The Song of Captain Kidd

In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day here is something from Howard Pyle.

“The Song of Captain Kidd” is, in fact, one of Pyle’s earliest known pirate pictures, and it’s one of eleven illustrations he made at the tender age of twenty-six for Lizzie W. Champney’s “Sea-Drift from a New England Port” which was published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for December 1879.

Pyle hand-lettered the title, but the rest of the text was typeset. The song isn’t the work of Champney, but was an “oldie” even in 1879 - and lo and behold there’s at least one site devoted to its history and where you can hear the tune. Pyle himself later wrote of it:

Maybe two hundred years have passed since Captain Kidd took his leave of the world at Execution Dock in London, yet even at this day, I suppose, seven or eight out of every ten people who read, remember at least a part of the famous ballad that has drifted down to us from that far away past - “The Song of Captain Kidd.”...

It is such popular songs as this more than almost anything else, that makes the name of an adventurer popular upon the lips and to the ears of the great public. So it is now that after 200 years, the name of Captain Kidd is that above all others suggestive of sea-roving, of the Black Roger, with its white skull and crossbones, of buried treasure, of death and of terror.

Now talk like pirates amongst yourselves.

Blueskin Stands Up

“He lay silent and still, with his face half buried in the sand” (1890)

Howard Pyle painted “He lay silent and still, with his face half buried in the sand” for his story “Blueskin the Pirate” in 1890, and it was first published in that year’s Christmas issue of The Northwestern Miller.

About a decade later, when, it seems, Pyle was thinking of compiling his own proto-Book of Pirates (or at least some kind of collection of his stories), he asked for a copy of the magazine from its editor, William Cromwell Edgar. Edgar soon complied and on March 13, 1900, Pyle wrote to thank him:

It is always a matter of some dread to renew my acquaintance with my one-time-made illustrations, but this, although made more than ten years ago, seems to me to stand up remarkably well alongside my present work, and I am very glad that you should have so good an example.

The original - and much more luminous - black and white oil painting (23.25 x 15.25 inches) is now partly owned by the Brandywine River Museum.

Pyle Drives a Hard Bargain

“Cap’n Goldsack” by Howard Pyle (1902)

Henry Edward Rood, an assistant editor at Harper’s Monthly, got to see Howard Pyle’s original illustration for “Cap’n Goldsack” a few months before it was published in the July 1902 issue of the magazine. He wanted to buy it. Pyle wrote him on April 30, 1902:

I feel very much complimented that you should like “Captain Goldsack” and shall be very pleased for you to have it. Do you think that $75.00 is more than you care to give for it? If so I shall be glad for you to mention what you think would be sufficient value.

Pyle drives a hard bargain, doesn’t he? I don’t know if Rood accepted the offer - but I sure would.

The painting has yet to turn up: it was last seen at the Art Institute of Chicago in December 1903. It illustrated a poem of the same name by William Sharp:

CAP’N GOLDSACK

Down in the yellow bay where the scows are sleeping,
Where among the dead men the sharks flit to and fro -
There Cap’n Goldsack goes, creeping, creeping, creeping.
Looking for his treasure down below!

Yeo, yeo, heave-a-yeo!
Creeping, creeping, creeping down below -
Yo! ho!

Down among the tangleweed where the dead are leaking
With the ebb an’ flow o’ water through their ribs an’ hollow bones,
Isaac Goldsack stoops alow, seeking, seeking, seeking.
What's he seeking there amidst a lot o’ dead men’s bones?

Yeo, yeo, heave-a-yeo!
Seeking, seeking, seeking down below -
Yo! ho!

Twice a hundred year an’ more are gone acrost the bay,
Down acrost the yellow bay where the dead are sleeping:
But Cap’n Goldsack gropes an’ gropes from year- long day to day —
Cap’n Goldsack gropes below, creeping, creeping, creeping:

Yeo, yeo, heave-a-yeo!
Creeping, creeping, creeping down below -
Yo! ho!

“Can’t you see ’em twicet?”

“Macarooned” “Marooned” by Howard Pyle (1909)

The Delaware Art Museum’s lovely, landmark show, Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered, closes today. Fortunately, it will reappear this June at the Norman Rockwell Museum.

