“His niece had found him lying dead”

“His niece had found him lying dead” from the short story “A Life for a Life,” written and illustrated by Howard Pyle (Scribner’s Magazine, January 1900).

Morbid, but lovely - like many of Pyle’s best pictures. The “modern” setting is somewhat unusual, but we see here such Pylean tropes as the partially-obscured-body and something I’ve only just coined as “the paroxysmal hand.”

On the Duomo di Milano, 1911

“I do not care very much for professional sightseeing, but while I was in Milan, the hotel being near the Cathedral, I went there to see it. It is my first sight of a real mediaeval cathedral, and it is certainly very noble and picturesque. The carved fretwork around the top looked like lace, and the ugly gargoyles around the sides, supported by rather nice caryatids add to the lacework effect. It was very splendid, and very large. I admired it extremely.”

Howard Pyle to Stanley M. Arthurs, January 25, 1911

“Is that Howard Pyle?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOWARD PYLE

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

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

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

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

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

Slideshow at the Drexel Institute, January 9, 1906

At 4.00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 9, 1906, Howard Pyle delivered a lecture illustrated with steriopticon slides titled “The True Spirit of Art” at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. The next day, the Philadelphia Inquirer noted:

HOWARD PYLE GIVES LECTURE

That the true spirit of art is the work of the imagination and soul of the artist, which expresses his inner thought clearly and forcefully, even though the work may not be technically correct, was the theory advanced yesterday afternoon by Howard Pyle, the well-known artist, in the Drexel Institute.

And an as yet unidentified newspaper gave a much more detailed report, also on January 10, 1906, which I’ve transcribed in full, below. Although the article names a number of the pictures Pyle featured in his slideshow, I’m having difficulty identifying all of them, so if anyone can present some more viable candidates, please let me know.

HOWARD PYLE TELLS OF THE TRUE IN ART
----------
HOW A PAINTER MAY REALLY ATTAIN HIS IDEAL
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Work of Famous Men Portrayed in a Lecture Delivered at the Drexel Institute
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Howard Pyle lectured at the Drexel Institute yesterday on “The True in Art.” His chief aim was to show that the ambition of a great artist should be to portray his ideal in as vividly life-like a manner as the barriers to all artistic expression will permit. He cannot express passage of time or increase of age, the speaker said, but he can express emotion.

To illustrate the difference between the art of the past and that of the present, as regards the truest understanding of a picture, was another of Mr. Pyle’s objects. The main difference, he said, lies in the difference of man’s mind, which in the Middle Ages was not creative. To illustrate the speaker’s points stereopticon views were given. Four pictures representative of the art of the past, which were shown, pointed out that in the picture of the Madonna by Botticelli the Virgin is not portrayed as a Jewish maiden, but as an Italian symbolic of the perfection of womanhood. The same is true of Raphael’s Madonna, which portrays the highest form of maternal love, but only as the artist saw it among Italian women.

Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” is not necessarily THE Madonna Pyle discussed, but she’ll have to do for now.

As with the Raphael, Pyle may have discussed another Madonna than the “Madonna del Magnificat” by Sandro Botticelli.


Mr. Pyle next had thrown on the screen a picture by Chavannes, “The Heavenly Vision,” in which the perspective was very faulty, not because the artist could not draw properly, but because his whole aim and thought had been centered on his dreamlike reflection of the heavenly vision. [I assume this refers to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ “Vision Antique” - though I suppose it could be “L’Inspiration Chrétienne”]

A similar idea was shown in the pictures by Millet - “Procession of Joseph,” the “Ploughmen” and an effective and wonderful work entitled “Leaving England,” [sic - “The Last of England” by Ford Madox Brown ] on which the artist labored years to bring an acute sense of tragedy to the face.

I assume “The Procession of Joseph” is really “The Flight into Egypt” by Jean François Millet. It represents Joseph carrying the Christ child - with halo aglow - followed by Mary. There is a similar version, where Mary is carrying the baby and is sitting on a donkey led by Joseph, but I believe Pyle would have been more familiar with the version show here.

“The Last of England” by Ford Madox Brown


Millais’s “Ophelia” was another illustration used to show the extent to which the artist went to get just the right touch of a woman floating in the water.

“Ophelia” by John Everett Millais


Then Mr. Pyle spoke of the American school of artists of today. Placing Augustus St. Gaudens at the head of the list, he presented a picture of the head of “Victory” used on the Sherman statue to show that this was St. Gaudens’s conception of glorified American womanhood.

“Head of Victory” by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Pyle had a slide made from a plaster study which the sculptor had given him in 1902. Shown here is a replica of the bronze version.


George De Forest Brush’s power of accepting and digesting a side of American life was shown in a powerful picture of primitive life - “Indians Spearing a Deer.”

“Indians Spearing a Deer” is more likely “The Moose Chase” by George De Forest Brush


The position of Winslow Homer in the artistic world, Mr. Pyle said, was not fully settled, “but that he ranks among the greatest artists today cannot be disputed. His ‘Maine Coast’ is considered one of the finest sea scenes ever painted.”

“Maine Coast” by Winslow Homer

In this way Mr. Pyle tried to illustrate his theme, that to be a great artist the aspirant must not think solely of painting and drawing well - for then he will in time make a beautiful picture, but never a great one. To paint a great picture he must have a huge ideal which he is always trying to express in its most complete form as he sees it in his dreams.

