Hugh Buchanan paints the John Murray Archive Austen, Byron, Conan Doyle, Etc ... National Library of Scotland George IV Bridge · Edinburgh EH1 1EW 26 June – 6 September 2015

John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street · London W1S 4JG 18 September – 10 October 2015 Hugh Buchanan paints the John Murray Archive Austen, Byron, Conan Doyle, Etc ...

John Martin Gallery · 2015 Foreword The John Murray Archive Preface An Artist in the Archive

The John Murray Archive was transferred from 5o Albemarle As a first year graphics student at Edinburgh Art College in the twenty five miles of shelving, this is probably the largest pri­ Street (where the Murrays lived from 1812) to the National 1970’s I would often spend my lunch breaks wandering aim­ vate archive in Europe. It was work from this last project that Library of Scotland in Edinburgh in 2006. It is made up of lessly around the second hand bookshops of the Grassmarket, was shown at Summerhall in Edinburgh in 2013 as part of the over 150,000 manuscript letters as well as manuscripts of the buying the odd tattered volume here and there, never even Historical Fiction Festival. works of Byron, Walter Scott, Livingstone and many others. It dreaming that thirty years later I would be working with Later that summer I was sitting by the edge of a lake in is much more than just a collection of authors’ writings; it is similar but rather more important material in the National Berlin, where I had gone to paint porcelain, when I received an a complete publisher’s archive that includes ledgers, account Library five hundred yards away at the top of the hill. In sec­ email from David McClay of the National Library of Scotland. books and letter books. It spans one of the most exciting and ond year I dropped out of the Illustration course and switched ‘Why don’t you come and paint a proper archive?’ he asked; complex periods in our country’s history, a time of innumer­ to Drawing and Painting. From then on I put my bibliophilia ‘You’ve heard of John Murray’s I’m sure?’ And so began one able pioneering discoveries in science, medicine, exploration to one side and concentrated on watercolours of architectural of the most fascinating years of my life. Every week we would and archaeology. By the end of the nineteenth century the interiors, particularly the play of light across rooms. take two authors – Austen and Byron, Leigh Fermor and world was almost unrecognisable from what it had been at In 2008 in search of new subject matter I was drawn back to Lancaster, Scott and Hogg, Washington Irving and Isabella the beginning. And the Murrays were at the forefront of most the world of books and exhibited a series of paintings of librar­ Bird, Darwin and Livingstone … and attempt to assemble com­ of the developments. They published many of the key books ies. However, a critic pointed out in a review, that the spines positions from their incunabula – letters, maps, passports etc. of the period – Jane Austen’s Emma and Persuasion, Byron’s of endless rows of books were, after a while, rather boring. So Some were easy and some defeated us. Often we would have Childe Harold, Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology, Charles I asked myself what it was about books that really did interest to back track, as better ideas occurred to us. The process of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and David Livingstone’s me and I came to the conclusion that it was the paper itself, composition alone took six months. Missionary Travels to mention just a few. Murray also launched especially when torn or stained, crumpled, brittle or greasy. Bringing paint into the strong room was obviously out of the Quarterly Review in 1809, with the help of Walter Scott Archives in other words. Add some glistening wax seals and the question. Nor was this a cobwebbed vault, but a modern and George Canning, as a Tory counterblast to the Whig maybe a cobwebbed vault to the mix and I found that I had room filled with dexion shelving and humming with neon. Edinburgh Review. It became the leading literary and politi­ endless scope, not only for evoking the pathos of age, which But what we were able to do, by turning the overhead lights cal quarterly of the century, and brought people of power and has always interested me, but also some aspects of the lives off, and with the aid of low, hand held lamps, was to replicate influence into the Murray circle. of the people that created all those painstakingly transcribed the effects of raking sunlight – illuminating every crease fold John R. Murray documents, be they great novels, ordinary letters, title deeds or and wrinkle in the documents. By laying them on different simple rental agreements. coloured papers we were also able to evoke some kind of mood My search for the archives that lived in my imagination – for the camera. those in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast and Umberto Eco’s The It had not originally been my intention to include images Name of the Rose – led me from Drumlanrig in Dumfriess­ of the authors or their principal characters, but, having started shire, (the finest in situ archive in Scotland), to Forchtenstein, on the Leigh Fermor passports, I saw that it added a clarity the Esterhazy stronghold south of Vienna. Stretching to and vigour to the compositions. Not only that, but dialogues

