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CHAPTER 1
William Heath Robinson
On 20 April 1910, the first in a new series of cartoons was published in the weekly illustrated magazine The Sketch. 'Am Tag! Die Deutschen Kommen!' sought to make light of what was a growing paranoia in the British press – the possibility of a German invasion. In retrospect, the series appears remarkably prescient, and in 1910, though it would be more than four years before war was to erupt in Europe, the theme was both timely and topical. Four months earlier, in December 1909, Lord Northcliffe had commissioned the socialist journalist and editor of The Clarion, Robert Blatchford, to write a series of ten articles in the Daily Mail warning of the coming German menace. Northcliffe had already published a serial called 'The invasion of 1910', written by William Le Quex three years earlier, and several other papers under his control began to pump the British public full of stories that foresaw the potentially disastrous consequences resulting from emergent Prussian aggression. Certainly, Germany's military and naval expansion was a cause for concern, and in less than four years, Blatchford's views would eventually be justified, but in 1910 it all seemed a touch hysterical to a sophisticated magazine such as The Sketch and a state of affairs ripe for satire.
William Heath Robinson, the man behind 'Am Tag', was one of The Sketch's most popular artists. His imagined 'Incidents of the Coming German Invasion of England' depicted German spies in the most incongruous of locations, posing unnoticed as Graeco-Roman statues in the British Museum – invisible to visitors despite their pickelhaube helmets – or as British excursionists crossing the North Sea equipped with tell-tale boxes of Schnitzel, Schwartz Brod and Lager. The first in the series, 'German Spies in Epping Forest', showed the Teutonic intruders disguised as a ludicrous assortment of birds, trees and woodland animals following the movements of a single, small Boy Scout on an innocent ramble. It was a picture that embodied two elements intrinsic in Heath Robinson's art – the elaborate and extraordinary lengths undergone to achieve what are ultimately underwhelming and simple objectives, and his own wry and gentle brand of mocking humour. 'Am Tag' encouraged the British to laugh, not only at the ridiculous Germans in their woodland fancy dress, but also at themselves. Perhaps a German invasion was a possibility – one day – but Heath Robinson's visions diluted and dispelled hysteria and replaced it with a calmer perspective: a case of laughter triumphing over fear.
It appeared, however, that the British sense of humour was not shared by the Germans. Heath Robinson would later discover in 1915 that the cartoon had been taken literally when it was reprinted in the German press as an example of 'the alarm we were all supposed to be feeling at their frightfulness'. The correspondent who had sent him the magazine from the front agreed, writing with amused disbelief, 'I don't think Jerry tries to convey to his readers the same meaning as your original idea conveyed ... I do believe he thinks that we have all got the wind up.'
When war broke out in August 1914, less than five years after the publication of 'Am Tag', Heath Robinson was firmly established as one of the leading humorous artists of the day, and would find that his work of the next four years would be unavoidably influenced by what he called 'the all-consuming topic'. The portly German soldiers, relics from the Franco-Prussian War, with their straining tunic buttons and ubiquitous pickelhaube helmets of 1910, became an amusing, if anachronistic, blueprint for the characters that would begin to populate his wartime cartoons, the majority of which were published in The Sketch, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, The Bystander and, less frequently, The Strand. Of editor Bruce Ingram's decision to publish him in The Sketch in 1906, Heath Robinson admitted it 'fairly launched me on my career as a humorous artist', even though around the same time his pictures had already begun to appear in rival publications The Tatler and The Bystander. Nonetheless, Heath Robinson would become associated with The Sketch more than any other publication, and by January 1911 he was profiled in a series of 'Photographic Interviews' within the magazine. Writing glowingly of 'the famous "Sketch" artist', The Sketch declared, 'the work of Mr. Heath Robinson has always been an abiding joy since it first graced these pages with its delightful humour, its unforced yet vivid imagination, and the technical skill of its execution.'
The Sketch, launched in 1893 as a sister to the prestigious Illustrated London News, was published each Wednesday and catered to a middle- and upper-class readership, bringing news and gossip on an eclectic mix of subjects to those who enjoyed, or aspired to, a more leisured existence. Alongside coverage of theatre, sport, celebrity, royalty, high society and fashion there was a liberal seasoning of high-quality illustration, most commonly in the form of several full- or double-page humorous drawings featured in each issue. The Edwardian era saw the heyday of the magazine artist, with work aplenty for those who had the talent and ideas to feed what seemed to be an insatiable market. Edgar Rowan, writing of Heath Robinson's meteoric rise in The Young Man magazine in March 1908, put the artist's success into context:
Within the past ten or fifteen years processes for reproducing drawings in journals and magazines have improved so rapidly, and such reproductions have become so effective and so cheap, that the demand for really good illustrations is well ahead of supply ... To-day there are literally hundreds of editors asking for good work in 'line' or 'wash' for reproduction, and the young artist with ideas is much sought after. But he must be an artist, for the standard insisted upon is a high one ...
