Robert Lawson: The Early Years
Writing a profile in The HORN BOOK Magazine, Marie Lawson summed up her husband’s early childhood succinctly: “The biography is simple; he spent a normal childhood in a pleasant but uninspiring suburb near New York. He was surrounded by good books which he most thoroughly enjoyed on those days when it was impossible to play football, baseball, or go skating” (ML). In his own autobiographical sketch for another publication, Lawson adds only a few more details -- including that he “was born in New York not many blocks from where The Heritage Press now carries on its activities. But that was back in 1892 before there was a Heritage Press” (RL 12) and that “I was soon snatched from it however and taken to Montclair, N.J.” (RL1).
The town lucky enough to be called Lawson’s hometown was “a pleasant place . . . There were a horse, a cow, chickens, dogs and cats, a lot of relatives and enough boys in the immediate neighborhood to make up a complete baseball team,” which apparently was a very good team in spite of Lawson, who admitted, “I wasn't very good. I played right field and they usually had to wake me up at the end of each inning.” (RL12)
By all accounts, Lawson was a typical boy, enjoying the moments of his childhood with little aspiration or inclination for any future plans. His father, an Alabama-born dry-goods salesman “of the old school . . .[who] believed in beginning at the bottom, or a little below it, and working up” (RL2), tried at various times to convince Lawson to follow in his footsteps -- attempts that Lawson would later recall with some humor -- but the life of a businessman was of little interest to him. His father found more success encouraging the love of books that Lawson’s mother also shared:
My mother taught me to like good books. She never forbade my reading trashy books or the funny papers, she didn't care what I read as long as I was reading something. But she always gave me the finest books that could be had, with the most beautiful illustrations. She always spoke of trashy reading as “sculch.”
The books she read herself, both English and French, were always good books and she talked about them so interestingly and lovingly that I just naturally got to like good books better than sculch.
She drew and painted too; and about once a year we would go to New York to spend a day at the Metropolitan Museum. She never told me what I should like or shouldn't like, we just looked at everything and had a grand time. . . .
My father was not a great reader but he loved Uncle Remus and used to read it to us by the hour. When I tried to read it myself, I never could understand the dialect very well, but Father came from Alabama -- and when he read it it sounded fine. He told me stories about the Civil War. He had been a soldier in that when he was just fifteen years old. RL 12
In addition to cultivating a love of books, his parents also would prove to be his role models for successful parenting.
Despite these influences, Lawson the boy “neither drew pictures nor wrote stories, as many children do” (ML). In fact, Lawson’s first picture did not happen until “my final year in high school, when it was pointed out to me that I must prepare to do something in the world. I had always had a vague idea that I would like to be an engineer and build bridges, but having managed to avoid every form of mathematics, this career did not seem very possible” (RL1). On a lark, he entered a drawing contest and won “his first earned dollar” (ML).
Although Marie Lawson dismissed the idea “ this lone triumph” decided his future, it must have nudged him a little because after graduating high school, Lawson spent three years at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (ML). Upon finishing, he “spent three years in Greenwich Village doing odd scraps of illustration in designing scenery for the Washington Square players . . .and began to consider a career as a great scenic artist” (RL1).History had other ideas. As Marie Lawson wrote, “What might have come no one can surmise. For the roar of guns echoed across the Atlantic and Robert Lawson became one more khaki dot in the long lines of Americans moving into France.” Or, as Lawson somewhat more brusquely concluded of his early career: [Word War I] put a stop to that. I served a year-and-a-half and the Camouflage Section, 40th Engineers, U.S. Army” RL1.
The War Leaves a Lasting Imprint on Lawson
Lawson’s 18 months as a soldier in WWI had a tremendous effect on him personally and professionally. As Marie Lawson writes, “And, oddly enough, though there had certainly been no time in France for either study or practice, his new work showed not only a decided advance in maturity, but the trend his work was to take for all time” (ML). Whether there was more time than his wife thought, or whether Lawson made time in order to stay grounded and sane during the horrors of war, is uncertain, but he did manage to fill at least three notebooks with sketches of his time in France.
The work was enough to help him decide that art would be his profession (ML).
Beyond its impact on Lawson’s career choice, the war left its mark on him psychologically as well. He would later be accused of “pacifism” for works such as The Story of Ferdinand and would speak out against all forms of hypocrisy, stupidity, and censorship that he associated with the origins of war.
Years later, memories of the war were still very much alive for Lawson, who sometime between 1930 and 1957 wrote this account of the Armistice in his “Foreword” to the never-published These I Have Loved:
Every painter, every illustrator or edger has in his mind a store of pictures he has never done, probably never will do, sometimes because . . . they are things that just cannot be drawn or painted. They require too much; color and line alone cannot express them, they need words, they need music and atmosphere and feeling far too subtle for brush or pencil. One such I remember clearly. . .
