Howard Pyle drew “Poor Richard” for the programme/menu of the Franklin Inn Club’s celebration of Benjamin Franklin’s 200th birthday held on January 6, 1906, in Philadelphia. ...I remember sitting at a small table in the White House with you and Mr. Cadwalader after the Cabinet dinner, and hearing you tell Mr. Cadwalader of your intentions concerning the Panama Canal. What you said to Mr. Cadwalader was said so simply and so unaffectedly that I carried away with me the impression that you were one of the strongest men in the world.Pyle told others of his encounter with Taft that night - Edward Noble Vallandigham, for one, recalled of his friend Pyle:
He became some years ago an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Roosevelt, and was several times entertained at the White House. Upon one of these occasions he met Mr. Taft, then of the cabinet, heard him talk of the Panama Canal, and came away deeply impressed with his easy mastery of a great subject. “He seemed,” said Pyle, “as familiar with that vast undertaking as I should be with the laying of a drain in my back yard.”Pyle’s enthusiasm for Taft - which seems to have been kindled 108 years ago tonight - eventually led him to provide some last minute, but apparently invaluable assistance to Taft’s 1908 campaign.
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| Allen Tupper True |
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| George Harding, Gordon McCouch, Thonton Oakley, N. C. Wyeth, Allen True, and (seated) Howard Pyle, circa 1903 |
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| Cass Gilbert, circa 1907 (via the Minnesota Historical Society) |
Howard Pyle to Cass Gilbert, January 2, 1907
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| “Raising the First American Flag, January 1, 1776” by C. O. DeLand |
...I hold a “Composition Class” every week, some of the compositions submitted being of an excellence sufficient to admit their being used in pictorial form - page and double-page cuts - by the more important illustrated periodicals....Such was the case with one of DeLand’s drawings which, after meeting with Pyle’s approval, was submitted to and approved by Harper’s Weekly. DeLand then got an official order for the picture and started painting.
To cultivate independence, the compositions made by the pupils are from time to time submitted to some leading illustrated periodical or newspaper, and if accepted are worked up into a picture with only verbal criticism upon my part.
THE FIRST NATIONAL FLAG
by Clyde O. Deland
Prospect Hill (known also as Mount Pisgah) was the strongest fortification of the American army during the siege of Boston, and it was here that the Union flag was unfurled for the first time January 1, 1776, the day on which the new Continental army was organized.
Upon that day copies of the King’s speech at the opening of Parliament had been sent from Boston by General Howe to Washington. The speech was one better fitted to arouse opposition than submission to the English throne. It stated that the British nation was too spirited and powerful to give up those colonies which had been protected for so many years with “much expense of blood and treasure”; that both its army and navy had been strengthened, and that negotiations for foreign aid were already entered into. The English authorities entertained great hopes of the salutary effects of this message from the throne to the rebellious Americans. Accordingly the hoisting of the Union flag and the discharge of thirteen guns that saluted it were hailed with great delight by the British officers, who supposed it to be a token of submission to the crown.
Referring to these circumstances, Washington, in a letter to Joseph Reed, dated January 4, 1776, said: “The speech I send you. A volume of them were sent out by the Boston gentry, and, farcical enough, we gave great joy to them without knowing or intending it. For on that day - the day which gave being to our new army, but before the proclamation came to hand - we had hoisted the Union flag, in compliment to the united colonies. But, behold! it was received in Boston as a token of the deep impression the speech made upon us, and as a signal of submission. So we hear by a person out of Boston last night. By this time, I presume, they begin to think it strange that we have not made a formal surrender of our lines.”
The Annual Register of 1776 gives a more detailed description of the flag. It says, “So great was the rage and indignation [of the Americans] that they burned the speech and changed their colors from a plain red ground, which they had hitherto used, to a flag with thirteen stripes, as a symbol of the number and the union of the colonies.”
