Greenaway, Kate — Frederick Locker

Four poems by Frederick Locker, extensively illustrated in watercolour by Kate Greenaway, forty-eight pages including half title, title-page, dedication leaf ("to Jane Locker"), contents page and six pages of poetry in Locker's autograph, every page illustrated, decorated and initialled by Greenaway, title-page dated 1880, twenty-four leaves bound in a miniature volume, 24mo (2  15 / 16  x 2½in.; 75 x 63 mm), all edges green, vellum decorated and ruled in watercolor by the illustrator and titled "Babies and Blossoms"; some soiling to upper cover, spine darkened. custom green morocco box lettered in gilt "Hannah Jane Locker | 1880," with brown velvet pouch and dark red morocco folding-box; pouch slightly worn with some stitching loose.

Jane Locker Lampson, thence by descent. acquisition: Seven Gables

Spielman and Layard, p.96, four pages illustrated

A unique and charming miniature volume, prepared by Greenway and Frederick Locker as a birthday present for his wife, Jane.

Frederick Locker Lampson (1821-1895) had first encountered Greenaway thanks to her printer Edward Evans. In 1877, Greenaway had approached Evans with a collection of about fifty drawings and her accompanying verses, which Evans purchased at once. Before the publication of Under the Window, as the collection was titled, Evans asked Frederick Locker to "look over" the verses. According to Evans, Locker “was very much taken with [them], and showed them to Mrs. Locker with quite a gusto; he asked me many questions about her... Locker soon made her acquaintance and introduced her into some very good society.”

Locker had published London Lyrics in 1857, which had run to several editions by the 1870s. Locker had made a fortuitous match in his first marriage which allowed him to resign his position in the private office of the first Lord of the Admiralty, and indulge his poetic talents.

By the time his first wife died in 1872, Locker had become well established in the literary circles of London, counting Thackeray, Trollope, Tennyson, George Eliot, Dickens and the Brownings amongst his friends. His daughter Eleanor married Tennyson's son Lionel in 1878.

In 1874 Locker married Hannah Jane Lampson, a children's writer, after which Locker adopted her surname in order to succeed the family estate. Jane, like her husband, became a close friend of Greenaway, who often visited them. A typed note from Betty Locker Lampson, granddaughter of Frederick and Jane, accompanying the lot explains that this volume was prepared as a birthday present for Jane.

Greenaway's affection for her friend is immediately apparent in the care she obviously took over this project. Alongside her characteristic decorative depictions of children, fairies and flowers, each of the Locker Lampson's children is the subject of a particularly fine portrait to accompany Locker's poetry: Godfrey in "A Rhyme of One," Dorothy in "Little Dinky," and Oliver and Maud in "The Twins."

These poems were inscribed on the sheets of the manuscript by Locker once Greenaway was satisified with her illustrations: "This, he afterwards told Mrs. Locker-Lampson, was the most anxious experience of his life; for the drawings were down first, and he was in agony all the time lest he should make a mistake or blot" (Spielman and Layard, Kate Greenaway, p.96).