.. .Suddenly we were rooted to the spot. Through a rift in the clouds the setting sun had flooded the tower with a brilliant warm light, brilliant and warm as only the sun of France can shine on the old, old stone of French cathedrals. No stage manager could have arranged a more dramatic bit of flood lighting. We saw tiny figures busy on the summit. There were the gold and red robes of church dignitaries, winking braids and horizon blue of army officers, a brassy shine from the long trumpets of four buglers who took their places at the parapet, facing the four points of the compass.
Then, rippling and bellying in the breeze, the great tricolor of France slowly rose into the sunlight, its newness almost blinding against the leaden sky. As it climbed the staff the cathedral Bells, silent four heartbreaking years, burst into a wild clamor. The buglers blew those sweetly stirring calls that only French trumpeters blow, all the other belfries added their clanging in the freight train rumble of humans rose to the roar of a tempest. RL16
Robert Lawson's Career Begins Anew
In the years following the Great War, Lawson found himself challenged with re-starting a career “that had barely begun” (ML). “I began to illustrate a little more earnestly,” Lawson recalls, adding:
For 3 years I did a great many illustrations for the Delineator, The Designer, Century and Pictorial Review. . . In 1922 I married Mary Abrams, illustrator and author, and the following year we came to Westport Connecticut, where we have lived off and on ever since. Up to the time of the crash of 1929 most of my work was greeting cards mixed with considerable illustration and advertising work (RL1)
Although these years were “wholly commercial,” Marie Lawson wrote that both artists saw value in the experience: “[T]he very limitations and requirements imposed brought a greater technical versatility, the necessary limits of space, a finer sense of design, the rendering of actual products, a more accurate observance of detail, a finer draughtsmanship” (ML).
Even here, in the relatively anonymous world of commercial art, Lawson’s work achieved notoriety and respect. An editorial from a 1920 issue of Designer Magazine, tells this touching story about an unexpected use of Lawson’s drawings in a veteran’s hospital:
The young artist who drew the two delightful pages of pictures “The Knight , The Princess and The Bishop” in our January number doubtless never dreamed that his drawings were to furnish anything more than amusement. But he perfected each tiny drawing as lovingly as though the most critical eyes were to examine them. And he never guessed how far-reaching was to be the influence of one of those sketches. Neither did we until we received the following letter from one who has much to do with the hospital for disabled soldiers:
Will you tell Mr. Lawson for me that I have turned his “highly authored “ illustrations especially (VIII and XIV) into designs for toys which our “shell-shocked” soldiers can cut from thin wood? They are delighted with them, and, of course, that is half the game. McCarthy, one of the men, got his whiff of gas in France because he waited to quiet the horses that he was leading to water before he would put on his mask, and his depression followed that. He begs to be killed most of the time, and tries it himself occasionally, but when he is at work on that white horse he will give you the nicest sort of faint smile. He said the other day, ‘That's a real horse. Used to have horses on the farm.” Which is probably the longest sentence he has said since he has been in the ward. They have to feed him through a tube because he won't eat; but he will wobble over to that table and cut horse. As one of the other men says, “Horse is McCarthy's meat.”
Wouldn't you like to have drawn that little white horse? (DM)
By 1929, then, the Lawsons were happily succeeding in advertising and other commercial arts. But history would intervene again.
Robert Lawson: Etching out a Living During the Great Depression
After the stock market crash of 1929, “[t]he advertising world was a burst balloon” (ML). Still every cloud has its silver lining, and for Robert Lawson the break from commercial work meant that “[f]or the first time there was leisure enough to try etching, a medium which, because of its technical challenge, had long attracted him” (ML).
Lawson quickly rose to the top of this art form. In 1931, less than two years after starting out, Lawson’s “House of Usher” received the top prize from the Society of American Etchers for “the best piece of technical execution in pure etching” (JTA). Citing this and two other works in a follow up letter, the organization’s president, John Taylor Arms, wrote, “I cannot refrain from expressing to you my admiration for these three prints and if a may paraphrase I would say that a miracle has happened in connection with the medium displayed by one who has been working at it for as short as time as you have!” (JTA).
Two years later, his etchings were on exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., where art critic Leila Mechlin wrote:
Greatly adding to the interest of this exhibition are series of proofs with drawings showing the work in progress.. . . These drawings shown with the etchings recall the fact that an edger is under the necessity of reversing his drawing on his plate, and if one has never tried to reverse a drawing he does not know how difficult is the process. It is extremely interesting to see the difference in the proofs -- the first with only a small patch etched, the second with still more, the third and fourth bringing it to completion. What infinite patience, as well as skill, such a process must require.
