Sime Again?

Another Sime-related reference that has proven elusive over the years is to a novel by Arnold Golsworthy called Death and the Woman, published by Laurence Greening in 1898. Sime is supposed to have done the cover design. Of course the story is more complicated that this. 

Arnold [Holcombe] Golsworthy (1865-1939) is probably best remembered as an editor, though he also published a number of books, mostly in the 1890s. He co-founded and co-edited with Leonard Raven-Hill the literary magazine The Butterfly, which emphasized art and humor. It ran for ten issues in 1893-1894, and was resurrected for another twelve issues in 1899-1900. His fiction all appeared from smaller, off-trail publishers, and included  Death and the Women (1895); Hands in the Darkness (1899); A Cry in the Night (1899); and The New Master (1901). Two further novels appeared under the pseudonym Arnold Holcombe, The Odd Man (1910) and A Little World (1913), before his final book, The Fanatic: A Drama in Verse (1925) appeared as by Golsworthy. 

The bibliographically attentive may note that I date Death and the Woman to 1898 in the first paragraph, and to 1895 in the second. This is not a mistake, even though the British Museum Catalogue does not list any 1895 edition. However, the English Catalogue of Books notes the October 1895 release of the book (2s 6d from Simpkin), and this edition was reviewed in the Glasgow Herald for 24 October 1895.The Greening edition, co-published with the Favourite Publishing Company, came out in June 1898 at 1s, and was noted as a "New ed." in The English Catalogue of Books. This edition has the Sime cover, but it was not original to the book. Death and the Woman was also serialized in the short-lived magazine called Eureka, which was founded in 1897 and for a time co-edited by Sidney Sime.  Sime's illustration appeared with the serialized Golsworthy novel. 

Death and the Woman is a rare book today, in any form. Below is the cover.  Credit goes to The Bookseller on Safari blog, where there is very interesting posting about the book and author, under the title "A Very Shocking Shocker" by Laurence Worms of Ash Rare Books.  Read it here. 

Is this a Sime illustration?

Some years ago, I found a cryptic reference in "The Published Drawings of Sidney Sime," a bibliography by Geoffrey Beare and Martin Steenson, to a cheap edition of The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston that supposedly has a color dust-wrapper design by Sime. This edition was reportedly published by Blackwood, ca. 1916, and it was "subsequently issued with the dust-wrapper design in black and white." 

J[oseph] Storer Clouston (1870-1944) was a prolific Scottish author. The Lunatic at Large was originally published in 1899. A recent edition was published by McSweeney's in 2007.  The publisher's blurb describes the book as follows:

McSweeney's is pleased to announce the return of a much-loved Victorian comic masterpiece—the anarchic novel that ushered in the age of Wodehouse and Waugh. Meet Francis Beveridge, the newest resident of Clankwood, home of "the best-bred lunatics in England." At least, Beveridge seems to be his name, as it's the one sewn into all his clothes. But rather than attending his asylum's Saturday dances, Beveridge prefers to go on the lam in London, attendants in red-faced pursuit. So when the traveling German noble Baron Rudolf von Blitzenberg finds himself at the luxurious Hotel Mayonnaise without a guide to this strange land's customs, who better than the amnesiac Englishman who materializes by his side—a splendid tutor in bringing rail stations to a standstill, the best way to fake a rabies attack, and how to crash London's most exclusive clubs, quite literally. 

It hardly sounds like a book that Sime would have been chosen to illustrate (or to have chosen himself). And though I have observed a number of editions, none of the covers looked at all like they might have been by Sime. Until now. Here is a black-and-white dust-wrapper, apparently from the 1910s and published by Blackwood. Could this be by Sime?  Maybe. Something about the figures seem Sime-like, but I'm not entirely convinced. Thoughts? 

THE MUMMY AND SIDNEY SIME

Before he became the illustrator of work by Lord Dunsany (principally), Arthur Machen and William Hope Hodgson, the fantastic artist Sidney Sime provided artwork for various periodicals, notably comic journals, such as The Idler (which he owned and edited for a short period) and Pick-Me-Up. The latter was a weekly penny journal of about eight flimsy pages containing satirical cartoons and light humorous prose.

The magazine generally had a theatre review column, ‘Through the Opera Glass’, and the issue for September 5, 1896, contains a two page notice of a comedy called The Mummy. Sidney Sime provided portraits of the four leading players. These included Lionel Brough, by then a veteran comic actor, as the Mummy, and Elliott Page, who often performed in Wilde’s plays, as Hattie von Tassel-Smythe, the young woman who reanimates the ancient king. Sime's picture of the Mummy includes his rendition of the hieroglyphics on the papyrus used as a backdrop.

The review says: “The Mummy is a thoroughly enjoyable farce, and it has had the advantage of being written by two gentlemen who appear to have a very good grip of the subject”. However, it neglects to name the authors.

The Mummy was in fact by George Day and Allan Reed, and originally produced at the Comedy Theatre in London, from 11 August 1896. It was later performed at the Garden Theatre, Broadway, from November 1896. It is barely mentioned in theatre histories and then only briefly, as a failure. There seem to be few further traces of the two writers. A copy of a poster for a touring production of the play, by the artist Hassall (1868-1948) is held by The Victoria & Albert Museum.

