LEONARD LESLIE BROOKE was born at Birkenhead on September 24,1862. He was of Irish ancestry, a descendant of Henry Brooke of County Cavan who wrote The Fool of Quality, a novel in five volumes published in 1766.
Childhood was then an unexplored continent. “Children were still the immature young of man; they had not been discovered as personalities, temperaments, individuals,” says E.V.Lucas. “But the way toward a nicer appreciation of the child’s own peculiar characteristics was being sought by at least two writers of the eighteenth century, each of whom was before his time: Henry Brooke, who in The Fool of Quality first drew a small boy with a sense of fun, and William Blake, who was the first to see how exquisitely worth study a child's mind may be."
Blake's Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, gave children a new place in the world, and I like to speculate on what Henry Brooke might have said had he written a letter to William Blake. No letter was written so far as I know. There is no record that novelist and poet were ever in communication. But there is a letter from William Blake which bridges the century that lies between the birth of Leslie Brooke with his clear recognition of a child's right to fun, beauty and truth on his own terms and the small boy depicted by an Irish ancestor with a daring sense of fun. And so, since I propose to rely on Mr. Brooke's own letters in this personal sketch of a singularly beautiful life which came to a close at Hampstead on May Day 1940, I will take from the pages of Behold This Dreamer! this letter from William Blake. “Walter de la Mare does not comment on The Reverend Dr. Trusler to whom the letter was written. He merely places the Blake letter under the heading Reason and Imagination and leaves
the reader to use his own imagination as to what Dr. Trusler may have said. Blake's use of capital letters indicates the need he felt for making a rousing reply.
Fun I love, but too much Fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than Fun, & Happiness is better than Mirth. I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision. I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The Tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity, . . . and some scarce see Nature at all. ... As a man is, so he sees. You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil &; Milton in so high a rank of Art? Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason? ...
I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can
Elucidate My Visions, & Particularly they have been Elucidated by Children, who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my Pictures than I even hoped. Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity. Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But There is a vast Majority on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation. . . .
In this dark hour for childhood over the world and with Blake's water colors commanding fabulous prices in American auction rooms, we probably find his words more significant than did Dr. Trusler in the age of reason. Songs of Innocence have become poignant everyday experience. The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found are no longer lovely poems in a book. They are ways of life in a strange world from which for millions of children the sense of security and the right to happiness have disappeared. Yet out of darkness and terror comes Johnny Crow with his perennial welcome into a sunlit garden.
“Like Johnny Crow, the abbot of Reichenau did dig and sow till he made a little garden," wrote Helen Waddell in her Wandering Scholars in the midst of an enchanting picture of a medieval garden and the poet who planted it. On learning of Leslie Brooke's pleasure in his discovery that Johnny Crow had made his way into her book, Miss Waddell sent him this message: “Tell Mr. Brooke I consider Johnny Crow a great book. I give a copy to every child I know.”
As Johnny Crow is at home in any garden whether of the ninth century or the twentieth, so Leslie Brooke was at home in any age and in any country he traveled in or read about. “He was a man of wide interests, ranging from fine printed books to gardening, as well as a water colorist, a portrait draughtsman and above all an illustrator of children's books who had imagination and charm,” The London Times said of him.
“My pleasure in pen drawing began early in copying Tenniel as a small boy — so that when the time came that small commissions began to arrive from publishers that seemed the natural medium to use for them. I began drawing for Blackie and Casselk Also, I succeeded "Walter Crane as illustrator of Mrs. Molesworth's annual story for Macmillan's and held the job through a number of years.
“My connection with Frederick Warne and Company began in the winter of 1895-96 when I suggested to them the idea of a new volume of the Nursery Rhymes. As a result The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang, was published in 1897 and since then all my books have been published by Warne. Next came Lear's Nonsense Songs which appeared in two parts The Pelican Chorus drawn in London in 1 899 and The Jumblies done at Harwell in 1900.”
At this village near the Berkshire downs the Brookes lived for a number of years. In 1894 Leslie Brooke had married Sybil Diana, a daughter of the Reverend Stopford Brooke, who was his cousin. To the two sons born of their marriage their father dedicated Johnny Crow’s Garden, published in 1903, but it is to Mrs. Brooke he gives credit for suggesting that he put Johnny Crow into a book. “There never was a time when the name of Johnny Crow was not familiar to me,” he says, “yet I had never thought of making a picture book of his garden until Mrs. Brooke suggested it.”
It was while living at Harwell that Leslie Brooke illustrated Travels Round Our Village, an adult book by Eleanor G.Hayden.
