Abraham Solomon, Painter of Fashion, and Simeon Solomon, Decadent Artist

<plain_text><page sequence="1">Abraham Solomon, Painter of Fashion, and Simeon Solomon, Decadent Artist LIONEL LAMBOURNE, B.A. The history of the visual arts in the twentieth century has been remarkable for the emergence of many outstanding Jewish artists. A far from complete list would certainly include such widely known names as Marc Chagall, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Ben Shahn. For a non-Jewish observer, this major, uniquely Jewish contribution to the arts of painting and sculpture has a sudden, dramatic force, fore? shadowed only by the symbolic entrance of Camille Pissarro into the Impressionist head? quarters at the cafe* 'Les Nouvelles Athenes', bearing a canvas under his arm, looking like Moses bearing the Tablets of the Law. But like most apparently sudden artistic events, historical research reveals earlier talents of real ability, important though less familiar precursors of later developments. Recent research has shown that the effect of the injunctions against the making of graven images did not prevent a continuous tradition of Jewish work in the visual arts from mediaeval times. By the earlier period of the emancipa? tion, which for convenience may be dated from 1800 to 1880, individual talents were beginning to arise that were at once both aesthetically dis? tinguished and unmistakably Jewish in origin and inspiration. Two names in particular may be cited, the tragically short-lived figure of Maurcy Gottlieb in Poland, who died in 1879 at the age of 23, and in this country, the enig? matic figure of Simeon Solomon, who, rather than his more apparently successful brother, may be described as the most interesting Jewish artist of mid-nineteenth-century England. During the first half of the nineteenth cen? tury in England, the Royal Academy offered the surest road to a successful career as a painter, conferring an official seal of approval that could not be ignored and the chance of promotion to the ranks of a very real artistic establishment. An apposite illustration of this process can be seen in the career of Solomon Hart (1806-1881), the first Jewish Royal Academician, who successively held the posts of Professor of Painting and Librarian to the Royal Academy. Later in the century, after the emergence of such disruptive talents as Rossetti and Whistler, the dominant position of the Academy was to be modified, but in early Victorian times, once entrance to the Royal Academy schools had been achieved, the average student possessing a fair modicum of talent could hope for a reasonable degree of security in his chosen career. The popular con? ception of the artist as a professional man had not yet been affected by the 'bohemianism' of Miirger or the aestheticism of Du Maurier's satirical 'Punch' character 'Cimabue Brown'. These considerations may help to account for the otherwise somewhat surprising emer? gence of no fewer than three professional painters in the family of eight children born to Meyer, or Michael, Solomon, of Bishopsgate in the City of London, in the first four decades of the nineteenth century.1 The Solomon family, originally of Dutch or German extrac? tion, had settled in England in the mid eighteenth century, and Aaron Solomon, the founder of the British line, had started a profit? able business importing Leghorn hats into this country from Italy. During the Napoleonic blockade, the supply of hats being interrupted, the expedient of manufacturing them from woodshavings had been ingeniously and suc? cessfully adopted. Meyer, the second of Aaron's four children, had continued in the business, and had the distinction of being the first Jew to become a Freeman of the City of London, after the removal of the disabilities. In 1819 he married Catherine, or Kate, Levy, a woman of forceful character, from whom the family seem to have inherited their artistic gifts, for she was herself an amateur painter. Of the eight children of 274</page><page sequence="2">Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon 275 the marriage, we are now concerned with Abraham, the fourth child, born on 14 May 1823, Rebecca, the seventh child, born on 23 September 1832, and most of all with the youngest child, Simeon, born on 9 October 1840. At the time of Simeon's birth, Meyer abandoned the hat trade, and bought a small factory in which he developed a lucrative business for embossing paper doilies. The Solomon family fortunes, although not vast, were substantial enough to allow them to follow the intellectual and artistic pursuits so integral a part of middle-class Jewish family life. Abraham, the elder brother, showed early in life signs of ability as a