“I have made a very great mistake”

“I have just received the complimentary copies of my last book, ‘Sir Launcelot and His Companions,’” wrote Howard Pyle to Charles Scribner’s Sons on October 26, 1907.

Like many authors and illustrators, Pyle may have leafed through the new volume with a mixture of pride and apprehension. And in this case an embarrassing discovery was in store: “I notice in looking it over that I have made a very great mistake, for the picture on page 200 entitled ‘Sir Gawaine of the Fountain’ should read ‘Sir Ewaine of the Fountain.’”

Ever careful Pyle had not been careful enough. As with most of his children’s books, he had delivered Sir Launcelot and His Companions in fits and starts while juggling other work. To safeguard against errors and inconsistencies, on mailing one batch he had asked the publisher “to send me proofs of these drawings as soon as they are reproduced, for I shall maybe use the same characters in later decorations.”

And yet, although the picture served as a frontispiece to Part V of the book titled “The Story of Sir Ewaine and the Lady of the Fountain,” and three other illustrations of which featured Sir Ewaine, “Sir Gawaine” had slipped past Pyle - not to mention everyone else involved with the production of the book.

“Perhaps before any more copies are printed you will have this changed in New York (where almost anyone could do the lettering) or else send it to me to have the lettering changed,” Pyle continued in his letter of October 26. “It is very curious that this mistake should have happened but, as I say, it is altogether my fault.”

The expense of correcting the plate, however, must have been too much for Scribner’s to consider, and Pyle must have forgotten all about it, because the mis-titled illustration has lived on, reprint after reprint, and has never been called out or corrected.

But as I am “almost anyone [who] could do the lettering” (as well as being in New York), I’ve belatedly honored Pyle’s request, below.

In Praise of Cass Gilbert

Cass Gilbert, circa 1907 (via the Minnesota Historical Society)

“Your own life has been a life of success gratifying to all your friends, and the gratification they feel is enhanced a hundred-fold by the consciousness that that success has been well earned by a man who deserves to possess it. For such large hearts and generous spirits as that which you possess not only make the world a brighter and a happier place in which to dwell, but also leave their marks behind them in works of beauty and of grace.”

Howard Pyle to Cass Gilbert, January 2, 1907

The Haunted House

“The Haunted House” was built, as it were, by Howard Pyle for Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s story “The Gold” in the December 1904 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine. There, however, it was titled “Catherine Duke quickened her steps.” Pyle subsequently rechristened it and included it in various exhibitions of his work. So, among other places, it traveled to Boston in 1906 and to Minneapolis in 1907. In between those two shows, it sat in Pyle’s studio for a bit, as can be seen in the corner of this photo taken in the late spring or summer of 1906. (“The Suicide” is its neighbor, by the way.)

Pyle, then, was painting - or, more likely, pretending to paint - “The Battle of Nashville” for the Minnesota Capitol building and preparing to begin “The Landing of Carteret” for the Essex County Court House.
Both of these structures were designed by architect Cass Gilbert, to whom Pyle wrote on September 4, 1907:

I am going to send you a black and white picture of an old house which I call “The Haunted House.” The picture has been rather a favorite with me, and I think that you, as an artist, will appreciate the decorative scheme of black and white - say in a dining room. Anyway, I want you to have the picture, partly because I like it myself, and largely because I hope you may like it. So if you will accept it with my affectionate regards you will add another bond to our friendship.

Pyle inscribed the 24.75 x 16" black and white oil on canvas in red paint and shipped it off. I don’t know if Gilbert ever hung it in his dining room, but the original eventually landed back with Pyle’s grandson and its present and permanent address is now the Brandywine River Museum.

On “The Story of Adhelmar”

“He found Mélite alone” by Howard Pyle (1904)

“I am most pleased that my illustrations for your Story of Adhelmar should have met with your approval,” wrote Howard Pyle to James Branch Cabell on June 12, 1904. “A good story is always a great inspiration for an illustrator, and I hope I may have the pleasure of illustrating many more of yours.”