He says of it, “There are chapters in it that I think you might like. As to the drawings which were mostly done at the turn of the century, — so long ago that I may speak of them, — I think that they have caught something of the hard roughness of surface of the Berkshire village life that is unconscious of its own underlying humanity. ‘The Village’ was West Hundred, but the book, both in text and illustrations, is an amalgam of three neighboring villages — “West and East Hundred and Harwell (where we ourselves lived) and there are few figures in my share that were not drawn directly from, or from memory of, individual inhabitants, if not always from the same person that the author had in mind. Possibly had the illustrations been done with less respect for fact they might have been more amusing!”
It is interesting to note the effect of this close study of village life upon the characters who figure in The Golden Goose Book whether animal or human kind. This picture book, worth its weight in gold, was done in four parts during the Harwell period, as was Johnny Crow's Party.
In London again, between 1909 and the War years, drawings were made for The House in the Wood, a selection from Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Tailor and the Crow, The Truth About Old King Cole, whose author, G. F. Hill, a distinguished authority on coins and medals, was years later made head of the British Museum. The first part of Ring o’ Roses was also published before the War.
It was in 1921 that I met Leslie Brooke for the first time in his studio in St. John's Wood. He was finding it hard to go on with his unfinished drawings for the second part of Ring o’ Roses, for he was not in touch with any children. The War was over, but his eldest son, Leonard, had not come home. He was killed in action in 1918 while serving in the Royal Air Force. I had just come from a stimulating visit of several weeks to the children of the Devastated Regions of Northern France. There I had sensed with fresh insight the potential power of the picture book in freeing the spirit of childhood. Ring o’ Roses must be finished. The children need it, I urged. Mr, Brooke was eager to know everything I could tell him of picture books in action in American libraries and homes, in French libraries and schools. Out of that first exhilarating meeting grew a strong friendship fed by frequent interchange of letters and books.
We met again at his home in the village of Cumnor in 1927. Ten years later, in 1937, there was time for a more leisurely stay with the Brookes in Hampstead, close by Hampstead Heath. They had moved from Cumnor a few years before to be near their son who was living with his family at Hampstead. It is to Peter, Henry Brooke's eldest son, that Johnny Crow's New Garden, done at Cumnor and published in 1933, is dedicated. Peter, nearing his fourth year, darted in and out of his own house and his grandfather's like a swallow. He was already beginning to draw pictures as well as to enjoy them. There was time to look over old drawings in the studio, time for a long morning at Keats' house culminating with a toast in mulberry wine made by the Curator from the fruit of the tree under which Keats wrote The Nightingale. This was highly amusing to Mr. Brooke. There was time also for tea with Robert Charles, the lucky author of A Roundabout Turn, time for walks and drives about the countryside in April, time for delightful talk, for Leslie Brooke had the happy faculty of fully identifying himself with the interests of a friend. "Whether by letter or in conversation he entered in, with ready wit or with silent understanding of a mood for silence. Small wonder that Johnny Crow became "the perfect host.”
It had been my intention to present Leslie Brooke as a perceptive critic of the work of younger contemporary artists and in so doing to take from his letters such comments on the books I had sent him as personal gifts from year to year as seemed representative, but I have been unable at this time to achieve a design in harmony with his taste and my own and I quote only from one letter, dated December 29, 1938.
“I am having such a feast that I only wonder whether I can convey any digested impressions of the books before the year is out. They are so individual this year and their personalities are so varied.”
“I have least knowledge so far of Nino(1) which seems one of the most beautiful. I can only say at present that it seems to have had one individual influence over it all the time in the making, and that a delicate refinement of mind. (There is always something to be anticipated more eagerly when there is ‘Written and Illustrated by’ on the title page.)
“With The Three Policemen I had a wholly new experience with its c Written and Illustrated.’ For I never recall a book exactly to compare with it. Its assurance is so delightful and with it all so simple. And what remains most for me after an hour of surprised enjoyment — even astonished enjoyment — is the portrait of William Pene du Bois on the dust wrapper. He knows such a lot of things — and such a lot about drawing them — yes, and shading them, too. And every minute of the time he realizes that he is solemnly pulling my leg. And at the end he turns out to be that very healthy, wholesome boy, with a face of real quality. The drawings from pp. 47 to 57 seem to include many of his characteristics, one of them being a remarkable sense of volume.