Previous to this, so-called “Union flags” were sometimes displayed, but were merely British standards with the legend “Liberty and Property,” or “Liberty and Union,” set upon the field as emblems of colonial rights and principles.
In 1855 the historian Benson J. Lossing discovered a contemporary colored drawing that for the first time rendered an authentic presentment of the flag. It was a sketch of the Royal Savage (Arnold’s flag vessel on Lake Champlain in the battle of October, 1776). An ensign was depicted flying at the mast-head. This flag displayed the British union - the combined crosses of St. George and St. Andrew - in the usual upper corner, but the field had been changed from the solid red into alternate stripes of red and white. It was doubtless the union jack in the corner of the flag hoisted at Cambridge that caused the English to misinterpret it - to suppose that the Americans intended to submit once more to the rule of George the Third.
The colonial Union flag of thirteen stripes was also displayed in Pennsylvania during the year. A letter describing the departure of the American fleet under Admiral Hopkins from Philadelphia, in February, says it sailed “amidst the acclamations of thousands assembled on the joyful occasion, under display of a Union flag, with thirteen stripes in the field, emblematical of the thirteen united colonies.”
After allegiance to the British crown had been thrown off, the jack bearing the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew became inappropriate, and on the 14th of June, 1777, the Continental Congress passed the following resolution:
Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white, on a blue field, representing a new constellation.
The illustration represents the ceremony of raising the new colonial flag. The scene depicts the interior of the fortifications on Prospect Hill, looking southeast across the Charles River toward Bartons Point in Boston.
The colonial troops, while much better organized than ever before, were still without a regular uniform, the occasional buckskin hunting dress of the Southern riflemen or of the frontiersmen being in picturesque contrast to the bucolic homespun of the New England minute-men.
Washington’s uniform is described in a letter written July 20, 1775, thus: “His dress is a blue coat with buff-colored facings, a rich epaulette on each shoulder, buff underdress, and an elegant small sword; a black cockade in his hat.”
Three of the cannon used at this time are now planted upon Cambridge’s common. They date from the reign of George the Second.
The profile of Boston, it may be said, has been rendered as carefully as possible from contemporary drawings and prints of the period. Edes & Gills North American for 1770 contains an engraving by Paul Revere, entitled “Landing of the Troops in Boston, 1768,” which gives an approximate view of that city, with its beacon, towers, and spires. Besides this, Lieutenant Williams of the Royal Welsh Fusileers, while stationed in Boston under General Gage, made a panoramic view in colors of the country surrounding the city. A copy of this drawing is in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The vessel in the middle distance represents one of the British war-ships guarding the approaches to the city.
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| “The Good, Aged Doctor” by Howard Pyle (1899) |
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| “The Good, Aged Doctor” in McClure’s Magazine for December 1899 |
I am not only writing a book [The Story of King Arthur and His Knights] and conducting a class and building a house, but I have so many other engagements ahead of me that I hardly know how I shall carry them. Besides I shall be able next season to give you a much better thought out discourse than I could possible build together this year.So the plan went on hold until 1903, when Pyle was able to coordinate well-paying visits to both Indianapolis and Chicago in one week-long trip. At the Art Institute of Chicago, he lectured on “The Art of the Age,” met more informally with the instructors and students (including a 19-year-old Harvey Dunn, who would join Pyle’s school the following November), and attended the opening of a one-man-show of some 110 of his pictures.
My first finished attempt at verse was one that was taken by the St. Nicholas, and published in the department of children’s writings. Howard made a picture to go with it, and was paid for it but I, of course, was not paid for the verses as they were just a child’s contribution and I was very much disappointed that I wasn’t. They were about a child who was always crying until in the end his mouth had stretched till -Katharine neglected to provide a date, but searching through the pages of St. Nicholas - and page 78 of “The Letter-Box” of the November 1880 issue, in particular - one will find:
One Morning no Jackie was anywheres found,
But only a great mouth that lay on the ground;
And so that was all that was left, alack!
