In those days it was usual to bracket Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott, and myself together as special children’s-book providers, ignoring very great differences of style and aims (ignoring, too, the fact that I began my series of picture-books more than ten years before either Caldecott or Miss Greenaway were known to the public). Both those artists, however, were, I fancy, much more commercially successful than I was, as, when I began, children’s-book designs were very poorly paid. I was glad to be of some service to Caldecott when he started his series through Messrs. Routledge in 1878. My _Baby’s Opera_ was published in 1877 by the same house, and proved so successful that the publishers wanted me to follow it up immediately with another. Being engaged in other work, I did not see my way to this; but the publishers were equal to the emergency, for I was rather startled about Christmas to see Kate Greenaway’s first book, _Under the Window_, announced by them as ‘companion volume’ to _The Baby’s Opera_. To this I naturally objected as misleading, and the advertisement was withdrawn.
The grace and charm of her children and young girls were quickly recognised, and her treatment of quaint early nineteenth-century costume, prim gardens, and the child-like spirit of her designs in an old-world atmosphere, though touched with conscious modern ‘æstheticism,’ captivated the public in a remarkable way.
May I confess that (for me at least) I think she overdid the big bonnet rather, and at one time her little people were almost lost in their clothes? However, one saw this in the actual life of the day.
I remember Miss Greenaway used to exhibit drawings at the old Dudley Gallery general exhibition, but her larger, more elaborated studies were not so happy as her book designs in simple outline tastefully tinted.
Mr. Walter Crane speaks here of their difference of aims. Those who recall the public discussion between Mr. Crane and Professor Ruskin on the subject of children’s books will remember that what the former had greatly in mind was a special appeal to the eyes and artistic taste of the little ones: his purpose was in a measure educative. Kate Greenaway, on the other hand, sought for nothing but their unthinking delight; and whether her aim was higher or lower than that of her fellow-artist, there was no doubt of the esteem and affection in which she was now held by all little people as well as by their elders.