The American Art News on Howard Pyle, March 25, 1905

"Mr. Howard Pyle, as he said in his lecture at the Art [Students'] League on [March 18th], regards the making of compositions of extreme importance in an art student's training. This is the principal feature in the work of his class at Wilmington. He considers the main-spring of a composition to be 'mental projection,' or the power to so project one's mind into the picture as to actually live it. This power is contributed to by the multiplied experience of mature years, and by reading. 'No one,' Mr. Pyle says, 'requires as broad knowledge and wide reading as the pictorial artist of to-day.' He teaches the necessity of elimination - that is, after a composition is once created the eliminations are more important than the additions; also, to truly use black and white one must have color in mind. Mr. Pyle was especially interested in the compositions of Hugo Ballin and Remington Schuyler; their work he considers to be of great promise."

The American Art News, March 25, 1905

Into the River, 1893

What a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and rest! - that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral figures of life and death, could have but one brief holiday! Who can wonder that men swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos? - that they jump off from parapets into the swift and gurgling water beneath?

Despite the grim subject matter - a suicide - this is one of my favorite Howard Pyle pictures. It's "Into the River" from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, printed by the Riverside Press in the fall of 1893. The plate is so small - only 2.9 x 4.5" - and the paper has yellowed, but the fidelity of detail is there thanks to its having been reproduced in photogravure rather than in halftone. It illustrates the passage quoted above.

Pyle painted the original in black and white oil on 8 x 12" board in mid-1893 - possibly at "Delamore," the mansion on the edge of Wilmington where he had moved his growing family between May 9th and June 10th of that year.

March 24, 1885: A Newspaper Puff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Howard Pyle Bookplate: March 20, 1886

Design for an unused bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1886

"It was with me very much a work of love and I certainly should not care to part with it under ordinary circumstances. I have had a photo-engraved plate made, a proof of which has been sent me only this morning."

Howard Pyle to Edward H. Wales, March 20, 1886

Howard Pyle and Teddy Roosevelt Do Lunch

Theodore Roosevelt and his four sons by Arthur Hewitt (via NYPL Digital Gallery)

On March 19, 1904, Howard Pyle took the train down from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C., for a 1.30 p.m. lunch at the White House. The meal was wedged in between President Theodore Roosevelt’s 11.45 a.m. chat with Admiral Dewey and a 2.30 p.m. meeting with Booker T. Washington. (I often wonder if Pyle met either men on his way in or out - though I should note that there were three other meetings scheduled between Dewey’s and Pyle’s). First thing that same day, Arthur Hewitt took several photographs of Roosevelt and his family, including the one shown above.

The purpose of Pyle’s visit was to talk politics: a Wilmington newspaper had asked him to write what he thought of Theodore Roosevelt's then two-and-a-half-year-old administration. “I have endeavored to do so as honestly and courageously as possible,” he told Roosevelt's secretary, William Loeb, on March 16, “but, now that it is done, I feel, in view of the fact that the President stands in the relation of a personal friend, I should submit the paper to him before publishing it - that is if you think he will care to see it.” Pyle figured that other newspapers might quote him, and he planned to expand the piece (which he also sent) into a magazine article - “Hence a certain added importance to the few words I have written.”

Roosevelt objected to some of Pyle’s unintentionally, yet interpretably critical comments and warned, “Anything that you say will be apt to be taken as the best that a personal friend can say for me, and therefore any condemnation from you will be received and quoted independently of anything that you say that is favorable.” So he asked Pyle to come and talk things over - and, presumably, get “on message.”

Unfortunately, as luck would have it, I haven’t yet found the article Pyle wrote and don’t know if it ever appeared in either the Wilmington newspaper or in the magazine; Pyle mentioned that The Outlook might publish it, but, in looking at 1904 issues, it seems that they didn’t. I'll keep looking.

Below is the page from Roosevelt’s datebook for March 19, 1904 (please pardon the scratchy printout from a microfilm reel at the Library of Congress).

Drexel Women's Basket-Ball Team of 1897

Why the Drexel Institute Women's Basket-Ball Team of 1897? Because these seven women were all art students (notice the word "Art" emblazoned on their uniforms) - and some of them were students of Howard Pyle. Maddeningly, however, they are not identified in the book from whence these photographs came - the 1897 Drexel yearbook called the Eccentric.

But there is someone I recognize. It's Pyle's pupil and future sister-in-law, Ellen Bernard Thompson. She's holding the ball in the first two shots and is in the very middle of the "action" scene. She was born November 11, 1876, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, studied with Pyle for several years and attended both the 1898 and 1899 Summer Schools at Chadd's Ford. There, she and Pyle's younger brother Walter met and fell in love. They were married in 1904. A huge show of Ellen Pyle's work was recently on display at the Delaware Art Museum (and I foolishly missed it) and some more about her can be found here. Of course, Ellen's daughter Caroline married N. C. Wyeth's son Nathaniel, thereby entwining the Pyles and Wyeths in the branches of the same gnarly family tree.

