A Witness to History (Sort of)

Although not particularly substantive, this Howard Pyle letter - written 122 years ago today - to Mrs. John G. Milburn of Buffalo, New York, is of interest by association.

Mrs. John G. Milburn’s husband was President of the Pan-American Exposition Company and the Milburns lent a suite of rooms in their house at 1168 Delaware Avenue to President and Mrs. William McKinley to use during their visit to the Exposition in 1901.

After spending two nights with the Milburns, on the afternoon of September 6, 1901, the President was shot pointblank in the abdomen by Leon Czolgosz at the Exposition’s Temple of Music.

Following an operation at the Exposition hospital, McKinley was taken by ambulance to the Milburn house. There, Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (among dozens of others, apparently) came to visit while McKinley convalesced. And it was there, on September 14, 1901, exactly 18 months to the day after Pyle wrote his letter - which must have been somewhere on the premises - President McKinley succumbed to his wounds.

A Nice Trade

“A Dream of Young Summer” by Howard Pyle (1901)

“As you know,” said Howard Pyle to the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in a letter of January 2, 1902, “I have always admired your work extremely - have always considered you as a representative of that steadfast and lofty effort toward an Art that cannot condescend to tricks and effects to catch the eye, but that speaks with a deeper intonation to the hearts and the souls of men.”

Saint-Gaudens seems to have felt much the same way about Pyle, and for several years the two had intended to exchange works. Finally, at the end of 1901, the sculptor sent a bronze cast of the “Head of Victory” - a “sketch” for the allegorical figure in his wonderful Sherman Monument.

“Head of Victory” by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Pyle received the piece on January 2. “I shall regard it as one of the treasures of my life,” he wrote the same day. “I care for it much more than I should for a more finished work; it is, as it were, a pure and noble thought from a large, and I am sure, a noble mind.” He also vowed to send “something in return that shall represent an earnest, even if an inarticulate effort of my Art.”

At last, on February 10, 1902 - after having trouble getting the 22 x 12" oil on canvas framed to his liking - Pyle shipped “A Dream of Young Summer”:

Now that it has been sent I feel horribly conscious that it is no adequate return for the beautiful “Victory” which I possess. The only thing that reconciles me to it is that it is sent with the most friendly good wishes in the world. Moreover, whatever its short-comings it is a sincere effort to express a thought.

“A Dream of Young Summer” wasn’t a custom-made piece, but something Pyle already had on hand: it had been published the previous year, in Harper’s Monthly Magazine for June 1901, accompanied by Edith M. Thomas’s poem of the same name (which may have been written for the picture, instead of the other way around - but I’ll explain myself in a later post, I hope).

The painting - which, by the way, Pyle and inscribed “To Augustus Saint Gaudens this Picture of Young Summer with the Fraternal Greetings of His Brother in Art” - eventually wound up in the hands of Pyle’s grandson, who presented it to the Brandywine River Museum, where you can see it today.

Unfortunately, I don’t know where Pyle’s particular copy of the “Head of Victory” is, but it was the topic of this news item in The Evening Journal of Wilmington in March 1904:

AN INTERESTING ART TREASURE

A great many people of Wilmington have doubtless seen the equestrian statue Sherman that stands in the Plaza at Fifth avenue in New York, for that work is not only local but national and it is, moreover, regarded by those who should know as being one of the five great equestrian statues of the world. Perhaps the finest part of the entire group is the figure of Victory and it is rather interesting to know that the study for the head, cast in bronze, is now in possession of an artist in Wilmington to whom it was given by Saint-Gaudens.

And Pyle’s student N. C. Wyeth mentioned it in a letter of October 29, 1905:

Mr. Pyle has gone to Chicago today to lecture, etc. Enclosed you will find a photo of him. The cast is a head St. Gaudin’s [sic] gave him. He had a photo taken of it so as to use it in an illustrated lecture in Chicago and Milwaukee. He considers the piece of sculpture (original study for the figure of “Victory” on the Sherman Statue, NY) a masterpiece.

“No American Writer Can Come Within Touch of You”

Howard Pyle’s fondness for the writings of William Dean Howells is well documented - mostly in Pyle’s own correspondence. On October 30, 1895, Pyle wrote yet another glowing letter to his literary idol, mentor, and friend:

My wife and I are reading your Shaker story together. I was so much impressed with the first number that I sat down immediately and wrote Harry Harper what I so strongly felt - that it only added to my already formed opinion that no American writer can come within touch of you. The measure of your success lies far beyond the radius of the present into the vaster cycle of the future....

The first number of your story was startlingly true to nature, the succeeding numbers are charmingly idyllic.

“Your Shaker story” was “The Day of Their Wedding” which appeared in seven weekly installments (or “numbers”) in Harper’s Bazar between October 5 and November 16, 1895. And “Harry Harper” was J. Henry Harper, a friend of both Howells and Pyle, and a member of the publishing firm.

Pyle had, in fact, expressed a similar sentiment in a letter of February 26 that same year: “I do not of course know what are your present rewards of popularity but I feel very sure that you are writing for future readers.” Over the past century, however, Howells’ stock hasn’t performed quite as well as Pyle thought it would.

But now, future readers, why not read the novel yourselves and put Pyle’s assessment to the test?