draughtsman, and at the age of 13 he was sent to the School of Art run by Henry Sass in Bloomsbury,2 virtually a 'cramming' establishment for entry into the Royal Academy Schools, which he entered in 1839, two years after Queen Victoria's acces? sion to the throne. Between them, the work of the Solomon family was to offer an epitome of the major trends of Victorian painting. In Abraham's and Rebecca's case, they made their early reputations by their popular genre pictures, illustrating scenes from the novels and plays of Scott, Sterne, Moliere, and Goldsmith. Abraham then went on to paint a series of extremely successful pictures dealing with scenes from contemporary Victorian life, which rank among the most attractive of mid Victorian narrative paintings. Simeon, with his intensely personal Old Testament drawings, and his later uneven 'mystical' work, made his own highly individual contribution to the Pre Raphaelite and '^Esthetic' movements. Abraham, after gaining two silver medals at the Academy Schools, began to exhibit paint? ings at the age of 17, his first exhibited work being of 'A Rabbi expounding the Scriptures' at the Society of British Artists in 1840. He was still studying intermittently at Sass's school, and William Powell Frith, then a fellow-student, and later the painter of the enormously suc? cessful 'Derby Day' and 'Paddington Station', records an amusing story about the outing which Sass organised each year for his students to see the Raphael cartoons, then at Hampton Court. It was a beautiful summer's morning, and the students occupied all the outside seats on the coach; Sass sat beside the coachman, with Frith and Abraham Solomon immedi? ately behind them. Suddenly Sass turned to Abraham and said: 'Why don't you wear a Gibus collapsible hat?' Abraham, somewhat startled, replied that 'he didn't see why he should'. 'Why?' said Sass, 'I'll soon tell you why. You can put it into your pocket when you have done with it; if you sit upon it you can't hurt it; you just touch a spring and it shuts up. They are first-rate things, and I shall never wear any other.' As on this particular day Sass was wearing a white beaver hat, patently non collapsible, Abraham naturally replied: 'Well, sir, then why don't you wear one yourself?'? 'I do,' said Sass, 'this is one. Do you doubt it? I see you do. Then just look here. Coachman, get up a minute.' The coachman rose, the hat was placed on his seat, he sat down upon it, and it split in every direction. 'There,' said Sass, 'I hope you are satisfied that I do wear a Gibus', and he insisted upon wearing the battered headgear for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, however, Sass's amiable eccen? tricity, so reminiscent of Mr. Pooter in the Diary of a Nobody, was to increase, until it ended in insanity. For the first ten years of his career, Abraham exhibited many paintings, of which 'A Festive Scene' (Fig. 1), now in the Guildhall Collec? tion, may serve as an example.4 It is difficult, looking at such a synthetic melange of pastiche eighteenth-century themes, to realise that paintings of this type were at one time hotly competed for at annual Royal Academy exhibitions, but a glance at the Sheepshanks collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum provides many other examples of this type of picture by such artists as C. R. Leslie, W. P. Frith, W. Mulready, R. Redgrave, and T. Webster. The titles alone of some other oils by Solomon at this period provide ample evidence of what to expect: 'Too Truthful', 'An Academy for instruction in the use of the fan, 1711', and a rather charming example, 'An Awkward Position', now in the Ben Uri Gallery, in which Oliver Goldsmith is seen taking tea with some ladies in a pleasure garden, but, unfortunately, without sufficient money to pay the bill. On</page><page sequence="3">276 Lionel Lambourne the whole, however, Solomon's paintings of this type well merited the gentle reproof of the contemporary magazine the Art Journal:5 'Without any desire to depreciate Mr. Solo? mon's talent as an illustrator of the writings of popular novelists and dramatists, it seems a pity that one who can delineate character of his own creation so skilfully . . . should seek for subject matter out of himself: he has that within him which needs no extraneous aid of this kind, and should rely on his own powers in the study of human nature as manifested in the world around him. Thus did Hogarth.' It is indeed for his depiction of the con? temporary scene that Abraham Solomon is now mainly remembered. In 1854 he showed a pair of paintings at the Royal Academy which were, through the medium of engravings and chromo lithographs, to become immensely popular on both sides of the