This is an illustration from one of my most cherished children’s books. The text beneath this drawing, the book’s opening lines in fact, is no less brilliant: ‘Tom lived with his maiden aunt, Miss Fidget Wonkham-Strong. She wore an iron hat, and took no nonsense from anyone. Where she walked the flowers drooped, and when she sang the trees all shivered.’ Do search out a copy if you want to; if you can’t find one then I’ll lend you mine because Blake and Hoban are a brilliant team and the book will make you laugh. It was the first of their collaborations.
Blake is unusual because he’s been given independent exhibitions; he is not just seen as an illustrator but an artist in his own right. There are only a handful who’ve been treated similarly: Edward Ardizzone is one, Beatrix Potter another. Then there are a host of others who occupy places of nostalgic affection in our memories of childhood: Shepard (Winnie the Pooh), Dr Seuss, Sendak, Hergé (Tintin), Pienkowski (Meg and Mog), Uderzo (Asterix), Steig (Shrek) for example, though I’m sure you’ll have your own favourites as these things are, to an extent, generational.
Blake’s drawing style is feathery and febrile, agitated and whimsical; it’s both spiky and doodly, comic and deft. He’s also more than happy to add details to augment the text itself: in this one we see that Miss Fidget Wonkham-Strong uses the front of her dress as a pin-cushion, foolish perhaps but formidable. So as the summer approaches, may all your flowers stand tall, your hat be soft and the trees relax alongside you as you rest.