4 5 Introduction Byron’s Toothbrush and Other Stories

began to open up between the portrait images and the docu­ With the John Murray Archive the National Library of Scot­ the size of the collection can be overwhelming. However, it is ments themselves. Raeburn’s portrait of Scott is the basis of land can boast of having one of the world’s largest and most the quality of the archive which is truly striking. As well as the engraving on the Bank of Scotland ten pound note. So important literary archives. It was perhaps inevitable there­ providing insight into the creative and writing process through the postcard of Raeburn’s portrait that I used in the Childe fore that Hugh Buchanan, an artist renowned for his work in original drafts, rewrites and proofs of works, there is forensic Harold composition should be identical; and yet, when it came archives and libraries, would eventually find himself immersed detail on each book’s sales and reception. Sometimes this is a to painting the banknote and the postcard I subconsciously in that remarkable collection. story of unparalleled success, at other times of disappointing interpreted Scott’s image in different ways. When placed with Having admired Hugh’s paintings for a number of years failure. Whatever the story it is one worth discovering. The the cheques – coincident with his bankruptcy – he appears I was delighted to have the opportunity to introduce him lively correspondence between publisher and author can range to be pleading and mournful – while in my depiction of him to the history and archives of John Murray and now to see from fraught, celebratory, gossiping and poignant as the lives with his correspondence with Byron he appears complacent the impressive results of his engagement with the collection; of the authors are as often as not the topics of discussion as and defiant. nineteen captivating watercolours, representing nine Murray their literary endeavours. Through working with the John Murray Archive I have authors. Whilst most of the names of these literary greats will Growing success led John Murray II in 1812 to transfer his learned so much about the humanity of the authors, from the be well known, the name and connection with John Murray business from London’s Fleet Street to the more fashionable way Paddy Leigh Fermor carelessly repaired his maps with will, perhaps, be less so. Albemarle Street. There he established the most glittering lit­ photocopies and sellotape, to the messages hidden within The publishing house of John Murray was founded in erary circle where scientists and politicians could mingle with the mottos of the Ettrick Shepherd’s incongruously elaborate London’s Fleet Street by the Scotsman John McMurray. He explorers and poets. It was here for example in 1814 that Lord wax seals. Then there is Byron’s handwriting – the surpris­ had been advised to drop what one friend described as the Byron and Walter Scott, the two most popular writers of the ingly pedantic curlicues on the envelopes contrasting with ‘wild highland Mac’ from his name in deference to the strong day, first met. It was in that same room years later that Murray the drunken scrawl within. And lastly there are Jane Austen’s anti-Scottish feeling in the city at that time. However, the was involved in one of the most notorious of literary crimes: cheques, written out by Murray to her brother after her early Murray family maintained their strong Scottish connections the burning of Byron’s memoirs, thought by Murray’s literary death. They have an ineffably plangent quality that, along with throughout successive generations, so much so that when the advisor William Gifford to be ‘fit only for a brothel and would so much in this priceless collection, informs us on a level that current John Murray, seventh of that illustrious name, decided damn Lord Byron to certain infamy if published.’ biography can rarely reach, to bring 234 years of business independence to an end it was to However, the Murray family made amends for this destruc­ hugh buchanan the National Library of Scotland that their unparalleled pub­ tion by putting together over the generations the greatest lishing archives eventually came. single collection of Byron letters, manuscripts and archives. So, Whilst the lasting legacy of the long history of Murray pub­ alongside Byron’s invaluable literary manuscripts and proofs lishing is principally in the books and journals they produced, may be found his bills, medical reports and other curious doc­ it is also to be found in the archives which they created, col­ uments, for example a fallen French soldier’s livret or papers, lected and preserved. Numbering perhaps a million separate collected by Byron from the battlefield of Waterloo. The Byron items of correspondence, business, financial and literary papers papers also include thousands of letters to and from Byron.