“Then I come to Mei Li (which I am learning to call May Lee). This book is a most thorough and conscientious piece of work, on a par with the painting of an elaborate picture. What strikes me first is the amount of skill shown in the blending of groups of figures with a background of buildings — or of another smaller group of figures across the pages, attending always to the blocks of text which have always an integral effect in the design. The blending of the figures with the landscape across the pages in the Bridge outside the City (with the beggar girl) — and specially in the scene when they arrived at the Great Square which seems to me wonderfully good pattern gives me a lot of pleasure. But besides all this Mr. Handforth is carrying on a lot of activities — there is the sense of a family party of the Wangs out for the excursion — and the anxiety about their getting back too late — fended off by Lidza the beggar, and in between one gets a sort of impression of the family relationships — Uncle Wang and San Yu, and the circus folk. The modelling of many of the heads is a pleasure in itself. It is a book for artists and author and publisher and printer all to be proud of, for it remains throughout a children's picture book.
“The Cautious Carp(2) (perfect title) comes as a very happy relaxation in these strenuous days. It recalls the German animal picture books of more than fifty years ago — with Wilhelm Busch at their head, but it is on the whole more kindly, less callous, than they. I am looking forward to trying it on Peter who will, I think, appreciate the simplicity of it — for the drawings are so straightforward that they hardly require the explanatory rhyme, while the mechanism of the various ‘plots’ is as it were rather more casual — less inevitable — less ineluctable than the German — who had a less kindly sense of Fate than Mr. Radlov's. These, I take it, are all drawn direct on the stone, and in this the color is very well managed. It's very cleverly done, for the effect of the atmosphere in the different stories is varied. ‘The Porcupine's strange experience’ and (opposite) ‘Where is the Ball?’ are excellent specimens of this variation in atmosphere by color, as they are of the quality of the humor, while ‘How the Little Bird Escaped’ shows in ‘And put it in a cage’ very understanding drawing of two types of children.”
(1)By Valenti Angelo (Viking, 1938)
(2)By Nikolay Ernestovich Radlov
From The Horn Book for May, 1941
Childhood was then an unexplored continent. “Children were still the immature young of man; they had not been discovered as personalities, temperaments, individuals,” says E.V.Lucas. “But the way toward a nicer appreciation of the child’s own peculiar characteristics was being sought by at least two writers of the eighteenth century, each of whom was before his time: Henry Brooke, who in The Fool of Quality first drew a small boy with a sense of fun, and William Blake, who was the first to see how exquisitely worth study a child's mind may be."
Blake's Songs of Innocence, published in 1789, gave children a new place in the world, and I like to speculate on what Henry Brooke might have said had he written a letter to William Blake. No letter was written so far as I know. There is no record that novelist and poet were ever in communication. But there is a letter from William Blake which bridges the century that lies between the birth of Leslie Brooke with his clear recognition of a child's right to fun, beauty and truth on his own terms and the small boy depicted by an Irish ancestor with a daring sense of fun. And so, since I propose to rely on Mr. Brooke's own letters in this personal sketch of a singularly beautiful life which came to a close at Hampstead on May Day 1940, I will take from the pages of Behold This Dreamer! this letter from William Blake. “Walter de la Mare does not comment on The Reverend Dr. Trusler to whom the letter was written. He merely places the Blake letter under the heading Reason and Imagination and leaves
the reader to use his own imagination as to what Dr. Trusler may have said. Blake's use of capital letters indicates the need he felt for making a rousing reply.
Fun I love, but too much Fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than Fun, & Happiness is better than Mirth. I feel that a Man may be happy in This World. And I know that This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision. I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike. To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is far more beautiful than the Sun, & a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The Tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity, . . . and some scarce see Nature at all. ... As a man is, so he sees. You certainly Mistake, when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not to be found in This World. To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination, & I feel Flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil &; Milton in so high a rank of Art? Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the Imagination, which is Spiritual Sensation, & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason? ...
I am happy to find a Great Majority of Fellow Mortals who can
Elucidate My Visions, & Particularly they have been Elucidated by Children, who have taken a greater delight in contemplating my Pictures than I even hoped. Neither Youth nor Childhood is Folly or Incapacity. Some Children are Fools & so are some Old Men. But There is a vast Majority on the side of Imagination or Spiritual Sensation. . . .
In this dark hour for childhood over the world and with Blake's water colors commanding fabulous prices in American auction rooms, we probably find his words more significant than did Dr. Trusler in the age of reason. Songs of Innocence have become poignant everyday experience. The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found are no longer lovely poems in a book. They are ways of life in a strange world from which for millions of children the sense of security and the right to happiness have disappeared. Yet out of darkness and terror comes Johnny Crow with his perennial welcome into a sunlit garden.
