Page:Arthur Rackham (Hudson).pdf/104

THE IMPACT OF 1914

the supernatural, of goblins, elves and fairies, and many are based on actual fairy tales; but there are also delightful straightforward drawings of children at the seaside or in the Broad Walk, Kensington Gardens; there is the well-known ‘Cupid’s Alley’ (see page 59), which illustrates verses by Austin Dobson, and there are subject pictures and landscapes of wide variety. It was important that such a book should be drawn together by an introductory essay, and natural for Rackham to invite Barrie to write it. The answer he received was cordial but disappointing:

 

‘Dear Rackham,

‘I wish I could, but I have promised to write two introductions this autumn, and had better not undertake more. Added to which I would be very bad at it as I have no skill in criticism. I am very glad to hear of the book and look forward to it. You have no greater admirer than myself, and few there are more warmly indebted to you.

‘Yours very sincerely
J. M. Barrie’

Rackham was fortunate in obtaining Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch as a substitute for Barrie. ‘Q’ not only admired Rackham’s work; he also thoroughly understood a child’s instinctive longing for the imaginative and fanciful. ‘To this instant, constant, intellectual need of childhood no one in our day,’ he wrote, ‘has ministered so bountifully or so whole-heartedly as Mr Rackham.’ And Quiller-Couch was happy, too, in associating the random, impressionistic nature of much of the Book of Pictures with ‘the wayward visions that tease every true artist’s mind, while he bends over the day’s work’.

‘As one who has been doing the day’s work in another form of art, and for more years than he cares to count, I wish it were possible for

98