* * * * *

Ecclesfield, Sheffield. July 23, 1880.

MY DEAR MR. CALDECOTT,

I am sending you a number of “Jackanapes” in case you have lost your other.

I have made marks against places from some of which I think you could select easy scenes; I mean easy in the sense of being on the lines where your genius has so often worked.

I will put some notes about each at the end of my letter.  What I now want to ask you is whether you could do me a few illustrations of the vignette kind for “Jackanapes,” so that it might come out at Christmas.  Christmas ought to mean October! so it would of course be very delightful if you could have completed them in September—­and as soon as might be.  But do not WORRY your brain about dates.  I would rather give it up than let you feel the fetters of Time, which, when they drag one at one’s work, makes the labour double.  But if you will begin them, and see if they come pretty readily to your fingers, I shall only too well understand it if after all you can’t finish in time for this season!

In short I won’t press you for all my wishes!—­but I do feel rather disposed to struggle for a good place amongst the hosts of authors who are besetting you; and as I am not physically or mentally well constituted for surviving amongst the fittest, if there is much shoving (!) I want to place my plea on record.

So will you try?—­

* * * * *

It was very kind of you and your wife to have us to see your sketches.  I hope you are taking in ozone in the country.

Yours ever,
J.H.E.

[NOTES.]

Respectfully suggested scenes to choose from.

Initial T out of the old tree on the green, with perhaps to secure portrait the old POSTMAN sitting there with his bag a la an old Chelsea Pensioner.

1.  A lad carrying his own long-bow (by regulation his own height) and trudging by his pack-horse’s side, the horse laden with arrows for Flodden Field (September 9, 1513).  Small figures back view (!) going westwards—­poetic bit of moorland and sky.

2.  If you like—­a portrait of the little Miss Jessamine in Church.

3 to 5.  You may or may not find some bits on page 706, such as the ducking in the pond of the political agitator (very small figures including the old Postman, ex-soldier of Chelsea Pensioner type).  Old inn and coach in distance, geese (not the human ones) scattered in the fray.

The Black Captain, with his hand on his horse’s mane, bigger—­(so as to secure portrait) and vignetted if you like; or small on his horse stooping to hold his hand out to a child, Master Johnson, seated in a puddle, and Nurses pointing out the bogy; or standing looking amused behind Master Johnson (page 707).