Page:Arthur Rackham (Hudson).pdf/124

AMERICAN FRIENDS

For a number of years after 1920 Rackham’s output was maintained, and with it his high earning power, which was now considerably supplemented by an income from investments. In 1920 came his illustrations for Irish Fairy Tales by the poet James Stephens, who told Rackham that it was ‘a great pleasure’ and ‘a great privilege’ to work with him. Walter Starkie recalls one evening from their friendship:

 

‘Arthur Rackham considered drawing a more important accomplishment for his daughter than writing, for drawing was more natural: it was like dancing to the rhythms that spring up spontaneously in a child’s mind. Barbara when a tiny tot danced one evening in the garden for James Stephens who was with us. I fiddled an Irish fairy reel and the little sylph-like figure with her fair hair glistening in the moonbeams flitted here and there under the trees, while the poet intoned softly his poem “The Whisperer”:

The Moon was round!
And, as I walked along,
There was no sound,
Save when the wind with long
Low hushes whispered to the ground
A snatch of Song.’

Remembering another occasion when Augustus John was present, Walter Starkie sees John and Rackham, in his mind’s eye, ‘as Big Claus and Little Claus, and between them I spy the diminutive Pan-like figure of James Stephens seated cross-legged upon a table thrumming a guitar and gazing wistfully at the two painters’.

The appearance of Eden Phillpotts’s A Dish of Apples brought a characteristically appreciative letter from its author (24th September 1921): ‘I am immensely pleased at the charm & originality of your

118