Robert Lawson has only been etching for the past three years, but he has been an illustrator for much longer, and an illustrator he still is of exceptional caliber in his work both to accompany text and to be seen independently, satisfying the three requirements which Thornton Oakley set forth as essential to good illustration -- clearness, force and elegance.WS
Images courtesy of The Free Library of Philadelphia,
Images courtesy of The Free Library of Philadelphia,
These fanciful landscapes won Lawson a great deal of praise and attention, particularly for his ability to merge fantasy with reality. While appreciating this talent, his wife Marie saw these etchings as an indication of "his real work":
Technically, the etchings proved more than acceptable. In subject matter he bowed to the etching convention of landscape and architecture up to a point; then he pursued his inevitable way. Somehow or other, even in the most conventional landscape, the most carefully executed bit of architecture, that something else crept in: the tiny figure of a young knight before a mediæval castle, a Centaur ruthlessly trampling the neat borders of a New England garden; even before the high towers of modern Manhattan elves lurk in the remaining shrubbery. ML
In short, there was a push to let the imagination in and have some free reign -- the exact type of artwork that children would appreciate. So, it is not surprising that during these years, Lawson also began illustrating children's books, "beginning with The Wee Men of Bollywooden in 1930" (RL1). Marie Lawson called the opportunity to draw for Arthur Mason's book "fortuitous," adding that "the turning point had come" (ML).
Robert Lawson Finds His Calling
Etchings may have earned Lawson admiration and notoriety, but press clippings do not pay the bills. "By 1933, being quite destitute and out of touch with things," he wrote, "we sold our house in Westport and went to New York where we remained three years, looking for new work and making new connections" (RL1). Much of this "new work" included advertising and textbooks, as well as drawings for the Herald-Tribune Magazine. However, more children's book commissions came his way, and "gradually they began to occupy most of my time" (RL 1).
Among these jobs was The Story of Ferdinand, which his friend Munro Leaf wrote especially for Lawson to illustrate, having felt that his previous books did not tap enough into his talents. As Lawson later recalled:
. . .it was delightful. I liked it tremendously as a story, but I didn't at all like the idea of trying to illustrate it, because I had never drawn a bull in my life and knew nothing about Spain or bullfighting. So, I spent some time studying the anatomy and looks of bulls, and Spanish scenery, and bull rings, and toreadors' costumes, and then did the drawings. It was fun doing them but a lot of hard work (RL12).
The work paid off. The Story of Ferdinand was a hit -- in every sense of the word. In 1936, the year of it's publication, it sold 14,000 copies, and by 1938, it was the top-selling book in the United States, surpassing Gone with the Wind and selling 3,000 copies per week (Wikipedia, citing Silvey, Anita (July 11, 2005). 100 Best Books for Children). Although the book is still in print and earns rave reviews (with a 4.4/5 on Goodreads), today's audiences cannot appreciate the fervor for this book at the time, fueling a torrent of merchandise, promotional materials, Disney movie, and even floats for the world-famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Images courtesy of The Free Library of Philadelphia,
With Ferdinand, Lawson was firmly established as a a children's book illustrator, although he would later bristle at that title. In 1937, the year after Ferdinand appeared, he "illustrated nine books, my record for one year" (RL1). Among these was Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a collection of lesser-known nursery rhymes compiled by Helen Dean Fish, which secured for Lawson his first Caldecott Honor.
In addition to establishing Lawson as a book artist, Ferdinand was also significant because it solidified his artistic process, which was methodical and painstaking. It began with a thorough selection process:
First, the illustrator reads the manuscript once or twice, without any thought of definite illustrations-simply to see what it's all about and to gather the general atmosphere. Then he usually goes through it again, and which simply demand to be illustrated, either because of their dramatic or atmospheric qualities. Then he goes through it again, and, according to the number of drawings allowed by the publisher, either subtracts some or adds more to help carry out the action and spirit of the text. RL6
Once he decided what to illustrate, he embarked on researching whatever details would be necessary to bring the story to life. The brief account of this stage of the process in Lawson's recollection of illustrating Ferdinand does not capture the level of detail that Lawson insisted upon for this stage:
Just to give you a small idea of the process of doing a drawing we might take one of the first illustrations in the book “They were Strong and Good,” the last book I have done. This is a very simple drawing that shows the brig “Eliza Jane Hopper” sailing up to one of the islands of the West Indies. The date is about 1840. Our usual way of working is to first make a very rough pencil sketch, leaving out all details but just making a sort of rough general plan of what we want to show in the picture then we look up all the details and having found these we go ahead and make the finished drawing. Now the things that had to be looked up in this drawing were first what an island in the West Indies looked like, what a brig of 1840 looked like and then the details of two seagulls. I have been to most of the West Indies so I could do the island from memory. A brig however is a particular kind of sailing vessel, very different from a ship or bark, or schooner. Both the dictionary and the encyclopedia told me that a brig was a two-masted vessel with square sails, and showed a small diagram of the sails and rigging. But as some details varied in different times and I needed a brig of1840, I had to do a little more looking up. Finally in one of our books on sailing ships I found an old picture of a brig which was built in 1835. This was just what I wanted and supplied all the details that were necessary for drawing the “Eliza Jane Hopper.” The two seagulls came from a photograph that I had taken in Nantucket some years ago. That, of course, was a very simple drawing and required very little looking up with details, but some drawings require a great deal and it sometimes take longer to look up these things then it does to actually do the drawing.RL9