One hundred years ago this month, in March 1912, an exhibition featuring many of the same pictures was mounted by The Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, which had been formed in direct response to Pyle’s death the previous November. That show, held in the ballroom of the Hotel du Pont on Market Street, stayed up for only a couple of days, but it was a tremendous hit. “GREAT CROWDS VIEW PICTURES,” said one newspaper. “About 10,000 Saw the Howard Pyle Art Collection During Yesterday. MANY COULD NOT GET IN.”

An article about the show later appeared in The Outlook for June 1, 1912. Although unsigned, rumor has it that Pyle’s student Ethel Pennewill Brown was the author (a.k.a. “The Spectator”). And I'm going to quote it in full, here, since it so well describes the universal enthusiasm that Pyle’s work could generate - and can still generate, when given the chance.

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

THE SPECTATOR

Both entrance halls of the big office building, running in from two streets, were jammed with people - every kind of people, from white-haired men to infants in arms. The three elevators were plying as fast as they could to the eleventh floor, but the crowd thronged in far too fast for them to handle. “And it’s only beginning,” said the attendant in charge. “You ought to have seen them yesterday evening at about nine o’clock! It's only a quarter of eight now, and it’ll get worse from now on.” The Spectator was glad he had arrived early. Also, he was glad to see that for once a prophet was honored in his own country; for the swift shuttles of the elevators were taking up all Wilmington to look at the collection of pictures by Howard Pyle, the artist who had lived all his life in the busy manufacturing city of the Diamond State.

----

Never was there a better citizen than Howard Pyle, or a better friend. Therefore a group of his friends had organized this exhibit of all the pictures that he had left, that the whole city might see them, and that, if possible, they might be secured as a nucleus for an art gallery for the town. It was thus not an ordinary picture show, but a peculiarly personal and popular one. The Spectator, who counts the remembrance of Howard Pyle’s friendship as one of the privileges of life, met at the very door of the big ball-room on the top floor, where the show was held, others of an intimate circle who were serving as ushers and explaining the pictures to those who asked for information. “I’ve been taking small boys around all day,” one woman said, smiling, “and it’s been such fun! They want to know all about! ‘The Taking of Cartagena,’ and ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ and ‘The Battle of Germantown,’ and ‘Bunker Hill,’ and ‘The Salem Wolf,’ and ‘The Triumph of War,’ and ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ History isn’t my strong point, and several of them have corrected me. Not one boy has been troublesome or mischievous, and yet some of them have been regular little street boys - colored ones, too, among them. I shall never again think that art doesn’t interest the masses. Why,” to a nine-year-old, ragged and tousled, who came marching in with two younger boys tagging on to him, “haven’t you been here to-day already?”

----

“Yes, lady,” said the boy, shyly. “But I'd like to see ’em again, and here’s Joe hasn’t seen ’em yet, nor his brother. Can't you see ’em twicet?”

“Of course you can,” said the usher. “Which one do you like the best, out of them all?”

The urchin hesitated not a second. “That feller on the ship in the storm,” he said, pointing to the Flying Dutchman staggering on the slanting, streaming, gale-swept deck. The crowd was already three deep before it, but the little fellows wormed their way in and stood hand in hand gazing at the canvas. “I don’t suppose they have ever had a chance to see a good painting before in their lives,” said the usher. “That’s the interesting thing - to see the people here that one would never think would care for pictures or come. But they do come; there were six thousand here yesterday, and we didn’t expect five hundred! We’ve had four infants in arms, and three pet dogs, and several people on crutches, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some one come in on a stretcher rather than miss it!”

----

And still they came. A solid wave flowed into the wide door of the high-arched ball-room, so that soon the committee had to stand there and direct the people to “Keep to the left, and move on all the time, please.” White-haired men and women, young couples bringing the baby, high school girls and boys, fashionably dressed women, laboring men, city officials, Poles, Italians, Negroes, Russian Jews, sisters of charity, deaconesses, leading clergymen, shopgirls, saloon and sporting men, art students, and boys, and more boys - a whole community, in fact, was surging up from the street to see the work of a beloved citizen as well as a famous artist. It was what America’s greatest illustrator would have loved to see - the human impulse, the response of the people to an art that reached them. For they did not glance at the pictures and pass on. They did not stand, as at the usual cultivated “private view,” with their backs to the pictures and talk to each other. They moved along slowly, so slowly that they had to be fairly torn away from picture after picture by the hovering committee. The crowded line, five and six deep, all around the spacious hall wanted to see every picture, and stay a while before this and that especially appealing one.

