High atop Nestlings Press headquarters, so close to the sun that you can reach out and light a candle with it, the elves and gnomes have been working overtime to create the latest Nestlings Press monograph. And what a delight it is: The Art of Peter Newell, 176 pages (40 of them in colour), $19.99 plus tax, and full of wonderful wash illustrations and cartoons. (See a couple of examples by clicking on the cover on the home page of nestlingspress.com.)

 

The overwhelming reaction of those who hear the title is “Peter who?”, but you wouldn’t have said that if you’d been around between 1890 and 1915. (Go back and check. I’ll wait.) Newell was famous. He illustrated Mark Twain, and Stephen Crane, and Frank Stockton, and Carolyn Wells. His cartoons in the back of the popular magazines of the day were sought after and quoted. He created dozens of full-page illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass and The Hunting of the Snark, not to mention Favorite Fairy Tales (sic U.S. spelling) and The Pursuit of the House-Boat, in which author John Kendrick Bangs imagined that Sherlock Holmes had arrived in Hades and was helping Confucius, Walter Raleigh and others to rescue a house-boat commandeered by pirates. Arthur Conan Doyle had killed off Holmes a few years earlier, so Bangs said, well, he’s dead, I guess I don’t need permission. Fortunately Conan Doyle enjoyed the book.

 

Newell created three “toy” or “trick” books that are still in print – The Hole Book (with a hole drilled through it, imagining the path of a bullet accidentally fired by a boy and destructive to goldfish bowls, bass drums and the like), The Rocket Book (same idea, but with fireworks) and The Slant Book, with left and right sides cut at an angle so, when you held the left side upright, you could follow a runaway baby carriage. Newell wrote the verses for each book and supplied a full-page painting on every second page.

 

Among the colour pages in The Art of Peter Newell are illustrations from Mr. Munchausen (Baron Munchausen telling tall tales from Hades) and Mother Goose’s Menagerie, all of which were lithographed in eight colours. The book’s cover is from Mr. Munchausen, and the two accompanying illustrations at www.nestlingspress.com are from Menagerie.

 

The book cherry-picks four verses of a poem from Nautical Lays of a Landsman (by Wallace Irwin, illustrated by Newell), but, since the Internet has space galore, I will paste the entire poem at the end of this note.

 

Meanwhile, the elves and gnomes, who have to carry our stock up and down thirty-seven flights of stairs and would love to see their load lightened, ask me to remind you that all the Nestlings Press books are available at https://nestlingspress.com. As ever, for reasons too complicated, annoying and ultimately boring to get into, we mail only to Canadian addresses.

 

THE RHYME OF THE CHIVALROUS SHARK

 

BY WALLACE IRWIN

 

Most chivalrous fish of the ocean,

To ladies forbearing and mild,

Though his record be dark, is the man-eating shark

Who will eat neither woman nor child.

 

He dines upon seamen and skippers,

And tourists his hunger assuage,

And a fresh cabin boy will inspire him with joy

If he’s past the maturity age.

 

A doctor, a lawyer, a preacher,

He’ll gobble one any fine day,

But the ladies, God bless ’em, he’ll only address ’em

Politely and go on his way.

 

I can readily cite you an instance

Where a lovely young lady of Breem,

Who was tender and sweet and delicious to eat,

Fell into the bay with a scream.

 

She struggled and flounced in the water

And signalled in vain for her bark,

And she’d surely been drowned if she hadn’t been found

By a chivalrous man-eating shark.

 

He bowed in a manner most polished,

Thus soothing her impulses wild;

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, “I’ve been properly bred

And will eat neither woman nor child.”

 

Then he proffered his fin and she took it—

Such a gallantry none can dispute—

While the passengers cheered as the vessel they neared

And a broadside was fired in salute.

 

And they soon stood alongside the vessel,

When a life-saving dinghy was lowered

With the pick of the crew, and her relatives, too,

And the mate and the skipper aboard.

 

So they took her aboard in a jiffy,

And the shark stood attention the while,

Then he raised on his flipper and ate up the skipper

And went on his way with a smile.

 

And this shows that the prince of the ocean,

To ladies forbearing and mild,

Though his record be dark, is the man-eating shark

Who will eat neither woman nor child.