Pennell's Book

The chief requisites for an entertaining talker are an exuberant vanity, a wit modified by the ability to criticize a remark before it is made, and above all something to talk about. Joseph Pennell, famed etcher, has entertained a great many people--great authors whose books he has illustrated, pressmen who have interviewed him, artists who have asked him to dinner, ladies' clubs before which he has lectured on his own life and works. Thousands of sincere admirers have said to him: "Oh, Mr. Pennell, you do talk so splendidly you really ought to put it all down in a book." This remark never failed to please him because he knew that it was true. Now he has acted upon it.* He has told what he remembers of Philadelphia in Civil War days, when he was going to a Quaker School. ("Teacher, what is a concubine?" "Thee stay in at recess, Sally Jane, and I'll tell thee.") He has told how he went into business to make money and made illustrations instead; how he drank coffee in the Venice of the '80s with William Dean Howells, Henry James, F. Marion Crawford; what he knows about Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Wells, Shaw, F. Hopkinson Smith ("whom I never could stand personally, or his writings either"). He has told why he was asked to write Whistler's biography; how he came to introduce to the world of art that very pale and precious exquisite, Aubrey Vincent Beardsley.

For the rest, he has put down the adventures which have come to him during that part of his life which he has devoted to recording, with etching needle and lithographic chalk, the industrial life of the U. S. and Europe, all in a sturdy and magnificently printed book, adorned with countless of his own etchings, drawings, lithographs.

* THE ADVENTURES OF AN ILLUSTRATOR-- Joseph Pennell--Little, Brown ($12.50).