----

It was a fine group of canvases - full of color and fire and imagination. Howard Pyle’s Quaker blood made him a mystic, and also, by a paradox, sent him headlong on the trail of adventure and romance. His last picture - brought back from Florence unfinished and unsigned - was here: a heaving sea of iridescent blue and green, a cold moon, and slippery rocks, from which a mermaid siren, glittering, mysterious, alluring, winding her white arms about the young fisher-lad, was dragging him down, down, into the deadly depths below the white lacing foam. Across the room, in all the glory of a mellow sunset, the marooned pirate, crouched on the island sands, his head sunk on his hands, sat desolate while the screaming sea-birds wheeled overhead. Revolutionary scenes, mediaeval legends, colonial lovers and witches and sailors, bearded pirates dividing the spoils of cities or grappling treasure galleons, drew the eye and stirred the imagination. Exquisite black-and-white filled panel after panel, bold, minute, fascinating to linger over. The variety, the vigor, and the charm of the work were amazing.

----

“We didn’t have a catalogue, or put a rope railing in, because it was only for two days, and we never dreamed the whole town would come,” explained one of the committee. “We thought a few hundred, especially interested, would come and see what was here, and that a sentiment could be created for buying the collection. There are ninety-nine oils here, and then the black-and-whites and a few water-colors. Outside of the large mural paintings done for various public buildings in other States, these fairly represent the artist’s best work, and they are all in the market. If the little Italian towns of long ago could hold on to the pictures of their local artists, and so come to have galleries that travelers visit in thousands every year, there is no reason why American towns to-day should not begin to do the same thing. We are trying for a new free library building for Wilmington, and we want an art gallery in connection with it, with these for a nucleus. This crowd looks as if public sentiment will be running strong our way.”

----

It did indeed look so. The ushers at the door were fairly overwhelmed, and at last the order was given for the elevators to cease running. It was reported from below that the crowd was standing out in the street. The crush was now pressing the people fairly against the pictures, so it seemed better to let them wait in the street than come up and endanger the canvases. “Oh, dear, look at that woman’s hat-pin!” cried a watchful usher. “Won’t you please, Mr. Brown, go over there and call to her either to take out her hat-pin or keep her head slanted away from the canvas?” Mr. Brown obligingly pushed over, and the colored girl, whose enormous hat was pierced by a steel skewer with some six projecting inches of bare steel, giggled and threw her head far on the required slant, thereby knocking a meek and inoffensive man out of his place, but saving the pictures.

----

“We had the name, on a typewritten slip, pasted on the frame of each picture,” the Spectator was told. “But the crowd got so close to read the names that, we were afraid some of the near-sighted people would injure the canvas, and we took them all off. So the public can call them what they please. That wonderful one of the pirate abandoned on the island of the Spanish Main - ‘Marooned’ - is a great favorite. But many have called it ‘Macarooned,’ and enjoyed it just as much. Several men have come up and asked, ‘Which is the most expensive picture, please?’ One girl wanted to know ‘if the artist had a right to sign a picture with ships in it and call it an original picture, when he had the ships right there to draw from?’ Half a dozen school-children are going to write compositions about their favorite pictures. It seems to me that I never have thought of art as a thing that is alive and means something to all kinds of people, as I have these two days.”

----

The Spectator felt that way that night, too. He stayed to the end - until the lights were turned low so as to get the people to leave. They tramped off to the descending elevators - tired-looking men and women with another day’s work ahead of them, sleepy boys who still wanted to take another look at “Bunker Hill,” or “Thomas Jefferson,” or “The Mermaid,” or “The Pilgrimage of Truth,” or “The Burning Galleon,” or “The Taking of Cartagena.” Ten thousand of them had seen the pictures that day, in addition to the six thousand the day before - about one-fifth of the entire population, young and old. And yet some people think there is no future for American art! The Spectator is sure, after seeing that demonstration, that Wilmington will get its art gallery, and that the pictures of Howard Pyle will be a proud and prized community possession for all time in the old city where the Quaker artist was so beloved a citizen.