Twelfth Night, 1906

In 1904 Howard Pyle was elected a non-resident member of New York City’s prestigious Century Association - his name having been proposed by publisher J. Henry Harper and seconded by painter John White Alexander. Late the following year, Pyle was asked to design the invitation and program for the club’s traditional Twelfth Night celebration, to be held on January 6, 1906.

Either out of his own enthusiasm, or a desire to impress his fellow members, Pyle turned what should have been a quick and casual job into something much more ambitious. “I am afraid you are taking the Twelfth Night drawing too seriously,” warned his friend Frank Millet, who was coordinating the project (and who later went down with the Titanic):

The committee is very anxious to have something to send out with the notices which must be issued soon and they do not expect an elaborate work nor would they desire to give you much trouble about it.... Dr Curtis apparently dreams of something which in a few lines of the pencil will illustrate fully his description of the revels at Eagle-roost. But you can see from the old programs I sent you that elaboration is not necessary.

Millet wrote that on November 19, 1905, but I gather it was too late for Pyle to rein himself in. The invitation (which was also issued in grey-blue wrappers) and the program were printed under his supervision by John M. Rogers on Orange Street (“opposite the Old Malt House,” reads the colophon) in Wilmington, Delaware. Rogers had, among other things, printed Pyle’s Catalogue of Drawings Illustrating the Life of Gen. Washington and of Colonial Life, The Ghost of Captain Brand, and The Divinity of Labor - all in 1897 - and The Constitution and By-Laws of the Howard Pyle School of Art in 1903.

In addition to the drawings, Pyle did all the lettering seen here, except for the verse stanzas in “Centuria’s Call” and the portion of the paragraph beneath “The Programme of the Festival”: these were set in Fifteenth Century (later known as Caslon Antique), which Pyle began to use almost as soon as it was issued by the type foundry of Barnhart Brothers & Spindler.

And yet, for all his work, Pyle may not even have attended the Twelfth Night festivities: instead, he may have gone to the Franklin Inn Club’s dinner - for which he had also decorated the program cover - held the same evening in Philadelphia.

(By the way, Dr. Edward Curtis (1838-1912), whom Millet mentioned above, co-performed the autopsy on the body of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.)

Lunch at the White House, January 2, 1908

One of the several lunches Howard Pyle enjoyed at the White House occurred on this day in 1908. This time, Theodore Roosevelt hosted Pyle and his two eldest sons, Theodore, 18, and Howard Jr., 16, as well as Eugene A. Philbin and William Howard Taft, then Secretary of War.

Pyle was an ardent supporter of Roosevelt and Taft, and the propaganda he contributed to their respective campaigns in 1904 and 1908 helped both men get elected. After the latter beat William Jennings Bryan in November 1908, Pyle wrote to the President-elect:

I believe that the country will look to this epoch as one of the greatest in its history - first upon the heroic figure of Theodore Roosevelt inaugurating the new purposes of a new national life, and secondly upon you, who are so preeminently fitted for the task, carrying forward the work which he has so magnificently begun to an equally magnificent fullfilment [sic].

This I know you will do, just as the whole country knows that you will do it.

I do not know whether you will recollect that I and my two boys lunched in your company at the White House last December [sic], and that as we left the White House together I said to you that my two boys would not be able to vote for you this time but that they would both vote for you for a second term. You see that, under Providence, my prediction is in the way of being fulfilled.

Pyle could really lay it on thick, sometimes. While Taft thanked him for his “earnest and enthusiastic expressions of good will and of hopefulness for the coming administration,” he added, self-deprecatingly (if presciently), “I am a good deal in doubt about it myself, as I am under the load. I have got to do the best I can to lift it.”

In view of Taft’s abandonment of many of his predecessor’s policies, I wonder if Pyle’s enthusiasm ever waned - and (as I’ve mentioned elsewhere) I wonder what he would have made of the 1912 presidential race, had he lived to see it unfold.

Howard Pyle’s Early Impressions of Italy

Around Christmastime 1910, Howard Pyle was able to move his family from the cramped Pensione White “just on the outskirts of the slums” to “a suite of apartments in a very nice part of the city, where we shall be exceedingly comfortable, and where all the houses are new, and nice people live about us” at 6 Via Garibaldi. There, on December 28, he wrote about his as-yet ambivalent impressions of Italy to George Perkins Bissell, his friend back in Wilmington (who was also the brother of Emily Perkins Bissell):

I do not think an American of middle age who has spent practically all of his time in the United States should expect too much from Italy. As a rule, it is worn out and dilapidated, dirty and run down. Here in Florence, for instance, there are many old churches and many old palaces dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The churches are of black and white marble variegated with brown. They are dirty, stained and muddy with the dirt and dust of centuries: and personally I do not think anything of their architectural effect; but the insides of them are, in many instances, filled with treasures of art. The palaces every one look like prisons, and while inside there are fine carved pillars and some stunning stair cases, and court yards surrounded with coats-of-arms, yet outside they are gloomy and austere. They were nearly all of them built in the fourteenth century, and that was a time when every man’s hand was against every man, and every man’s hand against him: when the guards on the roofs used to shoot darts across the street at the guards on the other roofs, and every moment was the time of an assault. Many of these palaces are now converted into stores and market places, and a poor, homely, exceeding picturesque rabble down in the street below jostle and elbow one another; and there are butcher shops and drogherias (that is, rum shops) and there are bakers, and all sorts of nondescript tradesmen on the ground floors. This as you see is not at all like our well-made and well-arranged American life. It is very picturesque: but when that is said, all is said.