One more thing about the photos: the woman on the far left in the first shot, the far right in the second, and the far left in the third is, I think, Elfrida J. Lavino, who, as far as I know, was not a Pyle student. The fair- and frizzy-haired woman just to the left of Ellen in the first shot I believe is Paula Himmelsbach (not a Pyle student, either, but later a prominent painter and stained glass artist, and a teacher of Alice Neel). And the woman to the right of Ellen in that same photo might be Charlotte Harding (who was very much a Pyle student), but I'm not yet certain.

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.

He Would Shout Opprobrious Words...

"He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets" illustrated "A True History of the Devil at New Hope" by Howard Pyle in Harper's Weekly for December 18, 1897. It appeared untitled in the magazine, but was titled thus when published (reduced and solely in black and white) in Pyle's collection of tales called Stolen Treasure (Harper and Brothers, 1907). Pyle's bibliographers named it "How the Devil Haunted the Meeting House" - but it is, more accurately, a headpiece for the chapter of that title or for the story itself.

Pyle must have painted the original (which is still out there, somewhere in the ether) in oils - probably on illustration board. The reproduction shows how much mileage his work could get from even the most rudimentary two-color printing. It also shows the strong Japanese influence on his art: the high horizon line, the flattened space, the absence of shadow, and so on. The "Japonisme" of Howard Pyle is not often acknowledged, but it certainly shows up again and again from the late 1870's onward.

I grew up a few miles from New Hope, Pennsylvania, the once-quaint village in Bucks County on the Delaware River. But, like it or not, Howard Pyle's "New Hope" is in Rhode Island.

An Invitation from Howard Pyle

How would you like to have gotten this in the mail? It's an invitation - hand-lettered and decorated by Howard Pyle himself - for an event held 106 years ago tonight at 1305 Franklin Street, in Wilmington, Delaware. For those who trip over archaic ligatures and long s's, here is a transcription:

Mr Pyle presents his Compliments and will be happy if you will attend a Bohemian Card Party at his Studio on Saturday, the twelfth day of March, Nineteen Hundred and Four, at Eight o'clock in ye Evening. (Tobacco, Etc.)

A guest list has yet to surface, but one invitee was Henry Francis du Pont, 23, who later founded Winterthur Museum, and was the only son of Pyle's friend Colonel Henry Algernon du Pont. Young Henry brought along another guest, with the host's permission: "Any friend of your father’s son shall always be welcome under my roof," Pyle had assured him.

Pyle's students came, too, after having spent (according to Allen True) "a fine afternoon making things for the evening while [Pyle] painted at his mural decoration and swapped stories." True said they played "a very funny game called Muggins" and that "there was a fine crowd of young people - cards till about eleven when chafing dishes were spread around and we had a Dutch feed and some good singing. It was delightful all the way through and had a distinctive flavor very different from most occasions of the sort."

100 Years Ago: Ladies' Home Journal on Howard Pyle

The following, yes, fluff piece on Howard Pyle comes from the March 1910 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal. I don't know who wrote it and the part about his "vulnerable pocket" might be a stretch (more about that later), but it's entertaining nevertheless...


An Artist Without A Pose

It isn't often that one meets a successful artist devoid of affectation or the eccentricities of genius, but who is just a plain, every-day man, round-faced, jovial, with kindly eyes, a pleasant smile, and a mind absolutely abhorrent of pretense.

But that is Mr. Howard Pyle, the moving spirit of a unique and incessant colony of art workers in a studio at Wilmington, Delaware - a man who, by his own creative work and the wide influence he has exerted through his numerous pupils, is known as the founder of an American school of illustration.

He is the kindliest of men, a lover of children and loved by them, and his smooth face beams benevolence wherever he goes. There is no deception about the beam either. Every time he appears in the streets of Wilmington the youngsters are lying in wait for him, for they know his pocket is vulnerable. And he cannot resist their importunities.

For years he maintained a school for struggling artists, giving his service as critic and mentor free. Himself a painter, but chiefly renowned as a writer and illustrator of books and magazines, Mr. Pyle found his greatest pleasure during many years in imparting his knowledge to young men of promise, absolutely without remuneration.

Although he has discontinued this school, he still devotes half an hour every morning at his studio to criticism of those art works which are brought to him. His association is no longer with pupils but with brother artists, for he says, "I criticise their work as one artist criticises another."