“Like Johnny Crow, the abbot of Reichenau did dig and sow till he made a little garden," wrote Helen Waddell in her Wandering Scholars in the midst of an enchanting picture of a medieval garden and the poet who planted it. On learning of Leslie Brooke's pleasure in his discovery that Johnny Crow had made his way into her book, Miss Waddell sent him this message: “Tell Mr. Brooke I consider Johnny Crow a great book. I give a copy to every child I know.”
As Johnny Crow is at home in any garden whether of the ninth century or the twentieth, so Leslie Brooke was at home in any age and in any country he traveled in or read about. “He was a man of wide interests, ranging from fine printed books to gardening, as well as a water colorist, a portrait draughtsman and above all an illustrator of children's books who had imagination and charm,” The London Times said of him.
Concerning the facts of his personal history, Mr. Brooke wrote in 1928, “There is really so little to tell. I was born at Birkenhead and received most of my art training at the Schools of the Royal Academy in London. My brother and I were —always drawing like any other children — and I went on drawing; there is my whole story.
“My pleasure in pen drawing began early in copying Tenniel as a small boy — so that when the time came that small commissions began to arrive from publishers that seemed the natural medium to use for them. I began drawing for Blackie and Casselk Also, I succeeded "Walter Crane as illustrator of Mrs. Molesworth's annual story for Macmillan's and held the job through a number of years.
“My connection with Frederick Warne and Company began in the winter of 1895-96 when I suggested to them the idea of a new volume of the Nursery Rhymes. As a result The Nursery Rhyme Book, edited by Andrew Lang, was published in 1897 and since then all my books have been published by Warne. Next came Lear's Nonsense Songs which appeared in two parts The Pelican Chorus drawn in London in 1 899 and The Jumblies done at Harwell in 1900.”
At this village near the Berkshire downs the Brookes lived for a number of years. In 1894 Leslie Brooke had married Sybil Diana, a daughter of the Reverend Stopford Brooke, who was his cousin. To the two sons born of their marriage their father dedicated Johnny Crow’s Garden, published in 1903, but it is to Mrs. Brooke he gives credit for suggesting that he put Johnny Crow into a book. “There never was a time when the name of Johnny Crow was not familiar to me,” he says, “yet I had never thought of making a picture book of his garden until Mrs. Brooke suggested it.”
It was while living at Harwell that Leslie Brooke illustrated Travels Round Our Village, an adult book by Eleanor G.Hayden.
He says of it, “There are chapters in it that I think you might like. As to the drawings which were mostly done at the turn of the century, — so long ago that I may speak of them, — I think that they have caught something of the hard roughness of surface of the Berkshire village life that is unconscious of its own underlying humanity. ‘The Village’ was West Hundred, but the book, both in text and illustrations, is an amalgam of three neighboring villages — “West and East Hundred and Harwell (where we ourselves lived) and there are few figures in my share that were not drawn directly from, or from memory of, individual inhabitants, if not always from the same person that the author had in mind. Possibly had the illustrations been done with less respect for fact they might have been more amusing!”
It is interesting to note the effect of this close study of village life upon the characters who figure in The Golden Goose Book whether animal or human kind. This picture book, worth its weight in gold, was done in four parts during the Harwell period, as was Johnny Crow's Party.
In London again, between 1909 and the War years, drawings were made for The House in the Wood, a selection from Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Tailor and the Crow, The Truth About Old King Cole, whose author, G. F. Hill, a distinguished authority on coins and medals, was years later made head of the British Museum. The first part of Ring o’ Roses was also published before the War.
It was in 1921 that I met Leslie Brooke for the first time in his studio in St. John's Wood. He was finding it hard to go on with his unfinished drawings for the second part of Ring o’ Roses, for he was not in touch with any children. The War was over, but his eldest son, Leonard, had not come home. He was killed in action in 1918 while serving in the Royal Air Force. I had just come from a stimulating visit of several weeks to the children of the Devastated Regions of Northern France. There I had sensed with fresh insight the potential power of the picture book in freeing the spirit of childhood. Ring o’ Roses must be finished. The children need it, I urged. Mr, Brooke was eager to know everything I could tell him of picture books in action in American libraries and homes, in French libraries and schools. Out of that first exhilarating meeting grew a strong friendship fed by frequent interchange of letters and books.
