“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.