This statement is characteristic of the intense modesty of the man. Those who bring their work to him are very far from regarding his criticism as merely that of a brother artist on an equality with themselves. He shuns all those things commonly known as theories or principles, disclaims any desire for the "uplifting of art," and avoids those high-sounding phrases which have become catch-words among artistic poseurs. Nor will he be tempted into the expression of any partisanship in favor of this or that "school."

His artistic creed is so simple and practical as to appear almost commonplace. Yet his pupils know well it is not; it is that art should represent what the people want, what they love; that the artist should base his work on simple statement of natural and psychological fact; that Americans should study at home in their own country, instead of flocking to France, where art, he thinks is "decadent," where the exhibitions, he says, are "decidedly bad in drawing and color," and where there are no longer any teaching artists who may be called "distinguished."

Then he will talk along quietly of his interest in the work of young artists, of his constant pleasure in helping them along over difficulties. He will speak of inspiration as a thing wholly normal to the normal man, and will tell you that all of his own work is done with no grandiloquent purpose, but only because he finds it natural and desirable to do it.

There is no pose about Howard Pyle: great as an illustrator, perhaps the greatest in America, he is equally as great as a man.

Where Was Howard Pyle Born?

Howard Pyle was born 157 years ago today in Wilmington, Delaware. But where in Wilmington? Readers of the Abbott or Pitz biographies might come away with the idea that he was born and raised at “Green Hill” (or “Greenhill” - and now “Goodstay”), the bucolic property on the outskirts of the city. While it's true that Pyle spent about seven years there - more time than at any of his other childhood homes - his father, William Pyle, only purchased the place when Howard was 18 months old.

The 1853 Wilmington City Directory, however, tells us that William Pyle, patent leather manufacturer, resided at 224 Market Street. Simple enough. But where was 224 Market Street? In those days, before citywide renumbering, it stood between Eighth and Ninth Streets. Market Street, then Wilmington's main thoroughfare, was busier at its commercial lower end, toward the Christiana River, but above Eighth and up to the Brandywine it was a quieter stretch lined with colonial residences and newer townhouses.

William Pyle’s older brother and business partner, Cyrus, lived across the street at No. 225 and their immediate neighbors were predominantly doctors, lawyers, and merchants. The house at 224 had been built on the grounds of the old Wilmington Academy, where the Declaration of Independence had been read in 1776, and where, in 1786, a visiting Benjamin Franklin (joined by Dr. Benjamin Rush and James Madison) performed an experiment with electricity. In 1832 the Academy was torn down and replaced with private homes. (A misplaced note of mine states that No. 224 in particular was erected in 1835.)

I don't know how long the Pyles stayed there - three years at the most. William Pyle married Margaret Churchman Painter on September 30, 1851, and I gather they set up house soon after - perhaps at No. 224. But on September 25, 1854, William bought “Green Hill” for $10,000 and the family moved on to more rural surroundings. At the start of the Civil War they left “Green Hill” and in the 1860s and ’70s wound up renting three other houses on Market Street.

As time went on, new buildings sprang up near No. 224 (or No. 826, after the renumbering), most notably the Masonic Temple or Grand Opera House, which opened in late 1871. It was separated from the Pyles’ old place by only one other townhouse. And at the turn of the century the Garrick Theatre was erected directly adjacent to the house, which had been used primarily for business since the 1880s.

So far I haven’t found too many images of the house, but here are a few...

This crude engraving comes from John Thomas Scharf’s History of Delaware (1888). The six windows on the far left presumably represent 224 (or 826) Market Street.

In this 1890s view, the house is partially obscured by a pole and a wagon, and sits to left of the place with the bright shutters.

In this photo, taken in 1906 at the latest, we see the house again partially obscured by a pole and butted up against the Garrick Theatre, which opened November 23, 1903. The sign on the wall between the second floor windows might have advertised the law practice of Benjamin and John Nields, which was located there for many years.

Later photos suggest that the building was re-sided or remodeled, but, either way, the original structure was pulled down long ago. And one of these days maybe we’ll know for sure whether or not Howard Pyle was born there on March 5, 1853.

NOTE: Another scrap of evidence can be found here.

The Death of a Pyle Student, March 3, 1902

"They're After Us, John!" by John Henderson Betts (1898)

John Henderson Betts (born April 6, 1877) was one of Howard Pyle's more promising pupils at the Drexel Institute. His work was shown in the first exhibition of work done in the School of Illustration (1897) and Pyle featured one of his pictures in his article, "A Small School of Art" (Harper’s Weekly, July 17, 1897). Betts was also one of the ten students awarded scholarships to the first Summer School of Illustration at Chadd's Ford, Pennsylvania, in 1898. While there he made six illustrations for The Boys of Old Monmouth by Everett T. Tomlinson (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1898), including "They're After Us, John!" He appears in these two snapshots taken that summer, on the porch of Washington's Headquarters, where the male students boarded:

Front row: William F. Weed, Clyde DeLand, Frank Schoonover. Back row: Stanley Arthurs, Winfield S. Lukens, John H. Betts (in shirt sleeves), Robert L. Mason

Top to bottom: Robert L. Mason, Stanley Arthurs, William Francis Weed, James Wood (an instructor in Drexel's Antique Class, who backed up Pyle that summer), John H. Betts, Clyde O. DeLand, Winfield S. Lukens

Coincidentally - and if my genealogical calculations are correct - John Henderson Betts was also the third cousin of his classmate Anna Whelan Betts (1873-1959) and her sister Ethel Franklin Betts (born 1878), both Pyle students. He married Mary Furman Smith on November 1, 1900.

