Arthur Rackham
A Note of Appreciation
Arthur Rackham is a genial Englishman without eccentricities or idiosyncracies, who lives a serene uneventful life with his wife—who is also a gifted artist—and their daughter, in a studio appropriately situated near Primrose Hill in his native London. In this peaceful spot, far from the more exciting bohemian atmosphere of Chelsea, fragrant with the sweet odours of lilac and laburnum, and at Houghton, Arundel, his country home, he works patiently, like one of those quaint, keen-eyed, good-natured gnomes he loves to draw and which he in many ways resembles. It is easy for a visitor to discover the gentle humour and the even gentler pathos of Charles Lamb behind Rackham’s large tortoise-shell spectacles, but it is difficult to