CHAPTER TWO
Art School and After
hroughout the next seven years, from 1885 to 1892, Rackham sat on his stool in the insurance office and brought to his work there the methodical application and accurate accountancy which he showed in business affairs for the rest of his life. From his rooms in Buckingham Street he sent occasional contributions to the cheaper illustrated papers. His first crude published drawings had appeared in Scraps of 4th October 1884, illustrating the thesis: ‘Mothers in Ceylon have a curious way of preventing their children from eating too much. A fine thread is tied round the child before it commences its meal, and when the thread breaks, the child is considered to have had enough.’ Rackham demonstrated this with the minimum of subtlety. Another drawing, in Scraps of 15th November 1884, shows a little boy and a cat both trying to get their feet into their mouths, the cat with more success. His next drawing ‘The Old Year and the New’, published in Illustrated Bits of 3rd January 1885, was much more ambitious and attempted a light vein of prophecy, beginning with a piece of wishful thinking, the ‘Triumphant Return of Wolseley and Gordon’. Rackham was already showing an interest in studies of animals; an egregious frog represented ‘1884 Leap Year’. while lions and kangaroos played a test match Australia v. England. The next published29
