhibition of how the foot used to be shaken in the good old days. This incident was seized by our artist as the subject for the illustration to be found on page 592.

At the conclusion of the dance tickets were distributed for the excursion the veterans are to have at Spring Hill Grove, on August 4, to raise money to maintain their down-town head-quarters another year, and the company separated.