In his 1939 speech to the Cleveland Library Association, Lawson revisits this theme, this time detailing the countless questions that arise when asked to draw a policeman, from their rank and state to the number of buttons on the front of a uniform. With such a insistence upon accuracy and detail, Lawson once described his life as an "endless process of observing and stowing away in some curious rag-bag part of his mind, all the thousands of ill-assorted facts and impressions that he will sometime be called upon to use" including "strange faces; how different sorts of shoes wrinkle; clothes, people, lights and shadows; how a plumber carries his tools and what sort of horses pull milk wagons" RL6. After all, he concluded:
The landscape painter places himself before a landscape and paints it; the portrait painter paints a stout lady who places herself before him to be painted. But the poor illustrator may, at any moment, be called upon to dive into his memory and produce, correctly and recognizably, an Egyptian princess, a Chinese junk, a Christmas tree with all its candles, a circus parade or a little girl eating spinach. RL6
With his research complete, Lawson would then move to pull the book together, but this, too, was a recursive process, the artist ever-questioning the specifics of the final illustrations:
The next step, usually, is to make a dummy the exact shape and size of the book, and to plan, roughly, the drawings themselves in their proper sizes and places. Then, with the drawings in this tangible form, he goes through this dummy again, adding here, eliminating there, until the drawings would, taken by themselves give a very clear idea of the feeling and progress of the story. RL6
. . . .[H]ow do you know what things to put into the drawing . . .? This is a more difficult question and can only be answered in part. In the first place it brings up the whole question of just what is meant by illustration-is it merely to do in pictures what the author has already done in words, or to go on and carry out in a pictorial and decorative form the spirit and atmosphere the author can really only suggest? The infinite detail which it is possible to put in a drawing to enhance the scene, would, all too often, if written, hopelessly retard the action and drama of the narrative. To my mind this is the true function of the illustrator. RL6
With the planning concluded, all that remained was to complete the final drawings. For this, Lawson had developed his own unique process:
Robert Lawson had also developed a method of his own, a rubbed or brushed Woolf pencil technique on smooth Whatman drawing board. He describes his discovery in an article in Art Instruction: "I noticed at one time how much Woolf pencil rubbed and smeared when used as a pencil. Experimenting, I found that it could be rubbed with a brush to give a tone that is easily picked off with kneaded rubber for light. A very sharp pointed pencil, used almost like a pen, gives definition and textures. The whole process consists of an endless series of drawing, brushing, picking and light with the rubber, and then doing it over and over again, finally fixing and picking out the highlights with white tempera or by scraping with a knife." HDF
The following details from Lawson's original sketches for his three Caldecott books (Four and Twenty Blackbirds -- honor, Wee Gillis -- honor, and They Were Strong and Good -- winner) show this technique:
(Original sketch and final art for "Old Crummles" in Four and Twenty Blackbirds: Old Nursery Rhymes, collected by Helen Dean Fish and illustrated by Robert Lawson, 1938 Caldecott Honor. Sketch courtesy of The Free Library of Philadelphia,
If Lawson's overall approach to illustrating remained fairly constant, it was not due to any lack of ingenuity or insight. Rather, it was because the process did not need to change; it already included an almost endless cycle of trial and error -- or drafting and revising and editing -- that in the end likely was limited more by deadlines and other practicalities than any sense of completion. As Lawson would later write:
For my own part I can say that only twice in something over twenty years has a definite idea for a drawing come out of thin air by the process called, I believe, inspiration. It has always come by sitting down with paper and a pencil and actually thinking about the subject; by scratching and rubbing out and starting again. Eventually some combination of scratches and smudges, of irritation or desperation will stir a memory of something once seen, which will suggest an arrangement or a point of view, and from then on it is simply a problem of building this up and elaborating upon it until the desired result is attained. I should say approached -- it is never attained. RL6
Robert Lawson: From Artist to Icon
As suggested in the last section, the years following The Story of Ferdinand were extremely successful for Lawson. According to the New York Herald-Tribune, advance sales for the 1938 Wee Gillis, Lawson's second book with Munro Leaf were nine times the original 14,000 for Ferdinand (NYHT October 24, 1938).
The book would earn a second Caldecott Honor for Lawson. Although completed only a year after Four and Twenty Blackbirds and two years after Ferdinand, the evolution of Lawson's art is apparent; it is more detailed and more sophisticated, as these original sketches with details show:
Wee Gillis by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson. The scene not only captures the mist that envelops the young man but the force of his call, which fills his lungs and lifts him off his feet.
Sketches courtesy of The Free Library of Philadelphia,
Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson)
Wee Gillis by Munro Leaf and illustrated by Robert Lawson. This opening scene captures both the expanse of the Scottish countryside and the intricate details of the house; note how the added detail of the waving Wee Gillis humorously plays upon his name, and how Lawson is able to achieve a "glow" in the mountains even though he limited to black and white.