6 7 These include his letters to Murray which range from furious archive collection to include not only the publishing papers reactions to editorial interference to long shopping lists, like of their authors but many of the personal archives too, includ­ the one from Italy in which he requested books, toothbrushes, ing thousands of Lancaster’s cartoons and the entire personal tooth-powders and ‘I want besides a Bulldog – a terrier – and archive of Leigh Fermor. Other authors, like the intrepid two Newfoundland dogs.’ The Murray relationships with their Victorian traveller Isabella Bird, left Murray, not only her pub­ authors were seldom restricted to publishing matters alone. lisher but one of her dearest friends, her papers including her The glamour of the Romantic period when Murray was letters to her beloved sister and her remarkable photographs publishing the literary works of Jane Austen, Walter Scott, from her global travels. Lord Byron, James Hogg and Washington Irving, gave way as Even authors who began their literary careers with one pub­ the nineteenth century progressed to more works of science lisher often found themselves becoming Murray authors. The and travel. Murray was responsible for important and best­ hugely prolific Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one such, who selling works of scientist Charles Darwin and explorer David after Murray’s acquisition of Smith, Elder & Co., became one Livingstone. However, such interesting authors, whilst con­ of Murray’s bestselling authors, especially with his editions of sidered by Hugh, were ultimately passed over. The challenge the gripping Sherlock Holmes stories. for Hugh was not, I think, in finding interesting people or The National Library of Scotland is keen to encourage as materials in the John Murray Archive but in trying to limit his much use of the John Murray Archive collection as possible, options. With perhaps a million separate archive items, cov­ be that with researchers in our reading rooms or through ering thousands of authors, some of whom are the greatest in exhibitions and displays. Whilst the archive can provide an their genres, the challenge over the six months of his regular unparalleled store of information and insight into the lives, visits to the archive was to find a combination of interesting personalities and writings of authors and their readers, there is authors, stories and especially book and archive items. In each another often overlooked aspect of these archives; their beauty of his watercolours Hugh has achieved just that. This is equally and interest as objects. Elegant or indecipherable handwrit­ so for authors of the twentieth as well as the nineteenth cen­ ing, handmade papers, leather bindings, gilded lettering, postal tury. The famous literary circle of the Romantic period had marks and wax seals, all add to the visual variety and appeal of its twentieth century manifestation when some of the great­ an archive. With the exhibition of these watercolours alongside est travel writers of the day, including Patrick Leigh Fermor, some of the original manuscripts and books from the collec­ would meet the likes of Osbert Lancaster, who after dashing tion people have a unique opportunity to see some remarkable off his latest cartoon for The Daily Express, would regularly literary treasures examined through the special creative and make his way to Murrays for the pleasure of stimulating and artistic talents of Hugh Buchanan. convivial company. David McClay 1 · Mu rray at his ledger The John Murray Archive, thanks to the generosity of the Curator of the John Murray Archive, watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches John R. Murray Charitable Trust, has been able to expand the National Library of Scotland

9 10 Jane Austen Kathryn Sutherland

Though Jane Austen had dealings with several publishers, the John Murray Archive allows us a unique perspective on her brief career as a novelist. In the Murray account books and in correspondence with his talent scout and journal editor, William Gifford, we discover precious evidence for her early esteem and track details for the economic fortunes of a writer who was not averse to admitting that she wrote for money as well as fame: ‘tho’ I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edward [her brother] calls Pewter too’ (30 November 1814, to her niece Fanny Knight). Jane Austen was a published author for just seven years of her short life – from 1811 to 1817 – and engaged with John Murray II by autumn 1815. Murray brought out Emma and a second edition of Mansfield Park (both in 1816), and two short nov­ els, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, issued together in 1818 within months of Austen’s death. He was not noted as a novel publisher; most of the novel manuscripts offered to the firm (including that of Frankenstein) were rejected. Emma is his first novel by an English woman writer; yet he was among the most fashionable publishers of his day, cultivating influential connec­ tions and establishing his imprint as a leading literary brand. In some ways, John Murray and Jane Austen were on sim­ ilar trajectories in the 1810s. She was forging a reputation as a new kind of fiction writer, almost counter-novelistic in the illusion of reality she created, while he was in the vanguard of a new breed of publisher. Emma issued in three volumes for a guinea, with a dedication to the Prince Regent, and a promo­ tional review by Walter Scott in Murray’s own periodical the Quarterly Review gave Jane Austen’s career a major hike and 2 · Jane austen cheque study the critical seal of approval to a serious talent. watercolour on paper · 11 x 15 inches

12 3 · Jane austen and emma watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

4 · Jane austen cheque watercolour on paper · 22 x 30 inches Lord Byron Robin, 13th Baron Byron

Byron was not known for his love of artists or art galleries. There is therefore a certain irony – one which Byron would surely have appreciated – in the fact that, perhaps more than any other of the Romantic Poets, Byron has always inspired artists. His love of climes warmer than his chilly homeland – ‘give me a sun, I care not how hot …’; his musings on the iconic sights of Italy and Greece; his wandering and revolutionary spirit; above all the drama of his own life and his passionate response to the people and places he visited have provided limitless scope for artists to create their own visual interpre­ tations of his work. In France, Delacroix found inspiration in Byron for the exotic and emotional themes of his creations, while in England it is Turner’s images which are most associ­ ated with Byron’s poetry; impossible to read Byron’s lines on ‘Sounion’ or ‘The Bridge of Sighs’ without Turner’s paintings coming to mind. Hugh Buchanan has created very different images with which to conjure up the spirit of Byron. Drawing on the Murray Archive from the National Library of Scotland, his evocative water colours give an almost physical experience of the texture of the manuscripts and the smell of the sealing wax. I particularly like the detailed image of Byron’s seal with the letter ‘B’ and the coronet imprinted deeply in the red wax; you sense the moment when Byron has finished an amusing scribble to a close friend and plunges his seal into the hot wax before sending the letter on its way. To bring us such proximity to Byron is a fine achievement. 5 · Byron seal study watercolour on paper · 11 x 15 inches