We met again at his home in the village of Cumnor in 1927. Ten years later, in 1937, there was time for a more leisurely stay with the Brookes in Hampstead, close by Hampstead Heath. They had moved from Cumnor a few years before to be near their son who was living with his family at Hampstead. It is to Peter, Henry Brooke's eldest son, that Johnny Crow's New Garden, done at Cumnor and published in 1933, is dedicated. Peter, nearing his fourth year, darted in and out of his own house and his grandfather's like a swallow. He was already beginning to draw pictures as well as to enjoy them. There was time to look over old drawings in the studio, time for a long morning at Keats' house culminating with a toast in mulberry wine made by the Curator from the fruit of the tree under which Keats wrote The Nightingale. This was highly amusing to Mr. Brooke. There was time also for tea with Robert Charles, the lucky author of A Roundabout Turn, time for walks and drives about the countryside in April, time for delightful talk, for Leslie Brooke had the happy faculty of fully identifying himself with the interests of a friend. "Whether by letter or in conversation he entered in, with ready wit or with silent understanding of a mood for silence. Small wonder that Johnny Crow became "the perfect host.”
It had been my intention to present Leslie Brooke as a perceptive critic of the work of younger contemporary artists and in so doing to take from his letters such comments on the books I had sent him as personal gifts from year to year as seemed representative, but I have been unable at this time to achieve a design in harmony with his taste and my own and I quote only from one letter, dated December 29, 1938.
“I am having such a feast that I only wonder whether I can convey any digested impressions of the books before the year is out. They are so individual this year and their personalities are so varied.”
“I have least knowledge so far of Nino(1) which seems one of the most beautiful. I can only say at present that it seems to have had one individual influence over it all the time in the making, and that a delicate refinement of mind. (There is always something to be anticipated more eagerly when there is ‘Written and Illustrated by’ on the title page.)
“With The Three Policemen I had a wholly new experience with its c Written and Illustrated.’ For I never recall a book exactly to compare with it. Its assurance is so delightful and with it all so simple. And what remains most for me after an hour of surprised enjoyment — even astonished enjoyment — is the portrait of William Pene du Bois on the dust wrapper. He knows such a lot of things — and such a lot about drawing them — yes, and shading them, too. And every minute of the time he realizes that he is solemnly pulling my leg. And at the end he turns out to be that very healthy, wholesome boy, with a face of real quality. The drawings from pp. 47 to 57 seem to include many of his characteristics, one of them being a remarkable sense of volume.
“Then I come to Mei Li (which I am learning to call May Lee). This book is a most thorough and conscientious piece of work, on a par with the painting of an elaborate picture. What strikes me first is the amount of skill shown in the blending of groups of figures with a background of buildings — or of another smaller group of figures across the pages, attending always to the blocks of text which have always an integral effect in the design. The blending of the figures with the landscape across the pages in the Bridge outside the City (with the beggar girl) — and specially in the scene when they arrived at the Great Square which seems to me wonderfully good pattern gives me a lot of pleasure. But besides all this Mr. Handforth is carrying on a lot of activities — there is the sense of a family party of the Wangs out for the excursion — and the anxiety about their getting back too late — fended off by Lidza the beggar, and in between one gets a sort of impression of the family relationships — Uncle Wang and San Yu, and the circus folk. The modelling of many of the heads is a pleasure in itself. It is a book for artists and author and publisher and printer all to be proud of, for it remains throughout a children's picture book.
“The Cautious Carp(2) (perfect title) comes as a very happy relaxation in these strenuous days. It recalls the German animal picture books of more than fifty years ago — with Wilhelm Busch at their head, but it is on the whole more kindly, less callous, than they. I am looking forward to trying it on Peter who will, I think, appreciate the simplicity of it — for the drawings are so straightforward that they hardly require the explanatory rhyme, while the mechanism of the various ‘plots’ is as it were rather more casual — less inevitable — less ineluctable than the German — who had a less kindly sense of Fate than Mr. Radlov's. These, I take it, are all drawn direct on the stone, and in this the color is very well managed. It's very cleverly done, for the effect of the atmosphere in the different stories is varied. ‘The Porcupine's strange experience’ and (opposite) ‘Where is the Ball?’ are excellent specimens of this variation in atmosphere by color, as they are of the quality of the humor, while ‘How the Little Bird Escaped’ shows in ‘And put it in a cage’ very understanding drawing of two types of children.”
(1)By Valenti Angelo (Viking, 1938)
(2)By Nikolay Ernestovich Radlov
From The Horn Book for May, 1941