Sketches courtesy of The Free Library of Philadelphia,
Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson)
Not long after receiving his second ALA honor, Lawson's art took on another dimension when he was invited to try his hand at writing. He later recounted this new development with his typical self-effacing humor:
After Mr. Popper's Penguins, Little, Brown and Company said that they would like me to do another book and asked that I suggest something that especially interested me. Then they said they would get an author to write the story and I could do the drawing. They also suggested that perhaps a story from some famous historical person and his, or her, pet might be a good idea to work on. So I considered all the famous historical characters that I could think of but the only ones that had pets, animal pets, that is, as far as I could remember, were Cardinal Richelieu and his kittens and Cleopatra and her asp. Neither of these seemed very appealing. Then for some unknown reason I thought of Ben Franklin and that messy looking old fur cap of his. It always looked to me as though it must be inhabited by something and so why not a mouse? So suddenly Amos took form. The origin of the name is simple. AMOS - A MOUSE. His character was somewhat suggested by that of a friend of ours who is a very fine person and all that, but pretty much of what might be called a “sour-puss.” A grand friend, but he always is right about everything, which is very exemplary but most annoying...The chief difficulty, strangely enough, came and doing the drawings. Ordinarily I get a manuscript from the Publishers and illustrate it pretty much as I please, giving very little thought or attention to the author and his wishes. But in this case I, the illustrator, had a great deal of fault to find with the story that I, the author, had given me to illustrate. And of course as the author, I felt that the illustrator was not doing justice to my story at all, so that by the time the book was finished, we were both very confused and hardly on speaking terms RL8
Lawson would go on to write 20 more books. Among these were 1940's They Were Strong and Good, which earned him his first and only Caldecott Gold Medal in 1941. The book tells the story of his family, its move from Europe and its early years making a new future in the United States. Caldecott chronicler Irene Smith said of the book:
One feels that Robert Lawson's drawings and text for They Were Strong and Good, the Caldecott medal book, were a labor of pure love. In this distinguished picture book, he tells about his forebears, what they were, how they worked and what they endured to help make their country the America we have inherited. He captures children's love of a story with the romance of the Scotch sea captain and the Dutch farm girl, and the little Alabama boy (Mr. Lawson's father) who marched with the southern Army has their complete sympathy. The drawing that portrays this young soldier's return home, a ragged boy limping down the war-desolated road, is one of the memorable pages in all picture book literature. In these pages there is strength, tenderness and beauty of line. IS
Her inference is partly correct. No doubt, the book was a loving tribute to his family, as the original sketches below highlight:
However, it was also a statement, as Lawson later wrote:
They Were Strong and Good was the result of a spell of irritation. At the time it was written it seemed to me that most of the current biography and autobiography insisted that to amount to anything at all one simply must spring from a dramatic, a horribly drab or an exotic background.. . .Poverty, of course, was essential, alcoholic or sadistic parents an asset, none at all even better. RL14
More to the point, he saw the book as a response to "demagogic politicians, 'advanced educators,' and the great legion of miscellaneous do-gooders were catering assiduously, and nauseatingly, to the vociferous demands of the so-called minority groups, to the out-of-line mentalities and the dole demanders" by insisting upon books written with such themes and forgetting to tell the stories those who had accomplished great things despite having "had perfectly normal, ordinary, pleasant childhoods in decent American families . . .None of them was great or famous, but 'they were strong and good'. . . So I wrote about them" (RL14).
While today's political atmosphere would likely cast a different tone to Lawson's words and lead to challenges over what he considered a "decent American," the larger context of many Lawson's speeches and other writings of this time suggests that his "spell of irritation" was not due to the stories of other groups per se but with the insistence of the publishing of the publishing world that they predominate the landscape of children's literature.
Although Lawson would later say of himself that he "never championed anything" except perhaps "the Cause of Common Sense," he was a firm believer in free speech -- in every sense of the word (RL10). "I hate blanket indictments and taboos of whole subject simply because there are few bad examples: it smacks too much of prohibition and Nazi book burnings," he once wrote in response to then-popular criticisms of comics by educators, publishers, and parents calling for their elimination (RL11). Instead, no doubt influenced by the approach of his mother, he believed in a free market of ideas for children, where they themselves would be able to decide what to read, with informed guidance by parents who did not just preach "good literature" but modeled a love for it by actively reading it themselves.
As part of this philosophy, Lawson despised book lists, leveling books, word lists by age, and attempt to define the “right” kind of book -- or the "right" type of book for the "right" child. He believed that these contrivances, along with publishers' priorities and taboos, kept great stories out of the hands of children. Moreover, they were unnecessary: "People with this point of view never seem to realize that children are really smart. You can't fool them. No matter how you may sugarcoat it, they can smell a concealed geography lesson or a bit of propaganda or uplift at forty paces and they will have none of it" (RL10).
Lawson also believed that not only can children see through these ruses, but that their native intelligence made their responses to media unpredictable -- a belief that he supported with his own experience in "BAD BOOKS for Children" (1942-1943):
[I]t came as rather a shock recently when I realized how much I owe to BAD BOOKS for children -- to the wrong kind of reading as a child. Somehow I seemed to get hold of a great many items of unrecommended reading -- a great many books that should never have been given to a youngster, but strangely enough most of them sort of backfired and turned out all for the best (RL2).
