known wood-engraver, had long been seeking for an illustrator for Washington Irving's ‘Sketch-Book,’ when he fell in with one of Caldecott's sketches for ‘London Society.’ The result was the volume of selections from the ‘Sketch-Book,’ which appeared at the close of 1875 under the title of ‘Old Christmas.’ This book, in which artist and engraver co-operated in the most congenial manner, is an almost typical example of fortunate sympathy between author and artist. In 1876 it was succeeded by ‘Bracebridge Hall,’ another of Irving's books, and henceforth Mr. Caldecott's position as a popular book illustrator was secured. In 1877 he illustrated Mrs. Comyns Carr's ‘North Italian Folk,’ in 1879 Mr. Blackburn's ‘Breton Folk,’ in 1883 ‘Æsop's Fables with Modern Instances,’ and he supplied designs to stories by Mrs. J. H. Ewing, Mrs. Frederick Locker, and others. But his chief achievement was the series of coloured children's books, which began in 1878 by ‘John Gilpin’ and ‘The House that Jack Built,’ to be succeeded in the ensuing year by Goldsmith's ‘Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog’ and ‘The Babes in the Wood.’ He continued to produce two of these books annually until the Christmas before his death, when the list closed with the ‘Elegy on Madam Blaize’ and ‘The Great Panjandrum Himself.’ Strangely enough, he had not intended to make any further additions. Besides these, he contributed Christmas sheets and other illustrations (notably some excellent sketches of life at Monaco) to the ‘Graphic’ newspaper. In 1882 he became a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and he exhibited there and at the Grosvenor Gallery and Royal Academy. He modelled occasionally, one of his first efforts in this way being a bronze bas-relief representing a ‘Horse Fair in Brittany.’ At the time of his death, which took place on 12 Feb. 1886 at St. Augustine, Florida, whither he had gone to escape an English winter, he was engaged in making sketches of American life and manners for the ‘Graphic.’ His health, owing to the sequels of severe rheumatic fever, had long been in a critical state. Yet nothing could suppress his native cheeriness. ‘The quality and quantity of his work done manfully for years under these painful conditions,’ says one who knew him, ‘was heroic, and to the anxious inquiries of friends he was always “quite well,” although unable to mount two flights of stairs.’ He was married in 1880, but left no family.
Caldecott's genius was thoroughly English, and he delighted in portraying English country and out-of-door life. He had a keen love, dating from his Chester and Whitchurch days, for the quaint and old-fashioned in furniture and costume, and the scenes and accessories of the latter half of the eighteenth century especially attracted him. In grace and refinement he was fully the rival of Stothard, but while possessing an equal appreciation of feminine and childish beauty, he far excelled that artist in vivacious humour and sportive fancy. As may be seen from the posthumous paper published in the ‘English Illustrated Magazine’ for March 1886, he drew horses and dogs and the accidents of the hunting-field with the enthusiasm of a sportsman. To these qualities he added the pictorial memory of a Bewick, and he thoroughly understood the capabilities and limitations of colour-printing, by which his most successful books were produced. His skill in adapting his designs to the necessities of the process—a skill in which he was ably seconded by Mr. Edmund Evans, who printed them—and his unerring instinct for simple and effective composition, lent a special charm to his work. But this would have been of little effect without other characteristics. What was most winning in his drawings was their wholesome happy spirit, their frank joy of life, and their manly, kindly tone. Few English artists have left so large a legacy of pure and playful mirth.
[Communications from the Rev. Alfred Caldecott, M.A., Mr. Armstrong, Mr. J. D. Cooper, &c.]
CALDECOTT, THOMAS (1744–1833), bibliophile and Shakespearean student, was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship and proceeded B.C.L. on 24 Oct. 1770. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple; afterwards became a bencher, and was for many years a prominent member of the Oxford circuit. He published, in continuation of Sir James Burrow's ‘Reports,’ two volumes of ‘Reports of Cases relative to the duty and office of a Justice of the Peace from 1776 to 1785’ (2 vols. 1786, 1789). Caldecott died at the age of ninety, at Dartford, at the end of May 1833. He best deserves to be remembered as a book collector and Shakespearean student. He laid the foundations of his library at an early age, and at his death it was singularly rich in sixteenth-century literature. He was a regular attendant at the great book sales, and many of Farmer's, Steevens's, West's, and Pearson's books passed to him. He bequeathed to the Bodleian an invaluable collection of Shakespearean quartos, some of which cost him the merest trifle, but the bulk of his library was sold by auction by Messrs. Sotheby between 2 and 7 Dec. 1833. Dr. Dibdin, the bibliographer, described the