Ye Pirate Bold (and Bloody Expensive)

On September 13, 1903, Howard Pyle jotted down this drawing in a little notebook belonging to his student Thornton Oakley. Some years later, when Merle Johnson was compiling Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, Oakley allowed it to be reproduced.

Today, this 5.75 x 3.25" scrap was auctioned off at Freeman’s in Philadelphia. And as a testament to the enduring allure of Pyle’s pirates, it sold - with buyer’s premium - for $20,000!

Insert your favorite piratical expression of shock here.

Howard Pyle vs. N. C. Wyeth

Behold, two great versions - two great visions - of the same scene from Kidnapped:

“I saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body” by Howard Pyle (1895)

“I saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body” by Howard Pyle, painted in black and white oil, about 11 x 16" on canvas board for The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895). The original is at the Delaware Art Museum. The reproduction in the book (from which the above was scanned) is only 3 x 4.3" and the sized paper has rippled and yellowed over time.

“The Siege of the Round-House” by N. C. Wyeth (1913)

“The Siege of the Round-House” by N. C. Wyeth, painted in full-color oil on canvas, about 32 x 40" for Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913). The Brandywine River Museum has the original which is considerably less yellow than this plate (5 1/4 x 6 5/8") from an early edition of the book.

The more I look at Pyle’s paintings the more I feel that there is a certain “quietness” (I wouldn’t say “coolness”) in even his most action-packed scenes. They uncannily capture those slow-motion, hushed moments of highest tension. As I’ve said before (somewhere around here), one of the things I love about Pyle is that his best pictures - and his best writings - activate my other senses as I look or read: I feel the sun’s hot glare; I smell the grass or the smoke; I hear the distant birds or lapping waves. It’s subtle, yet it’s a big part of what gives his work its resonance and power. And when I look at this picture I hear the thin, almost imperceptible blade piercing the mate’s clothing as it emerges from his back.

Pyle once said something to the effect of, “If you hear a man say, ‘I will kill you!’ in wild passionate tones you will not believe that he means it - but if he should say it quietly and deliberately with the passion kept behind you will know that life is endangered.”

Of course, N. C. Wyeth rarely kept the passion behind. In this as in so many of his pictures (especially his earlier ones) his barbaric yawp is loud and clear - not to mention the cacophony of clattering swords, shouts, and stamping feet. His scene is more overtly melodramatic and theatrical than Pyle’s: it’s even illuminated as if by footlights. But while Wyeth’s actors are hammier, his colors brighter, and his composition simpler, somehow he pulls it off - as he so often did. His over-the-top approach was as effective as it was different from his teacher’s “quiet and deliberate” path.

“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.

“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)

Who (or Which) Shall Be Captain?

“I think that pirate duel is the most terrific thing I ever saw. I had almost all the sensations I have enjoyed at a prize fight. Oh if I were only a pluto I’d have that in the middle of my shack and when I wanted to be lifted out of the dreary run of existence I would take a look. As I grow older and colder I do not fail to remember that fighting - drinking and the women are after all the big primitive sensations - everything else is B. Flat.”

So said Frederic Remington in a letter to Howard Pyle, written on November 13, 1908. “Who Shall Be Captain?” was one of thirty Pyle works then on display at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City. Harper and Brothers had the right to reproduce it, but they didn’t exercise that right for a couple of years: the picture appeared, at last, in the January 1911 Harper’s Monthly along with a poem called “The Buccaneers” by Don C. Seitz - and with the title tweaked to read “Which Shall Be Captain?” It also went by the name “The Fight on the Sands” at the Harper offices, according to Pyle.

The Delaware Art Museum now owns the original 32 x 48" oil on canvas. And, incidentally, the treasure chest was painted “from life” and can be seen in photos of Pyle’s studio; he bought it on one of his trips to Jamaica and then Thornton Oakley bought it at Pyle’s estate sale in 1912 (and rumor has it that it’s now in the vicinity of Chadds Ford).

I’ve always been of two minds about this picture: while it’s nicely painted, the exaggerated expressions of the onlookers - the cartoon scowls and goofily popping eyes - don’t sit well with me, and I find the composition more static than dramatic. Then again, if I were only a pluto I’d have it in the middle of my shack, too.

June 18, 1887

I hope this will make up somewhat for my long delay in posting anything - and for my even longer delay in posting a picture.