“Art” by Howard Pyle, 1908

In a letter dated December 22, 1908, architect Cass Gilbert wrote to Howard Pyle:

Your speech at the dinner was a great success. I heard many favorable and enthusiastic comments among the members of the Institute but not one criticism. You seem to have struck exactly the right note. As for myself, I concurred heartily in every word you said.

When I read this statement years ago, I thought, “What speech? What dinner?” Over time I was able to find out that Pyle spoke on December 17, 1908, at the banquet of the 42nd Annual Convention of the American Institute of Architects, at Washington, D.C.

A little more digging turned up the speech itself, printed in the AIA’s Proceedings, published the following year. But it turns out that when Pyle learned that the AIA was to put his words in print, he asked if he could rework them. He explained to Gilbert on December 23, 1908:

As you know, I had composed an entirely different speech from that which I delivered, that which I spoke being hastily arranged during the course of the dinner. I think it should be revised before being given to the public - the points sharpened, and the rhetoric put in better shape than is possible in an extempore address.

And so, the “official” version of Pyle’s speech differed from what he actually said. Unbeknownst to Pyle, however, (and perhaps even to the leaders of the AIA) a transcript of his address as delivered had been sent to The Western Architect and appeared in the January 1909 issue, reprinted below...

ART
by Howard Pyle

What is art? When we ask that question, the idea ordinarily intended is of a picture, of a statue, or a beautiful work of the architect; but art to me has a far greater, a far more vital significance than that. Art is the expression of a human thought in a living and a permanent form. As that thought is great and noble and grand within the man that conceives it, so in that degree is the work that he produces great and noble and grand. There is no school, there is no possible means whereby a great work of art can be created. The great work of art must emanate from the man - not from without, not by lines or rules or methods - it must emanate from the man. What is it that makes the great Saint Gaudens statue of Sherman so very great? It is not its technical skill; it is not any particular form or line or method of construction, but it is that that great man conceives within his mind the image of the hero of our war. Before that hero, advancing from the rock whereon he stands, the very ideal of American victory. It is American. It is not based upon any line or any rule or any method; but it is American, and therefore it is great, because it appeals from a great American soul to the soul of every other American who beholds it.

For three and thirty years I have served steadfastly at my chosen profession as an illustrator. In that time I have beheld the art of illustration, originating from small, obscure beginnings of a discredited handcraft, extend, expand and grow, until today it is almost, if not quite, the most dominant factor in existing American art. In that growth there is symbolized the truth that governs and must govern the product of all works of art. That truth is this: that any given work, to make its final and its most magnificent appeal, must be based upon the divine truth of uses. Unless a work of art meets a use, unless it fits to the demands, the aspirations and the ideals of the age in which it is created, it is a failure, and nothing can possibly make that art a success. [Applause.] The art of illustration is a success. Why? Primarily because the people of this country desire and love that which is beautiful. I have no patience with the talk, that emanates largely from the studios, of educating the American people to understand art. Educate the artist to understand the American people. [Applause.] If the artist understands the American people, there is no question of his work being a success. He does not have to depend upon commissions or ministries or any means to make his art a success, for it is a success in itself, because it emanates from a living soul and reaches to the other living souls who receive it. The art of illustration is a success for the simple reason that the American people love to see that which they read made beautiful with pictured image.

It is not far to seek; it is not a profound equation. All art is great just in the degree it is useful; and it is never great in any other degree. What was it that made the art of Phidias great? His art was created for a specific, definite purpose, as definite and as specific as the illustration today for our great magazines was made for a specific purpose. It was made that those who beheld it might be inspired with reverence for their gods and admiration for their heroes. [Applause.] That was the one reason why it was made, and as it touched the reverence and the respect, and the admiration of the Greeks of that day, so does it touch our reverence, our respect and our admiration today; - that when a living thought is embodied in a form that men can see, and touch and understand, it lives forever. What was it made the work of Michael Angelo, Leonardo, of Raphael, Durer, or Holbein great? Those works were great because each and every one was done for a definite and specific purpose. That purpose was to embody the human ideal of reverence for the divine motherhood; and as those artists poured their souls into those pictures that they made, just in that degree do those pictures. live today. They lived then; they live now, and they shall live forever - because they are human, not because they are technical works of art, but because they are human thoughts of excellent ideals cast into a living, visible work.

What is it makes American architecture the most successful art of the day? It is because the inspiration, the ideals, the beauty and graces that emanate in the mind of the architect is cast into the form of use. We talk of the American people not appreciating art. The crowds of American people pour into the public buildings which they themselves built, and who love them because they are beautiful in their eyes, not because they cost so many millions of money, but because they are beautiful. They say: “That is my capitol.” What is it makes the art of the architect successful today? It is because the American eyes can see and behold the visible form of American ideals. I cannot say that the art of painting, of which I am a representative, is so successful, for I do not think that that art is based fundamentally upon the higher uses of humanity, and until it is it cannot be successful.

I would touch again upon what I have heard several times tonight, and that is the education of the American people. I am a plain American. A very charming lady lately accused me of being a Philistine. Well, I am a Philistine. I like my beef and pudding, but I do like other things as well, and I am an American; and as an American I resent the talk that emanates from the studios of educating the American people. Let us instead of talking vaguely about this, recite the true facts, side by side; measure and compare those facts and see their proper significance. Upon the one side is a nation, we will say, of a hundred million people. It is safe to say that it is one of the greatest nations, one of the most enlightened nations in the world - a nation which is successful beyond the highest dreams of success; a nation with high ideals, exalted aspirations; a nation with a limitless future; upon the other side are a group of men (Shall I speak it of my own fellow craftsman?), narrow in their views - necessarily narrow in their views because they are confronted with certain technical rules which make them narrow in their views. As a rule, they are bigoted in their opinions. We all know that, for we are all artists. [Laughter and applause]. Doubting among ourselves as to what is the right thing, it is a great question among the hundreds of schools of art, each differing from the other in his opinion of what is the right thing; callous, not successful as a rule; taking the painters by a large majority, it is not a successful craft. Now, I ask you, with those two pictures placed side by side, which is the better equipped to educate the other? To me there is no doubt about it.