Atlantic and lay the foundations of his considerable financial prosperity. The paintings were, in effect, a contemporary morality story that contained a threefold appeal for the British public, for they both 'told a story'?or, rather, two stories? preached a moral, and dealt with a theme of great current interest, for railway travel in the years of Hudson, the railway king, had the dramatic appeal of a scene at an airport today. In the first picture, '1st Class?the Meeting? and at first meeting loved' (Fig. 2), the young gentleman is seen deep in conversation with the captivating young lady, under the benevo? lent eye of the 'Pickwickian' old gentleman. In the first version of this painting, the one actually exhibited in 1854, which has recently come to light, the old gentleman was asleep, but this so scandalised contemporary critics that Abraham was obliged to wake him up in the several replicas of the subject which he later painted, and it is the second version which has become widely known. In the second painting, '3rd Class?The Parting?Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor' (Fig. 3), the situation presented is more harrowing, and well calculated to appeal to sentimental mid-Victorian emotions. The young man, or rather boy, is parting, perhaps for ever, from his mother, in a third-class compart? ment, and we learn his destination from the hoardings advertising boats sailing to Australia. The picture shares with Ford Madox Brown's 'The Last of England', exhibited at the Liver? pool Academy two years later, in 1856, and now at Birmingham, a common theme of great topical significance, namely, the vast number of emigrants leaving this country for the colonies and America. Between 1851 and 1861, more than two million people emigrated from Great Britain, the total population then being approximately thirty millions, or, in other words, one in every fifteen people emigrated, and the emotional implications of such subjects were only too familiar at that time. The 'moral' of the two paintings, which would doubtless appeal to our latter-day Baron Beeching, would appear to be that it pays to travel first class, because of the opportunities it gives to 'make friends and influence people', and one is irresistibly reminded of the heroine of the popular Victorian melodrama 'The Whip', who, after a dramatic train crash, one of the greatest stage effects of the day, was comforted in her mourning for the dead by the villain's remark, 'Never mind, my dear, they were only third-class passengers!' This comparison, with a Victorian melo? drama, is not a purely facetious one. The Solomon family were enthusiastic amateur actors, and a programme has been preserved that gives details of 'An Amateur Dramatic performance' that took place on Tuesday, 18 March 1856, when the two-act drama 'Time Tries All' and the farce 'As like as Two Peas' were presented, principal parts in both plays being taken by Mr. A. Braham, Mr. S. I. Meon, and Miss R. E. Bekah. It was from dramas of this type that Abraham derived subjects for his genre paintings. But Abraham's strong dramatic streak, his sense of theatre, fostered by these amateur dramatic per? formances, found its fullest expression in 1857 in the ever-popular drama of a court scene, depicted in his painting 'Waiting for the Verdict' (Fig. 4). Abraham had now really 'hit the jackpot' of popular taste, and this picture and, to a lesser extent, its sequel 'The Acquittal' (Fig. 5), exhibited two years later, enjoyed tremendous success. Abraham, besides enjoy? ing the revenue derived from reproductions,</page><page sequence="4">Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon 277 was commissioned to execute several versions of the same subjects, and the pair illustrated here are one of these later commissions, recently shown at Messrs. Newmans, and reproduced by their permission. The original pair are in the Ashton collection at Tunbridge Wells Art Gallery. The Art Journal eulogised 4Waiting for the Verdict' for 'the despair of the father, the bitter grief of the wife, the unspeakable distress of the mother ... set forth in terms the most touching'. It is, however, instructive and a trifle salutary to mentally contrast these themes taken from the railway carriage and the court? room with the exactly contemporary paintings of the same subjects by Honore Daumier, the great Romantic Realist painter. The penetrat? ing observation and truly universal qualities in Daumier's works make Solomon's situations appear a little too contrived and theatrical, but in spite of this they possess great interest as documents of Victorian taste and the social scene. In the following year, 1858, Abraham painted one of his finest works, 'The Flight? the