“Serious Advice” - Seriously?

I remember when I first saw this illustrated verse by Howard Pyle: I thought, “Wait a second - THIS isn’t in Pepper & Salt!”

No, it isn’t. It almost seems like a weird-alternate universe-racist parody of Pyle. But, unfortunately, it is, indeed, his handiwork, and one that shows an ugly side of him and the world he lived in.

Yes, for some reason, Pyle made it and Harper’s Young People printed it in their June 24, 1884, issue. But somebody had a change of heart, and it was the only piece of its kind that didn’t make it into Pepper & Salt when it was published sixteen months later. A good thing, too - I mean, that it was suppressed and didn’t live on in book-form. For better or worse, though, I wanted to show it and air some of Pyle’s dirty laundry. There’s not a lot, but the little there is is still cringe-inducing and unforgivable.

And, of course, Pyle also had to immortalize himself in the illustration: the mutton-chopped jester and adviser to the “Little Ethiopian” is Pyle himself. In fact, the two images are his earliest known self-portraits. Compare them with a photo taken at about the same time:

By the way, Pyle-as-jester turns up again in another illustrated verse, “Venturesome Boldness” (Harper’s Young People for August 26, 1884), and later in Pepper & Salt itself - in the frontispiece and the headpieces for the Preface and Table of Contents.

The original pen-and-ink for “Serious Advice” resides at the Delaware Art Museum, but I don’t know how often it sees the light of day.

“Myles, as in a dream, kneeled, and presented the letter”

“Myles, as in a dream, kneeled, and presented the letter” illustrates the following passage from the second installment of Howard Pyle’s novel Men of Iron in Harper's Young People for January 27, 1891:

[The Earl of Mackworth] was a tall man, taller even than Myles’s father. He had a thin face, deep-set bushy eyebrows, and a hawk nose. His upper lip was clean shaven, but from his chin a flowing beard of iron-gray hung nearly to his waist. He was clad in a riding-gown of black velvet that hung a little lower than the knee, trimmed with otter fur and embroidered with silver goshawks - the crest of the family of Beaumont.

A light shirt of link mail showed beneath the gown as he walked, and a pair of soft undressed leather riding-boots were laced as high as the knee, protecting his scarlet hose from mud and dirt. Over his shoulders he wore a collar of enamelled gold, from which hung a magnificent jewelled pendant, and upon his fist he carried a beautiful Iceland falcon.

As Myles stood staring, he suddenly heard Gascoyne’s voice whisper in his ear, “Yon is my Lord; go forward and give him thy letter.”

Scarcely knowing what he did, he walked towards the Earl like a machine, his heart pounding within him and a great humming in his ears. As he drew near, the nobleman stopped for a moment and stared at him, and Myles, as in a dream, kneeled, and presented the letter.

Pyle’s devoted student Thornton Oakley bought the original black and white oil painting (7.75 x 10.5" - done in Summer or Fall of 1890) from Herb Roth for $42.00! It now lives at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

This one - like a few others from the novel - makes me ache. Is it the almost photographic “presence”? The deceptively simple composition? The grouping of figures, tones, textures? Pyle is lauded for his scenes of dramatic action, but time and again I’m more affected by his scenes of dramatic inaction.

Howard Pyle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Title-page drawing for The Wonder Clock (“1887” was changed to “1888” in the first edition of book)

No, you won’t find a major exhibition of Howard Pyle’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York - for that you’ll have to go to Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (RIGHT NOW!), Wilmington, Delaware (starting November 12!), and Stockbridge, Massachusetts (next year!), where his work is genuinely appreciated.

Trapped somewhere in the bowels of the Met, however, are a couple of Pyles from The Wonder Clock, acquired in 1926, when his stock was still pretty high. The drawings are rarely - if ever - seen by the general public, but the museum has done something good with six of them: they’ve posted high resolution scans on their website, so we can really inspect them, instead of relying on the just-OK reproductions in various editions of the book.