16 Lord Byron Miranda Seymour

Lord Byron turned twenty-four in 1812, the year in which the addressed envelope to John Hanson, Byron’s agent, we glimpse publication of Cantos I and II of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage a fragment from one of his most capricious letters: in part, a transformed a mocking newcomer (Byron’s 1809 satire, English clipped request to his publisher for cash (‘I have imbibed a Bards and Scotch Reviewers, had caused sparks to fly on both great love of money – let me have it’); in part, a passionate sides of the border) into a poet of international stature. A defence of his great poem against the censor’s pen: (‘in short, poem that promoted the image of the romantic loner (‘Apart Don Juan shall be an entire horse or none.’). he stalked in joyless reverie, And from his native land resolved John Murray, Byron’s long-suffering but canny publisher, to go’) turned its handsome author – addressed by an ecstatic unites the Byron-themed paintings with another literary figure Lady Caroline Lamb as if Byron himself was the gloom-soaked in the series. Writing to James Hogg, ‘the Ettrick Shepherd’, Childe – into the darling of society. in 1818, Murray stamped his letter with a black seal highlight­ Poetry is notoriously prophetic. In 1812, Byron could not ing his association with Byron. It was Byron who had first know that his own exile was only four years away; that his flight introduced Hogg to his own publisher, back in 1814. Hogg’s from scandal, debt and a disastrous marriage would resolve disturbing masterpiece The Private Memoirs and Confessions itself into a permanent absence that ended with his doomed of a Justified Sinner was published two months after Byron’s journey to Greece where, aged thirty-six, he died. death. Few would have appreciated a novel about Calvinism, That sense of exile – in flight, as it were, from his own self demonology, persecution and duality more than Byron himself. – haunts the marvellous series of paintings in which Hugh Buchanan delicately collates elements of Byron’s literary life abroad in a way that is wonderfully suggestive both of his pas­ sion (blood-red wax spatters the letter lying beneath one of two representations of Byron’s splendid, coroneted seals) and of the poet’s exasperating, fascinatingly mercurial temperament. I am the very slave of circumstance And impulse – borne away with every breath! How to communicate that frightening, entrancing quicksilver quality that glitters through Byron’s writings, that lightning shift from calm to fury, from sweetness to mockery, from love to hate? Buchanan’s paintings represent the shifts in 6 · Byron seal mood through subtle juxtaposition. Thus, laid aslant a primly watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

18 Lord Byron David mcclay

The Byron portrait seal in black wax on the letter of John coming to an end he noted forlornly that ‘Every day of my life Murray II to James Hogg is based on Thomas Phillips 1813 I sit opposite to your Lordships Portrait.’ ‘Portrait of a Nobleman’, better known as the cloak portrait. Murray used the portrait seal in his letters to Byron, Murray received one of Phillips’s several copies from Byron. even though the poet did not like it. Byron wrote to Murray He acknowledged the offer of the portrait on 18 November regarding the seal on 4 September 1817: 1813 ‘I do most heartily accept the offer of your Lordships Your letter of the 15th has conveyed with its contents the Portrait, as the most noble mark of friendship with which impression of a Seal to which the ‘Saracen’s head’ is a your Lordship could, in any way, honour me – I do assure Seraph – and the ‘Bull and Mouth’ a delicate device. – your Lordship that I am truly proud of being distinguished as I knew that Calumny had sufficiently blackened me of later your publisher – and that it will be my anxious endeavour to days – but not that it had given the features as well as com- preserve, through life, the happiness of your Lordships steady plexion of a Negro. – Poor Augusta is not less – but rather confidence.’ more shocked than myself – and says, ‘people seem to have However, Murray had to wait several months after the sum­ lost their recollection strangely’ when they engraved me into mer exhibition of the Royal Academy finished in July 1814 such a ‘blackamoor’. – Pray don’t seal (at least to me) with before it was finally delivered. Murray frequently mentions such a Caricature of the human numskull altogether – & to Byron his pride and satisfaction of having the portrait; if you don’t break the Sealcutter’s head – at least crack his for example on 11 October 1822, when their relationship was libel (or likeness, if it should be a likeness) of mine.–