I welcome more than I can tell you the words that have come to me regarding the commission - a government commission or ministry of art - the effect of it - because I would see that commission operate along identically the lines that have made the art of illustration successful. The practical operation of that line is this: On the one side stands the artist equipped to produce beautiful works; upon the other side stands the public, desirous of receiving that which is beautiful. Between the two stand, as a commission (if we may so phrase it) the art editor and the editor in chief of the magazine. The art editor is supposed to be equipped to understand what is beautiful and correct in the art of picture making. The picture is brought to him; that he must pass upon primarily - the picture as being a work of art. Upon the other side of that commission there stands the editor in chief. The editor in chief is in touch with the whole mass of people. He must know that which will touch the heart of a million men. Therefore he demands that that picture shall be so constructed that it shall reach the heart, the understanding and the ideals of a million men. The result, you know as well as I, has been phenomenal. It is incredible to think that in ten and one-half decades the art of illustration should have risen to the height which it represents today. It has risen for no other cause than that it is founded and established upon the love and the desires of the people. That is its foundation and its full foundation; its final foundation.

I have used the simile before as to my ideal of art. I shall venture to use it again. To me the spirit of art is not a poor, weak and puling object, that must be supported by either political or plutocratic patronage. She is strong, erect, straight-limbed, full of the blood of humanity. Her brows are crowned with the stars of Heaven. The mountains are her throne, the earth her footstool, and the everlasting waters of the seas bathe her feet. I use that simile because those things - the sky, the earth, the waters beneath the earth - are the prime equations of humanity. Upon them all finer love and care for art are based. Therefore, that spirit of art that I would serve is crowned and enthroned and bathed by those fundamentals of human life.

I would welcome such a commission as that which has been suggested tonight, not that I think that that commission can create such a spirit of art, but I think that commission can part the curtains of the present, and that that spirit or art can come forth; and, when she is made manifest to the world, then the nations of the earth will come and lay the fruit of her prosperity beneath her shining feet.

Howard Pyle at Santa Croce, December 20, 1910

“The Gothic church of Santa Croce, begun in 1294…was completed in 1442, except the façade, which was added 1857-63. The interior, 128 yds. long, with its widely spaced pillars and open roof of its nave, produces an impressive effect, enhanced by numerous monuments of famous Italians and by Giotto’s venerable frescoes in the choir-chapels (Morning light best).” - Baedeker’s Northern Italy



One hundred years ago today, on December 20, 1910, Howard and Anne Poole Pyle toured the Basilica di Santa Croce, around the corner from their temporary lodgings on the Piazza Cavalleggieri in Florence. The next day, he wrote to Stanley Arthurs and gave his impressions of some of the things he saw there.

“Yesterday Mrs. Pyle and I went to an old church which was started to be built in the Twelfth Century [sic], and which was only completed in the Nineteenth.”



“There are a number of things in it which are good, or fairly good, and one or two things which are extremely beautiful. Among these is a tomb, or rather, memorial, made by Donatello - beautiful figures, soft greys and gilt.” [I assume Pyle meant Donatello’s “Annunciation” in gilded pietra serena, a grey Italian sandstone.]



“The walls are decorated with pictures of the Giotto school, 14th Century and are interesting as being a transcript of that life. The Italians have not preserved them very closely, but have spread stucco-work over them which has only just been removed.”



“I think the things which interested me most were the tombs let into the floor, and the figures of knights and ladies in the costumes of the 14th and 15th centuries worn by passing feet so that you cannot see any detail, but still leaving enough to see the general character.”

Edwin Markham’s Poem to Howard Pyle

Here is a poem by Edwin Markham:

Art
To Howard Pyle

At her light touch, behold! a voice proceeds
Out of all things to chide our sordid deeds;
A beauty breaks, a beauty ever strange,
The Changeless that is back of all the change.
Lightly it comes as when a rose would be
Takes feature yet remains a mystery.

This poem was born out of a request from Howard Pyle himself: after illustrating a deluxe edition of Markham’s The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (Doubleday & McClure Company, 1900), Pyle asked the poet to write him “an autograph verse” which he could insert into an “especial” copy of the book. It was “especial” - and, in fact, unique - in that Pyle glued the original illustrations onto sheets of Whatman’s hot-pressed paper onto which the publisher - in part compensation for the work Pyle had done - had printed the poems. Pyle then bound the book with wooden covers and decorated them with his daughter Phoebe’s pyrography set.

Ultimately, “Art” appeared in Markham’s subsequent collection, Lincoln & Other Poems, published in 1901 by McClure, Phillips & Company - and not by Doubleday, Page & Company, the successor to Doubleday & McClure, which had dissolved even before The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems was published (although the name still appeared on the title-age and spine). A chagrined Frank Nelson Doubleday, wrote on the flyleaf of an office copy of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, "This edition was made to please the author and get his next book. It did neither."

And after trying to sell his unique copy of The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems, Howard Pyle - in the words of Gertrude Brincklé - “lost interest in it and had it torn up.”