Howard Pyle on Rome

“As for Rome, I hate it,” wrote an ailing Howard Pyle to Stanley Arthurs on December 16, 1910. “I was in my room all the time but twice, and when I went out then I saw the Roman ruins, and not St. Peter’s and the great pictures and statues. The Moses was the only thing I saw. As for the Roman ruins, they are without shape, weather-worn, and channelled by the rivulets of centuries of rain. They are black in some places and white in others, and are, I think, ugly and disagreeable. I saw nothing beautiful in them, but only the weather-worn remnants of a past and forgotten age.”

“It looks very much posed”

The above photograph, showing Howard Pyle with “The Evacuation of Charlestown” on his easel in his Wilmington studio, has now and then been dated 1897 and 1898.

But 1897 is incorrect because Pyle only started the painting in mid-1898: Frank Schoonover remembered that Pyle (his teacher at the time) was working on it during the Drexel Institute’s first Summer School of Illustration - which officially opened on June 23, 1898:

I recall that Mr. Pyle set up a very poor three-legged easel on the lawn in front of the house at Chadds Ford, and put his canvas on the easel. Miss Ellen Bernard Thompson...was painting something on the lower side of the road, and just beyond her was the Indian painter, Angel DeCora. There were some chairs and books of engravings of Colonial ships of the line out on the porch, and there were also the Pyle children playing around in the yard. The sky was very blue that day, with many floating clouds. Mr. Pyle asked me to fasten the canvas so that it would not shake, so I went back into the house and got the things needed.

Mr. Pyle then sat down on a kitchen chair and started to work under an apple tree, but he had no mahl stick. Then he said, “Frank, I see a fine straight sucker up there - climb up and cut it off.” I did so...

It was amazing to see him do this painting with so many distractions such as the children’s running around and so forth.... The painting has a shadow across the water like the shadow of the lawn, and the sky is as it was that day at Chadds Ford with the drifting clouds making shadows on the uneven lawn, which was much the color of the water in the picture. This was a lesson to all the students to interpret the things around them when painting.

“The Evacuation of Charlestown” was later packed up and hurried off to be photographed and made into a half-tone plate, just in time to appear in Scribner’s Magazine for September 1898. The Delaware Art Museum now owns the original painting (oil on canvas 23.25 x 35.25" - if you’re keeping score).



But back to the above photo: 1898 is probably the wrong date, too. Years ago, looking in a box at the Delaware Art Museum’s library, I saw - I think - two glass-plate negatives made by Cyrus Peter Miller Rumford. There, too, I saw Rumford’s scribbled notes stating that these were “Portraits of Howard Pyle for Home Journal ’99” and (provided I’m reading my own scribbles correctly) it seems that Rumford arrived with his camera at Pyle’s Wilmington studio at 3.00 p.m. one January day in 1899 and took a total of four photos.

Rumford, who had turned 26 that month, was a recent Harvard graduate (Class of 1897) and already a prize-winning photographer. And, apparently, either from his own or Pyle’s initiative he made the photos for an article in the April 1899 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, titled “The Journal’s Artists in Their Studios” - but for some reason the magazine chose not to print them.

Pyle’s own opinion of the photos sounds mixed: on February 11, 1899, he dictated the following letter:

Wilmington, Del.

My dear Mr Rumford:

I am very much obliged to you for the photograph of myself in my studio. It looks very much posed, but that is the fault of the subject and not of the photographer. It was very kind of you to remember me.

Once more thanking you,

I am

Very truly yours

Howard Pyle

February eleventh.

I don’t know why Pyle says “the photograph” and not “the photographs” - maybe Rumford only sent a print of what he considered the best. But “very much posed” is about right: these two known photos show a seated Pyle - who usually stood at his easel - stiffly “at work” on the already-finished “Evacuation of Charlestown”.

I should note, too, that Pyle’s letter to Rumford was handwritten by Pyle’s secretary, Anna W. Hoopes, and although it appears to be signed by Pyle, the signature is, in fact, the work of Miss Hoopes as well. In a 1935 talk she explained:

When rushed at the end of the day with correspondence, [Mr. Pyle] often asked me to sign his letters; and I became so proficient at imitating his signature, that he once made me promise not to copy his handwriting, jokingly remarking that sometime I might want to sign his checks.

When Howard Pyle “Struck Pan”

“The little pink finger and the huge black index came to a full stop under this commandment”

“Work is beginning to roll in upon me at last, and at last I think I have ‘struck pan,’” wrote Howard Pyle to his mother on February 28, 1878 - 135 years ago today. “My work is beginning to pay better too and I think before long I shall be able to pay off my debts to father in toto.”

Although I haven’t yet been able to find another use of Pyle’s idiom “struck pan” - it’s clearly a hybrid gold-mining term, somewhere between “struck pay dirt” and “pan out”.

Anyway, after over a year of living in New York, the 24-year-old Pyle had finally found himself making real headway as an illustrator. He credited his “A Wreck in the Offing!” as having “really launched me” - The Book Buyer for October 1888 said of it, “This drawing was published as a double-page engraving in Harper’s Weekly, and brought Mr. Pyle at once into prominence.”