He then gave several examples of these bad books, along with the lessons each taught:
- A book given to him by his father about the shady dealings of a businessman and his friends, from which he learned not to be a businessman;
- A bloody memoir by a retired New York City police officer, which taught him not to live in New York;
- A collection of lectures by a Temperance advocate, which convinced him that when the time came he would drink;
- A book of Last Words of Distinguished Men and Women” that included gory accounts of the events surrounding each utterance, which gave him “an unending interest in old times and customs and an undying distrust of mob thinking and organized intolerance”; and
- “painstaking perusal of all the literature accompanying patent medicines and toilet preparations,” which helped him develop the ability to tune out radio ads and other boring things.
Thus, Lawson believed that attempts to regulate books for children too tightly were ill-conceived no matter how well-intended -- and that adults owed children some respect for their own childlike tastes:
All this is not intended as seriously recommending wrong reading for children. It is merely the thought that if Junior should suddenly develop an interest in strange and unlikely literature -- all is not lost. It is not imperative to rush him to the nearest child psychologist. He will very likely get something out of it and I’m sure will suffer no harm. For I thoroughly believe that there is a strength and resilience in the mind of a child that many grown-ups. in their infinite wisdom, are entirely too prone to underestimate. I know that there is an innate simplicity and honesty of thought there that enables them to find goodness and beauty and inspiration in strange places where grown-ups cannot even see it (RL 2).
These themes appear repeatedly in Lawson's speeches and editorials, which were much in demand after 1940. Thus, by the end of World War II, Lawson had established himself not just as an artist and writer but as an expert in his field.
Inspiration Hits Robert Lawson: Rabbit Hill
Whatever irreverence Lawson had for publishers likely was reinforced by his experience writing Rabbit Hill. Named after his home, this tale focuses on the personified wildlife in Westport, Connecticut, as they deal first with the famine caused by an abandoned house and untended garden and next with the anxiety of new occupants. Although a bit uncertain how to start it:
after that first chapter a strange thing happened. Somehow little Georgie, Father, Phewie, Willie Fieldmouse and the rest just took over the book. I scarcely remember writing it, it went so rapidly and easily, far more easily than any other book I had ever done. Of course it was the exact opposite of what I had set out to do but I still thought it was a pretty good story (RL15).
According to Lawson, the publisher only partly agreed. He liked the story well enough, but it was so far from the original concept that he ultimately was disappointed and passed on the book. Another accepted it, and Lawson wrote a book for the first editor more like the agreed upon story; that book Country Colic, had flat sales and little recognition (RL15).
Rabbit Hill, however, had tremendous success both critically and commercially. Lawson's personal papers are filled with fan mail about the book, press clippings about school events honoring the book, and similar coverage. The book earned him a Newbery Award in 1945, the same year that Harvey won the Pulitzer, leading Lawson to quip "This seems to have been quite a season for rabbits," in his Newbery acceptance paper (Horn Book Papers Volume I, Newbery Medal Books, 1922-1955).
The remainder of Lawson's Newbery Acceptance Paper is a rather fanciful account of the "strange things" that have happened since the publication of the book, including extended interactions with the wildlife that seem to extend the fantasy world of the book into his own life. The paper is so whimsical and such a contrast to Lawson's other public papers that it really does seem that he was overwhelmed by intensity of the inspiration he felt writing this book, suggesting more than a grain of truth behind the account given by his wife, Marie:
But one thing he does not believe, and that is that he wrote Rabbit Hill. For the first time in his life, this book was an effortless effort. There is no doubt but that May Massee sowed a tiny seed when, years ago, she said that “one of these days" there should be a rabbit story from Rabbit Hill. In her infinite wisdom, she was not insistent, and the days went into years before anything was done. There, also, seems no doubt that the story was on the way long before it was set down; just something here, something there --- Old Porky sunning himself on the garden wall; a rare glimpse of the red buck in the glow of sunrise; Willie Fieldmouse, attracted by birdseed, peering into a lit window on a cold night; Uncle Analdas and Father, nibbling grass on the lawn, and, unquestionably and justifiably, complaining of its quality; Little Georgie cavorting across the road toward the mailbox. . . The question still remains as to who wrote Rabbit Hill. Possibly May Massee, waiting patiently and hopefully in her New York office; perhaps the gray fox or the mole -- or perhaps Little Georgie himself.ML
My wife enjoys jeering at me about an old lady whose illusions I rudely shattered. Had been doing some rather romantic and imaginary etchings, and we were at the opening reception of an exhibition where several of them were being shown. My wife was helping pour coffee when an elderly dame bore down on her and asked if she would point out Mr. Lawson. She said, “I have a great many of his etchings, and I think they're just so lovely and so romantic and I'm just dying to meet him!” Well I'd been working in the garden quite a bit and was pretty sunburned and I'd outgrown my evening clothes and was choking to death . . . my wife said, “Oh he's that red-faced thing over there with the black nails clawing at his collar.” The lady gasped and said, “Oh dear, oh my goodness – why I'd always pictured him as being tall and dark and slender and romantic looking. Are you sure that is he?” And my wife said, “I ought to be. I've been married to him for 20 years and he's never been any of those things.” So the poor lady went away without even speaking, with all her illusions shattered, and I'm sure never bought another one of my etchings (RL5).
