The Bat: A Lost Fable

When 23-year-old Howard Pyle began his career, he eked out a living by writing fables, drawing on his already vast knowledge of the genre. “I try to make them as witty as I can,” he explained, “and at the same time indoctrinate a small lesson with them. I strive to hold the lesson in view and throw in the wit as an accessory. Perhaps if I do the best I can in this way it may bear fruit at some time; but dear only knows!”

Fortunately, Mary Mapes Dodge, founder and editor of St. Nicholas, liked what Pyle submitted to her magazine. Encouraged, he composed more...and more. In a November 16, 1876 letter to his mother, he said:

Wrote yesterday another budget of fables as follows: 1st, A mouse having rendered a service to one of Jupiter’s Eagles, asks in return that he may be granted wings, so as to associate with the birds. It is granted and he becomes a bat. He soon finds, however, that though he has removed himself from the society of animals, the birds will not receive him among them because he still possesses ears and a tail. So the poor mortified creature only ventures out at night when others are sleeping.

A week later, he told his mother that “having...received a note from Mrs. Dodge accepting all my fables [except two], I went to work designing some illustrations.”

Mrs. Dodge especially requested me to design but one of them, but, so far from following her injunctions, I made a design of the discontented philosopher (as good a design as I have made lately) and two for the Bat, knowing my chance of having them accepted.

But before long Dodge got pickier about Pyle’s fables and his as-yet crude pen-and-ink drawings - and they paid less than he had hoped and expected:

I was far from satisfied at this as thee may well imagine, but I had to swallow it as best I could and digest the hard case in my own inner consciousness. They rather have me. There is no other childs’ magazine of any worth in the country and my writings are essentially for children.

Worse, as biographer Charles D. Abbott noted, “The truth of the matter was that St. Nicholas was overstocked, the editors had on hand enough of the fables to last them for many months, since it was not editorial policy to publish too many at once.”

In some cases, “many months” was, in fact, years: Pyle wrote “The Over-Wise Mouse,” for instance, in the fall of 1876, but it only appeared (with the title “Adventures of a Mouse”) in St. Nicholas for December 1885.

Indeed, for more than a century “The Over-Wise Mouse” was believed to have been the last-published of Pyle’s early fables. But, in scouring the pages of St. Nicholas, I found that another one appeared after it - though not for decades. “The Bat: A Fable” was finally featured in the May 1905 issue of St. Nicholas.It is credited only to “H.P.” and is accompanied by an unsigned illustration which must be one of the two illustrations Pyle had made for over 28 years earlier.

Why didn’t St. Nicholas herald it as a long-lost work by the famous author-illustrator? In 1905 Pyle was under a near-exclusive contract with Harper and Brothers, so St. Nicholas may not have been legally able to print “The Bat” (or at least the illustration) without getting permission from the rival publisher or from Pyle himself. I have a feeling neither party would have given the O.K. And I wonder if Pyle ever saw it - either in St. Nicholas or in the local Wilmington paper, The Morning News, which reprinted the text on April 27, 1905 - and, if he did, did he remember having done it?

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THE BAT: A FABLE

by Howard Pyle

A mouse, one time, rendered a service of some importance to one of the eagles of Jupiter. “Ask,” said the grateful bird, “anything that you desire, and in the name of my master, Jove, I promise to grant it to you.”

“Oh, sir,” said the mouse, eagerly, “I have long felt the mortification of living among such vulgar creatures as the beasts, and have ardently desired to associate with the more refined society of the birds. If you could but grant me wings, my happiness would be complete.”

“Consider well what you ask,” said the eagle, gravely. “Nature has placed you in a certain grade of society, and you need not hope that wings alone will make you a bird.”

“I have considered the matter thoroughly,” said the mouse, “and feel certain that if I had but wings I could at last associate with those I have so long envied and admired.”

“Very well,” said the eagle; “be it so!” and, instantly, wings springing from the mouse’s shoulders, the first bat was created.

His ambitious desires, however, were not realized; for the birds, perceiving that he still had ears and a tail and was, besides, covered with hair, would not associate with him, while, upon the other hand, his own pride had withdrawn him from his old companions.

“Alas!” said the poor, lonely animal, “why was I not contented with the humble sphere that nature intended me to fill? My very wings, that I hoped would be my pride, now prevent me from walking upon the ground, where I belong.”

So mortified and disappointed was he that thenceforth he ventured out into the world no longer by daylight, but only at night, when all other creatures had retired.

Howard Pyle’s First Cover?

This is probably the first magazine cover ever to feature an illustration by Howard Pyle. It’s not something that Pyle remembered, apparently, and it also eluded his bibliographers. But here it is: the May 1877 cover of St. Nicholas, Scribner’s Illustrated Magazine for Girls & Boys.

