illustrates Walter Emanuel's "The Snob. Some Episodes in a Mis-Spent Youth," London: Lawrence & Bullen, Ltd., 1904.  Aldin, a British artist and illustrator whose work encompassed sporting and hunting and rural life, golfing and animals, especially dogs, also contributes in 1904 to The Studio Magazine and illustrates "A Dog Day" also by Walter Emanuel and "Stories from Puppyland" in the Piccaninnies Picture Pocket Book series.
 


Cecil Aldin.  Detail of "The Falllowfield Hunt Breakfast at the Three Pigeons," one of six (?) images in the Fallowfield Hunt series, circa. 1900.

People often ask, why 1904?  There are the cosmic, historical, and metaphorical reasons.  And personal:

Before the move to Ohio (about which I have written previously), we lived in western Pennsylvania in an old and picturesque and fairly isolated white clapboard farmhouse, circa 1800, across the (unpaved) road from the ruins of a paper mill in the woods where a branch of the creek once ran, hence the name Paper Mill Hollow.  There was a small cherry orchard next to the house which was itself surrounded by ancient black walnut trees, under which I spent hours playing, when not also exploring the woods and orchard and creek, all the while entirely unchaperoned.  It was a kinder, gentler time.  Eisenhower was president.

Over the fireplace in the kitchen, (it was that kind of old house) a large reproduction (probably from the 20s or 30s) of Cecil Aldin's Hunt Breakfast hung.  Was it wallpaper you could buy?  I don't know.

The Fallowfield Hunt series is not specifically 1904 but I think we can safely say it's in the ballpark, and so I ask you, if your earliest vivid memories were of a hunt scene like this, and because you lived in a relatively remote and rural setting and were not to be thoroughly socialized until you went (with great reluctance) to school and until such time had only the (sometimes unreliable and unverifiable) word of your siblings to go on and so you were forced to fall back on your own conclusions regarding the Real World which lay beyond Paper Mill Hollow, as fueled by your fertile imagination, then I ask you: what would you think?  What conclusions might you draw about Life?  What expectations might your impressionable young mind come up with, in terms of the kind of grown-up existence you might hope to enjoy one day?  

I rest my case.  As you might have anticipated, I was in for something of a shock.  What's more, I confess that on some level I remain to this day not a little ambiguous about the value of the real world versus the one in which I once fancied myself participating.  Of course I had no idea what those men were rushing through their hearty repast to go off and do.  But I liked the idea that whatever was going to happen would include lots of dogs and some horses.   And I liked the outfits. 

I am about to depart for a family reunion -- in Saugatuck, Michigan -- with my siblings and their spouses and their children and their respective spouses and offspring, and so understandably I am not only feeling old but waxing a little nostalgic.  The Aldin pictured above is long gone, along with the house which was "accidentally" burned to the ground by a subsequent owner who acquired the property with an eye to development and plowed roads in for several more structures although he did manage to save and renovate the barn.  No one in the family lives in Pennsylvania now.  Or in Ohio either, for that matter. 

In any event, imagine how differently life might have turned out had some other kind of image from some other era by some other sort of artist greeted me at every meal.  For instance, I once met a lady who'd filled her dining room with works by the artist Raoul Dufy.  Very decorative, and a striking contrast to Aldin in terms of the dining experience, as I think you'd agree.  Or there's the Peacock Room about which I've written in these pages.

What did you look at every morning while you ate your Cheerios?  What if it had been a reproduction of that painting of dogs playing poker?  Or it could have been a stencil pattern of alternatng windmills and little girls in bonnets.  Or avocado green appliances.  Or copper jello molds.

Art and beauty matter.  It's no wonder we turn out the way we do.