Unhandsomely Illustrated

I BEGAN to read the Contribution called “Handsomely Illustrated,” in a recent Club, with all the pleasant anticipation of the small boy who sees his contemporary about to come in for an application of the maternal slipper. (Let me correct myself and say paternal, for the Contributor has done his utmost for the credit of the Club by betraying his sex.) I read with interest and sympathy, but finished disappointed. Was it possible that he had failed to bring the slipper down on the right spot, — which meant, of course, the one I was thinking of? Should that bad boy still go unpunished for that particular sin ? Discipline forbid ! Not if I have to give him what he deserves myself !

“ He [the illustrator] derives his idea from the text just as the reader derives his,” remarks the Contributor. But there are times when we are forced sadly to doubt the truth of this statement, in fact, to wonder whether the illustrator derives his idea from the text at all. “ Sophronia sat in the twilight pondering,” Sophronia being represented in the story as a gentle, quiet New England maid. Illustration, a thick-lipped, fierceeyed, disheveled, tropical sort of creature whom one suspects of mixed descent. Or Alicia’s straitened circumstances and narrow village life are happily indicated by a modish, low-cut, evening frock. Two generations ago we could forgive a Becky Sharp who was apparently a decrepit Italian hag. And in 1840, when the burning of the Steamer Lexington was pictured, we were much edified to see all the gentlemen, escaping on mattresses or floating in the water, prudently attired in high hats. We should not, I think, have caviled if we had seen them courteously removing those stately coverings in deference to the ladies whom they were helping to places of refuge. But times have changed since then, and our demands have changed with them. It appears, however, that methods have not changed so much as we are sometimes led to fancy. With all the boasted advance in illustration, Sophronia’s West Indian countenance and Alicia’s low-necked dress seem to my humble perception to belong to the same stage of development as the early Becky and the “ toppers ” of the Lexington’s passengers.

Another weakness we should surely have outgrown. “ Isabel watched Robert’s changing expression,” remarks an author in a late magazine. But in the illustration, Isabel’s attention is determinedly fixed upon a spot on the wall, about on a level with Robert’s waist. Again I am sent back to the past, this time to those large wall-engravings that within not so very long a memory no gentleman’s parlor was without. “ The Marriage of Pocahontas ” was especially admirable for the ingenuity of the artist in providing separate points of attention for all the numerous wedding guests, and still avoiding the necessity of having a single one glance in the direction of the pair just making their vows to Heaven. “ The Declaration of Independence ” presents the same effect with no less success, the august Signers showing an entire lack of interest in the great document before them, and bending their minds, to judge from their evident uneasy self-consciousness and rapt gaze at vacancy, on having their pictures taken. The illustrator who gave us Isabel cannot rival these examples in point of elaborate composition, but so far as his subject permits he has followed their tradition faithfully.

I quite agree with the Contributor. Illustrations should illustrate. Is it too much to ask that they also make a nearer approach to that realism which we are so often assured is the most striking characteristic of our time ?