Through the Wardrobe

‘So, Mr Allwood, what’s your favourite book of all time?’

As a school librarian, it’s a question I get asked quite a lot, and of course it’s impossible to answer. But on this occasion I headed for my junior fiction section and took C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe off the shelves. ‘When I was your age, the Chronicles of Narnia were a real favourite,’ I said. As I started to tell the story, I opened the book and stopped dead in my tracks. There, on p.130, was an illustration that I probably hadn’t seen for thirty-five years: Aslan and the White Witch, deep in conversation, negotiating Edmund’s fate. Aslan’s maned head is bowed, his ‘arms’ clasped behind his back. The White Witch, wearing an improbably tall crown and with long black hair, stretches out her hand to emphasize a point as she talks. After the book-club session was over, I sat and flicked through the rest of the book, looking for more memories, and found them in abundance: the White Witch’s dwarf, holding a jewelled cup of something hot and sweet, steam rising; Lucy and Mr Tumnus, walking through a snow-covered wood together; the towers and steeples of the castle of Cair Paravel, which always reminded me of a holiday to Mont St Michel when I was 12. The Chronicles of Narnia are now re-entering children’s consciousness because of the current series of films, and it often takes some time to convince them that the books came first. For me, however – and, I hope, for others of my generation – what really made the books special were Pauline Baynes’s illustrations. Pauline Diana Baynes (1922–2008) should sit high at the table of children’s book illustrators who have brought literature to life, for her influence on generations of readers puts her on a par with E. H. Shepard, John Tenniel, Raymond Briggs, Beatrix Potter, Dr Seuss and a particular favourite of mine, George Adamson. Her early life was spent at convent and boarding-schools, and she then trained at the Farnham School of Art and the Slade, at that time based in Oxford. During the war, she and her sister Angela worked as assistant model makers with the Royal Engineers’ Camouflage Department and later drew charts for the Admiralty’s Hydrographic Department. After the war Pauline was invited to return to her old boarding school, Beaufront in Camberley, as an art teacher, where her colourful appearance and brightly painted fingernails lit up her lessons. In her spare time she painted and sketched incessantly, and by the late 1940s she had had work published in Country Life. Her life was to change when J. R. R. Tolkien spotted some of her unsolicited paintings on his publisher’s desk. The two became friends as well as colleagues, and they devoted many hours to discussing Middle-Earth. An early collaboration was the 1949 novella Farmer Giles of Ham. Here we see precursors of the dragons, horses and medieval knights that were to become so familiar in later years. These early illustrations have an innocent, uncluttered feel about them, with little shading or background detail, but they are none the less accomplished and magical. When Tolkien first saw her depictions of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, he is reported to have murmured, ‘There they are . . . there they are.’ Strangely, however, she never illustrated the trilogy in full – perhaps the extent of the task was beyond her, or perhaps Tolkien’s own early illustrations meant that, to her, any attempts would have been compromised by potential imitation. Recent research has shown that Tolkien was not completely enamoured with her work – he once described one of her dragons as ‘ridiculous’. She did, of course, illustrate dust jackets for both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and she drew some of the maps of Middle-Earth which adorned so many students’ walls in the 1960s and ’70s – using her wartime Admiralty training, perhaps – as well as the hauntingly beautiful poster for Bilbo’s Last Song. Her relationship with C. S. Lewis was never as cordial – he privately questioned her ability to draw lions, and they met only infrequently – but her illustrations for the seven Narnia novels during the 1950s cemented her position as a doyenne of the art. Viewed as a complete portfolio in publication rather than reading order (Lewis advised that The Magician’s Nephew, the sixth in the series, published in 1955, should be read first), the Chronicles of Narnia become progressively darker and more forbidding as the saga slides to its Armageddon-like conclusion. Baynes’s illustrations certainly capture this mood – compare, for instance, her haunting depictions of Tash in The Last Battle with the lighter, fairy-tale evil Queen Jadis in Nephew. Her characterization of mood and personality throughout the books is superb. However, it was not until 1968 that she won the coveted Kate Greenaway Medal (awarded ‘for distinguished illustration in a book for children’), for her studies in Grant Uden’s Dictionary of Chivalry. This was well deserved – the dictionary itself is a remarkable work with over 1,000 entries highlighting, in true romantic style, the daring deeds of knights (both historical and mythical), the language and symbolism of heraldry, the architecture of medieval cathedrals and castles, and the intricate and everchanging fashions of armour. As always, though, what really brings the book to life is Baynes’ senchanting collection of 600 illustrations – ranging from simple black-and-white depictions of heraldic shields and devices to full-colour illustrations of ballads, battles and baronets. By the 1980s Baynes had either written or illustrated well over a hundred books. Later in life she began to explore her religious beliefs through art, and she had just completed depictions of scenes from the Qur’an at the time of her death. These have yet to be published. Her output throughout her life was immensely varied, from designing a stained-glass window for her local church and providing an illustration for a Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin to devising a set of embroideries for the Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. These magnificent works of art, each measuring 16 x 25 feet, have only just been completed. In the late 1980s, Baynes provided new colour illustrations for The Land of Narnia by Brian Sibley which seem softer, more friendly and stylized than her original pieces. In 1998 she returned to her original Narnia illustrations and painstakingly water-coloured them all. For me, however, the original black-and-white line drawings will remain as her lasting legacy. They enticed me as a small boy into the realms of fantasy and adventure, and I sometimes think I’ve never quite managed to get back through the fur coats and into the wardrobe of reality. Do children’s book illustrators receive the credit they deserve? More so now, perhaps, than in the past. For most of her early work, Baynes was paid a flat fee with no recurring royalty – she once noted that a single first edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was now worth much more than the total amount she received for illustrating the book in 1950. However, the fact that the former Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne, is an illustrator of the highest order, and that the first ever holder of the post, the recently knighted Quentin Blake, has always been associated with Roald Dahl suggests that illustrators are now recognized as being just as vital as authors to children’s literacy. Many scholars and students of Narnia and Middle-Earth hold Pauline Baynes in high esteem – none more so than the remarkable USA-based husband-and-wife team of Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, who have amassed a vast and extensive collection of her work. Similarly, in Britain the writer and broadcaster Brian Sibley continues to highlight her legacy and keep her memory alive. Wayne, Christina and Brian all knew Pauline towards the end of her life and have written with fondness of their memories of her. It is up to those of us who work with children, who are committed to raising literacy standards, and who believe that inspiring illustrations can make the difference between a flat piece of text and a three-dimensional adventure, to promote her work to a wider audience. Pauline Baynes is much loved and revered by Narnians and Middle-Earthers, but she still deserves greater recognition in the sphere of children’s literature.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 41 © Lomax Allwood 2014