But let’s let Pyle himself explain some of the work that he had been doing soon after his “first success” - and apologies in advance for his unfortunate racial slur:

I have just finished a picture for Harper’s Monthly of an old darky giving a lecture to a naughty little girl. It was quite a success and they are going to put it into the hands of the best engraver in New York City, Mr. Smithwick. They gave me two pictures to do for them in illustration to a most excellent story of modern Spanish life. They are beyond all comparison the best things I have ever done. I don’t think I am as a general rule inclined to be “cock almighty” about my work but for these two designs I can say that they are so far beyond anything I have ever done before that I can hardly realize their being my own work. They are not finished yet, but so far every touch I have put on them has improved them.

“She went by without looking at him”

The first one represents a Spanish caballero standing against the side of a bridge looking after his Dulcinea whom he has mortally offended by a lampoon written in a fit of jealousy. She is “soaring” past him with a scornful expression on her face and he is looking after her in a beseeching way. The scene is early morning and I think I have gotten a real feeling of early sunlight in the picture. I borrowed a Spanish cloak from an artist friend of mine that almost entirely covers the modern European dress and which with the addition of a sombrero gives him quite a picturesque look. I hired a Spanish woman’s costume in which I posed my female model Jenny Watts, a very pretty ladylike girl, and I tell you, she cut quite a shine!

Fermina opens the casket

The story goes on to say that after having thus mortally offended his sweetheart and being for some time unable to regain her love the cavalier finally succeeds by sending her a casket. In the casket was the pen with which he had written, broken; under the pen, a sheet of paper where was written in his blood “Retribution,” and under the paper his right hand. This, of course, “dropped” the girl. A very effective dénouement, I think. The scene I took for illustration was when she is just opening the box, or rather, had just opened it, the horror not yet fully dawned upon her mind. This was Mr. Alden’s suggestion. And I have made an illustration that some of my artist friends say shows not only talent but genius - I only hope it is so. Mr. Abbey says it is one of the best things that have been done in New York illustrating.

By the way, “The little pink finger and the huge black index came to a full stop under this commandment” was engraved, in the end, by Frederick Juengling, not John G. Smithwick, and published in Harper’s Monthly for July 1878. It illustrated “Daddy Will: A Glimpse of Ancient Dixie” by Charles D. Deshler. Pyle’s original black and white gouache painting showed up on the market in 2006, I think. And “She went by without looking at him” and “Fermina opens the casket” illustrated “Manuel Menendez” by Charles Carroll in Harper’s Monthly for August 1878.

Howard Pyle and the Groundhog

“According to the tradition of the ‘ground-hog’ the weather should have broken by now, but this time the ‘ground-hog’ was a prophet neither in his own country nor out of it. We read that you also on the other side of the ocean are suffering a like bitter winter and, indeed, the whole earth seems to be girdled by a belt of ice. I suppose that we should take comfort that one is not worse off than ones neighbours but I do not know that that fact makes the thermometer any higher.”

Howard Pyle to Thomas Francis Bayard (in London), February 10, 1895.

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)

“I am glad I am not dead”

Today is the 108th birthday of Miss Mary Asenath Ball, who sent a fan letter to Howard Pyle when she was seven years old. Her letter is lost, but we can glean what she wrote by reading Pyle’s reply:

In case Pyle’s writing is difficult to decipher, he said:

My Dear Mary Ball

I like your letter. I am glad you like my books. I wish I had written an Indian story. I did not write one. I am glad I am not dead.

I am yours truly

Howard Pyle

Pyle received Mary’s letter when he was in Florence, Italy, and he sent his reply sometime in April 1911 (I haven’t yet figured out if, on the postmark, the “1” refers to the day and the “17” to the hour, or vice versa). This is (so far) the last known letter in Pyle’s own hand - in fact, all the others sent from Italy were written or typed by his secretary, Gertrude Brincklé. And, of course, there’s a certain poignancy to it since Pyle died some seven months later.

Mary was the only child of Bertrand Emery Ball and the sculptor Caroline Cheever (Peddle) Ball (1869-1938), who studied under Pyle’s friends Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Kenyon Cox.

“I saw a many ‘gruesome’ sights”

“The stout little old gentleman who ate four fish-balls for breakfast on Sunday”

How better to charm a woman than by drawing an old man about to vomit? That was Howard Pyle’s tactic, at least, in a letter he wrote to Miss Alice Hannum Cresson on August 19, 1875:

Wilmington

Aug 19th 1875

Dear Miss Alice:

Now ma am the question is am I or am I not to be forgiven for my appearant neglect of your kind permission to write to you. Before the court decides let me be heard in a little excuse “iv it be plazen to yus mum [?]”. Now the fact is that immediately upon my return home I received orders to prepare myself ‘instanter’ for a business trip to the north so you can easily imagen that I must have been much hurried to get off in reasonable time.

I arrived home on Monday or rather Tuesday last at half past one o’clock at night, rather fagged out to tell the truth; having travelled about thirteen hundred miles (and all at night at that) the foregoing week. However I am now as you perceive in my normal state of vavicious brilliancy - “Richard’s himself again!” in fact.

Boston was the last city I visited before I returned home and from there I came to Philadelphia by ocean. Ah Miss Alice in two days of ocean travel I saw a many “gruesome” sights - old gentleman that would ever and anon dash frantically to the edge of the boat where they would stand with bodies that heaved and swayed with the force of some internal conflict between breakfast and stomach. The wail of little children and cries of suffering women whilst the stewardess ran hither and thither with a baisin in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other - no ma am I was not sea-sick.