Relief of Lucknow' (Fig. 6), now in the Leicester Art Gallery. The subject?the relief of the beleagured British garrison at Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny in 1857, is immedi? ately reminiscent of the patriotic novels for boys produced by George Henty, the popular Victorian novelist. But the figures are treated with real feeling and reveal new and confident painterly qualities, which are seen again in the fine, almost impressionistic picture 'Brighton Front' (Fig. 7), now at Tunbridge Wells, which dates from the last years of Abraham's short life. The painting shows the front at Brighton, outside the Bedford Hotel, with a typical cross section of a seaside crowd, and prominent among them a splendid example of a 'heavy swell', sporting a glass eye and Dundreary whiskers. (Lord Dundreary was a brainless peer, a character in Tom Taylor's play 'Our American Cousin', first produced at the Hay market in 1861. Dundreary whiskers and clothes soon became the fashion.) Abraham, now an accepted figure of the artistic 'establishment', became well known for his hospitality and his frequent musical parties, at which appeared many of the leading professional musicians of the day, including Joachim, the virtuoso violinist* George Du Maurier, the brilliant Punch cartoonist, was a frequent visitor, and paid tribute to Abraham's kindness in July 1861 in a letter to his sister,6 Isabel, in which he complains of his friend, Tom Armstrong, later to become Director of the Science and Art Museum, South Ken? sington (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). 'Armstrong', he wrote, 'riles me by running down Jews like a stupid schoolboy. The very kindest people of my acquaintance are Jews, the Levys and the Solomons for instance. I dined at the Solomons, tremendously rich people, I believe, and holding a very swell place in the artistic world (though I don't go in for S's painting). They were delightfully kind, and on Sunday at the Crystal Palace Rose show Miss Solomon came up and intro? duced herself to Emma in a way that was charming'. This tribute is of particular interest when one remembers the somewhat anti semitic note to be found in Du Maurier's novel Trilby and in many of his later cartoons. Abraham's Saturday evening conversaziones were well known, and were given on a large scale. On another occasion Du Maurier records a party of 200 people being entertained by professional singers. On 10 May 1861 Abraham married Ella Hart, but unfortunately their married life was not to be of long duration, for symptoms of cardiac disease soon began to be apparent in the artist. Acting on medical advice, he was recommended to try a rest cure at Biarritz, then at the height of its fashionable reputation as a health resort, and the couple left for France in the autumn of 1861. He continued to paint a little, and his last work, 'The departure of the diligence from Biarritz', can still be seen in that fascinating treasure house of Victorian painting at the Royal Holloway College, Egham. He died on 19 December 1862, at the age of 41, on the day that he was, somewhat belatedly, elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. Thackeray, whose relatively little-known art criticism in the Roundabout Papers is a valuable guide to mid-Victorian taste, had recommended his election in 1857, on the exhibition of 'Waiting for the Verdict',</page><page sequence="5">278 Lionel Lambourne perpetuating at the same time an atrocious pun even by Victorian standards: 'Here is Solomon in all his glory, but he is not R.A.yed [arrayed] like some of these.' Simeon, the younger brother, used to say in later years, with his typical mordant wit, that the two events of his brother's death and simultaneous election to the Royal Academy were not necessarily correlated.7 On Derby Day, in 1861, the watercolour painter G. P. Boyce, whose diaries are a valu? able source of information on members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle,8 'went down to Epsom by rail and walked to the course. Met Woolner and a brother sculptor Burnett, John and William Millais, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Solomon and Miss Solomon'. This encounter and the graceful compliment of George Du Maurier, already quoted, are some of the few contemporary references to this enigmatic and remarkable woman. Born on 23 September 1832, she studied as a girl at the Spitalfields School of Design, later becoming the pupil of her elder brother, Abraham.9 As a young woman she exhibited several paintings of genre subjects that greatly resemble Abraham's work. The general character of her work can, once again, be inferred from the titles of the exhibited pictures, 'Fugitive Royalists', 