AMERICAN FRIENDS
exhibition in 1922, wrote of him as ‘always going ahead, never backward’. Americans have pioneered the bibliographical study of Rackham, a field which his industry and the multiplicity of variant editions combine to make exceedingly complex. A short bibliography of Rackham’s work by Frederick Coykendall was privately printed in 1922 at Mount Vernon, New York, designed by Bruce Rogers. It was followed fourteen years later by the bibliography compiled by Sarah Briggs Latimore and Grace Clark Haskell, published in Los Angeles, which remains the fullest bibliographical record available.
During the nineteen-twenties it became increasingly clear that Rackham would sooner or later have to accede to the requests of his American admirers that he should come over to ‘pick up his laurels’. He went at last in 1927, not only with the object of meeting some of these friends, and of hanging a large exhibition of more than seventy of his works (including the drawings for The Tempest) at Scott and Fowles’ gallery, New York, but also with the intention of talking business to publishers and editors. Alyn Williams, President of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, and his American wife were Rackham’s companions on the voyage in the liner Republic in early November. ‘Mrs Williams, thank heaven, had never heard of me before,’ Rackham told his wife. In the ship’s gymnasium Rackham and Williams went through a series of exercises designed to make Rackham fatter and Williams thinner. These Rackham illustrated in a long letter home. Protesting at a suggestion that he should diet, Williams told the instructor: ‘Look at Rackham, talk to him, he eats more than I do.’ (‘Probably not true,’ added Rackham in parentheses). ‘ “Oh, he may eat what he likes,” says the pro: much to Williams’ disgust.’
The voyage was smooth, but Rackham found it rather boring and depressing, although he could report: ‘The pianist Percy Grainger is on board & played at the concert. … He runs round the deck several
123