This little sketch represents the stout little old gentleman who ate four fish-balls for breakfast on Sunday.

[drawing of man, 7/8 x 3/4" - see above]

But enough of this “fal-lal.”

I saw Spencer this evening. He tells me that he has received a letter from Miss Sallie inviting us both up to Consho. next Saturday. Most unfortunately I have sundry little engagements for that day; while Saturday week Spencer is engaged; however on Saturday two weeks weather permitting and provided it suits you we shall do ourselves the pleasure of visiting you.

I suppose Spencer has told you all about our departure from Maryland. How I scarcely had time to buy my segars and ticket and to dash off a few agonized lines of parting to Miss Smith and at the last moment to post your letters almost forgetting my valise in my hurry. We were both upon the platform of course to catch a last lingering look at our lady friends at Mansion Farm and were duly gratified.

I enclose an illustration of Shakspeare - “a poor thing but mine own” - applicable to this peach and watermelon season [enclosure missing]. Please give my respects to your father and mother and the rest of my Consho. friends and believe me as ever -

Very Respectfully Yours

Howard Pyle

May I hope to hear from you soon in answer to this my first letter since my return from Maryland?

I should note that although Pyle dated the letter “Aug 19th” sometimes he got his dates wrong, plus the envelope (see below) was postmarked 10 p.m. August 20th, so it’s possible he wrote it on that day.

I’ve posted a couple of things regarding “Miss Alice” already, but here’s a quick review:

When the 22-year-old Pyle wrote to Alice Hannum Cresson, 26, she was living with her parents, Walter and Alice (Hannum) Cresson, and sisters, Anna and Sarah (or Sallie), in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. She and Pyle were cousins by marriage - Alice’s maternal aunt, Hannah Hannum (1817-1896), was the widow of Pyle’s maternal uncle, John Painter (1824-1865) - so they may have known each other since childhood.

First, regarding “iv it be plazen to yus mum”: I’ve been squinting at that phrase for the last fifteen years. “It be” and “to” were clear, but the other parts I thought, at various times, were “played to your music” or “muse” and “plague to your name” and so on. All nonsense. But I think I’m on the right track now. It really can’t be anything but “plazen” - that’s Pyle’s “p” and “z,” etc. - and if we say it with an “Irish” accent, it translates to “it be pleasing to.” Since Pyle was familiar with Irish character songs and plays, this seems likely. I might be misreading the first word “iv” (or “if”), but Pyle also was apt to add extra bits to his letterforms and not dot his “i”s consistently. “To yus mum” - i.e. “to you, ma’am” - is iffy (or ivvy), but I don’t know what else it could be. Any takers?

But what else does this letter show us, apart from Pyle’s earthy sense of humor - and that he sometimes smoked “segars”?

Well, we see that Pyle was a mediocre speller, but he knew that: “I was never a good hand at spelling,” he admitted years later. He also knew his “Shakspeare” - sort of: “a poor thing but mine own” is a common misquotation of “an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own” from As You Like It (Act 5, Scene 4). Incidentally, Pyle also used the phrase to “modestly” describe his fairy-tales in an 1889 letter: “But you know what Touchstone says - ‘A poor thing, a poor thing, but mine own!’” Meanwhile, “Richard’s himself again!” comes from Act 5, Scene 3 of Colley Cibber’s Richard III.

“Spencer,” it turns out, was Willard Spenser, born July 7, 1852 (or later), in Cooperstown, New York. He moved to Wilmington in 1873 and in 1875 was living at 1229 Tatnall Street with his mother, Mary, and brother, Claude. All three taught music. Spenser had early musical talent and composed his first waltz at age 7. In 1886, “The Little Tycoon” - for which he wrote both the music and the libretto - premiered in Philadelphia and became the first successful light opera by an American composer. By then it seems that he and Pyle had drifted apart, though later they were fellow members of the Franklin Inn Club.

“Mansion Farm,” as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, was the Owings Mills, Maryland home of Pyle’s (and Alice’s) aunt and uncle, Sarah and Milton Painter. I recently learned, though, that the place - also known as ULM and built by Samuel Owings himself - was the focus of controversy some 15 years ago, when a developer sneakily demolished it. A more full, interesting, and illustrated history of it can be found here.

But perhaps the most intriguing thing about this letter is what it reveals about Pyle’s otherwise murky involvement in his father’s leather business. The 1875-76 Wilmington city directory (published in June 1875) lists William Pyle as a “leather dealer” and Howard Pyle as an “artist.” The latter description may have been wishful thinking at that point, but it’s plain that Howard’s duties went beyond clerking in an office and that he acted - well, once - as a sort of traveling salesman, going by train - and boat - to visit scattered customers. This is, at least, exactly what his father did, especially in the 1880s, after his younger sons, Clifford and Walter, had taken the reins of the family enterprise.

One more thing: chief among the Pyles’ products (eventually, but quite possibly in the 1870s, too) was leather for bookbinding. Their clients, naturally, would have included publishers. In fact, according to Alpheus Sherwin Cody - who interviewed Pyle in 1894 - Roswell Smith, President of Scribner & Company, “was a friend of [Pyle’s] father.” Why would a Delawarean leather dealer become friendly with a New York publisher?

I wonder, therefore, if this as-yet hypothetical connection to the publishing world was an “in” - or the “in” - that Pyle successfully exploited in 1876, after writing up his Chincoteague experiences...

