ART SCHOOL AND AFTER
Neither of these books can be favourably compared with the best of Rackham’s later work, but they show him at an interesting phase of his development. The fiend who blows the horn in ‘The Lay of St Cuthbert’s; or The Devil’s Dinner-Party’ in Ingoldsby is recognizably the same fellow as ‘The Influenza Fiend’ of 1893 and the Caliban from the Lambs’ Tales of 1899, but in his mere ugliness he is a crude precursor of later devils. The artist’s ever-increasing popularity during the next decade led to the publisher’s decision to re-issue Ingoldsby and the Tales from Shakespeare, in 1907 and 1909 respectively, with additional illustrations. In some respects this was regrettable. Rackham provided admirable new frontispieces for both books and worked on many of the old colour plates. The 1907 Ingoldsby, in its vellum-bound limited edition, is valued by collectors, but the book as a whole lacks consistency of vision. Authentic Rackham is to be found in the frontispiece and occasionally elsewhere, but might seem to have been imposed on a medley borrowed from Beardsley, Hugh Thomson and the monkish slapstick of John Hassall. By 1907 Rackham had not only outdistanced his own earlier self but had also outgrown the coarse humours of Barham.
When Rackham was asked by The Bookman (October 1925) to contribute to a symposium on ‘The Worst Time in My Life’, he said that for several years at the beginning of his career he had had ‘far from an easy time’, but added that the Boer War ‘was a very thin time indeed for me, and may be considered the worst time I have ever had’. Rackham had little liking or aptitude for the sort of journalistic work then in demand; he realized, moreover, that the camera would soon largely supplant the artist in illustrated journalism. His financial success as an illustrator, though merited and overdue, was also a matter of practical necessity.
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