Edward Bawden and the Russell Square Twins

To help my wellbeing during these strange times I have been trying to limit the amount of time I spend looking at social media and read books instead. It is helping me to feel saner and it is so satisfying to tackle the huge pile of books I own and haven’t yet read.

I have just finished reading Faber & Faber – The Untold Story by Toby Faber which tells the tale of the London publishing house from its beginnings in the 1920s. I started it hoping that there would be some interesting insights into Edward Bawden’s work for the company (it turns out he is only mentioned once) but I wasn’t disappointed as the firm’s history was fascinating and included lots on Berthold Wolpe, another of my favourites.

The one thing I did know about Faber & Faber before reading the book was that there was only one Faber, Geoffrey the chairman. According to legend it was the poet Walter de La Mare who suggested the company’s name saying that ‘you can’t have too much of a good thing!’

In the book, Bawden corresponds with Walter’s son and Faber & Faber’s executive director, Richard de La Mare. In 1932 he is looking for someone to illustrate Good Food by Ambrose Heath (one of the few books not in the Higgins Bedford archive) and approaches Bawden, by then a well-established illustrator. Bawden responds ‘I think I have a certain capacity to illustrate this book in the fact that I am a keen gardener and by no means indifferent to good cooking’.

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) Christmas Puzzle List, 1934 © The Edward Bawden Estate

In 1934 Bawden turned the imaginary Russell Square twins into Lewis Carroll’s literary duo Tweedledum and Tweedledee with just a slight tweak to the name. Faber & Faber included a crossword with their Christmas catalogue throughout the 1930’s.

Bawden began illustrating book jackets for Faber in the late 1920's. In the archive there are jackets dating from the firm’s first incarnation as Faber and Gwyer right up to 1969 with a cover for Phocas the Gardener by Paul Bourquin. My favourites from the collection are two he illustrated in the 1930s: A Problem a Day by R.M. Lucey and Archy does his Part by Don Marquis. Both are in typical Bawden style and cleverly use the space provided. They are also both full of fun which is a welcome tonic at the moment.

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) Book Jacket: A Problem a Day © The Edward Bawden Estate

A Problem a Day contains a problem for every day in the year, along with solutions at the end of the book. Hocus and Pocus, depicted in Bawden’s illustration, refers to a puzzle about the number of pages left in a book:

‘You’re a long time getting through that book’ remarked Hocus to his friend. ‘True’ replied Pocus, ‘but I’m nearing the end.’ ‘How many pages are there?’ persisted Hocus. ‘Since you are so curious,’ said Pocus, ‘it may interest you to know that the average number of words per page in this book is 248. The first page contains only 15 words, the last only 5, and the average number of words per page on all the other pages is 249. Now I hope you are satisfied.’

Can you work out how many pages there are?’

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) Book Jacket: Archy does his Part © The Edward Bawden Estate

The Archy of the title is a cockroach poet who befriends an alley cat called Mehitable, who thinks she was Cleopatra in a previous life. The pair feature in a series of books based on Don Marquis' Archy newspaper columns, first published in the New York Evening Sun.

Written by Victoria Partridge, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art