7 · black Byron watercolour on paper · 11 x 15 inches

20 8 · Byron from pisa watercolour on paper · 11 x 15 inches

9 · don juan watercolour on paper · 15 x 11 inches James Hogg James Robertson

James Hogg is one of the great outsiders of our literature. Born The ladies smiled, the courtiers sneered; and bred to the hardest kind of rural life, he desperately wanted For such a simple air and mien to gain admittance to the cultural citadel that was post-En­ Before a court had never been. lightenment Edinburgh, but when he did he was treated like a A clown he was, bred in the wild, barbarian, mocked for his uncouth manners and lack of criti­ And late from native moors exiled, cal self-awareness. Even his friend and patron Sir Walter Scott In hopes his mellow mountain strain patronised him in the other, less noble sense. His social supe­ High favour from the great would gain. riors revelled in the company of ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’, but were always sniffing at his back for the odours of ‘blood and His harp is not adorned with gold crest or coat of arms but sheep shit’, the very palette of Hugh Buchanan’s images. dressed with streamers of ‘the briar-rose and the heather-bell’ – At one level Hogg cared deeply what others thought of him; and ‘there his learning deep to prove, / Naturae Donum graved at another he didn’t give a damn, maintaining a good conceit above.’ Significantly, Hogg’s own seal, as reproduced in Hugh of himself: ‘Dear Sir Walter, ye can never suppose that I belang Buchanan’s compositions, included the form of a Grecian lyre to your school o’ chivalry? Ye are the king o’ that school, but and the same motto – an assertion that both he and his writ­ I’m the king o’ the mountain an’ fairy school which is a far ings were the gifts of nature. higher ane nor yours.’ Hogg saw himself as the carrier and rep­ Robert Louis Stevenson acknowledged that Hogg’s mas­ resentative of an ancient culture which was of greater worth terpiece The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified and authenticity than that of the literati. In his long narrative Sinner had a direct influence on his own exploration of moral­ poem ‘The Queen’s Wake’ (first published in 1813), the bards ity, duality and hypocrisy: ‘The book since I read it, in black, of Scotland compete before a courtly audience for a prize pouring weather on Tweedside, has always haunted and puz­ harp. The tenth bard, who ‘on Ettrick’s mountains green / zled me.’ Hogg himself haunts us to this day, a defiant ghost in In Nature’s bosom nursed had been’, is clearly a self-portrait. the archive, indelibly under our skin and persistently messing When he first appears: with our heads.

10 · hogg to murray watercolour on paper · 22 x 30 inches

24 Byron & Hogg David mcclay

It was Lord Byron who promoted James Hogg to John Murray II in 1814: I have a most amusing epistle from the Ettrick Bard Hogg – in which speaking of his bookseller – whom he denominates the ‘shabbiest’ of the trade – for not ‘lifting his bills’ he adds in so many words ‘G – d d – n him and them both’ this is a pretty prelude to asking you to adopt him (the said Hogg) but this he wishes – and if you please, you & I will talk it over – he has a poem ready for the press … – yrs. Ever Byron. PS – Seriously – I think Mr. Hogg would suit you very well – and surely he is a man of great powers and deserving of encouragement – I must knock out a tale for him – and you should at all events consider before you reject his suit. Murray did go on to publish Hogg, and he became an intermediary between Byron and Hogg, especially after their relationship was immediately strained by Hogg’s inappropriate remarks to Byron about his marriage.

11 · hogg to byron watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

26 Sir Walter Scott satu rt kelly

Scott, more than any other author in the Romantic period, was obsessed with money. Obsessed of course with the getting and losing of it, but also obsessed with it as metaphor as much as a means of acquiring stuff. The bank note is not just a promise; it is a symbol, a circulating medium. Who but Scott would have written a fantasia of his narrators forming a joint stock corporation, in order to see off the threat of another character’s invention of a novel writing loom? In reviewing Mary Shelley’s The Modern Prometheus – Frankenstein – Scott described the relationship between the reader and the writer as creating ‘a sort of account current’ – drawing on the reader for license in imagination, repaying it with trust in feasibility. Creativity was a kind of overdraft. By the end, even his loyal son-in-law Lockhart said that Scott must ‘pay the price’ as well as reap the dividends of a lifetime attached to creative detachment.

Detail from Scott’s Review of Childe Harold [cat.13]

28 29 12 · scott’s cheques 13 · scott’s review of childe harold watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches Washington Irving Elizabeth L. Bradley