“Delaware, the land of peaches!”

“A Farm ‘Pluck’” by Howard Pyle (1878)

“There are few more beautiful sights than a peach orchard in full bearing, the vistas between the parallel rows of trees over-arched with dark green foliage, the verdant roof studded with ripe and ripening fruit, suggesting the gems of Aladdin’s cavern. Every where throughout the orchard are seen the figures of the ‘plucks,’ mounted on high step-ladders, drawing down the heavily laden branches of luscious fruit. Every where the air is burdened with the all-prevading [sic] fragrance of peaches.”

Howard Pyle on “The Peach Crop in Delaware” (Harper’s Weekly, September 14, 1878)

Howard Pyle enjoyed peaches, and he went to great lengths to ensure that his friends would enjoy them, too. A little over 114 years ago, during the height of Delaware’s peach season, he wrote this letter to Christopher L. Ward:

Rehoboth, Del., Aug. 9th., 1897.

Dear Chris:

I am sending to Carrie by tomorrow (Tuesday) morning’s train a basket of specially picked peaches, gathered as nearly perfectly ripe as possible, so that you will have to get them without loss of time and spread them out so they may keep. They will not, I think, last more than twenty-four hours, but some of them may not be so perfectly ripe as that. I shall try to send them in care of the Baggage Master so that there will be no delay in your getting them. If I cannot do that, they will have to go by Adam’s Express, in which case you must get them from the express office as soon as may be. I think you had better have some one meet the morning train.

You still linger with us in odds and ends of conversation and in continual recollection, for your visit was a great pleasure to us.

Very truly yours

Howard Pyle

“Carrie” was Caroline Tatnall Bush Ward, Pyle’s onetime neighbor and model, who married “Chris” on May 5, 1897. As Pyle said in the same 1878 article quoted above:

The Delaware peaches are not an exotic growth, like the grapes of the same name, but a strictly local production, excelled by no other fruit of the kind in the world. The quantity of peaches raised in the peninsula is still constantly on the increase, as facilities for transportation and the increase of canning establishments open ever wider markets for their sale. The latest statistics number the peach-trees of the peninsula at about five millions, covering fifty thousand acres of the best and most productive land, and representing in money an invested capital of nearly three million dollars.

Of the fresh fruit shipped to the markets of New York, Philadelphia, and other cities of the Middle States, there passed over the Delaware Railroad, in 1877, 4248 car-loads - over two million baskets - while at least an equal quantity would find its way to market by water. This year's crop is much less in quantity, probably not more than half an average crop, owing to the untimely frosts of late spring - a fact that has probably already unpleasantly impressed itself upon peach-lovers by the comparative scarcity this season of this most delicious and satisfying fruit.

Master Pyle Goes to Washington

The United States Treasury Department at Washington, from a photograph by Alexander Gardner (1866)

“You aught to see the treasury bilding it’s steps are the queerest things I ever saw there is not any thing to hold them up yet hundreds of people walk on them ever day...

“Dr* says thers is more 3700 clearks and not more than 3 or 4 to each room The building takes up a hole squair much longer than any of ours...”

Howard Pyle, 13, to his father, William Pyle, June 16, 1866

* Dr. William Elder (1806-1885), physician, lecturer, political economist, biographer of Elisha Kent Kane, etc., etc., and longtime friend of the Pyle family.

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.

“Morgan at Porto Bello” (and then New York)

Above is the earliest known letter written on this date by Howard Pyle. It is addressed to Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908), the “Banker-Poet” and one of the first seven men elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

For a couple of years, Pyle carried on a spirited correspondence with Stedman, who had been fortunate enough to have a few of his ballads embellished by Pyle. After seeing Pyle’s illustration for his poem, “Morgan,” (published in Harper’s Monthly for December 1888) Stedman wrote on July 20, 1888:

The drawing, or rather painting, is magnificent! Figures, faces, composition, all dramatically fine, and catching the spirit of the ballad at its most characteristic point. ’Tis a pity that this unique painting, which is the result of both talent and close labor, should have to be condensed into a page of Harper. Yet, it will be effective, even on that scale.

Yes, it is one of your very best, and will bear off the honors next December.

I suppose you own the painting, but I ought to. I wish I were able to pay your price for it, if you would permit it to go on my walls. When I see such a picture enriching my own verse, I feel more than ever the loss of my former means. Still, I will pinch a good deal in other directions, if you will name a price for it.

Pyle named $100. Stedman replied:

I am charmed that you are willing to sell me the “Morgan” cartoon, and at a price which I dare pay, and to obtain which (the amount) I shall write and sell a hundred dollar poem, between now and the date of its return to your possession. And if I had the means formerly at my command, I should tell you that you ought to have more for so successful and elaborate a picture. If then, you are willing to dispose of it to me, for the hundred dollars, please consider it sold. And when you deliver it, advise me as to the most appropriate frame for me to give it.

By late October 1888, the painting hadn’t yet made its way back to Pyle, who worried that Frank H. Wellington (who, incidentally, died after eating toadstools in Passaic, NJ, in 1911) may have “soiled” it while making the wood engraving for the magazine, and he begged Stedman to “let me slick my child up a little before he is finally presented to Metropolitan Society”:

Seriously, I have always felt a little bit shabby - a trifle hang-dog concerning that charge of a hundred dollars for a drawing which should unquestionably have belonged to you. So I would like to do all that I can to make it presentable and acceptable.