I would’ve liked the drawings to have been scanned in color to better see Pyle’s alterations, but it’s possible to detect some here and there. I’ve posted scans of a few of the illustrations as they initially appeared in Harper’s Young People to show the extent of the changes. Some are quite radical since Pyle began illustrating the stories in his Pepper and Salt style - more “vignette-y” with floating banners - but eventually switched to a square format with blackletter titles. And when he began preparing the pictures for the book he made them all uniform.

I’ve already pointed out that Pyle altered the title of “Master Jacob” - but here you can see that he pasted his new lettering onto the original drawing.

Three of the Met’s originals come from the “The Clever Student and the Master of Black Arts” which initially appeared (with “Black Arts” hyphenated) in Harper’s Young People for February 23, 1886. Pyle must have drawn them in late 1885, then altered them for use in The Wonder Clock in early 1887. A memorandum book in the Harper and Brothers Archive shows that he delivered these revisions to art editor Charles Parsons on March 5, 1887.

“The Princess walking beside the Sea” (above) in Harper’s Young People became “A Princess walks beside ye water, into whose basket leaps ye ring” in The Wonder Clock (below). Apart from the title, note what Pyle did to the princess’ crown.

*************************

“The Master of Black-Arts with a Hen” in Harper’s Young People became “The Master of Black Arts bringeth a curious little Black Hen to the King” in The Wonder Clock. Who knows where the blackletter title with an illustrated initial went to.

*************************

And “What happened to the Master” in Harper’s Young People became “What happened to the Master of Black Arts after all his tricks” in The Wonder Clock.

*************************

Finally, “The Princess and the Pigeons” (above) from Pyle’s story “Mother Hildegarde” in Harper’s Young People for May 25, 1886, became “The Princess dwells in the oak tree where ye wild pigeons come to feed her” in The Wonder Clock. As far as I can tell, Pyle only altered his initials - and the title - in this one.

Good Gifts and Harper’s Fool Folly

Decorated title for “Good Gifts and a Fool’s Folly”- Harper’s Young People version (1890)

Decorated title for “Good Gifts and a Fool’s Folly” - Twilight Land version (1894)

Sometimes Howard Pyle would alter his pictures after they were published. And in a few instances he would redo them entirely, like two for “Good Gifts and a Fool’s Folly.” These, however, he redid not out of choice, but of necessity.

In early 1892, Pyle was assembling his latest crop of fairy tales from Harper’s Young People into a children’s book, which - he hoped - would be on sale by the following Christmas. At his request, Harper & Brothers returned his original pen and ink drawings, but in a letter of March 6 Pyle noted that he hadn’t yet received the seven for “Good Gifts and a Fool’s Folly,” which appeared in the September 9, 1890, issue of the magazine.

Art editor Arthur B. Turnure tersely replied that they were gone.

Pyle, of course, was not happy. On March 10, 1892, he wrote:

If I may make bold to say so it impressed me as seeming just a little “cool” to tell me, without offering any explanation or remark or expression of regret, that my drawings for “Good Gifts and a Fool’s Folly” “were not preserved”. However, it occurred to me that perhaps the many calls upon your official correspondence did not allow the use of such formal expressions and also precluded your telling me why and how the drawings were not preserved.

Pyle added that perhaps Turnure - who had only taken charge of the Art Department in November 1891 - didn’t realize that the plan all along had been to publish the stories in book form - and that, with that understanding, he had charged less than usual for the illustrations. Pyle also expressed doubts that the plates used to print the magazine could be re-used for the book, because some of the pictures had “been so reduced as to have much of the artistic quality eliminated.” And he concluded, again somewhat pissily:

I do not, of course, know just where the responsibility for the loss of the drawings belongs, but, taking for granted that the Art Department should have seen to it that they were preserved, will you kindly let me know what you propose as an alternative in the event of the photo-reproductions not being found available for the book and failing the originals being recovered?

Then it was Turnure’s turn to take offense (his reply to Pyle is missing, unfortunately). But Pyle had calmed down by March 12, and he apologized, explaining, “that I have been, perhaps, somewhat over worked of late and I am sure that you will know that overwork is somewhat apt to disturb ones poise - I know it makes me irritable.” He sheepishly figured that if he could “give up several magazine illustrations, I may find time to do my work more quietly and not be so quick to take offense for small things.”