“The best engraver in the world is Mr. French”

The Yale Club bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1905 (engraved by Edwin Davis French)

“I have long admired your very admirable work, and have lost no opportunity of speaking of it to my friends, I am glad that my small efforts in that direction have brought about such results as the Bibliophile bookmark [sic], and the book-plate of the Yale Club.”

So said Howard Pyle in a letter to Edwin Davis French, written on December 11, 1905. Pyle had just completed a bookplate design for Edith Kermit Roosevelt - Teddy’s wife - and was hoping to get French to engrave it. He had said in a letter to her, “I think the best engraver in the world is Mr French. If he cuts this for you you will have a treasure that will always be a joy to you, for his work is as good as it is possible to be.” French, however, was unavailable for a few months, so Pyle got Sidney L. Smith to do the work instead.

I confess I don’t know what Pyle meant by “the Bibliophile bookmark.” Pyle’s drawings and paintings for the Bibliophile Society were photo-engraved, or etched by W. H. W. Bicknell. French did, however, engrave Pyle’s second bookplate for The Players Club in 1894.

The Players Club bookplate by Howard Pyle, 1894 (engraved by Edwin Davis French)


I think this is Pyle’s least successful bookplate design. I blame him for an awkward conception more than French for faulty engraving, although French seems to have blamed himself for its defects. It was, I understand, only his second such commission and Pyle’s “exquisitely delicate wash-drawing” - as French called it - “at the time seemed to me (and indeed I fear it proved to be) quite too formidable an undertaking for a plate-engraver of my limited experience.”

Perhaps the original art will turn up one of these days and we’ll be able to judge for ourselves.

Elihu Vedder Calls on Howard Pyle, December 10, 1910

On December 10, 1910, Elihu Vedder, the American artist and longtime resident of Italy, called on Howard Pyle at the Grand Continental Hotel in Rome.

But Pyle couldn’t see him: after dinner that day he had had an attack that spurred the family to fetch a doctor. His lingering illness, punctuated by sharp abdominal pains, pretty much confined him to his rooms: in fact, during his week-long stay in Rome, he ventured out only twice - and one of those times was so he could be x-rayed for kidney stones or gallstones.

Gertrude Brincklé and Phoebe Pyle went downstairs to meet Vedder in Pyle’s stead. Miss Brincklé wrote of the encounter the next day:

Elihu Vedder, the first personage whom we have seen abroad, came to call on Mr. Pyle last night, and Phoebe and I “received” him. He does not look at all like an artist, any more than Mr. Pyle does! He is a fat elderly man with a wondrous black worsted knitted vest, and a small brown skull-cap, and he talks a great deal about his book, apparently an autobiography or memoirs, of which both Phoebe and I were entirely ignorant.

Just a few weeks before Vedder’s visit, Houghton, Mifflin and Company had published his autobiography, The Digressions of V - in which Pyle gets only a passing mention (but waht else is new?).

Apparently, Pyle had known Vedder since the late 1870s. So far, though, I can put them in same place at the same time only once: on November 8, 1894, the two dined with Laurence and Eleanor Hutton at their house at 229 West 34th Street in Manhattan. A couple of days afterward Pyle spoke of “poor old Mr Vedder!” to Mrs. Hutton, “I suppose he enjoys his Italian life but isn’t it dreadful? Think of having to live in an atmosphere of art forever with no let up of nature and simplicity.”

Howard Pyle Arrives in Italy, December 7, 1910

The Sant’ Anna in Naples

In the rain and before dawn on December 7, 1910, the Sant’ Anna, carrying Howard Pyle, his family, and his secretary, Gertrude Brincklé, landed at Naples, Italy.

Pyle had already been unwell for several days and considered staying over in the port city, but, according to Miss Brincklé, he woke that morning “with light of determination in his eye” and decided to continue on to Florence as planned.

Fortunately, they met a Wilmington acquaintance, a Mr. Gawthrop, whose friend, Mr. Montefredini, helped get them through customs and onto a northbound train. After dark that same day, they arrived in Rome. But Pyle was unable to travel any further, so they found rooms at the Grand Continental Hotel, just opposite the Stazione di Termini.

The Red Cross Christmas Stamp, 1908

Did you know that Howard Pyle - at the request of his friend and fellow Wilmingtonian, Emily Perkins Bissell - designed the first nationally distributed Christmas seal? (The first seal, of 1907, was designed by Miss Bissell herself and was more of a Delaware-centric affair.) The Report of the Seventh International Tuberculosis Conference, Philadelphia, 24th-26th of September 1908 (Berlin-Charlottenburg, Internationale Vereinigung gegen die Tuberkulose, 1909) stated:

The Christmas Stamp in red and green, which this year has been kindly designed by the artist, Mr. Howard Pyle, will be sold for the benefit of the Red Cross anti-tuberculosis work. The little stamps do not carry mail, but with the good wishes that they bear to the friend on whose letter or gift you may place them, they will carry also some of the Christmas cheer to many sorrying homes, where the terrible scourge of tuberculosis now holds its sway.

These so-called “bullets in the fight against tuberculosis” cost a penny a piece and by mid-November 1908, seven million copies of Pyle’s stamp had already been ordered.

For some more historical background, take a look at this from Harper’s Weekly for December 5, 1908:

The Red Cross Christmas Stamp

The Christmas stamp which the American Red Cross is selling this year as part of its active campaign against tuberculosis, was invented in Denmark, where, in 1904, the Danish government issued a similar stamp with the King's head and the word “yule” on it, not good for postage, but to stick on Christmas letters, postal cards, and packages.