A great big mouth with a border of Jack.
THE SAD STORY OF A LITTLE BOY THAT CRIEDIt should be noted, however, that no picture by Katharine’s brother - or anyone - accompanies the verse. Maybe Howard made one (and got paid, unlike his sister), or maybe he didn’t; it’s still a mystery.
Once, a little boy, Jack, was, oh! ever so good,
Till he took a strange notion to cry all he could.
So he cried all the day, and he cried all the night,
He cried in the morning and in the twilight;
He cried till his voice was as hoarse as a crow,
And his mouth grew so large it looked like a great O.
It grew at the bottom, and grew at the top;
It grew till they thought that it never would stop.
Each day his great mouth grew taller and taller,
And his dear little self grew smaller and smaller.
At last, that same mouth grew so big that - alack! -
It was only a mouth with a border of Jack.
And so this was all that was left of poor Jack:
The great gaping mouth, like a wide-open sack!
P.K. [sic]
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| “Jack Frost’s Harvest” by Philip L. Hoyt in Harper’s Weekly for December 6, 1902 |
Mr. Pyle's inordinate ability as a teacher lay primarily in his sense of penetration; to read beneath the crude lines on paper the true purpose, to detect therein our real inclinations and impulses. In short, to unlock our personalities. This power was in no wise a superficial method handed out to those who would receive. We received in proportion to that which was fundamentally within us.This “ungainly lad” was Philip Langly Hoyt, born November 2, 1873, in Wentworth, New Hampshire, a few miles from the Vermont border. The son of a farmer, Hoyt studied with Pyle at the Drexel Institute, won a scholarship to the 1899 Summer School of Illustration at Chadds Ford, and was selected by Pyle to join the nucleus of his own art school when he founded it in 1900.
I recall an instance as an illustration. One member, an ungainly lad from the back country of northern New England, found his way into Pyle classes. He had dreamed, in his remote village, of becoming an artist; of picturing his visions of cities he had never seen, and of the lives of the people therein.
He had come into the composition class week after week, with sketches of society folk and kindred subjects. They were, naturally, unconvincing and poor, but Mr. Pyle’s interest in them did not flag. Meanwhile he assiduously gathered from the fellow accounts of his life in the woods, of breaking snow roads, of gathering maple sap, of log driving, of corn huskings, and a myriad things. It began to dawn upon the Vermonter that his own life at home, the incidents of his own north country which he knew and loved were interesting, yes, intensely interesting. His pictures at once gained in vitality and importance. With Mr. Pyle's trenchant help, he had found himself. I doubt if Howard Pyle ever had a student that did not at some time or other experience some such awakening as this while under his direction.
The fellow is a typical Yankee named Hoyt. He’s from Vermont [sic]. Perfect Habits. Shrewd and as economical as possible.Hoyt remained in Wilmington until about 1904 or so, when he moved to Boston. Eventually he abandoned illustration and although he may not have actually lived in Vermont prior to meeting Wyeth, Hoyt did wind up there later: on the 1930 Census he is listed as a construction contractor in Hartford in Windsor County. He died in Vermont at the age of 90 in March 1964.
I had to get an easle of course and Pyle could get a $25 one for 12.60. Hoyt says Don’t ye dew it! Make it. He made a slendid one for himself, lumber (hard pine), iron fixings and all cost four dollars or a little less. Now it’s quite a piece of mechanism and needs a cabinetmaker’s skill to make one so I bought his for five dollars and he’s making himself a new one making a few improvments (which is to his great delight).