Of course, Pyle didn’t design the entire cover, just the long rectangular illustration that the publisher - for better or worse - slapped across it. Fortunately, a word of explanation was included in “The Letter Box” on page 508:

The beautiful tablet by Mr. Pyle, which adorns our cover this month, tells a true story in its own lively fashion. Its quaint costumes of successive centuries, showing how May-day rejoicings have been kept up from age to age, will send some of you a-Maying in encyclopedias and year-books, but it gives its real meaning at a glance - which is, that through all time people have welcomed the first coming of the spring. “Merrie May,” meaning pleasant May (for in old times “merry” simply meant pleasant), was as fresh and beautiful ages ago as it is to-day; and in one way or another the thought at the bottom of all the rejoicing is ever that of the old carol:

“A garland gay I’ve brought you here,
And at your door I stand;
It’s but a sprout, but it’s well budded out.
The work of our Lord’s hand.”

Pyle most likely drew this “tablet” for “The Merrie Month of May” in the depths of the winter of 1877, while occupying a “small hall bedroom” at 250 West 38th Street (between Seventh and Eighth Avenues) in New York.

“I think myself they are among the best”

“Blackbeard's last fight” by Howard Pyle (1894)

Finally, some pirates.

On June 4, 1894, Howard Pyle sent the last two illustrations for Jack Ballister’s Fortunes to William Fayal Clarke, his editor at St. Nicholas Magazine. His pirate novel for children was then running in installments and these two pictures wouldn’t appear until the issues of July and September 1895. Both were painted in black and white oil on academy board (probably made by Devoe & Co.) about 10 x 15 or 16".

Pyle seems to have begun these after May 16, 1894, the day he sent in the three preceding pictures - or maybe even after the 17th, when he and Clarke discussed the final four subjects over lunch in New York - or maybe - and perhaps more likely - after May 25, when he replied to a letter from Clarke, who had a few concerns about them.

“I hope you will like these drawings,” Pyle wrote to Clarke on June 4. “I think myself they are among the best, especially the fight, in which I have studiously thrown Blackbeard somewhat in the background.”

And that’s the curious thing about the painting: we see comparatively little of Blackbeard, whose braided-bearded face, with a dagger clutched between his teeth, is dead center, yet partially obscured by the cuff of the dark-jacketed Lieutenant Robert Maynard. Here is Pyle’s long description of the chaotic scene:

Lieutenant Maynard, as he called out the order, ran forward through the smoke, snatching one of his pistols out of his pocket and the cutlass out of its sheath as he did so. Behind him, the men were coming, swarming up from below. There was a sudden stunning report of a pistol, and then another and another, almost together. There was a groan and the fall of a heavy body, and then a figure came jumping over the rail, with two or three more directly following. The lieutenant was in the midst of the gunpowder smoke, when suddenly Blackbeard was before him. The pirate captain had stripped himself naked to the waist. His shaggy black hair was falling over his eyes, and he looked like a demon fresh from the pit, with his frantic face. Almost with the blindness of instinct, the lieutenant thrust out his pistol, firing it as he did so. The pirate staggered back: He was down - no; he was up again. He had a pistol in each hand; but there was a stream of blood running down his naked ribs. Suddenly, the mouth of a pistol was pointing straight at the lieutenant's head. He ducked instinctively, striking upward with his cutlass as he did so. There was a stunning, deafening report almost in his ear. He struck again blindly with his cutlass. He saw the flash of a sword and flung up his guard almost instinctively, meeting the crash of the descending blade. Somebody shot from behind him, and at the same moment he saw someone else strike the pirate. Blackbeard staggered again, and this time there was a great gash upon his neck. Then one of Maynard's own men tumbled headlong upon him. He fell with the man, but almost instantly he had scrambled to his feet again, and as he did so he saw that the pirate sloop had drifted a little away from them, and that their grappling-iron had evidently parted. His hand was smarting as though struck with the lash of a whip. He looked around him; the pirate captain was nowhere to be seen - yes, there he was, lying by the rail. He raised himself upon his elbow, and the lieutenant saw that he was trying to point a pistol at him, with an arm that wavered and swayed blindly, the pistol nearly falling from his fingers. Suddenly, his other elbow gave way, and he fell down upon his face. He tried to raise himself - he fell down again. There was a report and a cloud of smoke, and when it cleared away Blackbeard had staggered up again. He was a terrible figure - his head nodding down upon his breast. Somebody shot again, and then the swaying figure toppled and fell. It lay still for a moment - then rolled over - then lay still again.

I should note that the above passage comes from the book, not the magazine, and differs a fair amount since Pyle extensively revised the text somewhat over a year later. The picture, too, was retitled, “The Combatants cut and slashed with savage Fury,” for the book version. Go and see the luminous original at the Delaware Art Museum.

“‘Then I will come,’ said he” by Howard Pyle (1894)

The second picture shows Jack Ballister and Miss Eleanor Parker “standing in the full moonlight, which will make an effective contrast to the illustration preceding it, having, as it will, a background setting of the night and the starry sky.” Or so Pyle described it in his letter of May 25, 1894. He went on:

This picture will not necessarily be especially dark, though of course it will not be as brilliant as the full sunlight. Nevertheless, I should recommend it as a fitting subject. It accents the peaceful conclusion of a rather active story, especially as it will directly follow, both in the magazine and the book form, the fight between Blackbeard and the King’s men.