'Peg Woffington', 'The Arrest of a Deserter', and the 'Duchess of Devonshire canvassing for votes', which portrays the incident in which the famous eighteenth-century beauty paid for a vote with a kiss. Rebecca achieved some reputation by these works, several of which can be found reproduced in dusty back numbers of the Illustrated London News and the Art Journal, but she earned her living as a copyist and drapery painter. (A drapery painter, much used by Sir Joshua Reynolds and other eighteenth-century portrait painters, was en? trusted with the hack work of filling in the broad masses of colour indicated by the artist on coats and draperies.) Rebecca is known to have worked in this capacity, and to have assisted with studio replicas, for W. P. Frith, Thomas Faed, John Millais, and John Philip. The Royal Collection still possesses a copy she executed of John Philip's 'The Marriage of the Princess Royal'. She is also known to have studied for a while in France and Italy, paint? ing a picture of a 'Roman Wedding Party* for the great Victorian feminist and philanthropist the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. It was probably through her work for Millais that Rebecca met the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, who was to play a major role in both her life and that of her young brother, Simeon. Swinburne, born in 1837, had, after an unfortunate though brilliant career at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, left Univer? sity without taking a degree. While at Oxford, he had met the members of the 'jovial brother? hood' led by Rossetti and including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, then engaged on painting the frescoes illustrating the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table on the walls of the debating hall of the Oxford Union. Their knowledge of the diffi? culties of fresco technique was non-existent, and very little of the decorations can be seen today, but the escapade remains one of the most hilarious chapters in the history of British painting, and these artists were to provide the spearhead of the second wave of Pre-Raphaelit ism that was to dominate English art for the next 40 years. Swinburne's poetry cast a stone of impassioned sensuality into the placid Tennysonian waters of mid-Victorian English verse, and his early admiration and shrill advocacy of the work of the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire caused a literary sensation in their day. Later in his career his alcoholic tendencies were to lead his mother to entrust him to the care of Theodore Watts-Dunton, a staid solicitor who admired his work, even more respectable than his name suggests, who adopted the incongruous male role of chaper one. Their joint tenancy of The Pines, Putney, has become one of the many Pre-Raphaelite legends. Rumour, and the poet's own indiscreet remarks, led Rebecca's name to be linked romantically to Swinburne's in the early 1860s.10 But Swinburne was always inclined to exaggerate when describing his relationships with either sex, and it is impossible to establish any definite evidence of the real nature of their relationship. Whatever the degree of its inti? macy, their friendship was terminated by the</page><page sequence="6">PLATE XX Fig. 12. 'Lighting the candles on the Feast of Dedication', by Simeon Solomon. Wood engraving from The Leisure Hour, 1866 [For Plates XX-XXVIII, see pp. 274-286</page><page sequence="7">PLATE XXI Fig. 3. '3rd Class?the Parting?Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor', by Abraham Solomon, 1854. (By courtesy of Southampton Art Gallery)</page><page sequence="8">PLATE XXII Fig. 4. 'Waiting for the Verdict', by Abraham Solomon. A copy, dated 1859, of the original dated 1857. (By courtesy of M. Newman Ltd.) Fig. 5. 'The Acquittal', by Abraham Solomon, 1859. (By courtesy of M. Newman Ltd.)</page><page sequence="9">PLATE XXIII """""""""""""""""""""""""""" J3 ^?^^^^^j^fV^ 1,111 ?' ? t ?</page><page sequence="10">PLATE XXIV Fig. 7. 'Brighton Front', by Abraham Solomon, 1861. (By courtesy of Tunbridge Welk Art Gallery) Fig. 10. 'King David', by Simeon Solomon, 1859. (By courtesy of the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham)</page><page sequence="11">PLATE XXV</page><page sequence="12">PLATE XXVI Fig. 13. 'Sir Galipot bearing the Holy Gruel', by Simeon Solomon. (By courtesy of the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham) Fig. 15. 'The Mystery of Faith', by Simeon Solomon, 1870. (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Lady Lever Collection, Port Sunlight, Cheshire) Fig. 14. 'The Scrolls of the Law', by Simeon Solomon, 1871. (By courtesy of the West Lon? don Synagogue)</page><page sequence="13">PLATE XXVII Fig. 16. 