He also pointed out that the loss of the pictures wasn’t what annoyed him so much as what - “doubtless in my haste” - he saw as Turnure’s “slighting and indifferent regard of the fact.” He went on:

You see that the matter of making up this proposed book is of considerable importance to me. I want it to be as perfect as possible and to not have any make-shift about it if it can be avoided.

However, after this uncomfortable back-and-forth - and having realized that he still needed to write and illustrate more fairy tales to flesh out the book - Pyle put the project on hold for two years. In the meantime, Turnure (by the way, a founder of The Grolier Club, of which Pyle was an early member), had left the Art Department and had gone on to found Vogue.

In a July 18, 1894, letter to Harper & Brothers, Pyle wrote that - with two exceptions - the Harper’s Young People plates for “Good Gifts and a Fool’s Folly” could be re-used in printing the book (by then called Twilight Land), after all: “The first drawing is the decorated title, which I have re-drawn, and the other is the one which is to be used either as a tail-piece or as a final illustration - the man sitting among the rocks.”

And although those seven particular originals “were not preserved” at the Harper offices, two of them have since turned up, so perhaps they weren’t thrown out, pulped, or burned, but (as Pyle himself had theorized) they went home with an admiring member of the art staff.

“He lay there sighing and groaning” - Harper’s Young People version (1890)

“He lay there sighing and groaning” - Twilight Land version (1894)

NOTE: The original copies of the letters quoted above belong to the Morgan Library. I assume, however, that since Pyle, who died in 1911, wrote them in 1892 and 1894, I am justified in quoting them at length. But I hope that someone will alert me if my assumption is incorrect.

“I am conquered! I am conquered!”

I was just looking through Howard Pyle’s under-appreciated book of fairy tales, Twilight Land, and came across this picture: the untitled tailpiece for “Woman’s Wit” - which originally appeared in Harper’s Young People for July 29, 1890. It shows a despairing Demon howling, “I am conquered! I am conquered!” and “bellowing so dreadfully that all the world trembled.”

It’s hard to see much “classic” Pyle in this scratchy, vigorous (and beautiful) pen and ink - it’s a world away from his deliberate, Düreresque drawings for Otto of the Silver Hand, which he made only two years earlier. It reminds me more of... Heinrich Kley?

The Staff and The Fiddle and Hints of Parrish

Howard Pyle’s headpiece for “The Staff and The Fiddle” in Harper’s Young People for August 31, 1886. It was later included - with some slight variations to the hand-lettering - in The Wonder Clock. It anticipates the work of Maxfield Parrish, no?

“...and followed by Washington’s Birthday”

“Enter Fourth of July bowing and followed by Washington’s Birthday” by Howard Pyle from “The Revolt of the Holidays” by E. I. Stevenson (Harper’s Young People, December 18, 1883).

A Victim to Science, 1883

“A Victim to Science” by Howard Pyle (Harper’s Young People, November 20, 1883)

November 5, 1889

A teeny, tiny (1.5 x 4.6"), untitled vignette from “Wisdom’s Wages and Folly’s Pay” by Howard Pyle. It debuted in the November 5, 1889, issue of Harper’s Young People and was later included in Twilight Land. It illustrates this passage:

When the cook saw what Babo had done he snatched up the rolling-pin, and made at him to pound his head to a jelly. But Babo jumped out of the window, and away he scampered, with the cook at his heels.

I scanned the piece at 300 dpi to make it easier to inspect the deft handiwork.

November 3, 1885

“The Children are sent to the Asylum.” I know how they feel. This lovely pen and ink (about 9 x 7.5") is typical post-Pepper-and-Salt-pre-Wonder-Clock Pyle. It made its one and only appearance in the November 3, 1885, issue of Harper's Young People, illustrating “The Book of Balbo” by Sherwood Ryse, the pseudonym of Alfred B. Starey, who was editor of the magazine at that time. After Starey died, Laurence Hutton (another Pyle friend) eulogized him in the pages of Harper’s Monthly (May 1894):

Harper’s Young People, although they did not know him, and perhaps never even heard his name, lost a good and faithful friend when Alfred B. Starey died last summer in New York. One who was long and intimately associated with him, in a professional as well as in a social way, can only say of him here, that he was as clean in morals as he was in intellect, that he won the respect and the confidence of all those with whom he was brought in contact, that no man of his years, or of his position, in his profession or out of it, was more sincerely liked or more deeply regretted, and that he never, in any society, said or did anything which his own sisters, or the Young People for whom he labored, might not have heard or seen.