The comedy had no doubt been produced in response to the contemporary vogue for Egyptology. The archaeologist E A Wallis-Budge had published his study The Mummy: chapters on Egyptian funereal archaeology in 1893. Theo Douglas’ fantasy Iras: A Mystery, in which an Egyptologist is haunted by the spirit of a mummy he has excavated, was published in the same year as the play. Other novels and stories involving mummies followed thickly through the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, but the play seems to be amongst the earliest yarns involving a revivified mummy.

Day & Reed’s farce does not seem to be discussed in The Mummy’s Curse by Roger Luckhurst (2014), the most recent study of the mummy in popular culture. The Pick-Me-Up review, by ‘Jingle’, gives an account of the plot. Professor Garsop “conceives the brilliant idea of putting his antiquity under the influence of a galvanising battery with the view of restoring it to life”. But before he can complete his work, “a mischievous girl, who is staying with the Professor on a visit, sets the machinery going for a lark, and the lark goes on all the evening in a very delightful manner”.

The revivified pharaoh, inevitably called Rameses, relishes his new existence, and the rest of the play seems to revolve around mistaken identities, with the mummy thought to be the Professor himself throughout most of it: under this illusion two young journalists take Rameses out for a drink or several, with comic consequences. The play concludes with a piece of stage conjuring: the mummy climbs back into his casket and when the lid is opened again nothing is left but his cerements.

(c) Mark Valentine 2015

Rare Sidney Sime frontispiece to T.E. Ellis's CHILDREN OF DON (1912)

Just a quick post to share the rare Sidney Sime frontispiece to T. E. Ellis's Children of Don (London: Edward Arnold, 1912), a book which I have reviewed in my "Late Reviews" column in Wormwood no. 20 (Spring 2013), just published. Not all copies of this volume contain the photogravure frontispiece, a characteristic Sime illustration, here depicting a scene from the prologue, where Gwydion seizes the cauldron of Caridwen (click on the illustration to make it larger):

I am alone with the old gods; there breathes
About me menace of dire things to come.
Great beings watch, and a low distant drum
Thunders for change.
                               [Gwydion takes up the cauldron.
                                   I make this mine.
What flood I loose of powers obscure, divine,
What nest I rouse of venomed ills that bask,
Be to my charge. For here I hold
The fortune and the torment of my race.
Here I set destiny, a deathless rite
Upon the working of my kind: a geis
Upon these isles for ever. Mark!
Mark it, ye ancient ones, whom the great cold
And barren regions bind and mask.
I, Gwydion, take on me the stark
And dangerous deed, all that you ask,
Bare breast to lancing lights and bold
Acceptance of the darkness that you rule. 

The collaboration between the artist S. H. Sime, the poet/librettist T. E. Ellis (Lord Howard de Walden), and the composer Joseph Holbrooke, is fascinating, and I am continuing to delve further into their association.

My Talks with Dean Spanley

The cover of the first edition of Lord Dunsany's My Talks with Dean Spanley (London: William Heinemann, 1936), left, has always seemed garish to me. Trying to translate the central conceit of the novel into an image for advertising purposes must be difficult, and this one succeeds only in appearing laughable. The cover to the American edition (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1936), right, utilizes the frontispiece illustration drawn by Robert Ball. It's is not especially attractive, and only slightly better. S. H. Sime contributed the frontispiece to the London edition, his last illustration for a Dunsany book, top. While it is a delightful illustration that does indeed capture the spirit of the book, I'm not sure that it would have made a successful cover illustration. (Click on the illustrations for larger views.)

Dunsany as Jorkens

The first volume of Lord Dunsany's tall tales of Joseph Jorkens, The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens, appeared in 1931. Unlike many of Dunsany's books, which were often illustrated by Sidney Sime, this volume has no illustrations at all. However, Sime did illustrate the first two Jorkens stories, "The Abulaheeb" and "The King of Sarabh", when they appeared in the Christmas number of The Graphic for 1926. Sime, best-known for his exquisite work in black-and-white, uncharacteristically contributed five color illustrations: three for the first story, and two for the second. The best and most characteristic of the illustrations is the headpiece, which seems to depict the Van Dyked Dunsany as his own famous character. (Click on the illustration to see a larger version.)

Sidney Sime

In my column "Late Reviews" in Wormwood no. 6 (Spring 2006), I reviewed favorably the rare shilling shocker A Curious Case (London: Digby and Long, 1891) by one Sidney Sime. Whether this author was also the famous artist Sidney Sime is uncertain, but based on stylistic traits I suspect they are the same Sime.

Recently I happened upon a short review of the book, contemporary to its original publication, and thought I'd share it. It appeared in The Academy, 5 September 1891, and was written by William Sharp, who is better remembered as "Fiona Macleod."

Mr. Sidney Sime's Curious Case is a sufficiently sensation return for the shilling demanded for it. It is, indeed, better than most books of its kind; and the social problem involved in Dr. Hart's ethically justifiable if legally reprehensible and punishable action is one that is all the better for being brought before the attention of thinking men and women in all manner of ways.