‘Heads will roll,’ the cover of the Sleepy Hollow DVD proclaims. thought to be the model for the home of the young heiress What Washington Irving would have made of director Tim Katrina Van Tassel in ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ is in dialogue with Tim Burton’s liberal (and liberally gory) interpretation of his most Burton’s moody take: here is Dutch thrift, security and order famous story, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,’ is anyone’s guess. made manifest, proof against any rumor of a ghostly rider. Or He might have been intrigued (he encouraged the career of a is it? To those of a Burtonesque turn of mind the crimson seal young Edgar Allan Poe, after all), or he might have been flat­ of the Irving family looks like a splash of blood on the author’s tered (Irving loved the fact that elements from his tales became letter, but his family motto leaves room for interpretation: ‘sub ‘household words’ during his lifetime – words such as Gotham, sole sub umbra virens,’ or ‘flourishing in both sunshine and Knickerbocker, and Rip Van Winkle – not to mention the shade.’ There is no doubt that Irving’s works endure today headless horseman himself). He might have been indignant: because they do just that: with the characteristic generosity of the protection of authorial copyright was one of his pet causes, their author, they allow the reader to find her own meaning, be and as the first American writer to earn his living by his pen, it dark or light – and to dream her own dreams. he – and his British publisher and champion, John Murray – had good reason. It’s possible that Irving might simply have been confused by Burton’s feverish version: the original ‘Legend’ is a jack tale – a trickster story, with nary a beheading to be found. But he would have enjoyed the romantic, spectral gloom Burton throws over the landscape of Tarrytown, Irving’s chosen retreat on the banks of the Hudson River. Had he not done the same thing with his depiction of the Alhambra? ‘I left the Alhambra on the 29th July,’ Irving wrote to his friend Henry Brevoort in 1829 (note Hugh Buchanan’s rendering), ‘after having passed between two and three months there in a kind of oriental dream.’ Irving’s visions of ‘Saracenic and Gothic’ Spain were to serve as an introduction to that country for generations of Americans, but he is today best remembered for ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and the other tales of the Hudson River Valley: gentle fables that imbued the young United States with something like a storied past. Hugh Buchanan’s inclusion of 14 · sleepy hollow a pen-and-ink sketch of the Philipsburg Manor house, long watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

32 Isabella Bird Meg Rosoff

Crippled by Victorian ideas of womanhood (and a twisted spine), Isabella Bird spent her early decades as an invalid, reclining on a sofa in the home of her Yorkshire vicar father. When (in 1854) an enlightened doctor prescribed travel, she arose from her bed of pain and hightailed it down to the docks, embarking on a lifetime of almost unimaginable adventure. Tiny, fearless and blessed with a constitution of iron, Isabella rode eight hundred miles through the Rocky Mountains on horseback, fell in love with a notorious outlaw and wrote a series of best-selling books to fund her travel. She explored the remote tribal villages of Japan and Korea, filthy back­ ward places where not even zealous missionaries dared to go, endured gruelling conditions, slept in caravanserai and on the floors of mud huts. In 1892, she became the first female fel­ low of the Royal Geographical Society, and late in life, when she could walk only with difficulty, was carried into Tibet on a litter. Her final travels in Japan, China and Korea during the time of the Sino-Japanese war are here illustrated in Hugh Buchannan’s vivid watercolour. This period of travel was char­ acterised by conditions of great hardship and danger – she was nearly lynched by an angry mob as she travelled up the Yangtze river – but also with unprecedented access for a foreigner and a woman, including friendship with the Korean King Gojong. Her appetite for the ravishing wide world remained insatiable till the day of her death.

15 · isabella bird watercolour on paper · 22 x 30 inches

34 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Owen Dudley Edwards

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) became a John Murray execution for high treason in Summer 1916. And in July 1914 the author in 1917 after Murray’s acquired Smith, Elder & Co. who Strand had published his short story ‘Danger!’ which bluntly had published his collected works in 1903 and took on the predicted extreme vulnerability amounting to likely defeat for Sherlock Holmes stories after their original publisher of the the UK if enemy submarine warfare cut off food supplies. The short stories George Newnes withdrew from book publication British authorities ridiculed the idea. When war broke out, the in 1906. Newnes had published the Strand magazine from its Germans showed much more interest and widely circulated launch in January 1891, and ran the first Holmes short stories it in translation. Conan Doyle summoned the aid of his most there from July 1891. Holmes made the Strand, and the Strand influential friend – his creation Sherlock Holmes, whose ‘War made Holmes, for the two ‘long stories’ preceding the appear­ Service’ appeared in the Strand in September 1917. But the ance of the series of short had but moderate fame. Two series story was announced to Smith, Elder as in preparation as early of twelve bred two Newnes book collections. Holmes officially as March 1917, the evidence in the Murray archive tells us, and died when in December 1893 the Strand published ‘The Final the house of Murray having taken over found itself the holder Problem’ with a frontispiece grimly subtitled ‘TTHE DEA H OF of a hot property. For despite having only seven short stories SHERLOCK HOLMES’ although showing what was to be taken not yet book-published Arthur Conan Doyle had determined as the death-grapple of Holmes and Professor Moriarty at the to vindicate himself with his war story for Holmes heading Reichenbach Falls. Arthur Conan Doyle never fully consented a new volume to be entitled His Last Bow. The story itself to his ostensible death-sentence on Holmes and the first break made a war hero and master-counterspy of Holmes. Its con­ came with retrospective ‘long’ story, serialised in the Strand in struction forced one change. As Agatha Christie made Hercule nine instalments (August 1901–April 1902): The Hound of the Poirot remark in The Clocks (1963) the genius of the Holmes Baskervilles. Newnes also handled the collected new series of stories lay in the creation of Watson, through whose eyes we thirteen short stories The Return of Sherlock Holmes in the see the godlike Holmes otherwise inaccessible to us. ‘His Last Strand and in book form. But Conan Doyle subsequently Bow’ was the first whose plot required disguises not only for wrote Holmes stories only intermittently. Holmes and Watson but of the narrative itself. It worked: the Conan Doyle was a whole-hearted supporter of the UK’s war German spy Von Bork was foiled in the story, the UK censors effort and from April 1916 was serialising a multi-volume his­ foiled because of it, and Arthur Conan Doyle won back his cre­ tory of the British campaign in France and Flanders through dentials. But so urgent had been his conscription of Holmes the Strand. But his hitherto accorded credentials for cover­ that Murray received copy for the book His Last Bow in May age of the front were held back early in 1917 as the war begun before the short story ‘His Last Bow’ received its final improve­ to spawn witch-hunts. Arthur Conan Doyle had unsuccess­ ments, so for once it is the Strand which is the definitive text. 16 · the hound of the baskervilles fully sought to have his friend Roger Casement spared from We used it for the Oxford Sherlock Holmes. watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

