‘A Very Special Birthday Card’: Marjorie Coughlan’s Response to the Monument to Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886) by Sir Alfred Gilbert, 1900

Transcript

‘A Very Special Birthday Card’ by Marjorie Coughlan

Randolph Caldecott was born in Chester on 22^nd March 1846. After a few years as a bank clerk in Whitchurch and then in Manchester, he took the plunge and moved to London to pursue a career as an artist. The rest, as they say, is history, and although he died tragically young at the age of 39, his work lives on, especially through his picture books, which continue to delight new generations of children – and their parents. For Caldecott had that gift for conveying a scene, a moment, and depicting nuances of character, through insightful observation and gentle humour.

Caldecott was 26 when he arrived in London with £100 in his pocket: enough to keep him going for a year while he established himself. At some point in those early years, he joined a sketch club of which my great-great-grandfather, was also a member, I believe in some sort of administrative role – he was an economist and journalist, not an artist. In 1875, his daughter, my great-grandmother, Isabel received a birthday card from Caldecott that is very much in keeping with the little sketches that were always integral to his personal correspondence. It carries the date 23^rd October and is inscribed, ‘To Miss Wilson on her Birthday’.

It shows a dark-haired little girl happily receiving the gift of a book marked ‘Volume VII’, from a genial, rather emaciated old Father Time. He has wings and the sometimes characteristic, curious little tuft of hair sticking up from his otherwise bald pate, and he hides his scythe behind his back in a gesture that is presumably meant to be reassuring but also carries the inevitable undercurrent of foreboding.

It is perhaps a curious picture to give to a seven-year-old.  I’m not sure it would sell particularly well as a young child’s birthday card today. But Father Time figured much more prominently in children’s stories then than he does now, and it is perhaps only the adults viewing this drawing who feel the frisson of our mortality.

As well as the little drawing itself, for its own sake, I love everything about it – the layers of meaning with their gentle humour; the connection that it gives both to my great-grandmother and also to my Granny, who gave it to me; and the privilege and uniqueness of the connection with Caldecott.

In the decade after making this drawing, Caldecott produced the 16 ‘toy books’ that were to become a defining moment in children’s literature. Then in 1886, accompanied by his wife Marion, Caldecott embarked on a tour of America, partly because his work was so popular there, including his illustrations for Washington Irving’s Bracebridge Hall and Old Christmas; partly to seek out a warmer climate for his health. For he had suffered bad health nearly all his life. But Florida was unusually cold in February 1886 and Caldecott got sick and died, in the coastal town of St Augustine. 

Caldecott’s death gave rise to a national outpouring of grief – he was someone who was universally loved, and the sense of loss was intensified by the thought of what might have been.  His many friends raised the money for his memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral, by Sir Alfred Gilbert.  His monument became one of the highlights for children visiting St Paul’s, as can be seen in a charming children’s book published in 1902: The Visit to London by F. D. Bedford and E. V. Lucas.  And Caldecott’s name lives on in the Randolph Caldecott Medal, known simply as the Caldecott, awarded annually since 1938, the highest American award for a children’s book illustrator.