The Danish stamp was issued to raise funds to build a tuberculosis hospital for children. Jacob Riis wrote a piece about it [see The Outlook for July 6, 1907] and tried to get a similar stamp issued by our government. That proved impracticable, but last year the Delaware Red Cross issued a Christmas stamp and sold about 400,000 of them. That considerable success led the National Red Cross to make a wholesale experiment this year. Howard Pyle designed a stamp, and it is to see how many can be sold between Thanksgiving and New-year's. The purpose is as much to advertise the work against consumption, and educate and interest the public in it, as to raise funds. The stamps will be supplied to buyers and sellers from the Red Cross headquarters in each State, but the distribution will be well attended to, and the Christmas stamp is likely to be a very conspicuous feature of the coming holidays.

Howard Pyle Misses the Mark?

The latest incarnation of the Autobiography of Mark Twain has been getting a lot of press. I don’t hold out much hope that Samuel L. Clemens’s “private” thoughts on Howard Pyle will be revealed therein or in subsequent volumes. In fact, I doubt that his thoughts would prove much different than the comments he made directly to Pyle or to his publisher. And even though they had many mutual friends and acquaintances (W. D. Howells and Albert Bigelow Paine, in particular), the two probably didn’t linger long enough in each other’s company for Clemens to form an opinion of Pyle the man.

As yet, I can only place these two in the same room at the same time at Mark Twain’s 67th birthday party hosted by George Harvey. Subsequently, Pyle was invited to the 70th birthday - Harvey’s even larger publicity stunt, held on December 5, 1905 - but he couldn’t attend. In sending his regrets to Clemens, Pyle wrote that “it is not often that a fellow craftsman can have it to say that in nearly half a century of work he should never have written any words that were not pure, and kind, and free of malice toward any of his fellow-creatures.”

Reviews of the autobiography, however, make Pyle sound pretty naive - or just hyperbolic and polite. In Slate, for instance, Judith Shulevitz says,

...this volume is punctuated by uncomic riffs - I believe they are meant to be funny - that quickly degenerate into furious rants, usually about former business partners who had grievously cheated Twain. The unvarnished truth about Twain/Clemens turns out to be his unvarnished rage.

Or, “When in Doubt, Leave It Out”

“...it is better to err in the lack of detail than it is to introduce details that may arouse question or criticism...”

Howard Pyle to Paul Leicester Ford, November 30, 1898

From “The Lady of Shalott”

A very early full-color illustration by Howard Pyle for Alfred Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott, published by Dodd, Mead & Company - and copyrighted and deposited on this day in 1881.

At Mark Twain’s Birthday Party, 1902

Last year I wished Mark Twain a happy 174th birthday. And 108 years ago tonight Howard Pyle and 52 other men wished him a happy 67th birthday. The New York Times reported on it the next day:

Mark Twain’s sixty-seventh birthday, which falls on Sunday, was celebrated at the Metropolitan Club last night by a dinner given in his honor by Col. George Harvey, editor of Harper’s Weekly and The North American Review, and President of Harper & Brothers, publishers. It was attended by fifty-three guests, most of them prominent in the literary world.

Mark Twain may or may not have read the notices of his demise which certain newspaper paragraphers have from time to time inserted in their papers prematurely as an excuse for the perpetration of a real or imagined witticism, but last night he laughingly listened while John Kendrick Bangs read a long obituary of him in rhyme and rhythm.

Mr. Howells read a sonnet in which he referred to a number of incidents in Mark Twain’s life, and particularly the article the humorist wrote on foreign missionaries. The other speakers were Chauncey M. Depew, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Col. George Harvey, W. D. Howells, Hamilton W. Mabie, Thomas B. Reed, Wayne MacVeagh, and Mr. Clemens.

Here is the complete list of 54 attendees (I can connect Pyle personally or professionally to about two dozen of them, but will spare you):

Henry Mills Alden
John W. Alexander
James Lane Allen
John Kendrick Bangs
August Belmont
Samuel Bowles
George Washington Cable
Will Carleton
Robert W. Chambers
Dumont Clarke
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Chauncey Depew
Frederick A. Duneka
Charles Froham
Hamlin Garland
Richard Watson Gilder
Will N. Harben
Henry S. Harper
J. Henry Harper
George Harvey
John Hay
William Dean Howells
Roy Rolfe Gilson
Thomas L. Janvier
Adrian Joline
John Larkin
Richard le Gallienne
William M. Laffan
W. B. Leeds
Frederick T. Leigh
Hamilton Wright Mabie
James MacArthur
Wayne MacVeagh
St. Clair McKelway
David A. Munro
William A. Nash
Adolph S. Ochs
Daniel O’Day
Howard Pyle
Thomas Bracket Reed
Dr. C. C. Rice
Henry H. Rogers
Thomas F. Ryan
Hamblen Sears
Ernest Thompson Seton
Francis Hopkinson Smith
Henry L. Stodard
Van Tassel Sutphen
Booth Tarkington
E. W. Townsend
Reverend J. H. Twichell
Henry Van Dyke
Horace White
George W. Young

Pyle’s Art Students’ League Students?