"'Boat ahoy!' I cried out, and then levelled my pistol and fired" appeared in Harper's Weekly for June 18, 1887. It illustrates Pyle's serialized pirate novel, The Rose of Paradise. The admirable but unsigned engraving measures 9.1 x 6.6 inches and is, I imagine, a much different animal than the as yet unlocated original which is either ink or watercolor wash on paper and measures about 10 x 15 inches.

I first saw this while rooting through the bins at Pageant Books and Prints, then near The Cooper Union in Manhattan. I think I actually staggered backward as though hit by a boom - and I still get a little seasick from its strength and simplicity. Although a finished picture, it calls to mind the Pylean epigram (via Charles DeFeo): "After the first half-hour of work, your lay-in should kill at a hundred yards."

Howard Pyle at Yale University

Howard Pyle crossed paths with Yale University a number of times during - and after - his lifetime. In 1903 he delivered the Anniversary Address at the School of Fine Arts; his pictures were exhibited there in 1903 and 1909; in 1905 he designed the bookplate for the Yale Club's library; and his two eldest sons, Theodore and Howard, Jr., were attending the college when he died in Italy. Several of Pyle's letters reside there now, as do some original works of art - and early ones at that - which can be seen here.

And, in looking the Yale page over, I see that the works aren't very well identified. So here's more:

"At the Sign of the Griffin" was published with the title "The Press-Gang in New York" in Harper's Monthly for March 1882. It is one of three Pyle illustrations for the article "Old New York Coffee Houses" by John Austin Stevens. He painted it at the end of 1879.

"He Stops at the Sign of the Weathervane" illustrated Pyle's own poem "Tilghman's Ride from Yorktown to Pennsylvania" in Harper's Monthly for November 1881. The original probably dates from that year.

"The Dunkers - Going to Meeting," although published (without "The Dunkers" in the title) in the October 1889 issue of Harper's Monthly, was painted some nine years earlier, when Pyle initially prepared his article "A Peculiar People" following his November 1880 visit to Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

"Avary Sells His Jewels" was featured for Pyle's article "Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main" in Harper's Monthly for September 1887. I'm pretty sure Pyle painted this in early 1887 - maybe late 1886.

"An Old Government Toll Gate with Westward Bound Express" appeared in Harper's Monthly for November 1879. It was one of a dozen illustrations Pyle made for William Henry Rideing's "The Old National Pike." The two men travelled along the pike earlier in 1879 (which I mentioned in this post).

And "Isaac Walton" and "Richard de Bury Tutoring Young Edward III" are etchings made by William Henry Warren Bicknell after paintings by Howard Pyle for the Bibliophile Society in 1903.

A Howard Pyle Model

“Lola” by Howard Pyle (1908)

In 1925, Estelle Taylor, Hollywood actress and wife of world heavyweight champion boxer Jack Dempsey, reminisced in a syndicated interview about growing up in Wilmington. Here (from The Delmarva Star, February 7, 1926) she tells of what happened after she dropped out of high school:

Shortly afterwards I met Howard Pyle, the noted Wilmington artist and illustrator, and he asked me to pose for him.

After much urging Grandmother [Ida Barrett] agreed that I might pose for Mr. Pyle. For, as she said: “He’s such a fine man, the association may be very pleasant for you, and besides, (and with her it was a very important ‘besides’) the experience may get those stage ideas out of your head.”

But as to that last, it worked just oppositely.

I’ll never forget the day I walked into Mr. Pyle’s studio. The first thing I saw was a picture of a pirate sitting in the sand, with a bandanna about his head - his brow wrinkled in thought.

As I studied the picture which, I think, is one of Mr. Pyle’s most famous works, I fell to wondering what was in the pirate’s mind. I wondered if his future was troubling him as much as mine was beginning to trouble me. For I found myself consumed with restless ambition. And I immediately began to figure how, by posing for Mr. Pyle, and possibly other Wilmington painters, (for there were three separate colonies of artists there) I could earn enough money to start on the stage.

While those thoughts were going through my head Mr. Pyle came into the room. Although, on our first meeting, he had struck me as large, he now seemed taller and bigger - and much more formidable. I felt somewhat awed by him. And I began to fear that my posing days might be limited to just that one, for I was not at all sure that Mr. Pyle would like me as a model.