It seems to me that it would hardly be in keeping with the story to culminate the illustrations with action instead of repose. However, of course I will make whatever illustrations you think fitting.

But Clarke conceded, and Pyle painted with breakneck speed. His Wilmington neighbor, Caroline Tatnall Bush - called “Carrie” - who later married Christopher L. Ward, posed for Eleanor, who, in turn, provided the name for Pyle’s second daughter, born February 10 that same year.

Howard Pyle’s Early Turkey

In honor of Thanksgiving, I serve up Howard Pyle’s earliest known turkey.

It also happens to be his earliest known illustration for a national (as opposed to a local) publication: namely, St. Nicholas for November 1875. That honor used to belong to his two pictures for his poem, “The Magic Pill,” which appeared in Scribner’s Monthly for July 1876. (Of course, the poem itself remains the first-known nationally published bit of writing by Pyle.)

Somehow, though - and just like his 1871 drawing for Every Evening’s masthead - Pyle neglected to mention this piece when writing or being interviewed about his early life: perhaps because it had little impact on his nascent career (at least compared to “The Magic Pill” and his Chincoteague article) and perhaps because Pyle considered himself more a writer than an illustrator at that time.

When Paul Preston Davis (while compiling his exhaustive bibliography) first showed me the drawing in 2002, I didn’t think it was a bona fide Pyle. Why would St. Nicholas publish such a crude thing? Granted, it illustrated a poem, “The Reformer,” by Pyle’s own mother, but, still, I figured she probably wrote the poem for the picture, which was probably just a “recycled cut” - the kind which filled so many magazines in the 1870s and which accompanied the bulk of Pyle’s mother’s writings for children.

However, my skepticism gradually eroded: the drawing did, after all, resemble those for “The Magic Pill.” Even so, I wanted more proof. The drawing was unsigned and absent from the magazine’s bound volumes and indices, but, finally, when I inspected a copy of the November 1875 issue in its original wrappers, I was happy to see that Pyle was indeed credited in the table of contents.

So I gather mother and son submitted poem and picture as a package deal. And although within a year St. Nicholas was accepting Howard’s writings and illustrations, nothing by Margaret Pyle ever again appeared in that magazine. Sadly, too, she didn’t live to see their only other known collaboration, “Hugo Grotius and His Book Chest,” published in Harper’s Young People for March 15, 1887.

Incidentally, according to Every Evening, at the sixth-annual reunion picnic of the Friends’ Social Lyceum on June 26, 1875, “Mrs. M. C. Pyle read a very amusing poem, poking fun at fussy reformers” - no doubt the same poem her son illustrated.

The Fox, the Monkey, and the Pig

Howard Pyle most likely wrote and illustrated the following fable in November or December 1876 and it appeared in the September 1878 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls. The delay was not unusual for the magazine: another fable written at the same time wasn’t published until December 1885. Pyle's original 4.8 x 7.6" ink drawing, like so many others from this period, is at the Delaware Art Museum.

The Fox, the Monkey, and the Pig

The fox, the monkey, and the pig were once inseparable companions. As they were nearly always together, the fox’s thefts so far reflected upon his innocent associates, that they were all three held to be wicked animals.

At length, the enemies of these three laid a snare, in a path they were known to use.

The first that came to the trap was the pig. He viewed it with contempt, and, to show his disdain of his enemies and his disregard for their snare, he tried to walk through it with a lofty tread. He found he had undervalued it, however, when, in spite of his struggles, he was caught.

The next that came was the monkey. He inspected the trap carefully; then, priding himself upon the skill and dexterity of his fingers, he tried to pick it to pieces. In a moment of carelessness, however, he became entangled, and soon met the same fate as the pig.

The last that came was the fox. He looked at the snare anxiously, from a distance, and, approaching cautiously, soon made himself thoroughly acquainted with its size and power. Then he cried, “Thus do I defeat the machinations of my enemies!” - and, avoiding the trap altogether, by leaping completely over it, he went on his way rejoicing.

Just One More Turkey, 1894

As it’s still Thanksgiving weekend, I figured I would post yet another Howard Pyle illustration featuring a turkey (be warned: there are more to come - but maybe next year). This one has rarely (or never) been reproduced outside its original context, namely Pyle’s Jack Ballister's Fortunes. “He picked up the bird and held it out at arm's length” first appeared in St. Nicholas for October 1894 and then a year later in the book version of the novel, published by The Century Company. In the magazine it measured 7.6 x 5 inches. Pyle painted the original in black and white oil on a piece of academy board of about 15.5 or 16 x 10 inches. I particularly like how he captured the effect of the glaring midday sun on the southern Virginia landscape.