Here is another news item about Howard Pyle’s Art Students’ League lectures and critiques of 1904-05. This one comes from the International Studio:

The Art Students' League has been fortunate enough to obtain the services of Mr. Howard Pyle for the coming winter. His class will not be of the usual academic order, as Mr. Pyle particularly wishes to help young artists as well as students. The course will consist of a series of critical lectures on Composition, the class meeting on alternate Saturdays and lasting two hours, from four to six o'clock. The first hour there will be a general talk on composition, and the second hour will be devoted to criticising the work of those who pass Mr. Pyle's standard. The less advanced pupils will, however, have the benefit of his criticisms as well as his lectures. The first lecture will be held on Saturday, December 3. The tuition fee for this class will be $2.00 a month.

This arrangement was very much like the one Pyle had during his first year as an instructor at the Drexel Institute in 1894-95. What puzzles me is that there were plenty of League members and artists who attended these lectures and had their work criticized by Pyle, but unless they subsequently went to Wilmington for further Pylean guidance they do not appear on the many lists of Pyle students that have been assembled over the years. On the other hand, even those who had only fleeting contact with Pyle at the Drexel Institute (or in Wilmington, for that matter) are considered Pyle students.

But Pyle himself looked on those he instructed in New York as his students - at least if what he wrote to Hugo Ballin on March 8, 1905, is any indication: “I have a few pupils at home and abroad to whom I like to apply when I find myself in need of help, and you see I include you in that limited category.” The American Art News of March 25, 1905, also said, “Mr. Pyle was especially interested in the compositions of Hugo Ballin and Remington Schuyler; their work he considers to be of great promise.” As far as I know, however, Ballin has been conspicuously absent from the “Pyle student” rolls - and I don’t think he’s an isolated case.

Howard Pyle Lectures at the Art Students’ League

“It has just been announced at the Art Students' League that Howard Pyle will give a series of lectures on Composition, every other Saturday, from 4 to 6. The lectures are open to all students on payment of a small fee, but those wishing to put compositions up for criticism must first submit a sample of their work.”

The American Art News, November 26, 1904

Howard Pyle’s Early Turkey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Howard Pyle’s Sketch Club

On November 24, 1902, Allen Tupper True wrote home to his father:

…Mr. Pyle’s latest innovation is a “Sketch Club” to meet once a week when we and he can get together around a long table in his studio for a “stag” evening. The event of the evening is to be an impromptu pen and ink composition the subject for which will be assigned just before commencing. Mr. Pyle is to sketch too and his idea seems to be that he shall be one of a jolly crowd for one evening a week. We will have beer, ginger ale and good tobacco which in this case do not mean as coarse as an affair as you might think.…

Pyle’s “innovation” was something he resurrected from his time in New York in the late 1870s - from the Salmagundi Sketch Club, in particular.

The compositional subject was just a word or phrase - “Idiocy,” “The End,” “The Conquerer,” “The Challenge” - and after it was assigned (or, perhaps, drawn from a hat, etc.) the artists would draw and eat and drink and talk and smoke.

Just imagine the groups that assembled each week or so in 1902-03: N. C. Wyeth, William J. Aylward, Philip R. Goodwin, Arthur Becher, George Harding, Allen True, Clifford Ashley, Henry Peck, Thornton Oakley, et al.... And the artist whose impromptu creation was deemed best would go home with Howard Pyle’s drawing.

“Mr. Howard Pyle...departed yesterday”

GOES TO PAINT IN ITALY

For a long stay in Italy, where he will have a studio in Florence, Mr. Howard Pyle, an American painter and illustrator, departed yesterday with Mrs. Pyle and their daughters, Misses Phoebe and Eleanor, and Master Wilfred [sic] Pyle, on board the Sant’ Anna, of the Fabre line. Mr. Pyle has just closed his art school in Wilmington, Del.

“I have commissions which will take up my time abroad,” said Mr. Pyle.

The New York Herald, November 23, 1910

Bon Voyage, Howard Pyle

One hundred years ago today, Howard Pyle took an early train from Wilmington to Hoboken, then a ferry around Lower Manhattan to the Fabre Line docks in Brooklyn, and at 1.00 p.m. (or maybe 12.17?) he sailed away on the Sant’Anna, pictured here.

Years later, his student Harvey Dunn recalled, “When we stood on the R.R. station platform at six o’clock the morning he and his family left he looked out over the city of his birth and his labors he held my arm in a strong grip as he said, ‘Write to me, Dunn’ and I know he didn’t want to go at all, somehow, and would never come back.”

“Pyle’s illustrations for my poem are lovely”

“...Pyle’s illustrations for my poem are lovely in the Wide Awake...”

From the diary of Edmund Clarence Stedman, November 21, 1887

A Victim to Science, 1883

“A Victim to Science” by Howard Pyle (Harper’s Young People, November 20, 1883)

Howard Pyle and A Peculiar People

“The Kloster” by Howard Pyle, 1880

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh no.”

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

“Why I don’t know.”

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

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

The Battle of “The Battle of Bunker Hill”

On November 18, 1897, Howard Pyle wrote to Joseph Hawley Chapin, Art Editor of Scribner’s Magazine:

…I send you today the Bunker Hill picture. It is quite carefully studied, and I think, excepting the portraiture which of course has to be idealized, it is a correct view of the battle.…

The ship of war firing in the distance is the Lively. In the remoter distance I have represented Copp’s Hill with the boat yard at the foot of the hill as nearly as I could represent it from the maps of the period. The smoke arising from the remoter distance is being discharged from a fortification upon Copp’s Hill. Charlestown lies back of the hill and the black smoke arising is from the burning houses.…

It’s worth noting that this description formed the basis of the caption for “The Battle of Bunker Hill” when it was printed in Scribner’s Magazine for February 1898, illustrating the second installment of Henry Cabot Lodge’s The Story of the Revolution:

The scene represents the second attack and is taken from the right wing of the Fifty-second Regiment, with a company of grenadiers in the foreground. The left wing of the regiment, under command of the major, has halted, and is firing a volley; the right wing is just marching past to take its position for firing. The ship-of-war firing from the middle distance is the Lively; in the remoter distance is the smoke from the battery on Copp’s Hill. The black smoke to the right is from the burning houses of Charlestown.