But Stedman told Pyle to “do that you choose, & I’ll be proportionately grateful.”

It took a while, but by January 28, 1889, Pyle had finished cleaning, repairing, retouching, re-varnishing, and framing the painting, and “Morgan” was on “his last cruise, perhaps,” to New York. Pyle also mentioned to Stedman that he was about to take a cruise of his own to the West Indies, “to follow in the footsteps of the redoubtable Welshman [i.e. Henry Morgan] and others of his kidney”:

Oh, that you were inspired to go along! What an opportunity to become acquainted with you as we cruised together through the Spanish Main and amongst those musty old towns that were one time the glory as they were the ruin of poor Mother Spain. My wife goes along with me.

Stedman jokingly warned Pyle of the “beautiful girls, of mixed breed & dubious character” in Panama, who “wear jasmines in their hair…& talk Spanish-Indian - but you are to take your family with you? If so, you are safe. However, the French invaders have probably taken all the poetry out of the place.”

And - to make a long-winded story short - Pyle replied on February 3, 1889:

Wilmington, Delaware

Feby. 3rd 1889

My Dear Mr Stedman: -

I am glad that your Morgan came at last - the hanging which he received was too good a fate for the like of him.

As for the frame - I may as well be frank at once - it was the making of it that delayed his final voyage to New York. To tell the truth I have always had a sneaking fondness for that particular offspring of mine, and it tickled a certain rib of self vanity to dress him in good clothes before I packed him off to his new home in great New York. Moreover I have always had an idea that black and white would look well set in a wooden mat. I hope you like the plan of so framing it and will pardon me if I have taken a liberty in putting a stick or two around the drawing instead of leaving it to your better taste.

I shall certainly endeavour to make the Panama trip that you advise - it sounds alluring enough. But as for the girls with jessamines in their hair, why, as I take my good wife with me and as in these seven years I have n’t found anyone that quite tickles my fancy as she does I hardly think that I shall leave the tiller and jump overboard at the beck of the “greaser” sirens.

I remembered your book-plate very well so soon as I laid eyes on it. It was published in the “Book-Buyer”, was it not? Honestly I like it much better than my own lucubrations, if I may so apply the word, it looks more like a real book-plate and less like a Christmas card.

I suppose that the Players will officially notify me if I am to be enrolled as one of them [They did so on February 11, 1889]. As for the book-plate, if they pass favorably upon it I hope that they will return it for corrections as soon as possible as I leave home on Saturday next.

Very Truly Yours

Howard Pyle

I might add that I’ve been able to bask in the glory of the original and I’ve sometimes wished that Pyle had followed Stedman’s advice and had made “a painting four times this size, from this fine study, possibly with more colors than black-and-white, for a large effect and for exhibition and sale.”

But he didn’t. And “Morgan at Porto Bello” - a relatively small, black and white thing at 15 x 24 inches - now resides in rural New Jersey.

“Morgan at Porto Bello” by Howard Pyle (1888)

“Is that Howard Pyle?”

Photograph of Howard Pyle taken between December 11, 1887, and January 18, 1888

In December 1887, Edwin Wilson Morse, editor of The Book Buyer (“A Summary of American and Foreign Literature” published by Charles Scribner’s Sons), asked Howard Pyle to send a photograph of himself for use in the magazine.

“It has been years since I have had one taken,” Pyle replied on December 11, “but spurred by the compliment of your request I will visit a gallery at the very earliest opportunity and send you the result as soon as I receive it.”

When exactly Pyle visited a photographer is not known, but we do know that it was a little before January 18, 1888, when he wrote to a Mrs. Dickinson of Wisconsin:

A long while ago - March of last year - you wrote me a letter asking me for my photograph and autograph. My neglect to answer immediately arose not from indifference toward your request but because I had had no photograph taken for so long a time that I felt a reluctance to having myself projected upon material card-board, fearing the result. At last, however, I have had it done and such as it is I send it to you. I imagen to myself the little ones looking at it far away in Wisconsin. “What!” they cry, “is that Howard Pyle? Why; he is bald! He is grey! and - yes - if one looks closely enough one finds lines at the corners of his eyes that the photographer has forgotten to obliterate with his pencil!”

The Book Buyer, meanwhile, had a wood-engraving made from the photo, which appeared in the October 1888 issue. It accompanied a brief biographical sketch of Pyle, all part of Scribner’s campaign to promote his Otto of the Silver Hand, which came out that November (not to mention his The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and Within the Capes). Later, Scribner advertised that artist’s proofs of the portrait could be had for twenty-five cents and “Special Artist’s Proofs on India Paper” for fifty cents.

Pyle liked this engraving. In a letter of August 12, 1892, he said to Frank Nelson Doubleday (who also asked Pyle for a picture of himself for use in another project): “I think the portrait that you used in the Book Buyer is about as good as any that I have had taken - I suppose because it flatters me not a little.” See for yourself...

Howard Pyle, engraved for The Book Buyer (October 1888)

And here’s the article from The Book Buyer...

HOWARD PYLE

Howard Pyle began his career as an author under somewhat unusual circumstances. A number of years ago he heard of an island off the coast of Virginia where a peculiar breed of ponies ran in a semi-wild state. He visited the place, and wrote a paper upon it which he sent to Scribner's Monthly.