Despite his promise, Betts is little remembered today, for on March 3, 1902, he came to a terrible end. The Germantown Guide for March 15, 1902, described what happened:

Germantown Artist's Awful Death


John Henderson Betts met a shocking death on Monday by falling down the elevator shaft from the eleventh floor of the Real Estate Trust Building, southeast corner of Broad and Chestnut streets. Mr. Betts was hurrying to keep an appointment with his father, Colonel Charles M. Betts, a wholesale lumber dealer, whose office is on the twelfth floor of the building. The only other passenger in the car was Mr. William A. Messinger, of Clayton, Pa., who alighted at the eleventh floor. He says he heard the doors of the elevator shaft behind him. Almost immediately after that he heard a noise as if the doors had been reopened, and a scream which caused him to look around in time to see Mr. Betts go headlong over the edge of the platform through the doorway and into the shaft. Albert F. Gault, the boy in charge of the elevator, said that just as he started the car Mr. Betts said something to the effect that he had passed his floor, and clutched at the doors. The lever was at once reversed and the next thing Gault knew his passenger had disappeared. The body was taken to the Morgue, where it was identified soon after, when it was removed to 2034 Spring Garden Street, the residence of the deceased's father, where the funeral services were held on Thursday morning. Mr. Betts resided with his wife, to whom he was married in 1900, on Pomona Terrace, and was in his twenty-fifth year. He was a graduate of the Friends' Central School, and four years ago finished a course under Howard Pyle, the celebrated illustrator, at the Drexel Institute. He at once established himself as an illustrator became very successful, having his studio at 430 Walnut street. Among the most conspicuous books he has illustrated are Edward Robins' "Washington and Braddock's Campaign" and "An Iron Horse Chase; or, a Boy's Adventures in the Civil War." Mr. Betts also illustrated John Habberton's "Some Boy's Doings," and had only recently completed four illustrations in color for Mr. Robin's "A Boy in Early Virginia." He also illustrated Charles Heber Clarke's "Captain Bluitt," and was engaged at the time of his death in the illustration of a magazine story by Julien Gordon (Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger). He had also contributed illustrations to the Century, Scribner's and other magazines.

March 1, 1887

Readers of Harper's Young People for March 1, 1887, would have seen this lovely "Bearskin" headband by Howard Pyle for the very first time. Later, Pyle changed his hand-lettering when preparing the illustration for its appearance in The Wonder Clock, as you can see below. I don't know... I kind of like the bolder, heavier style of the first incarnation, but Pyle was trying to give all the hand-lettered titles a more or less consistent "point size" and weight for the book, hence the tweaking. Rumor has it that the artist George de Forest Brush once owned the original pen and ink drawing.

February 28, 1878

"I hope your patience has not entirely given out at my somewhat lengthened delay in writing. I will not attempt to offer any excuse as I deserve none but will simply throw myself at your mercy with the promise of doing or trying to do better in future."

Howard Pyle to Margaret Churchman Painter Pyle (his mother), February 28, 1878

Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute, 1896

"Howard Pyle, the well-known and deservedly popular draughtsman, has a class at the Drexel Institute, in Philadelphia, that is unique in its way. It differs entirely from the ordinary classes in composition, in that the pupils are kept constantly at work on one or two subjects during the entire term, so that they modify their original drawing many times before it becomes a finished piece of work. Mr. Pyle selects these subjects, and the first step consists in the pupil's execution of the idea in a charcoal sketch. This is submitted to the teacher, who critcises it and hands it back for overhauling. The finished illustration is made in black and white oil. Not only do the highest-grade students at the institute take the course, but Mr. Pyle's class every Saturday is attended by a number of pupils from other schools, as well as by several of those who are already known as illustrators."

New York Times, January 14, 1896

A Howard Pyle Bookmark

I plan to write more in depth about Howard Pyle's involvement with To Have and To Hold, the novel by Mary Johnston, but until then, take a look at this odd scrap of Pylean ephemera...