According to some notes taken during a 1949 conversation between Frank Schoonover and Gertrude Brincklé:

When Mr. Pyle was collecting information and ideas for this painting he wrote to the Admiralty office in London for details about the real formation in the battle, but got very little information. He made the composition from what they told him, and from his own imagination. At first the drummers were marching on the right side, and then he put them in the rear where they are now.

The version seen here was also Pyle’s second try: he was unhappy after a week’s work on the first, so he slashed the canvas with a sword. And then he painted this one in four days.

Charles Scribner’s Sons was impressed enough with Pyle’s “Battle of Bunker Hill” and “Fight on Lexington Common” to consider reproducing them - and the other ten pictures he was contracted to do - in color and selling them by subscription. This never panned out. But the publisher did decide to send an exhibition of illustrations for The Story of the Revolution around the country while the history was being serialized - a canny promotional stunt.

Pyle balked. He told Joe Chapin on December 30, 1897, that “to exhibit my pictures in their present partially finished state would, in my opinion, be injurious to them and to me, and that I am accordingly compelled to lay aside my other work and to retouch them whether I choose to do so or not.” However, he conceded - under protest - in the same letter.

But Pyle wasn’t being entirely frank, and a few days later he confided to Charles Scribner II: “It may not be a probability, but at least it is a very strong possibility that this set of pictures, when completed, may be purchased by the Congressional Library Committee, to be hung in the Library Building in Washington.” Pyle was worried, though, that key government officials would see his “unfinished” works on display and deem them unworthy of so high-profile a home as the Library of Congress. He was also concerned that showing “The Battle of Bunker Hill” as is in Boston might jeopardize his chances for a commission to paint a mural on the same topic for the Massachusetts State House. He explained, “The picture was sent to you very hastily and in an unfinished state, because of the demand of the Magazine to have it in the Art Department by a certain given date. I was aware that it was crude in its effect and unfinished in all of its details - but had no idea that it was so crude in color as it proved to be when I saw it again and with fresh eyes.”

In the end, Pyle indeed tweaked “The Battle of Bunker Hill” somewhat: compare, for example, the clouds in the magazine plate (in black and white, above) and the original (in color, below). Ultimately, however, for all his hand-wringing and the efforts of his friends with influence, both the Washington and Boston schemes collapsed.

Howard Pyle Didn’t Sleep Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Return from Deerfield

“The Return from Deerfield” by Howard Pyle, 1897

The town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, came up in conversation recently and it prompted me to exhume this picture from my files. Howard Pyle painted “The Return from Deerfield” for Volume I of A Half-Century of Conflict, included in France and England in North America, Part Sixth, which formed Volume XI of the The Works of Francis Parkman (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1897).

The original 14 x 24" oil (in part color) belongs to the University of Delaware. And here is a blurry photo of the same (swiped from UD’s website, with apologies) if only to give some idea of Pyle’s use of red in the cap, robe, kerchief, etc. and the “colder” overall feel of the piece, which is lost in the warm browns and yellows of the photogravure.

The calm demeanor of the standing figure always puzzled me: I guess because I was misreading the title as “The Return to Deerfield.” But in finally bothering to read the chapter Pyle illustrated, I now understand that it shows the French and Native American forces marching back to Canada after raiding the village and taking a number of villagers captive. The detail of the standing figure’s collar indicates that he is the cold-blooded Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville, who commanded the attack in the winter of 1704. The woman at his snowshoed feet is Eunice, wife of the Reverend John Williams. As Parkman says:

The prisoners were the property of those who had taken them. Williams had two masters; one of the three who had seized him having been shot in the attack on the house of Stebbins. His principal owner was a surly fellow who would not let him speak to the other prisoners; but as he was presently chosen to guard the rear, the minister was left in the hands of his other master, who allowed him to walk beside his wife and help her on the way. Having borne a child a few weeks before, she was in no condition for such a march, and felt that her hour was near. Williams speaks of her in the strongest terms of affection. She made no complaint, and accepted her fate with resignation. “We discoursed,” he says, “of the happiness of those who had God for a father and friend, as also that it was our reasonable duty quietly to submit to His will.” Her thoughts were for her remaining children, whom she commended to her husband’s care. Their intercourse was short. The Indian who had gone to the rear of the train soon returned, separated them, ordered Williams to the front, “and so made me take a last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my eyes and companion in many mercies and afflictions.” They came soon after to Green River, a stream then about knee-deep, and so swift that the water had not frozen. After wading it with difficulty, they climbed a snow-covered hill beyond. The minister, with strength almost spent, was permitted to rest a few moments at the top; and as the other prisoners passed by in turn, he questioned each for news of his wife. He was not left long in suspense. She had fallen from weakness in fording the stream, but gained her feet again, and, drenched in the icy current, struggled to the farther bank, when the savage who owned her, finding that she could not climb the hill, killed her with one stroke of his hatchet. Her body was left on the snow till a few of her townsmen, who had followed the trail, found it a day or two after, carried it back to Deerfield, and buried it in the churchyard.