But I had all my fears for nothing. He was kindness itself and I never saw anyone more patient or more considerate, only sometimes he’d forget how long he had been working and would keep me in one position until I felt I’d drop from fatigue. That, however, I knew, was the result of his concentration on his painting. For, when he realized how tired I must be, he’d say: “Oh, I’m so sorry, child, you must be worn out. Now take a nice long rest.”

All the time he painted he whistled, no tune in particular, as I noticed over and over again, but a sort of medley - and he always seemed happy and contented with life. My experience as a model for him was extremely happy.

Ida Estelle Taylor was born May 20, 1894, in Wilmington. Some biographies erroneously say she was born “Estelle Boylan” and was of “working-class Irish” stock, but she appears on the 1900 Census, aged six, the daughter of Harvey (or Henry) D. Taylor, a building and loan agent, living on a respectable stretch of Washington Street (just a few blocks north of Pyle’s home from 1881 to 1893). While she may have been of Irish descent, her parents and four grandparents were born in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Estelle’s mother married Harry Boylan c.1913 - hence the Boylan confusion - but by then Estelle was married to Kenneth Peacock. She later moved to New York City and Hollywood and married Jack Dempsey in 1925.

Estelle vaguely says she dropped out in the “second grade” of high school. Gertrude Brincklé said Estelle posed for the title character of the story “Lola” for the January 1909 Harper's Monthly Magazine, which would have made her only 14 - a little young, but not out of the question. And Pyle was indeed at work on “Marooned” in 1908: he showed it in progress to his students Gayle Hoskins and Ethel Pennewill Brown on February 6 of that year.

Brincklé also recalled that Estelle first modeled for Clifford Ashley, who recommended her to Pyle, and that she went by trolley to the Taylor house to “hire” Estelle and escort her back to 1305 Franklin Street. Although Estelle does not mention Ashley in her interview, she does remember posing for Harvey Dunn, Leslie Thrasher, E. Roscoe Shrader, Stanley Arthurs, Charles MacLellan, W. H. D. Koerner, and Douglas Duer - all Pyle disciples. And she notes, “Altogether I worked for Wilmington artists for approximately two years.”

January 15, 1895

“Pirates used to do that to their Captains now and then” by Howard Pyle (1894)

“…‘Too good - too good,’ The pirate captain dead on the sand. If I get that I will worship you, it, and once more take stock in humanity. As for what you will get - anything I have.…”

Frederic Remington to Howard Pyle, January 15, 1895

January 11, 1890

The January 11, 1890, issue of the New York Ledger included a “Souvenir Supplement” featuring “The Captain’s Well,” a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, illustrated by Howard Pyle. Here is one of the illustrations (which Pyle painted in late summer or fall 1889), untitled, and engraved on wood by Henry Wolf.

Note the marked resemblance to Pyle’s much better known “Marooned” of 1887...

...and his even better known “Marooned” of 1909...

Like many artists, Pyle revisited similar themes, scenes, and poses now and then, and he made at least four variations on this one (the third, chronologically speaking, is in a private collection).

The figure here, however, is neither marooned, nor a pirate. Rather, he is Valentine Bagley (1773-1839), a Massachusetts sailor, who was shipwrecked off the Arabian coast in 1792.

“He wandered for fifty-one days over the desert, suffering intensely from lack of food and water, and from heat, having been robbed by Bedouins of all his clothing,” said William Sloane Kennedy in “In Whittier’s Land” (The New England Magazine, November 1892). And here is an extract from Whittier’s poem, specific to the picture.

In the Arab desert, where shade is none,
The waterless land of sand and sun,

Under the pitiless, brazen sky
My burning throat as the sand was dry;

My crazed brain listened in fever dreams
For plash of buckets and ripple of streams;

And opening my eyes to the blinding glare,
And my lips to the breath of the blistering air,

Tortured alike by the heavens and earth,
I cursed, like Job, the day of my birth.

Then something tender, and sad, and mild
As a mother's voice to her wandering child,

Rebuked my frenzy; and bowing my head,
I prayed as I never before had prayed:

Pity me, God! for I die of thirst;
Take me out of this land accurst;

And if ever I reach my home again,
Where earth has springs, and the sky has rain,

I will dig a well for the passers-by,
And none shall suffer from thirst as I.