It's a promotional bookmark which Pyle executed in its entirety (and by that I mean he drew the picture and did the hand-lettering and the border). The portrait is in charcoal and it appears in the background of a 1902 photograph of Pyle taken by his student and sometime photographer, Arthur Ernst Becher (1877-1960). It was initially published in Art Interchange for January 1903.

Becher, by the way, was a friend of Edward Steichen from their days in Milwaukee, and his photographs were shown in the first exhibition of the Photo-Secession (1902) and in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera-Work (October 1903).

And there's certainly something Steichenesque about this Pyle portrait - but perhaps I'm being superficial if it calls to mind Steichen's photo of Rodin: an artist in his studio (presumably) with an example of his work ethereally floating in the background - sort of like those "spirit" photos championed by Arthur Conan Doyle where an image of a dead loved one hovers around the portrait of a living person. Granted, this photograph of Pyle lacks the "mystery" and "atmosphere" of Steichen's Rodin, but still...

“The Parting of My Little Boy”

No tragedy in Howard Pyle’s life could ever compare with the death of his son Sellers. The surrounding circumstances only made it more sad. He briefly outlined what happened in a letter I quoted, but here is some more...

Pyle’s journey to the West Indies was his first trip out of the country (with the probable exception of some Canadian jaunts in 1877). Jamaica was only supposed to be one stop on Pyle’s two-month-long itinerary: he also planned to visit Panama, the Bahamas, and other locales associated with his “Buccaneer heroes” in order to gather material for a couple of Harper’s Monthly articles and for a novel which he hoped would be his magnum opus. His wife, Anne, about nine weeks pregnant with their third child, would accompany him. Their two children would stay in Wilmington: Phoebe, 2, at home with Anne’s mother, and Sellers, 6, with his aunt (and Howard’s sister) Katharine Pyle, at the house she shared with her father at 802 Franklin Street.

Howard and Anne sailed from New York on February 9, 1889, on the Atlas Line steamship Ailsa. The voyage to Kingston took about a week and Pyle recorded his first impressions of their arrival in “Jamaica, New and Old” (Harper's Monthly, January 1890):

It was all like a dream, for there are times when the real and the unreal interweave so closely that it is hard to unravel the one from the other. Mostly gratification is the unfortunate part of anticipation; it is such a gross and tasteless fruit to be the outcrop of so pretty a flower; but that vision of the south coast of Jamaica, so long looked forward to, was at once so full of the lovely changes of afternoon and evening and moonlit night, and so full of suggestions of the romantic glamour of the past and by-gone life, that the bright threads of fancy and the duller strands of fact interwove themselves into such a motley woof that it was hard indeed to separate the one from the other.

It was almost yesterday that shivered under a heavy overcoat, with a bleak sky above and a sea of ice below; to-day floated upon the rise and fall of the great ground-swell of a tropic sea, flashing into spray under a humming trade-wind that set the feathery cocoa-palms and the ragged banana leaves upon the distant shore to tossing and swaying. Flying-fish shot like silver sparks, with a flash and gleam from the water to the right and the left, skimmed arrow-like across the heaving valleys of the waves, and disappeared far away with another flash and gleam.

Although Pyle’s article goes on to refer to Anne, it gives no hint of the awful way their plans changed.

Sellers Pyle died on the morning of February 22 and a telegram must have been sent to Jamaica almost immediately. In his Pyle biography, Henry Pitz wrote, “There was a desperate time of trying to find transportation back home and a wait of many days for a steamer sailing. They reached home long after the funeral.”

But I think Pitz was misinformed: Every Evening of February 23 stated, “The body of the boy was placed in a vault in the Wilmington and Brandywine cemetery to await the arrival of the bereaved parents,” and according to the “Marine Intelligence” of the New York Times, on February 25 the steamship Dorian - with the Pyles aboard - sailed from Morant Bay and arrived in New York on the evening of March 4. The Pyles may have spent the night in quarantine on the boat, but surely they arrived home by the following day, which also happened to be Howard’s 36th birthday.

Surprisingly, after only a week in Wilmington, Pyle returned alone to Jamaica to finish his work. He confined his travels and resultant two-part article solely to the island, however, and he never wrote a novel specific to the area.

Pyle’s leaving home so soon may seem cold-hearted, but his Swedenborgian faith had helped him find solace in a “firm and unfailing belief in a future life” - as well as in writing and drawing and painting.

“I have tried not to let my troubles interfere with my life’s work and ways and think I may say that I have pretty well succeeded,” he explained to Edmund Clarence Stedman. He added, “There are many sad things in this world but few that are unhappy excepting what we make for ourselves.”

And as time wore on, Pyle became more and more convinced that “the bitter delight of a keen and poignant agony” which Sellers’ death represented was necessary to make his own life complete: he saw it as “an agony that has dissolved much - almost all of the poison flesh leaving only a thin membrane to hide from the eyes the brighter light of a life beyond.” As he put it to W. D. Howells (after the publication of The Garden Behind the Moon, which he dedicated to Sellers), “Death is so thin a crust of circumstance that I can feel his heart beat just on the other side.”