Heath Robinson was most certainly an artist of ability, as well as one brimming with ideas. The Sketch magazine's slogan, 'Art and Actuality', could equally be applied to him, producing as he did pictures beyond the limits of the imagination but deeply rooted in the everyday trials of human existence.
But humorous art was by no means William Heath Robinson's first choice of career. The shy and diffident man, whose crazy contrivances would eventually earn him the title the 'Gadget King', had in fact nursed early ambitions to be a landscape painter.
William Heath Robinson was born on 31 May 1872 at 25 Ennis Road, Stroud Green in North London. His family would call him Will. Commercial art was in his blood. His father, Thomas Robinson (1838–1902), had trained as a wood engraver, but by the 1870s had become an illustrator of current events for the Penny Illustrated Paper, which had begun in 1861. One of Heath Robinson's biographers, Langston Day, describes Thomas Robinson as a 'pillar' of the 'P.I.P.', as the paper was popularly known; it was he who pictured the majority of the leading news events of the day for its 200,000 readers, from the Tay Bridge Disaster to the Maybrick murder. A generation back, Thomas Robinson's own father, another Thomas (1806–85) born in County Durham, was a bookbinder for the pioneering wood engraver Thomas Bewick, and eventually migrated to London, where he became an engraver himself for magazines such as Good Words and The London Journal. Islington and the surrounding area of North London became a centre for firms of wood engravers (nicknamed 'peckers'), the artistic community growing as the explosion of magazines and newspapers during the second half of the nineteenth century produced a corresponding demand for their services. The younger Thomas Robinson married Eliza Heath, the daughter of an innkeeper, in 1868. Their first child, Thomas, was born in 1869, another son, Charles, in 1870, followed by Will in 1872. The Robinson children would eventually number six in total, with the addition of Mary in 1874, George in 1879 and Florence in 1883. Another daughter, Mabel, died in infancy. Will's father, having elevated his status to 'artist on wood' by the 1870s, moved his family to Benwell Road, near Highbury Fields. Grandfather Robinson, as well as an aunt, lived in the same road, making for a close-knit family life and happy childhood. The boys attended a local dame school and later Will went to Holloway College from 1880 to 1884, followed by Islington Probationary School until 1887, where he found academic success largely eluded him. He was, however, inspired by one schoolmistress who taught electricity and magnetism, a subject that sparked his interest and would eventually be manifested in his later drawings. At home, among the numerous books the children were encouraged to read, Will took an unhealthy interest in illustrations inside the family's copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs by John Foxe, poring over the grisly collection of torture techniques and agonising demises. In common with many Victorian children of that time, he created his own toy theatres, a pastime that brought together artistry and mechanical function and, again, sowed the seeds of Will's future specialism. Real-life theatre trips, typically to the pantomime at Christmas (once in a box at Drury Lane), were a spell-binding treat. As the boys got older, they delighted in taking rambles, heading northwards up Holloway and Archway Roads to more open countryside. High Barnet was their aim, but they rarely made it further than Finchley before the 'Three Musketeers', as they dubbed themselves, turned back for home. Unsurprisingly in such an artistic family, drawing and creativity were part of everyday life, as Will remembered fondly in his autobiography My Line of Life, published in 1938:
We had to be creative, and to use our imaginations continually and at every turn, to make our crude efforts seem real to us. We had no mechanical models of steamships or trains. I think I may attribute the seeds of inspiration for the humorous drawings which I have since attempted to these early efforts to make things out of homely materials originally intended for some wholly different purpose. In such circumstances drawing became a necessity, and a normal means of expression. My father consistently encouraged it.
He was, however, modest about any suggestion that he might have been a prodigy. In an interview in The Strand in July 1908 he mulled over his progression towards a career in art:
How did I come to be an artist at all? I can hardly answer, except that my development was gradual only. I suppose, too, the instinct was hereditary. At all events, my father was an artist and my grandfather was an artist. I don't believe I showed any great promise as a boy, although I was certainly fond of drawing, and, like most boys, drawing more from my fancy. I fear I was a poor copyist; in fact, the ordinary school drawing lesson used to bore me as much as some of the other lessons.