'The Song of Solomon', by Simeon Solomon, 1868. (By courtesy of the Muni? cipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, Eire) Fig. 18. Simeon Solomon, about 1865, from an unpublished carte de visite photograph by Frederick Hollyer. (By courtesy of the Ben Uri Gallery, London) Fig. 17. 'Bacchus', by Simeon Solomon, 1867. (By courtesy of the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham) Fig. 19. 'How beautiful is Death, and his brother Sleep', by Simeon Solomon, 1886. (By courtesy of the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow)</page><page sequence="14">PLATE XXVIII Fig. 21. 'Love among the schoolboys', by Simeon Solomon, 1865. (In the possession of John Sparrow, Esq.?reproduced by courtesy)</page><page sequence="15">Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon 279 arrival in London in 1867 of the colourful figure of Adah Isaacs Menken, whose appear? ance on horseback as 'Mazeppa', wearing flesh-coloured tights, made the mid-Victorian gentleman's pulses race. Swinburne, fluttered, moth-like, away to Astley's circus, to singe his wings in a comic association with the Amazonian figure of Menken, herself a minor poet, and the curious can find their relationship recorded in some caricatures by Burne-Jones in the Print Room of the British Museum. Little is known of Rebecca's later career, until her tragic death from alcoholism on 20 November 1886. Her unusual life has many parallels with that of her younger brother, Simeon, and a close bond is known to have existed between them, for they shared rooms together for several years after leaving the parental home. When Simeon, the youngest child of this remarkable family, was a much spoiled and highly precocious child, Rebecca is said to have been a stabilising influence on the boy, and to have supervised his regular attend? ance at the synagogue and suggested the choice of Hebraic themes for his early works. It is possible that Rebecca's close working associa? tion with Millais was influential on the style of Simeon's early drawings, executed before he was 20, which have many affinities with Millais's work. It is not proposed in this short essay to retell the oft-told story of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but a few words of explanation are necessary at this point before embarking on an account of Simeon's life, as his name has become so closely associated with that move? ment. The original circle of seven idealistic young men who in 1848, the year of revolutions, founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood re? acted sharply away from Landseer's 'Monkey ana' and the sentimental genre subjects of the 'anecdotal' schools. They rejected the in? sincerity of the faint carbon copies of the Italian Renaissance promoted by the enfeebled relics of academic teaching in the tradition of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom they nicknamed 'Sir Sloshua', and strove for a return to a more direct contact with nature, a freshness in approach, which without much real knowledge of the Italian Primitives they declared had left T painting with the appearance of Raphael. Like the Nazareners, a parallel group of young German artists in Rome in the 1820s, 'truth' was a central precept of their programme. But, unlike their German counterparts the Naza? reners, the group lacked the cohesion of a real brotherhood, for the concept of an artistic 'ism' was alien to the British nature. The dynamic genius for friendship of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the son of an Italian political refugee, was the major unifying basis for the movement. A magazine, The Germ, went the way of most artistic avant-garde magazines, appearing on only four occasions, and the artists soon separated, Holman Hunt to the Holy Land to paint, Millais to bourgeois success in the Academy, Woolner to Australia. Rossetti made the acquaintance of two young men from Oxford, William Morris and Edward Burne Jones, and embarked on the adventure of the Oxford frescoes. The second, more influential wave of 'Pre-Raphaelitism' had begun, and it is with this movement that the early work of Simeon Solomon must be considered. From very early years Simeon seems to have manifested considerable artistic talent, and he studied as a boy in Abraham's studio before going on at the age of 15 to the Royal Academy Schools, where he entered as a probationer. He soon became a close friend of a fellow-student, Henry Holiday, now chiefly remembered for his picture 'Dante meeting Beatrice', in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Holiday's book, Reminiscences of Sixty Tears, published in 1914, has preserved an amusing picture of Simeon