February 22, 1889

“In the midst of a most charming trip my wife and I received a cablegram telling us that our little boy - a noble little fellow of six years old had died of membranous croup after only a few hours of sickness. He was our only son and, apart from parental prejudice, was I may say a child of deep mind and noble generosity of character.”

Howard Pyle to Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, April 13, 1889

Lost Pylean Ephemera, 1900

Who knows how many unidentified pieces of Pylean ephemera are still out there. For instance, this 1900 advertising booklet for Houghton, Mifflin and Company, which managed to miss both bibliographies. It is uncredited, but Pyle's distinctive hand-lettering gives it away.

February 21, 1885

Illustrators, have you ever received a letter from an admirer who complimented your work and then asked you to send them one of your originals? I recall my father receiving such a letter, which implied that his gift would somehow cure a child's illness. That may be so, but it's hard not to be cynical about these things. Here's how Howard Pyle deflected a request in a letter written 125 years ago today:

In answer to your request for one of my drawings (that, as I take it, being the matter intended in your letter) I am compelled to say that I can hardly take the time to make you such a drawing as the “Lowland Brook” which is the work not of a minute, but a day.

Maybe I may sometime send you a rough sketch if I happen at any time to have one by me, but hardly such a drawing as that...

Pyle painted "The Lowland Brook" in the fall of 1880, probably beginning it in October on location in the Poconos, then finishing it back in his studio at his parents' house at 714 West Street in Wilmington. It was one of several illustrations for his article, "Autumn Sketches in the Pennsylvania Highlands," published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine for December 1881. The 3.7 x 5.2" engraving was by John Hellawell. Please pardon the printing flaw!

February 18, 1892

"The temptation to talk is great but it is so dangerous to formulate thoughts into words. So formulated they become such hard stones of doctrines; such ready weapons to kill the prophets withal."

Howard Pyle to William Dean Howells, February 18, 1892

Presidents Day

Howard Pyle was on friendly terms with three presidents - or, more precisely, two presidents and one future president. The future president was Woodrow Wilson, with whom Pyle carried on a spirited correspondence while collaborating on two projects in 1895-96 and 1900-01. Pyle also knew - if only slightly - William Howard Taft and even wrote some bona fide propaganda for Taft’s 1908 campaign against William Jennings Bryan. But, above all, Pyle was closest to Theodore Roosevelt. And he certainly could lay it on thick sometimes...

If I may write so intimately, I would like to say that it [is] my strong and personal belief that you will stand forth in history as one of the very greatest of our presidents, and it is a matter of pride and joy to me to think that one whom I believe I may regard as a friend should be destined to descend into the future as so dominant and so inspiring a figure. (Howard Pyle to Theodore Roosevelt, September 11, 1907)

The admiration went both ways, however, and in honor of Presidents Day, here are some things Roosevelt said to or about Pyle:

This note introduces a particular friend of mine, Mr. Howard Pyle, the writer. He is a first-class fellow in every way and I commend him to your courtesy. (Letter to Captain W. H. Brownson, June 11, 1903)

You can hardly imagine, my dear fellow, how much I prize your good opinion, and how loath I should be to forfeit it. (Letter to Howard Pyle, July 5, 1904)

One of the very best men I know anywhere, one of the pleasantest companions, stanchest friends, and best citizens, is Mr. Howard Pyle, the artist.... he is as good a man as there is in the country. (Letter to Gifford Pinchot, September 9, 1907)

One of the pleasantest features of our time in Washington has been the friendship of you and dear Mrs. Pyle.
(Letter to Howard Pyle, February 19, 1909)

I’ve often wondered what Pyle would have made of the three-way presidential race of 1912 which pitted Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson against each other. As Pyle was a lifelong Republican (though there’s a chance he turned Mugwump and voted for Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, in 1884), I doubt he would have considered voting for Wilson. And he believed in Taft because he thought Taft would “[carry] forward the work which [Roosevelt had] so magnificently begun to an equally magnificent fulfillment” (Pyle to Taft, November 5, 1908) - something that Taft didn’t really do, after all. So I think Pyle’s idolatry of Roosevelt (and his somewhat progressive tendencies) would have trumped party loyalty, and he would have become a Bull Mooser and followed Roosevelt wherever he went.