It was clear from his underwhelming progress at school that further academic study was not to be Will's destiny. Instead, his parents enrolled him at Islington School of Art, where he embarked on what he called his 'marble stage' of education, so-called because of the seemingly endless amount of classical sculpture he was required to study and draw. 'Nowadays, they tell me, the student is not required to study so much of antique. Otherwise, I should not wonder if artists were sometimes driven to become comic draughtsmen from sheer desperation!' he joked. Will's vision of life as an artist was a romantic one. Those country walks with his brothers had fostered in him a yearning to live as an itinerant artist, roaming foreign lands with his easel as a landscape painter.
Though quiet and modest, his latent talent soon began to emerge while at art school and he was determined to gain entry to the Royal Academy, spending long periods at the British Museum in further study of the Elgin Marbles in order to achieve his ambition. Entry to the Royal Academy, he believed, would be the gateway to becoming a landscape painter. He was admitted, on his second attempt, in 1892.
Towards the end of his studentship in 1896, Will had his first pictures accepted for publication in Little Folks and The Sunday Magazine, though remained convinced that landscape painting was his vocation. But having sold only one or two of his paintings, and following a discouraging visit to an art dealer in Balls Pond Road who suggested bluntly he pursue an alternative career, Will was aware he could not continue as a penniless art student forever. As his profile in The Sketch explained, 'It was that stern mother, Necessity, which compelled him at an early age to give up a systematic art education to earn his own living.' His elder brothers Tom and Charles were already beginning to forge successful careers as illustrators of books; Will decided to follow in their footsteps. He rented a studio in Howland Street, off Tottenham Court Road, with his friend and fellow Royal Academy student Percy Billinghurst (situated over a stables, they later relocated to 115 Gower Street when the smell became overwhelming), and set to work touting his portfolio around the offices of art editors and book publishers, a task he undertook with energy and good humour, likening such forays to battle campaigns.
Eventually, his war of attrition began to reap rewards. The year 1897 saw the publication of five books all illustrated by Will: The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India published by David Nutt; Don Quixote, Danish Fairy Tales and Legends of Hans Andersen published by Bliss, Sands & Co.; and an edition of Pilgrim's Progress from Sands & Co. The following year he illustrated The Queen's Story Book and in 1899 The Talking Thrush and Other Tales from India. An edition of Andersen's Fairy Tales in the same year was a collaboration between all three of the artist brothers. As leading contributor to a lavish edition of The Arabian Night's Entertainment, published by George Newnes, William Heath Robinson was soon firmly established as an illustrator of note. A superb set of drawings to accompany The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, carried out over a period of six months in 1900 for the publisher Edward Bell, sealed his reputation. The Studio magazine hailed his work on the Poe volume as 'a most worthy disciple of the modern school of penmen'.
In 1902, Will approached young publisher Grant Richards with an idea for a children's book based on a character called Schnitzel, which he would write as well as illustrate. Schnitzel's name was changed to Lubin, and The Adventures of Uncle Lubin, which was published just a few months after the death of his father, exhibited the first examples of the kind of contraptions that were to become Will's trademark. It was also to give him a certain level of financial security. He had become engaged in 1899 to Josephine Latey, the daughter of John Latey, assistant editor of The Illustrated London News, and the pair finally married in 1903 when Will felt confident he could support a wife and family. The following year was to see the birth of their first child, Joan; the couple would go on to have four more children, all sons.
During this period, Will had been working predominantly on a series of drawings (100 full page and 100 more vignettes) for The Works of Rabelais, contrived by Grant Richards to be a deluxe two-volume edition with gilt and white buckram binding. The cost of producing such an ambitiously expensive book would be a contributing factor to increasing financial difficulties for the publisher, and Grant Richards was declared bankrupt in November 1904. As one of the creditors, Will received just 2/- in the pound.
Grant Richards' financial collapse was to cause Will to look towards the quality weekly illustrated magazines for further work that would promise reasonable and regular remuneration. The 'six-penny weeklies' or 'mid-weeklies', so-named because they were published each Wednesday, all featured illustration as a cornerstone of their content. In February 1905, Will's first cartoon was published in The Bystander and in the same year a series of cartoons on the theme of love – though of dubious humorous merit – appeared in The Tatler. In 1906, Bruce Ingram, editor of The Sketch, commissioned him to draw a series entitled 'The Gentle Art of Catching Things', the first of many ideas to delight the magazine's readers over the years.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "It's All a Bit Heath Robinson"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Lucinda Gosling.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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