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Photograph taken in Chadds Ford, PA, showing Pyle and his students seeing off Philip Hoyt, on or about September 1, 1899, at the close of the second Summer School of Illustration. From left to right: Robert L. Mason, Emlem McConnell, Frank Schoonover, Howard Pyle, Annie Hailey, Sarah Stilwell, Ellen Bernard Thompson, Anna Whelan Betts, Stanley Arthurs, Philip Hoyt (in straw boater), Bertha Corson Day. |
HOWARD PYLE, AN APPRECIATION |
| “Whither?” by Howard Pyle (1904) |
—From “How Are We Going To Vote This Year?” by Howard Pyle, published anonymously in Collier’s Weekly for November 5, 1904 (and subsequently reprinted in various newspapers). Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “I think it is as good a thing as we have had in this campaign, and I want to thank you for it with all my heart.” And journalist Richard Victor Oulahan later remarked, “I have been told that the cartoon entitled ‘Whither?’ with the accompanying reading matter entitled ‘How Are We Going to Vote This Year?’ was more effective as a campaign advertisement than anything else put out in behalf of President Roosevelt by the Literary Bureau of the National Committee.”
I am very proud of our book, a half dozen copies of which Harpers have just sent me. I arranged with them to return the picture of the Sphynx. I remember you expressed yourself as liking it rather much, and so, I think, as you inspired the picture, it should be yours. Accordingly I shall have it framed tomorrow and send it on to you as some token of the pleasure I had in illustrating your poems.Then on November 3, 1895, Pyle wrote again:
I sent you yesterday, by express, my picture of the Sphynx which I want you to keep for my sake.
It seemed to me that, in your poems, the piping Pan of your soul went up into just such twilight altitudes as I have tried to depict; and hearing the sudden dim rustle of wings, turned so to see his Sphynx crouching where she had not been before.
I want you to have the picture for that reason too.Howells later mentioned the painting in a July 9, 1903, letter to Pyle: “I have turned a barn into a library here” - in Kittery Point, Maine - “and I wish you could see how I have placed that rich gift of yours...”
He stood benignly before a painting by his friend, Howard Pyle, who had given him the original of a famous book-illustration. He was as proud as a child to have on his study wall a painting by this artist.
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| Howard Pyle, photographed by Arthur Ernst Becher in 1902 |
A great stick of hickory is smoldering and gleaming fitfully in the fireplace before me. Its pungent fragrance scents the room. My pulse quickens to the magic aroma, and my thought flies back to a day in October 12 [sic 10] years ago when I first set eyes on Howard Pyle. He was standing, tall, broad and impressive, legs apart, hands clasped behind him, backed against another such open fire in his studio. The smell of burning hickory was in the air!In subsequent years, when asked to write about his teacher, Wyeth returned to this particular memory several times. Compare, for instance, the 1912 passage with this one from his introduction to Howard Pyle: A Chronicle of 1925:
I had come to him, as many had before me, for his help and guidance, and his first words to me will forever ring in my ears as a vital symbol of his teaching and an unceasing appeal to my conscience.
“My boy, you have come here for help. If so, you are here to live your best, and to work hard!” His broad, kindly face looked solemn behind those words, and from that moment I knew that he meant infinitely more to me than a mere teacher of illustration. It was this commanding spirit of earnestness, and of love, that made his leadership distinctive, and which has perpetuated in the hearts of all his pupils a deep affection kindred to that which one holds toward his own parents....
A great stick of hickory is smoldering and gleaming in the fireplace before me. Its pungent fragrance scents the room. My pulse quickens to the magic aroma and my thought flies back to a day in October, eighteen [sic 23] years ago, when I first saw Howard Pyle. He was standing, tall, broad and impressive, legs apart, hands clasped behind him, backed against another such open fire in his studio. The smell of burning hickory was in the air.It’s remarkably similar, as are two other known variants of 1921 and 1925. But when Wyeth was asked to contribute an introduction (and a color frontispiece) to the “Brandywine Edition” of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood in 1933 (which also featured illustrations by his teenaged son Andy) he expanded on his earlier reminiscences, infusing them with much more myth and magic. In many ways Wyeth’s words reflect the best of Pyle’s own prose, so here’s the bulk of them, in honor of the 110th anniversary:
I had come to him, as many had before me, for his help and guidance, and his first words to me will forever ring in my ears as an unceasing appeal to my conscience: “My boy, you have come here for help. Then you must live your best and work hard!” His broad, kindly face looked solemn as he spoke these words, and from that moment I knew that he meant infinitely more to me than a mere teacher of illustration. It was this commanding spirit of earnestness and of love that made his leadership distinctive, and which has perpetuated in the hearts of all his pupils a deep affection akin to that which one holds toward his own parents....