as a young man. The two youths often accompanied each other to concerts, and Holiday mentions that for several years they never missed a perform? ance of Beethoven's Choral Symphony. Fre? quent visiting took place between their respective families, and typical Victorian 'musical' evenings took place. The young men, together with Marcus Stone and Albert Moore, formed an informal sketching club. The members met alternately at each other's homes, the host for the evening proposed a theme, and at the end of the evening the com? pleted sketches became his property. Simeon also took part with Holiday in several climbing</page><page sequence="16">280 Lionel Lambourne expeditions in North Wales and the Lake District, and many non-climbers will sym? pathise with the question he asked at Bettws-y Coed before an all too early ascent of the mountain: 'Will Snowdon be open at 8.30 in the morning?5 But perhaps the most amusing reminiscence of Holiday relates to that most unlikely of units in the British Army, the Artists5 Volunteer Corps, formed in 1860 during a threat of war with France. The Colonel of this curious unit was Leighton, and other members were Millais, Holman-Hunt, Burne Jones, Morris, John Leech, Marcus Stone, Henry Holiday, and Simeon Solomon. Holiday records that Solomon asked him for a little coaching on the drill: 'I did what I could but his demands were not always reasonable. He wanted me for instance to "fall into a hollow square55 to show how it was done! Of course we all had to take the oath of allegiance, and a day was appointed when all had to go and swear. Simeon said gravely, "Would the sergeant be satisfied if I just said 'drat it5, as I have a conscientious objection to stronger language?55 5 Throughout the period of his friendship with Holiday, Simeon Solomon had been producing a remarkable series of drawings which must be considered his finest aesthetic achievements, although they must not, as they almost in? variably are, be thought of as his only claim to serious recognition as an artist. The largest collection of works of this period is the sketch? book of 78 pages now in the Ein Harod Museum in Israel, from which the frontispiece (Fig. 8) is reproduced, a remarkable achieve? ment for a boy of 15. In the next five years the young artist produced an astonishing number of drawings of this quality, of which 'Hagar and Ishmael5 (Fig. 9, author's collection) is a typical example, executed at the age of 17. Two years later, in 1859, in the fine drawing 'King David5 (Fig. 10, City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham) occurs the first note of sexual ambiguity in the artist5s work, seen in the treatment of the naked figure of the young harp-player. The following year, 1860, saw the exhibition of Simeon's first major painting at the Royal Academy, 'The Mother of Moses', now in the possession of Robert Isaacson, of New York, which must be considered one of his finest works. Although hotly attacked by most critics, one of whom refused to believe that two ludicrously ugly and very Jewish women could form a beautiful or pleasing object, the work was defended by Thackeray. This date, 1860, a crucial year in the young artist's career, also marked his full-scale intro? duction into the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The rapidly maturing artist had attracted the attention of Rossetti, and Simeon became a frequent visitor at his studio. Rossetti's cartoon for the stained-glass window in Christ Church, Albany Street (Fig. 11, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow), serves as an unusual introduction to the characters whom Simeon met through this friendship. Following the common Pre-Raphaelite practice, Rossetti used his friends as models for the figures de? picted in the window. George Meredith, the novelist, is seen as Jesus, Christina Rossetti as Mary, Fanny Cornforth, rather appropriately, as Mary Magdalene, William Bell Scott as St. Peter, Gambart, a picture-dealer whom Rossetti particularly disliked, as Judas, Swinburne as St. John, and Simeon Solomon as St. James. This window dates from the early years of the 'Firm' of Morris and Company, founded by William Morris, which was to dominate the fields of interior decoration and design in the second half of the nineteenth century. Simeon Solomon was himself to design a series of stained-glass windows, on Old Testament themes, for the church of Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire, which also contains win? dows by Morris, Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, and Philip Webb. Simeon also took part in decorating some of the 'painted furni? ture' designed by William Burges, another major mid-Victorian designer, and a bookcase