36 Osbert Lancaster James Knox

In his post-war heyday, Osbert Lancaster was one of the fore­ the first to be published in the British press, appeared in most artistic personalities of his generation, whose front page January 1939. Apart from an eighteen month break in the pocket cartoons in Lord Beaverbrook’s mighty Daily Express war, his witty asides on everything from the H-bomb to the entertained the nation for almost forty years, whose designs mini -skirt, channelled through a cast of characters, who them­ for opera and ballet made him the toast of Covent Garden selves became national figures, led by Maudie, the Countess and Glyndebourne, and whose books of light verse, memoirs, of Littlehampton, poured forth until 1978 when he laid down parodies, travel and cartoons made him a constant star of Jock his pencil following a stroke. Murray’s spring and autumn lists. Hugh Buchanan’s portrait matches descriptions of him in Born in London in 1908, Osbert sprang, as he put it, from late middle age: ‘His head’, recalled a colleague at the Express, the ‘old upper middles of Victorian England’ cushioned by ‘poised above a strongly striped collar, has curious dignity: commercial fortunes on both sides of the family. An educa­ large eyes reflect an inner amusement, and outwardly miss tion at Charterhouse and Oxford, which culminated in a nothing; a well tended neo-Edwardian moustache goes well fourth class degree, fostered, on the side, his talent as an art­ with a habit of shooting his cuffs’. ist, which in turn was honed by stints at three different art schools. Oxford, and in particular his friend John Betjeman, also nurtured his love of architecture as well as his dandyism characterised by flourishes inspired by La Belle Epoque such as button holes, canes, and rakish hats. After Oxford, Osbert worked for the influentialArchitectural Review, which led to the publication by Jock Murray of Pillar to Post, an illustrated satire on British architecture which gave Osbert his first glimpse of fame as the inventor of amusing new styles (which have since entered the lexicon) such as Stockbrokers’ Tudor and Pont Street Dutch. Jock Murray was to remain his publisher and the closest of friends for the rest of Osbert’s life. Of the many strands in Osbert’s career, Hugh Buchanan highlights his work as a cartoonist which is reflected in the thousands of original drawings, marked up for publication, 17 · osbert in the Murray archive. Osbert’s first ‘pocket’ cartoon, indeed watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

38 Patrick Leigh Fermor Artemis Cooper

Passports and maps are the tools of bureaucracy and adminis­ tration. A passport allows governments to track the movement of individuals. A map displays the geographical features of a country, and marks the roads, settlements and boundaries that people have imposed on it. The information they contain is purely factual, expressed in stamps and symbols; yet nothing releases the excitement, liberation and romance of travel like a passport and a map. For Patrick Leigh Fermor they were talis­ mans of huge significance, treasured among his most precious possessions. No matter how far he allowed his imagination to recreate the past or how skilfully he wove his memories into elaborate tapestries, it was these well-worn, dog-eared maps and passports that put the solid ground under everything he wrote.’