The bound volume of the little magazine which he edited for seven years, and the first which has appeared since he passed away, is another and enduring stone in the monument which he helped to erect to himself. In Harper's Young People Mr. Starey put the very best of his life work. Although, of course, he did not die for it, he died in its service; and on every page, and in every line, it shows his critical instinct and his conscientious care.

August 5, 1883

“On Saturday I resumed work upon the illustrated verse. It progresses much more slowly than I had hoped. The printing of the letters of the text takes a long time and I had several setbacks through mistakes.”

So said Howard Pyle in a letter to his wife, Anne (then at her family's “cottage” in Rehoboth, Delaware), on Sunday, August 5, 1883. The “illustrated verse” to which he refers was, I assume, “Ye Romantic Adventures of Three Tailors,” the first in a series ultimately collected in the book Pepper and Salt in 1885. (The “mistakes” didn’t include reversed apostrophes, apparently.)

The idea for the series had come to Pyle a few weeks before: on July 8 he told Anne:

I wrote a verse for Harper’s Young People which I propose making into a full page. If Harpers should take to it, as I hope they will, I propose writing a number of similar bits (say fifty) and turning them into a child’s gift book next Christmas a year, first publishing them in Young People.

He updated her on August 3:

This morning I started drawing that series of full-page pictures with verses that I hope to do for Young People, to be published ultimately in book form. I told you yesterday how I hammered away at the verses and only hit one late in the afternoon. I hope that they may be successful: I did hard conscientious work today but got only a very little done.... This afternoon I had a sort of discouraged fit, for the work I was doing seemed so puerile and childish but I feel differently now, for after all no work conscientiously done is “childish”...

As Pyle had already started the illustration, he was probably “hammering away” at subsequent verses (for “Two Opinions,” say, or “A Victim to Science,” the next to be published). “Ye Romantic Adventures of Three Tailors” appeared in Harper’s Young People for August 28, 1883, which actually came out about a week earlier, say August 21 or 22, so only about two weeks would have been allowed for production: photo-engraving the plate, printing, stitch-binding the covers, packing, and shipping the magazine. An awfully tight, but entirely possible schedule for Harper and Brothers, which had its own printing plant and bindery on the premises at Franklin Square.

Howard Pyle's Proto-Vuvuzela?

Almost, but not quite - as you'll discover when you read the accompanying, oddly-metered verse. "Jeremy Black's Fourth of July" by Howard Pyle appeared in Harper's Young People for July 5, 1881 (the issue, unlike this post, was wisely published before Independence Day). As far as I know, it never came out in book form, though it was later reprinted in The Albany Evening Journal for July 27, 1901. July 27th? Now I don't feel so bad.

I've always loved this unusual drawing and its scratchily confident lightness of touch, compared to Pyle's somewhat heavier, or more "deliberate" pen-and-inks for Robin Hood and Pepper and Salt, which began to emerge from his studio a few years later. It's similar to the one for - and dates from the nearly the same time as - A Perfect Christmas, but it's also very A. B. Frost-y and shows that Pyle was indeed influenced by his good friend and the best man at his recent nuptials (i.e. April 12, 1881).

If only vuvuzelas or lepatatas (if you prefer) sounded like the Thing, we all would be much happier.

"And blew as he'd not blown since he was born" by Howard Pyle

Jeremy Black's Fourth of July
by Howard Pyle

"I'll make a noise," said Jeremy Black,
As the days drew nigh
To the Fourth of July;
"I'll make more noise than a cannon, or pack
Of fire-crackers, or pistol, or gun,
Or cannon-cracker; I'll have more fun,
With fifty cents, than the rest of the boys
With a dollar's worth of powder and things -
With fifty cents I will make more noise
Than all the rest of the town, by jings!"