Exhibit "T"

I don't necessarily want to see Howard Pyle's original illustrations in pristine condition, since the annotations that often appear on them can help shed light on his process. Above is an initial letter "T" for "How the Princess's Pride Was Broken," the twenty-first story (of 24) in his book The Wonder Clock (Harper and Brothers, 1888). He drew it with India ink on a 2.75 x 4.5" piece of Bristol board, glued on a little protective flap (made from a scrap of writing paper, watermarked "[crown] Royal Irish Linen / Marcus Ward / & Co") so it wouldn't get scuffed or too grubby, then labeled both flap and art with purple ink. A staffer in the Harper Art Department probably penciled in "1 1/4 in wide" (the size of the reproduction) and "3-59495 / May 20" (possibly an inventory number and the processing date).

Pyle delivered this "T" along with several other letters on May 16, 1887, and as he delivered the previous batch on May 10, he must have drawn this one between those two dates. So far, this is the only initial letter from the book that I've been able to inspect up close, but I gather he prepared all of them in more or less the same way.

“St. Valentine’s Day” by Howard Pyle

In his advanced Illustration Class at the Drexel Institute, Howard Pyle occasionally assigned seasonal topics to his pupils with the aim of submitting the best examples to art editors of leading periodicals. Pyle sometimes provided text to go along with or perhaps to inspire his students’ illustrations, and so we have his observations on “Decoration Day” (illustrated by Sophie B. Steel), a Halloween playlet called “The Priest and the Piper” (with a picture by Sarah S. Stilwell), and, apropos of today, “St. Valentine’s Day,” printed in Harper’s Weekly for February 19, 1898, and featuring a double-page spread by Anne Abercrombie Mhoon.

I need to dig up more on Miss Mhoon, who studied with Pyle for about five years and who Pyle must have considered one of his stronger pupils: in spring 1897 she and Bertha Corson Day spent two weeks working in his Wilmington studio; her work was shown in several exhibitions of the Pyle-directed School of Illustration; Pyle featured two of her pictures in his article, “A Small School of Art” (Harper’s Weekly, July 17, 1897); and in 1898 she was one of ten students awarded a scholarship to the first Summer School of Illustration at Chadd’s Ford. If what I’ve learned is accurate, Mhoon was born June 6, 1876, in Mississippi, and died January 2, 1962. She married Hugh McDowell Neely (1874-1925) in Philadelphia in 1906 and had at least one child, named Hugh (1907-1937). All three are buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee.

“St. Valentine’s Day in New England” by Anne Abercrombie Mhoon (1897)

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY
by Howard Pyle

St. Valentine’s Day in the old times possessed a popular significance that we of these degenerate days of filigree paper and printed rhymes can hardly appreciate. Popular tradition had it that the birds mated upon the good bishop’s natal day, apropos of which Old Drayton, in Shakespeare’s time, writing a verse to his “Valentine,” begins his pastoral thus:

“Muse, bid the morn awake;
Sad winter now declines;
Each bird doth choose a mate;
This day's St. Valentine’s” -

and so forth, to his mistress’s eyes, lips, and other charms.

Following these supposed habits of the feathered creatures, it became by-and-by a custom in the generation or so following for the men and women of that day to choose each his or her Valentine, to whom he or she was supposed to remain mated for the rest of the year. The gentleman generally entered into the compact with a poetic effusion and a gift, of more or less value, to the lady of his choice, and for the twelvemonth following he was supposed to devote himself exclusively to his chosen mate.

Usually the element of accident entered not a little into the choosing of the Valentine, for the first man and the first woman who met in the morning were supposed to remain Valentines and mated for the year to follow.

As witness to this, Gay, writing early in the eighteenth century, and beginning with the same theme that inspired Old Drayton -

“Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind
Their paramours, with mutual chirpings, find” -

says,

“The first I spied - and the first swain we see
In spite of Fortune shall or true love be.”

Old Pepys in his immortal Diary - that great reservoir of dead and bygone gossip - gives us a number of glimpses into the Valentine’s day of his time.

Once, mounting to the Olympian altitude of the gossip of White Hall, he tells us, apropos of Miss Stuart (afterward Duchess of Richmond), that “The Duke of York being her Valentine, did give her a jewel of about £800; and my Lord Mandeville, her Valentine this year, a ring of about £300.” Descending thence to the platitudes of his own private affairs, the good gentleman tells us very soberly that “I am also this year my wife’s Valentine, and it will cost me £5”; and adds, naïvely, “but that I must have laid out if we had not been Valentines.”

In another entry in his Journal he tells us how his wife hid her eyes lest she should see the masons working about the house, and so should miss choosing her proper Valentine; and in another place he informs us that “My wife, hearing Mr. Moore’s voice in my dressing-chamber, got herself ready, and came down and challenged him for her Valentine.”

From all of which we of these days may catch a certain remote notion of the importance of St. Valentine’s day in those far-distant old times so long passed away and gone.


As illustrating the importance of this one-time notable feast-day, Miss Mhoon has given a pictured image of the transplantation of the custom of the time into Puritan New England of, say, the year 1655.

