Valediction 16: Toys
Brian Alderson is bidding farewell to old favourites as he donates his remarkable collection of children’s books to Seven Stories. His latest gift is a children’s book by Cyril Beaumont.
There may still be some balletomanes and theatregoers who will recall Cyril Beaumont’s bookshop at 97 Charing Cross Road which ran from 1910 to 1965. Thanks to his shop assistant, whom he later married, he developed an interest in ballet which led to his becoming both a specialist bookseller and a prolific author and world authority on dance.
From 1917 however he also ventured into publishing in the altogether different field of fine printing, under the imprint of The Cyril Beaumont Press, producing a series of limited editions with attendant ‘specials’.
There would be twenty-six of these before the financial crisis of 1931 led to closure but the venture deserves an honoured place among the twentieth century followers of Kelmscott. For one thing he unusually concentrated on issuing previously unpublished works rather than new printings of classics, many by the ‘Georgian’ poets of those times such as John Drinkwater, Edmund Blunden, even D.H. Lawrence. And second because of the regular issue of the ‘specials’ usually printed on Japanese vellum and numbered and signed by authors and illustrators, commissioning wood engravings from several members of the Society of Wood Engravers which was founded in 1923. Ordinary copies were numbered and usually printed on hand-made paper for wider sale.[1]
What neither the historian of the Press nor yet the unadventurous historians of children’s book publishing between the Wars have recorded is that between 1924 and 1930 Beaumont also wrote five children’s books. Four of them he called ‘fairy stories’ but they are rather about middle-class boys of the time involved in magical events: The Mysterious Toyshop (1927), The Strange Adventures of a Toy Soldier (1926), and The Wonderful Adventure (1927) were published under his own imprint and Sea Magic by John Lane at the Bodley Head. All had fine four-colour illustrations, both full-page and in the text, by Windham Payne.
The omission of a mention of these volumes from Jackson’s checklist may be accounted for by their lowly status as mere children’s books and by the fact that they were not issued by the Beaumont Press. But they should have found a place in his study on the sufficient grounds that the three ‘fairy stories’ that he published himself followed the pattern of the Press’s ‘specials’, being bound in vellum over boards and with a Certificate stating the number so produced and signed by author and illustrator. The British Library copies were catalogued as ‘de luxe’ editions although not the ‘foreign’ volume from the Bodley Head.
The last of the five books, Toys of 1930 differs from its predecessors in being not a story but a rhymed alphabet book with reach-me-down verses by Beaumont himself:
A stands for Ark
Dear, what a lark
To live in a house like a zoo
Is it a boat,
Are you sure it would float,
Could it carry me and you?
Lift up the lid
And see what’s hid –
Lots of animals, two by two
Lions and tigers,
Snakes and spiders,
Yes, and two of a kangaroo.
As an illustrator here we lose Windham Payne but find Eileen Mayo. She has hand-coloured the special copies as stated by the signed Certificate: ‘Of this book 100 copies have been signed by the Author and Artist with the drawings hand-coloured by the latter’ – although vellum has been abandoned in favour of a book-jacket.
I bought the book in 1988 but cannot recall having seen another copy either plain or hand-coloured.
Brian Alderson is a long-time and much-valued contributor to Books for Keeps, founder of the Children’s Books History Society and a former Children’s Books Editor for The Times. His most recent book The 100 Best Children’s Books is published by Galileo Publishing, 978-1903385982, £14.99 hbk.
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Biblio details:
Cyril W.Beaumont Toys [in blue] Rhymes by Cyril W. Beaumont. Decorations by Eileen Mayo [coloured vignette] London: C.W. Beaumont, 75 Charing Cross Road, 1930. 230x150mm. [2]pp. 9 Irregular collation: ([1] half-title. [2] THE CERTIFICATE with signatures [3] half title [4] coloured frontis. [5] tp. [6] imprint: Printed and made in England. Wyman & Sons Ltd. Printers. London, Fakenham. Reading. [7] dedication: For Alice, Eileen, Marie and Ian [8] blank [9-48] twenty-six rhymes headed by coloured vignettes and interspersed by eight full-page decorations all coloured by hand [49] ‘good Night’ with vig. [50] ads.) Pink mottled paper over boards, gilt design to front, plain paper endpapers. Dust jacket, flaps blank.
[1] Details of the Press with a full check-list by B.T.Jackson can be found in The Private Library Second series No.21 (Spring, 1975) pp.4-37