So he went down
To Abraham Brown,
The tinker back of the Blue Bell Inn,
Who mended the pans for all the town,
And he got him to make a Thing of tin.
Then both of them tinkered and talked and planned,
Between the mending of pot and kettle,
And drew the patterns with chalk in hand,
Until they managed the thing to settle;
And all the boys were eager to know
What kind of a Thing they kept tinkering so.
Was it anything like a cannon, or rocket.
Or Roman candle, or pin-wheel, or gun?
Was it small enough to go into his pocket?
Or could he lift it when it was done?
Would the thing go off, or would powder go in it?
And a dozen of such like questions a minute.
But Jeremy Black just gave a sly wink,
And they could not tell what in creation to think.

So Fourth of July came around at last,
And the day was fresh and the sun was bright;
Then just as soon as the night was passed,
At the earliest dawn of the dewy light,
The boys turned out
With noise and rout,
And loud halloo and lusty shout,
And racket of crackers, and boom and pop,
And ringing of bells, and sizz and splutter,
Till good folks trying to sleep would stop,
And get up and close the window and shutter.
But Jeremy Black just turned in his bed,
And down in the pillow he nestled his head,
And thought, with a grin,
How the Thing of tin
Would make enough noise to drown the din.
At length he arose and dressed himself.
And afterward managed his breakfast to eat;
Then took the Thing from the wood-house shelf,
And carried it with him out in the street.
Now all the boys came running to see
What ever the wonderful Thing could be -
And, lo! 'twas a fish-horn six feet long.
"Now stand a little away," said he,
"And you'll hear a noise so loud and strong
And deep and mighty that it will drown
All popping of guns and cannons in town."
Then all the boys stood back, while he
Stepped up to the fire-plug under the tree,
And rested thereon the end of the horn,
Then took a breath that was long and deep,
And blew as he'd not blown since he was born;
And out from the Thing came - never a peep!
He stopped, and wiped his mouth for a minute,
Then blew as if the dickens were in it.
He blew till the hair stood up on his head;
He blew till everything swam around;
He blew till his forehead and ears grew red;
But out of the horn came - never a sound.

At first the boys were half afraid
Of the terrible sound that would soon be made;
But after a while they began to chaff,
And then to giggle, and then to laugh.
Poor Jeremy knew that the noise was there -
It only required a little more air.
Once more he blows, till his muscles strain:
Not a sound. And then he began to know,
Though he had endeavored with might and main,
The horn was too large for him to blow.

L'Envoi.

As one goes over this world of ours
One frequently finds a Jeremy Black,
Who overrates the natural powers
The Fates have granted him - somewhat slack.
Those people who build, though they may not know it,
A horn so large that they never can blow it.

June 29, 1886: Master Jacob, Proto-Parrish

Howard Pyle's headpiece for his fairytale "Master Jacob," first published in Harper's Young People for June 29, 1886, and later (reduced and with new lettering by Pyle) in The Wonder Clock.

Beautiful pen-work with great design and characterization to boot.

This is where Maxfield Parrish came from.

April Fools from Howard Pyle, Part 3

This fool - a detail from the illustrated verse “Venturesome Boldness” (Harper’s Young People, August 26, 1884) - has the distinction of being one of Howard Pyle’s earliest known “fool” pictures and also one of his earliest known self-portraits. Yes, that him on the right. The same character appeared two months before in “Serious Advice” in Harper’s Young People for June 24, 1884, (but of that the less said the better) and in various illustrations after, including the frontispiece of Pepper and Salt.

Down Fell the Fisherman, 1890

The tiny and terrific "Down fell the fisherman" from "Where to Lay the Blame" by Howard Pyle was first published in Harper's Young People for March 25, 1890, and then in Twilight Land in late 1894. It was a mere 1.5 x 4 inches in the magazine, so I've enlarged it a bit.