My most vivid recollection of Howard Pyle was gained during the first five minutes I knew him. He stood with his back to the blazing and crackling logs in his studio fireplace, his legs spaced apart, his arms akimbo. His towering figure seemed to lift to greater heights with the swiftly ascending smoke and sparks from the hearth behind him.
It happened on one of those blue and gold days in October. The air was sharp and keen. Moreover, it was my birthday [sic]. I was young, ambitious and impressionable. For years, it seemed, I had dreamed of this meeting. Success in winning this master’s interest and sympathy to the cause of my own artistic advancement seemed so much to ask, so remote, such a vain hope. But here I was at last, seated before him in the very room in which were born so many of the pictures I had breathlessly admired from boyhood. Paintings and drawings that had long since become a living and indispensable part of my own life.
And as Howard Pyle stood there, talking gently but with unmistakable emphasis, his large and genial countenance hypnotized me. The mobile mask of his face became more than individual. My rapid reflections were swept beyond the actual man. It was bewildering. I heard every modulation of his voice and I took note of his every word. Occasionally I would answer a question. I remember all this clearly. But a searching beyond his countenance persisted.
The soft top-light from the glass roof high above us poured down like a magical and illuminated mist over his magnificent head. The forehead was broad, spatial, and not too high, the frontal processes accented the shadowed caverns of the large and wide-set eyes. The well-defined brows were tremulously sensitive. Lifting toward the centre they would become ineffably wistful, then quickly dropping to a level line across the eyes the entire countenance became majestically severe, forceful, unrelenting. The recollection of the masks of Beethoven, Washington, Goethe, Keats, passed in swift succession before my vision and in a sudden grasp of the truth I realized that the artist’s face before me was actually a living composite of the men of history and romance which he had so magically and dramatically perpetuated on canvas. It was as though there existed a definite and precise genealogical tie between this living, pulsating countenance before me and the thrilling pictures of the men he had created whether of General Washington, Captain Kidd, Aaron Burr, Robin Hood, Sir Launcelot or numberless others. In a sudden relaxation of expression, certain curves and areas of the face would vividly suggest the soft mobility of Washington's features or the wise serenity of Franklin, or, perhaps, the nervous shrewdness of Jefferson.
In retrospect, and consequently with a better understanding of the processes of creative art, I have come to realize that power and conviction in dramatic expression (which is so salient a virtue in illustrative painting) lie fundamentally in its autobiographical nature - that, in each of us is something of everybody; if we but know, as artists, how to uncover and use it. Howard Pyle accomplished just this to startling degree as a phenomenal pictorial record he left testifies....
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| N. C. Wyeth, c.1903-04, via http://www.ncwyeth.org |
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| "The Old Violin" by Howard Pyle (1893) |
Interesting! But who wrote it? Well, on lifting the print from the cardboard, I discovered this, scrawled on the back:
“The Haunted House” was built, as it were, by Howard Pyle for Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s story “The Gold” in the December 1904 issue of Harper’s Monthly Magazine. There, however, it was titled “Catherine Duke quickened her steps.” Pyle subsequently rechristened it and included it in various exhibitions of his work. So, among other places, it traveled to Boston in 1906 and to Minneapolis in 1907. In between those two shows, it sat in Pyle’s studio for a bit, as can be seen in the corner of this photo taken in the late spring or summer of 1906. (“The Suicide” is its neighbor, by the way.)