Thus, of all the praise that he received for Rabbit Hill, probably nothing meant more than these words by his wife: "To analyze his writing is another matter. That peculiar art of mingling fact with fantasy and making people believe it, is completely beyond analysis. That he has achieved it seems, now, beyond all question" (ML).
Robert Lawson: Later Years & Legacy
THESE HAVE I LOVED through many years, just why, it is hard to say. Why should a certain verse or a certain passage of a book cling in one's mind for a lifetime while a flood of words rushes past, hundreds, perhaps thousands daily, leaving no trace, no memory? . . . Perhaps it is because of the circumstances under which we first read some poem or story, perhaps that we first heard it from the lips of someone very dear or in a moment of emotional strain which made us particularly sensitive to impressions. For those of us whose life's work is concerned with making pictures it may well be that certain bits of poetry or prose have painted such beautiful pictures that we have remembered them always, or that they suggest pictures that we have always wanted to make (RL 16).
Among his most nostalgic reminiscences is that of Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which was given to him "in the dim, distant past [when] I was courting a young lady" (RL18). He had "obstinately refused" to borrow the book for weeks because "most animal stories bored me"(RL18). Her persistence, and the promise of a "long and tedious trip out to Jersey," won out (RL18). Within minutes, he was engrossed in the book "in the dim, flickering light of the airless Hudson Tube" (RL18). He spent the next two days reading and really reading it. In particular, he cites the chapter "Dulce Domum" as "the loveliest" stories about "home and Christmas," which he found "a quiet place and a quiet hour" to read every Christmas Eve (RL18). However, the real meaning of the book to his life was something even greater than a Christmas tradition:
Later, the young lady admitted that she had used Kenneth Grahame's masterpiece as a sort of test. "I am sure," she said, "that I would never have even considered marrying anyone who didn't love The Wind in the Willows. Perhaps that is why I am especially fond of it (RL18).
That he and Marie shared a close bond based on mutual respect and admiration cannot be denied. He repeatedly refers to her role in his work, and his droll humor cannot hide his deference to her opinion: “Whenever I finish writing a chapter of a new book I usually read it aloud to Mrs. Lawson and when it's finished she usually says, ‘Well it sounds pretty well, and since you read it aloud worse than anyone in the world it may be quite good'" (RL 17). It is impossible to say the void left for Lawson when Marie died in 1956; one can only imagine it. A year later, on May 17, 1957, Robert Lawson died of a heart attack while visiting friends. He was 64 years old.
In its obituary of Lawson, The New York Times called him a "meticulous craftsman," noting that he had just finished Why Bats Are and that The Great Wheel was set to be published later in the year (NYTObit). Interestingly, the article did not mention any of his Caldecott-honored books, focusing instead on The Story of Ferdinand, Rabbit Hill, and Ben and Me, as well as other historical tales told from the perspective of the animals at the side famous personages. Later assessments of his work have praised his artistry, particularly the level of detail, expression, and movement he was able to achieve through line. However, like many artists of his time, he also has received criticism for being overly traditional, as well as having stereotypical portrayals of women and minorities and relatively flat depictions of people, compared to his anthropomorphic animal characters (nocloo.com).
While Lawson's traditionalism may affect interpretations of his work in today's world, it also belies a more radical conviction that children are deserving of more respect than adults saw fit to give them. Moreover, his conception of this respect for children may well surpass the modern view, which couples its demands for more child-centered learning environments and parenting styles with an overabundance of ratings, reviews, taboos, and school board curriculum debates. One can, for example, easily see his comments on comics being hurled at today's parents and teachers who denigrate video games and TikTok:
Just give children in books something better and something they will enjoy as much or more than the comics….. give children what they crave and enjoy, not what sober-minded elderly critics, editors, educators and earnest parents have decided is Good For Them.
Children by the million love the comics. To say that the comics are vulgar, sensational and degrading is to imply that most children have vulgar, sensation-seeking and degraded tastes. I do not believe it (RL11)
Instead, Lawson saw children as honest consumers -- unlike adults. Adults were who were full of "hypocrisy and self-delusion" that took all forms: From diplomats preaching peace in Geneva while "manufacturing and selling munitions to all comers" to politicians calling for a wartime cessation of publishing children's books while printing thousands of "Departmental Directives -- in quadruplicate" to parents who chastise their children for reading comics while they relax with copies of Esquire and Life (PM, RL 13, RL11). As a result of living in this world of deception, adults long ago lost their sense of who they are, and, therefore, their opinions could not be trusted -- especially on what was best for children:
[C]hildren are brighter and pleasanter to look at, that they have a wider imagination a quicker perception and a keener sense of beauty, that they have a cleaner sense of humor and that, most important of all, they are less hampered by stupid second-hand notions of what they ought to think and like and do. Children would not fly to a Picasso exhibition -- unless there were free ice cream cones . . .nor would they profess to stagger through Gertrude Stein's latest opus. They make no pretense. Their approval of what they like is thorough and honest and wholehearted. And what they do not like they can ignore with an indifference that is devastating. This makes working for children very delightful, for you know just where you stand. They like it or they don't like it and that's that. RL10
Because of this view, Lawson held his primary audience in the highest regard and ultimately believed that any concept of "children's literature" as a genre potentially demeaned them -- something he vowed never to do:
I have never seen any reason why a drawing for a child's book should be any less carefully planned or worked out than one for the most important scientific article -- and I do not feel that humor is any excuse for bad drawing or that “atmosphere” or “feeling” justified plain ugliness or sloppy technique. Which brings us, by a rather roundabout way, to the subject of children's books, and about this I really do not feel qualified to say much, because I do not consider that I am especially a children's illustrator. Or rather, that I do not consider that there is, or should be, any such thing as a children's illustrator. The moment anyone's work looks as though it were obviously done for children then we are talking down to children, we are talking baby talk with illustrations which I think is low and stupid. I think that trying to rise to the levels demanded by the clear ideals of children is a far greater task and a much more satisfying accomplishment than meeting the muddle-headed demands of their elders. . .