We know what strong testimony the Puritans bore against the puddings and the “meat pies” (probably the mince pie of our day), and all the jocularities of the old Christmas season, and we also know that they made a point of studiously ignoring the anniversary of the King’s birthday. It is altogether likely they would look with even less favor upon the suggestive levities of Valentine’s day.

The somewhat seedy Cavalier, who is doubtless offering the Puritan maiden an effusion in these, in which dove is made to rhyme with love, and eyes with skies, and dart with heart, has perhaps been spending the whole long winter in the dull, cold little settlement for the sake of escaping, let us say, from the pressure of his debts at home. One can imagine how greatly a man of his parts must have wasted in such surroundings as the picture indicates. As for the Puritan maiden, either her heart inclines more kindly toward the young Presbyterian minister who, clad in black, and with a voluminous theological volume under his arm, regards the pleasantries of the stranger with such manifest mislikings - either this, or else she has been so well brought up that even a cavalier in a red cloak and with high London manners cannot melt her reserve. Who shall say? The ways of women are passing strange!

I confess to a sympathy for the poor Cavalier fellow, and wish that a good tight ship may be landing with sassafras-wood at some near-by port, and that he may thence get a safe passage back to England again, and into more congenial surroundings.

Valentine's Day, 1898

In the spring of 1896 the Pyle family moved from Ambassador Bayard's mansion - which was much too costly to maintain - to a more modest brick house at 1601 Broom Street, on the corner of Gilpin Avenue in Wilmington. Almost immediately, Pyle's daughter Phoebe found a best friend in Gertrude Brincklé, who lived next door.

Here we see Gertrude, grinning, next to Phoebe, whose face is obscured by her brother Ted. This detail is from a snapshot taken by Howard Pyle himself, apparently, during a children's party at his studio, about 1897. Pyle later used the photo as reference when painting the title page illustration for an edition of Hawthorne's The Wonder Book.

On Valentine's Day 1898 - "That was the year we had a big storm, with snow up to the hairpin fence," remembered Gertrude - Pyle presented his young neighbor (and future secretary) with an illustrated poem, which was later destroyed in a fire. The Broom Street house is one of the few Pyle homes that still stands, but the hairpin fence is gone, though I recall seeing remnants of it 15 years or so ago.

A Soldier of Saint Valentine
In silk and golden lace
Was walking down Broom Street one day,
And there he saw thy face.

He thought it was the fairest face
The ever he had found;
He heaved a sigh, and gave one look.
And straightway he did swound.

Since then he mopes and pines with love,
His every breath a sigh;
He fain would be thy Valentine,
To ask he is too shy.

So here I send his pictured face
That you his love might know;
Unless he's buried in a drift
And lost beneath the snow.

February 11, 1895

"Howard Pyle, the artist, has a very pleasant studio at his home in Wilmington, Del. While he is painting his pictures he dictates his stories to a stenographer. He is an enthusiastic musician and sings a good tenor."

Elmira Daily Gazette and Free Press (Elmira, New York), February 11, 1895

February 10, 1895

"But to revert to the weather - for we cannot talk of anything without reverting back to it - I don’t think I have told you how all the trains have been stopped on our local Rail Roads by the drifts. I myself returning from my lecture at the Drexel Institute yesterday, did not get home until nearly midnight. As it was, the cab collapsed in a snow-drift in front of Bush’s and I had to wade out and help the man with his horse."

Howard Pyle to Thomas Francis Bayard, February 10, 1895. At this time, the Pyles were occupying "Delamore," a mansion at the corner of Clayton and Maple Streets in Wilmington, while Bayard (the owner) was serving as the Cleveland Administration's Ambassador to the Court of Saint James.

February 9, 1889

"Howard Pyle and wife started to-day for an extended trip to the Bahama Islands, to gather the information necessary for an article on the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, which he has engaged to write for Harper’s Monthly. He will stop at Jamaica en route."

Every Evening (Wilmington, Delaware). February 9, 1889

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.”

A Howard Pyle Doodle

On his blog, James Gurney brought up the topic of doodles - specifically "phone doodles" - and asked "Just curious: What sort of doodles do you do?"

So I started thinking about what kind of doodles Howard Pyle did. And although I can't show a doodle he made while on the phone (a drawing he made while waiting for a phone call does exist, however, but I haven't looked at it and don't know how doodly it is), here is a bona fide doodle he made on a bridge score. Unfortunately, that's all I know about it. Whether he made it before, during, or after all the tallying, I don't know. Or maybe he just doodled on a scrap of paper lying around his studio (where he hosted many a bridge game). His secretary Gertrude Brincklé preserved this fragment, so I assume it dates from sometime between 1904 and 1910. Funny, I tend to doodle evil clowns, too...