Pyle, then, was painting - or, more likely, pretending to paint - “The Battle of Nashville” for the Minnesota Capitol building and preparing to begin “The Landing of Carteret” for the Essex County Court House. I am going to send you a black and white picture of an old house which I call “The Haunted House.” The picture has been rather a favorite with me, and I think that you, as an artist, will appreciate the decorative scheme of black and white - say in a dining room. Anyway, I want you to have the picture, partly because I like it myself, and largely because I hope you may like it. So if you will accept it with my affectionate regards you will add another bond to our friendship.Pyle inscribed the 24.75 x 16" black and white oil on canvas in red paint and shipped it off. I don’t know if Gilbert ever hung it in his dining room, but the original eventually landed back with Pyle’s grandson and its present and permanent address is now the Brandywine River Museum.
Then she raised her parasol, and they went slowly down to the beach together. They sat just behind a little bank of sand that half hid them from the board walk. Sylvester lay beside her, stretched at length in the hot sand. “What are you reading?” said he; and he took up the book that she had brought with her. It was Howells’s Lady of the Aroostook. “Oh yes!” said he, without awaiting her reply.
“Have you ever read it?” said she.
Sylvester laughed. “Well, rather,” he said. “Lovely, isn’t it? Wonderful how he holds the interest centred in just those few characters and bounded by the narrow rails of the sailing ship!”
She did not make an instant response. “I don’t know,” said she, presently. “I haven’t got that far in the book. Yes, I think it’s a very nice story. Mamma brought a lot of books down with her, and I just began reading this this morning.”
Sylvester looked up quickly. Then he looked down again and began idly turning over the pages. “Did you ever read Silas Lapham?” said he, after a little while.
“No,” said she. “Who was it wrote it?”
“Howells wrote that too,” said he, a little dryly; and then he closed the book and gave it back to Miss Lannon.
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| “Greyhound and Hare” by Antoine-Louis Barye |
Barye is one of the very few who have rightly expressed the animal nature.
I recall a thing by him of greyhounds killing hares. One of the hounds had a hare in its strong jaws and was crunching it in a cold-blooded way - absolutely without any feeling or passion.
A wild beast devouring another takes its food in a way natural to it, as a tree absorbs moisture, rather than as a creature bent on revenge.
When you throw your own self into the animal you make him human. You should consider him a being different from yourself.
Howard Pyle to Edmund Clarence Stedman, July 26, 1888.
The Hon. The Continental Congress, impelled by the dictates of duty, policy and necessity, having been pleased to dissolve the Connection which subsisted between this Country, and Great Britain, and to declare the United Colonies of North America, free and independent States: The several brigades are to be drawn up this evening on their respective Parades, at Six OClock, when the declaration of Congress, shewing the grounds and reasons of this measure, is to be read with an audible voice.
The General hopes this important Event will serve as a fresh incentive to every officer, and soldier, to act with Fidelity and Courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his Country depends (under God) solely on the success of our arms: And that he is now in the service of a State, possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit, and advance him to the highest Honors of a free Country.One hundred and fifteen years later, illustrator Howard Pyle was commissioned to commemorate the event for an article, “How the Declaration Was Received in the Old Thirteen,” by Charles D. Deshler in the July 1892 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.
That his eyes opened upon blue sky instead of upon painted or carved ceiling roused in him no astonishment. In service against the Turks and against the Genoese he had often slept in the open, waking when the morning light became strong enough to force its way through his eyelids. He lay awhile, conscious of great comfort and bodily well-being, coming slowly and lazily into full possession of his faculties. The air was fresh and warm, with a scent of thyme in it, and from somewhere in the near distance sea-birds mewed plaintively, after their kind. He dropped his eyes from the pale-blue sky and saw that though he lay upon turf - a hill it would seem, or the crest of a cliff - there was a stretch of tranquil sea before him, a narrow stretch, and beyond this a mountain range looming sheer and barren from the water's edge.