It’s funny, though: Pyle’s three pictures for “The Story of Adhelmar” weren’t so inspired. John K. Hoyt’s criticism of Pyle (which I’ve reprinted in full) zeros in on two of them. Of “He found Mélite alone” Hoyt wrote:

Here we have a wooden image sitting, garbed in the habiliments of a woman, with a heavy mat of jute, in lieu of hair, falling from her head to her waist. The figure is devoid of any lines indicative of feminine grace; it might be the figure of a boy - a wooden boy. The arms in those sleeves are not made of flesh and bones and muscle, but of good solid oak. The expression of the face betokens intense, sullen stupidity. A knight clad in armor stands in the doorway, leaning against the jamb for support, evidently bereft of strength - as well he may be - at the ugliness of the thing.

Meanwhile, “He sang for her as they sat in the gardens”...

...represents a woman with a faded, washed-out face; a silly, simpering face; and whose right side has been developed at the expense of the left. And then, while gazing, one is stricken with deep compassion, as he perceives that this poor creature has curvature of the spine, and he wonders how, under the circumstances, she can even simper. In this figure also there are no lines to indicate the sex.

“He sang for her as they sat in the gardens” by Howard Pyle (1904)

“These two compositions are enough to drive the luckless author of ‘The Story of Adhelmar’ frantic,” Hoyt went on. “And if he has survived the sight of them, he is doubtless now going about in quest of the artist and thirsting for his gore.” Cruel assessments, perhaps, but he makes some good points.

Even so, the “luckless” Cabell was pleased with the set of illustrations and had written to Pyle on March 27, 1904: “I wish that I could properly express my admiration for the magnificent pictures you have made for the ‘Story of Adhelmar.’ But as I cannot, will you not take the word for the deed?” Pyle’s letter of June 12th (quoted above) was in response to this praise.

That same June, however, Pyle wrote to editor Thomas Bucklin Wells of Harper’s Monthly Magazine, “Again let me urge you not to send me too much medieval work.” But Wells seems to have ignored the request (or Pyle didn’t stand firm) and after another three years of illustrating Cabell and many other seemingly middling authors, Pyle complained to Wells on April 23, 1907:

I am in great danger of grinding out conventional magazine illustrations for conventional magazine stories. I feel myself now to be at the height of my powers, and in the next ten or twelve years I should look to do the best work of my life. I do not think that it is right for me to spend so great a part of my time in manufacturing drawings for magazine stories which I cannot regard as having any really solid or permanent literary value. Mr. Cabell’s stories, for instance, are very clever, and far above the average of magazine literature, but they are neither exactly true to history nor exactly fanciful, and, whilst I have made the very best illustrations for them which I am capable of making, I feel that they are not true to medieval life, and that they lack a really permanent value such as I should now endeavor to present to the world.

Of course, when Pyle wrote that letter, he only had four and a half years to live - not ten or twelve - and - despite his protestations - he and Harper’s Monthly continued on a similar path until his death.

“He climbed the stairs slowly, for he was growing feeble” by Howard Pyle (1904)

Pyle, Lincoln, and Roosevelt

“Abraham Lincoln” by Howard Pyle (1907)

On this day 150 years ago - February 21, 1861 - President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived in Philadelphia en (circuitous) route to Washington, D.C.. After a 34-gun salute, he rode from the depot in an open barouche pulled by four white horses to the Continental Hotel as anywhere from 100,000 to a quarter of a million people cheered him on. Mrs. Margaret C. Pyle was one of the onlookers, having come up from Wilmington, Delaware, at the invitation of a friend.

Some 46 years later, Mrs. Pyle’s son Howard painted this illustration for “Lincoln’s Last Day” by William H. Crook (Harper’s Monthly Magazine, September 1907). During a visit to the studio, Mrs. Anna Roosevelt Cowles got to see the original oil on canvas, and Pyle reported to her younger brother, Theodore Roosevelt:

She appeared to be moved by the pathos of the image which I had attempted to depict, and I told her then that the inspiration of your tireless and energetic struggle for the benefit of a great people had had a large, if not a dominant, influence upon my presenting the picture of your great fellow-president.

You also will always be remembered as one who has given the best efforts of his life to the combatting of a gigantic evil and for the preservation of the best interests, and the enlargement of the future happiness of his fellow men.

The painting was subsequently sold in Chicago - possibly at an exhibition of Pyle’s works at Marshall Field & Company in December 1909 - and hasn’t been seen in public since then.