Following the advice of friends, who saw in this article the promise of better things, Mr. Pyle came to New York, and began to work with both his pen and his pencil. He had inherited from his mother a taste for both art and literature; and she, being a large reader of lighter literature, and a critic of keen perceptions, cultivated and directed this taste, thus exerting a marked influence in the formation of her son's intellectual character.

After coming to New York Mr. Pyle did a considerable amount of work more or less obscure, until finally he caught the attention of his brother artists by a more serious drawing than any he had yet undertaken. This was called “Wreck in the Offing!” and represented the interior of a life-saving station of the old style. A fellow in oil-skins and sou’wester has just flung open the door, in a gust of wind and rain, and shouts to his companions the startling words which form the title of the picture. This drawing was published as a double-page engraving in Harper’s Weekly, and brought Mr. Pyle at once into prominence.

Of late Mr. Pyle has been directing his attention more and more to book-making, writing and illustrating his own stories, and bringing all parts of the book into the closest harmony with the spirit of the tale. Being something of a bibliophilist, Mr. Pyle finds the creating of books to be, without question, his most congenial occupation. He has rarely painted for exhibition. The first book in which his skill as a story-teller and his talents as an illustrator became conjointly apparent was “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood,” published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1883. His next book, a romantic sea story called “Within the Capes,” published by the same firm in 1885, was without illustrations. Following these two were “Pepper and Salt” (1886), a collection of fanciful tales and verses, and “The Rose of Paradise,” and “The Wonder Clock,” which were published by Harper & Brothers under date of 1888. Mr. Pyle's latest illustrated book is a romance of mediaeval Germany, entitled “Otto of the Silver Hand,” which is now in the press of Charles Scribner's Sons.

In 1879 Mr. Pyle returned to Wilmington, Del., where, by the way, he was born in 1853; and since then he has made his home there. He is a hard, though not a rapid, worker, and has won distinction as an illustrator by reason of the serious, earnest spirit that characterizes his drawings. He seems to have aimed for accuracy rather than for effect, as if with the idea that there should be more in a drawing than merely that surface work which tickles the fancy at the first glance, but stimulates no deeper train of thought. He has been especially successful in his representations of colonial life and mediaeval folk-lore.

Howard Pyle and A Peculiar People

“The Kloster” by Howard Pyle, 1880

The following is part of a letter Howard Pyle, then in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, wrote to Anne Poole, his fiancée, on November 19, 1880:

Bur-r-r-ruh! but it was cold today. I managed to potter along tolerably well in the morning, sitting in the sun and sketching the old buildings of the Cloister. But when I undertook in the afternoon to go around and get another view, sitting in the shade, I had to resign. I worked along for some time with stiff fingers and chilled bones, but when I got to painting and the water I was using froze in little cakes all over the picture, I absolutely could not go on. I would have stuck at it in spite of chilled fingers if it had not been for that.

…I went in to warm my hands and the strict head sister took them into her own puffy palms in the most motherly way, saying with a surprised air “dey is golt,” just as if it were a land of Egypt out in the shadow of the woodshed. I thought it a good time to bone her again about having her picture taken, but she still firmly declined in Pennsylvania Dutch.…

As I could do no more at the buildings I went over to see my ancient friend Pfautz. I showed him the sketch I had made and he was interested. Then I asked him to sit for his picture. Here his daughter put in her word, objecting most strongly. I think the old man rather liked the idea. He had the queerest old trousers that might have been worn by Noah anterior to his cruise - yellow with age and patched with parti-colored remnants - oh! so picturesque! His daughter thought it would be ungodly to have his picture taken. I thought she meant ungodly for me to draw it. “I’ll take the responsibility,” I said. “You better be responsible for yourself,” said she, “one soul ought to be enough for you.” Then I quoted Scripture and she answered with twice as much. Then I appealed to the old man. “She will scoldt me,” said he, “and make it onpleasant.” To make a long story short I finally prevailed, provided I would not sketch more than his head.

This was not exactly what I wanted, but half a loaf is better than no bread, so I acceded to this stipulation.

The old man followed me out of the house when I was done. “Vas you going to publish that in Harper’s Weekly?” said he.

“Harper’s Monthly, if you will let me. I hope you won’t object.”

“Ho-no-no,” said he - then after a pause, “but don’t tell my daughter.”

“Oh no.”

Again he hesitated. “You’ll put my name, won’t you?”

“Why I don’t know.”

“I t’inks you petter - ain’t my name’s John B. Pfautz. John Bauer Pfautz - aigh? (with a rising inflection). And you might send me one of the papers - aigh?”…

“My Cicerone” (portrait of John Bauer Pfautz) by Howard Pyle, 1880

Howard Pyle Didn’t Sleep Here

But Howard Pyle did eat a meal and write a letter here. Where? Why, the Mount Vernon House, run by Zephaniah Undercuffler in Ephrata, Pennsylvania - 130 years ago today. As he complained to his fiancée, Anne Poole, who was back home in Wilmington:

...You see where I am (Ephrata) - and the name spelled right thanks to being printed. But I am not going to stay here - oh no! I am going back to Lancaster tonight. And I am going to stay in Lancaster and am going to get one meal at least in Lancaster. The unpronounceable proprietor of this Mount Vernon House told me today that this was a Dutch house, kept in Dutch style, and that I must help myself accordingly, which I did, to fat pork, turnips, diminutive sweet potatoes, dried peaches, and an indescribable pie, but oh my! - never mind, I won’t say anything about my poor stomach just here.… I am going back to Lancaster tonight, as I said, for dear only knows what the German bed may be....

