AMERICAN FRIENDS
United States. The Rackham books, both in their limited and their trade editions, had long established themselves in the book-collectors’ market on both sides of the Atlantic, but it is noticeable that there was now a considerable increase in the number of letters he received from American publishers, collectors, and simple admirers. In 1923, for example, a group of students at the Senior High School, Trenton, New Jersey, chose him, as a ‘noted man’ whose life had made ‘an especial appeal to them’, to be a ‘sort of “guardian” ’ for them; and they begged ‘a little letter of kindly interest’. Rackham responded gallantly after a pause for thought: ‘If you possibly can, be makers & not dealers. Aim at the highest quality in your work. Go on improving it. Never be satisfied with it. Aim at taking pleasure in work for its own sake, & not for what you can make out of it.’ It was exactly what he had done himself.
Diving into a pile of surviving ‘fan’ letters we find one from Rochester, New York, written in the late nineteen-twenties, which commences ‘My dear Sir Arthur’, and another containing the apology: ‘Everybody here in New York calls you “Sir Arthur”, and that explains why I began my letter that way.’ (A Melbourne correspondent had already asked: “How shall I begin? Not Mr Rackham surely! It doesn’t sound a bit like the artist spirit who creates those wonderful fairy people. …’) A letter from Texas came from ‘a co-ed with red hair and artistic appreciations’. European correspondents, who had long addressed him as ‘Dear Master’, were surpassed by the Viennese lady who began ‘Most Venerated Master … please fulfill my passionate wish to me’. Many of the letters, particularly those from isolated parts of America, are moving evidence of the joy which his books brought, particularly to the young and to invalids who could not travel to art galleries.
Rackham’s American fame was greatly stimulated by profitable exhibitions of his work held at Scott and Fowles’, New York, in 1919, 1920 and 1922. The New York World, discussing his Comus
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