COVE

This is an 8 cm by 6.5 cm wood-block engraving black and white vignette illustration by Laurence Housman and it appears twice in Housman’s The House of Joy book which is a collection of fairy tale stories. It is on the frontispiece next to the title page and it is on page 36. Housman wrote the book and drew all the illustrations that are included. It shows the minstrel sleeping in front of the statue of the White King. The waiting-woman goes to the garden, sees him sleeping and goes to kiss him while professing her love for him. Hiding behind some trees is the Queen who waits for the woman to leave so she can kill the minstrel and remove his heart. Housman included an incredible amount of detail into this illustration with attention to the scenery and facial expressions. The trees are all tall and full of leaves making it difficult to see the sky. The face on the statue is rather simple but that is because it is a statue and not a living person. The waiting-woman clearly looks concerned for the minstrel who sleeps peacefully with his head on his shoulders. The Queen’s face is a little more challenging to read though as she is further away in the illustration. This illustration is also interesting because Housman does not mention that the minstrel plays a mandolin but includes it in the drawing beside the sleeping figure. At the time of its publication, there were some similarities between The House of Joy and Oscar Wilde’s A House of Pomegranates (1891) which was published a few years prior. The similarity of the use of the word “house” is significant and can be interpreted in different ways. In one way it could be used to suggest that the book is a house for a collection of fairy tales that keep them bind together. The House of Joy suits Housman’s book because it goes against some of the darker elements included in Housman’s stories, particularly with the ending of “The White King.”

Sources:

Doussot, Audrey. “Laurence Housman (1865-1959): Fairy Tale Teller, Illustrator and Aesthete.” Cahiers Victoriens & Édouardiens, vol. 73, no. 73 Printemps, 2015; 2011;, pp. 131-146.

 Kooistra, Lorraine J. “Wilde’s Legacy: Fairy Tales, Laurence Housman, and the Expression of “Beautiful Untrue Things”.” Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2017.