flâneur

Kelvin Xiao

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on the atlas — 13

highlights — 5

  • "The main trouble about Pauline B. is [...] her total ignorance of animal anatomy. In the v. last book [the fifth in the series] she has at last learned how to draw a horse. I have always had serious reservations about her [...]. But she had merits (her botanical forms are lovely), she needed the work (old mother to support, I think), and worst of all she is such a timid creature, so 'easily put down' that criticism cd. only be hinted [...]. At any real reprimand she'd have thrown up the job, not in a huff but in sheer, downright, unresenting, pusillanimous dejection.
    Pauline Baynes - Wikipedia
  • But learning from a 1988 biography of Lewis how he had complained about her behind her back both wounded her and made her see her relationship with him in a new, colder light.[7][4][71] "One doesn't need to have liked him to admire him", she told her confidante Charlotte Cory. "He never became a friend."
    Pauline Baynes - Wikipedia
  • she and Lewis "hardly corresponded at all [...]: he was, to me, the most kindly and tolerant of authors – who seemed happy to leave everything in my completely inexperienced hands! Once or twice I queried the sort of character he had in mind [...] and then he replied, but otherwise he made no remarks or criticisms, despite the fact that the drawings were very far from perfect [...]. When he did criticize, it was put over so charmingly, that it wasn't a criticism, i.e., I did the drawings as best as I could [...] and didn't realize how hideous I had made the children – they were as nice as I co…
    Pauline Baynes - Wikipedia
  • When he discussed Baynes with his friends, he revealed quite how much her work had disappointed him. She had "Magna virtutes nec minora vitia" – great virtues, but vices no less great.[59] The faces of her children were often "empty, expressionless and too alike".[58] She couldn't draw lions.[58] Indeed, "In quadrupeds claudicat" (she limps); she would profit from a visit to a zoo.
    Pauline Baynes - Wikipedia
  • Lewis's letters to Baynes herself were effusive in their praise. Her drawings were "really excellent" with a "wealth of vigorous detail".[61] She did "each book a little bit better than the last".[62] Her Lasaraleen was "a rich feast of line & of fantastic-satiric imagination".[62] Her Tisroc was "superb", her King Lune "really good", her Tashbaan "exactly right"[63] and her flying horse Fledge "the real thing".
    Pauline Baynes - Wikipedia