"The Americans Have Done Great
Things for Me"

Arthur Rackham
and His American Friends

JAJVIES HAMILTON

The English artist and book iUustrator, Arthur Rackham
(1867-1939), whose work is the subject of a forthcoming
exhibition in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, was a
natural and compulsive letter writer, with as sharp a gift for self-
expression through words as for expression in line and color. The
sound of his conversation, of course, is lost, but his turn of phrase
and his easy-going chat can be detected in his surviving letters. It is
to our advantage that Rackham professed to loathe the telephone
(along with other modern inventions such as the motor car and the
wrist watch) because the conversations he might have had on the
telephone are happUy recorded in surviving letters.

Rackham's correspondence divides itself broadly into four
groups: One group consists of letters to publishers concerning his
current or future books; a second of letters to admirers of his work;
a third is with dealers and patrons, some of whom, for example the
American art dealer Alwin J. Scheuer, became friends; and a fourth
group comprises letters to his famUy, in panicular to his wife, the
painter Edyth Starkie. If the letters in the first three groups show
Rackham retaining some measure of formality toward his corre¬
spondents, in the few surviving letters to Edyth his guard drops and
we read not only lively and amusing descriptions of sights seen and
events witnessed, but we also glimpse something of the inner feel¬
ings of this gentle, reserved Englishman.

Many of the letters in the first three groups are to Americans and
have now found their way into public collections in the United
 

Opposite: Arthur Rackham and his daughter, Barbara, ca, 1925 at
Houghton House, the artist's home in Sussex