March 24, 1885: A Newspaper Puff

Howard Pyle's "A Newspaper Puff" appeared in Harper's Young People for March 24, 1885, and in Pepper and Salt later that year. For some reason, the verse was typeset in the magazine, but hand-lettered (by Pyle, of course) in the book version, shown here. Pyle had a little trouble with the orientation of his apostrophes, but who doesn't these days?

The original pen and ink drawing is at the Delaware Art Museum. For your convenience, here's the verse:

Twelve geese
In a row
(So these
Always go).
Down-hill
They meander,
Tail to bill;
First the gander.
So they stalked,
Bold as brass
As they walked
To the grass.

Suddenly
Stopped the throng;
Plain to see
Something's wrong
Yes; there is
Something white!
No quiz;
Clear to sight.
('Twill amuse
When you're told
'Twas a news-
Paper old.)

Gander spoke.
Braver bird
Never broke
Egg, I've heard:
"Stand here
Steadily,
Never fear,
Wait for me."

Forth he went,
Cautious, slow,
Body bent,
Head low.
All the rest
Stood fast,
Waiting for
What passed.

Wind came
With a caper,
Caught same
Daily paper.
Up it sailed
In the air;
Courage failed
Then and there.
Scared well
Out of wits;
Nearly fell
Into fits.
Off they sped,
Helter-skelter,
'Till they'd fled
Under shelter.

Poor geese!
Never mind;
Other geese
One can find,
Cut the same
Foolish caper
At empty wind
In a paper.

Walt Whitman on Howard Pyle

The Flight from Falworth Castle (Harper’s Young People, January 20, 1891)

“I know nothing about the story: do you? No? Well, the picture is very impressive, has too, that indefinable charm of mystery - of half hinting, half inviting inquiry, yet giving nothing. There are things in nature have this same power to attract - to overawe, yet withold particulars. These fellows go ahead more and more. These certainly are better than the Century’s even, which are fine enough. This democratization of art keeps up a quick pace.”

Walt Whitman in conversation with Horace Traubel, January 21, 1891, while looking at a copy of Harper's Young People, which featured an installment of Howard Pyle’s serialized novel for children, Men of Iron.

Howard Pyle’s Santa Claus, 1883

We don’t usually associate Howard Pyle with Santa Claus, but Harper’s Young People for December 18, 1883, features Pyle’s only known published images of the jolly old elf. These illustrated “Revolt of the Holidays” by Edward Irenæus Stevenson. Granted, Pyle’s Santa Claus is not as fully realized as the one imagined by his friend Thomas Nast, or by his student N. C. Wyeth, but beggars can’t be choosers. The Delaware Art Museum owns the original pen and ink drawings.

A Perfect Christmas, 1881

One of the remarkable things about Howard Pyle the craftsman - or, in this case, the draughtsman - was his skillful use of so many different drawing styles. For a long time I was mostly aware of his pen and ink work as seen in Robin Hood, Pepper and Salt, The Wonder Clock, Otto of the Silver Hand, and his Arthuriad (i.e. his books readily available from Dover Publications). They were “what Pyle’s drawings look like” to me. In digging deeper into Pyle’s work, however, I’ve come across things that have thrown off my preconceptions.

“Do you live with Santa Claus in his own house?” for “A Perfect Christmas” by William O. Stoddard, was published - solely - in Harper’s Young People for December 20, 1881. The composition is dominated by the cut tree, but the whole drawing - full of short, straight strokes - almost looks like it was made of pine needles. Pyle used this technique here and there from about 1880 to 1882, and drew this one around the same time as - though it barely resembles - his illustrations for Yankee Doodle and The Lady of Shalott.

Men of Iron Halftone, 1891

As a footnote to my post about Howard Pyle’s black and white oil painting for Men of Iron, I present the illustration as it appeared in Harper’s Young People for March 17, 1891. The 8 x 10.5" original has been reduced to 4.8 x 6.3" and it’s not the worst reproduction - especially for something mass-produced, ephemeral, and made so early in halftone’s history - but a grey mist has crept into the room and subtleties have been lost. Still, it’s good to remember that Pyle’s reputation was made, to a large degree, on mediocre reproductions like this.