A day or so earlier, Pyle had arrived in the area to begin gathering data on the religious community of “Dunkers” for a Harper’s Monthly article. A few months later, Scribner’s Monthly (soon to be re-christened The Century) perhaps unwittingly dispatched two artists to Ephrata to illustrate a similar piece for that magazine. Joseph Pennell, one of the two artists, later recalled:

We went at the drawings with fury, but, to our horror, we found that Howard Pyle had been there, for he had left behind an unfinished drawing which was preserved in the hotel. We said nothing, but worked harder and faster, fearing that any month Pyle’s article might appear in Harper's and ours never be printed... and, though we trembled every month when Harper’s was announced, we came out in The Century years before he did in Harper’s.

Indeed, “A Colonial Monastery” by Oswald W. Seidensticker, illustrated by Pennell and Henry Rankin Poore, came out in December 1881. But Pyle’s “A Peculiar People” only appeared in October 1889.

Above is one of the pictures that Pyle didn’t leave behind (at the Mount Vernon House, I mean). And rightly so. It’s called “The Kiss of Peace” and again shows the sort of “transitional” drawing style that Pyle employed in the early 1880s and which I’ve pointed out here and here and here. It could almost pass as a drypoint.

November 8, 1895

Last year I wrote about how Howard Pyle altered his painting “The Burial of Braddock” after it was first published in magazine and book form in 1896 and before it was sent to its new (and present) owner, the Boston Public Library, in 1897. Now, here’s a little something written on this day 115 years ago about the origins of the same work...

And in case Woodrow Wilson’s handwriting is difficult to read, here is a transcription:

Everett House, Union Square, New York.

8 Nov., 1895

My dear Mr. Pyle,

Your last letter came just as I was leaving home, and I had to bring it off with me to find time for an answer.

You will notice that Washington in his account of Braddock’s death says “near the Great Meadows,” careful Mr. Parkman says exactly the same, writing before the publication of W’s account. It would not be safe, I think, to take the picture of Braddock’s grave as a picture of Great Meadows. [Colonel Thomas] Dunbar’s camp at the time of B’s death was, I should judge, between Gist’s and Great Meadows, nearer the latter than the former. See map opposite page 438 of Winsor’s “Mississippi Basin,” on which Gist’s is called “Guests.”

In haste,

Cordially Yours,

Woodrow Wilson

Mr. Howard Pyle

Wilson, by the way, was writing from Everett House, a hotel on the north side of Union Square, at the corner of Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South) and 17th Street, right next to The Century Company - a fragment of which can be seen on the left side of this photo of the hotel from the Museum of the City of New York. The hotel was pulled down in 1908, but The Century offices (which Pyle visited somewhat frequently in connection with his work for St. Nicholas and The Century Magazine, etc.) are now home to a Barnes and Noble store.

[Note of November 8, 2013: I added a few details and links since first posting this]

November 3, 1878

Referring to this picture, Howard Pyle wrote to his mother on November 3, 1878:

The composition class at the [Art Students’] League still occupies much of my attention. The subject last week was “Zekle’s Courtship.” I did not make a composition myself, however, as I was quite busy last week working on a design “The Interior of a Fishing Shanty,” which took me all week, cost me something for models, and at which I did not make a princely fortune. Mr. [Charles] Parsons liked it, however, and that was some satisfaction.

It was published as “Interior of a Fishing Station” in the following June’s issue of Harper’s Monthly, and it illustrated Part II of his article, “A Peninsular Canaan,” born out of travels on Maryland’s Eastern Shore the previous summer.

September 23, 1896

“Did thou tell them how I taught thee?” by Howard Pyle (1896)

On September 23, 1896, Howard Pyle wrote to Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell regarding the illustrations for the novel, Hugh Wynne:

…I wish most heartily now that I had not undertaken to illustrate it. I quite agree with you that a story, especially one that is so dramatically told, is very much better without illustrations than with them - that is unless these illustrations be made to fill out the text rather than to make a picture of some scene described in it.

I do not feel that my ability in picture-making lies in illustrating stories. In such work I am hampered and confined by the text, and my talent (such as it is) can have no room in which to play. It has always seemed to me to be better to choose for an illustration some point, if possible, not mentioned directly in the text but very descriptive of the text.

For example, in the first instance I was compelled to choose the return of the little boy from school welcomed by his mother. This, while perfectly charming in your description of it, was not a subject one could very well depict. You gave the idea of cool, dark interiors and wide spaces. In making the drawing I had to limit myself to the open door and a small vista outside; for in making a drawing one must make it with what one sees with the eyes and not with what one sees with the mind and thought, as you make in the text. If the story which I was illustrating had been mine, I would rather have chosen some impersonal subject to be called, perhaps, “Mother and Son,” in which the mother, with her arm around the little boy, is walking down the dark room with such surroundings as you depict in the text.

There is no such scene mentioned in your story, but I think it would illustrate the feeling you intend to convey, and if correctly drawn, would carry forward the thought of the reader with some definiteness of purpose.…