The sun must be rising behind it, he said to himself, for the tips of the serrated peaks glowed golden, momentarily brighter, so that it hurt his eyes to watch them. He wondered what mountains these could be, and then, all in a flash, it came upon him where he was - that this was Arbe, and that ridge the Velebic mountains of the main-land....
The woman who had saved his life half knelt, half sat behind him, and upon her knees his head had lain. At this moment she was leaning back a little, with her head and shoulders against a small tree which stood there, and her eyes were closed as if she were asleep.
I do not know just how much assistance I could be to you in the matter of pen drawing. It is a medium which I use but very little, except for the lighter and more decorative kind of illustrative work. If I can help you I shall be glad to do so.He added that “if you could bring your work to me every week, say, on Saturday afternoons, I would be very glad to criticize it for you and to give you such suggestions as I can - I shall not charge you anything for such criticism.” Then - on 19th - Pyle told her to meet him on Saturday, June 21st at his then-residence, “Delamore Place,” an airy old mansion at the corner of Clayton and Maple Streets. I gather he didn’t have her come to his studio either for propriety, or because he only worked till midday on Saturdays, or because he was doing a lot of work at home at that time (a number of his illustrations from 1893-96 are indeed set at Delamore).
into a room whose Oriental magnificence and splendor exceeded the possibility of his wildest imaginings. Upon the walls hung tapestries of heavy and Oriental damask, whilst a multitude of Eastern rugs of infinite magnificence and beauty were spread thickly upon the floor. The splendors of this apartment were brilliantly illuminated by the light of a score of perfumed waxen tapers burning in as many candlesticks, apparently of silver and of exquisite workmanship, and the furniture and appointments were of ebony inlaid with silver.
Upon a cushioned couch at the farther side of the room reclined a female figure clad in an exquisite négligé of yellow silk, and presenting so ravishing a beauty that had she been a houri from Paradise she could not more have dazzled the sight of the Rev. Enoch Miller. Near to her lay a lute inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl, which she had apparently only just the moment before allowed to slip from her indolent grasp. The hand that had perhaps just struck its silver strings now lightly held a cigarette, from which arose a thread of blue smoke perfuming the warm and fragrant air with the aroma of Turkish tobacco.
Here we have a wooden image sitting, garbed in the habiliments of a woman, with a heavy mat of jute, in lieu of hair, falling from her head to her waist. The figure is devoid of any lines indicative of feminine grace; it might be the figure of a boy - a wooden boy. The arms in those sleeves are not made of flesh and bones and muscle, but of good solid oak. The expression of the face betokens intense, sullen stupidity. A knight clad in armor stands in the doorway, leaning against the jamb for support, evidently bereft of strength - as well he may be - at the ugliness of the thing.Meanwhile, “He sang for her as they sat in the gardens”...
...represents a woman with a faded, washed-out face; a silly, simpering face; and whose right side has been developed at the expense of the left. And then, while gazing, one is stricken with deep compassion, as he perceives that this poor creature has curvature of the spine, and he wonders how, under the circumstances, she can even simper. In this figure also there are no lines to indicate the sex.
I am in great danger of grinding out conventional magazine illustrations for conventional magazine stories. I feel myself now to be at the height of my powers, and in the next ten or twelve years I should look to do the best work of my life. I do not think that it is right for me to spend so great a part of my time in manufacturing drawings for magazine stories which I cannot regard as having any really solid or permanent literary value. Mr. Cabell’s stories, for instance, are very clever, and far above the average of magazine literature, but they are neither exactly true to history nor exactly fanciful, and, whilst I have made the very best illustrations for them which I am capable of making, I feel that they are not true to medieval life, and that they lack a really permanent value such as I should now endeavor to present to the world.Of course, when Pyle wrote that letter, he only had four and a half years to live - not ten or twelve - and - despite his protestations - he and Harper’s Monthly continued on a similar path until his death.
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