Detail from Paddy’s Passports [cat.19]

40 41 18 · PA DDY’S MAP OF CRETE watercolour on paper · 15 x 22 inches

19 · PA DDY’S PASSPORTs watercolour on paper · 22 x 30 inches 44 Hugh Buchanan The Contributors

HUGH BUCHANAN was born in Edinburgh in 1958. The Hugh Buchanan’s paintings are in the collections of the Sincere thanks are due to the distinguished contributors James Knox In curating the hugely successful Osbert city instilled in him a lifelong love of architecture, which Victoria and Albert Museum, Edinburgh City Art Centre, to this catalogue: Lancaster exhibition at the Wallace Collection in 2008 James the University of Edinburgh, the University of Aberdeen, helped bring the genius of Osbert to a wider audience. James he developed as a student of Drawing and Painting at Elizabeth Bradley Historian, writer and journalist, the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Flemings is formerly Managing Director of The Art Newspaper and Edinburgh College of Art. After graduating in 1981 he Elizabeth has done much to promote New York and Bank, Deutsche Bank, the National Trust for Scotland and currently Director of the Fleming Wyfold Art Foundation. worked on commissions of interiors for the Prince of Wales, Washington Irving through her writing, in particular her the National Trust and the House of Commons. For the last the English National Trust. In 1987 he was one of Ten British editing of the Penguin Classics edition of The Legend of James Robertson Multi-award winning novelist, short decade he has concentrated on paintings of libraries and Watercolourists shown at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories (2014). story writer, poet and promoter of the Scots language, James’s archives. Spain. In 1991 he exhibited at the Lincoln Center, New York. The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006) is a brilliant rework­ In spring 2000 Buchanan was a participant in The Art of In 1994 Hugh Buchanan was given a retrospective by the Lord Byron The current Lord Byron is the 13th to hold that ing of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Memory: contemporary painters in search of Marcel Proust, National Trust at Petworth House. In 1998 five works by Hugh title. He maintains a strong interest in the poetical 6th Lord Jeykll and Mr Hyde and James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs at the National Theatre on the South Bank in London, The Buchanan were included in the exhibition Princes as Patrons: Byron through his valuable patronage and activities with The and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Lair of the Leopard: Lampedusa (2005), Everyone Sang: a The Art Collections of the Princes of Wales from the Renaissance Byron Society at home and abroad. view of Siegfried Sassoon and his world (2006), and Jumping to the Present Day shown at the National Museum and Gallery, Artemis Cooper With her biography Patrick Leigh Femor, Meg Rosoff Prize winning novelist and author Meg is a for Joyce: Contemporary painters revel in the world of Cardiff. In 2002 he was commissioned by the House of Lords An Adventure (2012) and the posthumous completion of Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She discussed her James Joyce (2013). In 2009 his exhibition of library paint­ to paint the lying in state of the Queen Mother at the Palace Paddy’s trilogy of his famous youthful journey in The Broken interest and admiration of intrepid traveller Isabella Bird in ings, Enlightenment, was shown at The Old Town House, of Westminster. In 2005 his paintings featured in Watercolours Road (2013) with Colin Thubron, Artemis has rewarded his the BBC’s Great Lives series in 2013. University of Aberdeen. In 2010 his exhibition Words and and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth the readers, old and new, with two indispensible works. Miranda Seymour Novelist, biographer and critic, is a Deeds explored the archive at Drumlanrig in Dumfriessshire. Queen Mother, at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh Owen Dudley Edwards An acknowledged inter­national Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Miranda’s many In April 2013 he was invited to show a selection of library and Queen’s Gallery, London. expert on a number of historical authors, periods and themes, books include her definitive Life of Mary Shelley (2000). and archive paintings at the Historical Fiction Festival, His work has featured in two limited edition publications Owen is particularly distinguished for his deep knowledge She is currently researching a biography of Lord Byron’s wife Summerhall, Edinburgh where his exhibition The Esterhazy with accompanying texts by Peter Davidson: The Eloquence of and expertise of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his works, for and his daughter, the mathematician Ada Lovelace. Archive was also held. Shadows (1994) and Winter Light (2010). which he was the ideal general editor of the Oxford Sherlock Kathryn Sutherland As Professor of Bibliography Holmes series. and Textual Criticism at St Anne’s College, University of Stuart Kelly Journalist, author, literary editor, critic and Oxford, Kathryn is a renowned international expert not book prize panellist, Stuart is almost as prolific as one of his only on Jane Austen but on Romantic period novelists and heroes Sir Walter Scott. His Scott-land (2011) is essential read­ writers. These interests often find her immersed in literary ing for anyone wishing to understand Scott’s cultural influence. manuscripts and archives.

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38 Albemarle Street · London W1S 4JG +44 (0)20 7499 1314 · [email protected] www.jmlondon.com

Published by John Martin Gallery for the exhibition at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, 26 June – 6 September 2015, and John Martin Gallery Mayfair, London, 18 September – 10 October 2015.

ISBN 978 0 9932195 2 8

Images © Hugh Buchanan 2015 Text © The contributors 2015 Catalogue © John Martin Gallery 2015

Photography by the National Library of Scotland Designed and typeset in Fleischman by Dalrymple Printed in Belgium by Albe De Coker ISBN 9780993219528

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