This marks for me a sort of Silver Wedding, for it is just 25 years since I started illustrating. In those years I have worked, I think, in every field of illustration that there is, and as a sort of celebration, I would like to make one small proud boast and a promise to all children whether they are in the eight or eighteen or eighty year “age group.” And that is this. That in all that time I have never, as far as I can remember, given one moment's thought as to whether any drawing that I was doing was for adults or for children. I have never changed one conception or line or detail to suit the supposed age of the reader. And I have never, in what writing I have done, changed one word or phrase of text because I felt it might be over the heads of children. I have never, I hope, insulted the intelligence of any child.
And with God and my publisher willing I promise them that I never will. (RL10)
With this in mind, it probably would bother Lawson very little if his critics told him that his work is too traditional or stereotypical -- as long as those critics were children.
Bibliography
RL1: Lawson. R. (1942). “Autobiographical Sketch.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 1.RL2: Lawson, R. (1942-43). “Bad Books for Children.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 28.
RL3: Lawson, R. (1943?). “Fan Mail and High Blood Pressure.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 3
RL4: Lawson, R. (1943). “It Was a Nice Simple Idea.” Publisher’s Weekly. July 10, 1943, pages 122-124.
RL5. Lawson R. (1942?). Untitled Speech Draft. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 29.
RL6. Lawson, R. (1937). “Lo, the Poor Illustrator!” Publisher’s Weekly, December 7, 1935, pages 2091-2094. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 8.
RL7. Lawson, R. (1939). “Children and the Library.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 33.
RL8.Lawson, R. (1939). “Cleveland Library Speech 1939.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 34.
RL9 .Lawson, R. (1940). “Cleveland Library Speech 1940.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 35.
RL10. Lawson, R. (1940). “Make Me a Child Again.” The HORN BOOK Magazine, November, 1940, pages 447-455. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 9.
RL11. Lawson, R. (194?). “Robert Lawson Answers the ‘Menace’ of the Comics,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, November 13, 1949. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 13.
RL12. Lawson, R. (1945). “The Story of Robert Lawson by Robert Lawson.” Magazine Clipping. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 14.
RL13. Lawson, R. (192?). “[Excerpt?] Speech on the Need for Children’s Books in Wartime.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 42.
RL14. Lawson, R. (194?). “They Were Strong and Good.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 41.
RL15. Lawson, R. (194?). “Rabbit Hill.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 41.
RL16. Lawson, R. (1930-1957). “Foreword to These Have I Loved.” Draft Manuscript. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 40, Folder 11.
RL17. Lawson, R. (1943). “On the Literary Tastes of Children.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 12.
RL 18. Lawson, R. (1930-1957). “Dulce Domum, Chapter 5, These Have I Loved.” Draft Manuscript. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 40, Folder 16.
AE. “The Illustrations of Robert Lawson.” Art Education, November 1938, accompanying an illustration for the Wee Men of Bollywooden. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 3.
HDF. Fish, H.D. (1940). “Robert Lawson Illustrator in the Great Tradition.” The HORN BOOK Magazine, January 1940, pages 17-26. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 3.
JTA. Arms, John Taylor. (1931). “Letters to Robert Lawson.” 16 Nov. 25 1931. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 39, Folder 16.
DM. Anonymous Editorial. “McCarthy’s White Horse.” Designer Magazine, June 1920. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 4.
IS. Smith, Irene. (1941). “Newbery and Caldecott Award Winners.” Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 1.
NYHT. “Wee Gillis.” From the New York Herald Tribune, October 24th 1938. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 18.
NYHT2. Becker, M.L. (ed). “Review of They Were Strong and Good.” New York Herald Tribune, Books for Young People, Sunday September 29th 1940. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 13
PM. “Robert Lawson’s Peace Conference.” PM Magazine, p. 32. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 4
WS. Mechlin, Leila. (1933). “Notes of Art and Artists: Robert Lawson’s Fantastic Etchings on Exhibit at Smithsonian.” Washington Star, The Sunday Star, January 22, 1933. Free Library of Philadelphia, Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson, Box 41, Folder 4.
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