THE IMPACT OF 1914
illustrated, his inspiration showing no decline. His drawings for Swinburne’s poems of childhood, The Springtide of Life (1918), again attracted the admiration of Edmund Gosse, who expressed his appreciation in a preface and told Rackham personally (18th October 1918): ‘This volume will not merely be the best book of the present art-season, but a joy to all sensitive people for years and years to come.’ It may nevertheless be doubted whether Rackham was at his best with baby worship on such an intensive scale. The immediate aftermath of the war brought Some British Ballads (1919), and the two volumes of Cinderella (1919) and The Sleeping Beauty (1920), retold by C. S. Evans, in which his gift for silhouette was given full play (see pages 110 and 111).
It was during these years that Rackham was most active in the Art-Workers’ Guild. He served on its committee in 1917–18, and in 1919 followed such distinguished predecessors as Walter Crane, William Morris, Sir George Clausen and W. R. Lethaby into the Master’s chair. Among the lectures at which he presided in his year of office were several whose subjects reflected his interests – notably those on ‘Modern methods of Process Reproduction’, ‘Colour Lithography’ and Fairy-tale Illustrations’. The Guild also held an exhibition of Art for Children during this year.
A writer in the Sunday Times after Rackham’s death remembered that in the discussions which followed the fortnightly papers ‘he spoke with quiet decision and an elusive sense of humour that showed itself in a twinkling eye and a dry smile’. He served the Guild with scrupulous devotion. A self-portrait in oils, dated 1924, hangs in the hall of the Guild to remind a later generation of what manner of man he was. It shows him wearing a bow-tie and a grey waistcoat; he holds a pencil in one hand, a sketch-book in the other. There is nothing smug about this face, of which the lines are sensitive and thoughtful to the point of severity (in Rackham’s case an introspective exaggeration). The background shows the River Thames, Waterloo Bridge108