with painted panels by Solomon, Poynter, and Rossetti is currently on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, on loan from the Ash molean Museum, Oxford. In the next few years Solomon executed a number of wood engravings for 'DalziePs Bible Gallery' on Old Testament themes which owe much to the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite school. He also produced a series of illustrations</page><page sequence="17">Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon 281 of contemporary Jewish life which possess an individuality that owes more perhaps to the work of Rembrandt. A striking example of this type of work, 'Lighting the candles on the Feast of Dedication' (Fig. 12), comes from a series of ten engravings which he executed for the periodical The Leisure Hour in 1866, which must be cited as his most profoundly Jewish achievements. In the early 1860s Simeon Solomon became a close friend of Edward Burne-Jones, who also possessed a keen sense of humour that is not revealed in his major works. The two artists shared a love of caricature, and Burne-Jones, the painter of so many versions of the legend of Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail, was no doubt highly amused at Simeon's delightful drawing 'Sir Galipot bearing the Holy Gruel' (Fig. 13). Simeon was often invited to Burne-Jones's home, and Lady Georgina Burne-Jones, in her biography of her husband,11 records him remarking to Solomon, half in jest and half in earnest, referring to the wonderful drawings that he was producing at the time: 'You know, Simeon, we are all schoolboys compared to you.' But if Simeon Solomon's character as an artist was already fully developed, the same cannot, unfortunately, be said of his moral character, which was highly susceptible to the influence of more volatile and audacious intellects. Rossetti's studio was for a while the home of Swinburne in the early 1860s, and it was there that Simeon Solomon, then in his early twenties, was introduced to the dynamic, controversial young poet, slightly his senior in years, but with a far more dominant and influential personality. In appearance the two young men were not dissimilar, for both were small in build and slight of stature and possessed red hair, although Swinburne's was far more exuberant and the colour of flame. Swinburne, then in his roystering, pre-Watts Dunton phase, soon formed a close friendship with the impressionable younger man. Once again, a letter of George Du Maurier, on this occasion one written to his mother in April 1864, brings the relationship vividly to life. Du Maurier had recently married and become a father, but one night went out with his friend Tom Armstrong. 'The other night I went to a bachelor's party to meet Rossetti and Swin? burne at Simeon Solomon's. Such a strange evening; Rossetti is the head of the Pre Raphaelites, for Millais and Hunt have seceded; spoilt, so to speak, by their immense popularity; whereas Rossetti never exhibits and is comparatively unknown; this strange contempt for fame is rather grand. He is also a great poet, and his translations from the early Italian poets are the finest things in their way that have been done. As for Swinburne, he is without exception the most extraordinary man not that I have ever met only, but that I ever read or heard of; for three hours he spouted his poetry to us, and it was of a power, beauty, and originality unequalled. Everything after seems rather tame, but the little beast will never, I think, be acknowledged, for he has an utterly perverted moral sense, and ranks Lucrezia Borgia with Jesus Christ, indeed says she's far greater, and very little of his poetry is fit for publication. If you like I will copy one of his very mildest which has been published, namely Faustine, and send it to you. These strange creatures all hang in a clique together, and despise everything but themselves, and really I don't wonder. . . . 'Tom and I felt such bourgeois that night, so healthy and human; didn't get home till three, and wasn't it jolly after this strange but gorgeous nightmare of an evening, to wake up and find a healthy innocent little baby weigh? ing over twenty pounds. 'Ce qui n'empeche pas that genius of this magnitude is a very diverse and extraordinary gift, to be bowed down to and worshipped.' Swinburne's friendship with Solomon pro? vided him with a stimulating contact with a talented young artist, and he composed two poems, 'Erotion' and the 'End of a Month', in? spired by drawings by Simeon, who responded by illustrating Swinburne's unpublished novel Lesbia Brandon and his pornographic epic poem 'The Flogging Block', based on the poet's unfortunate experience at Eton, where he had been at the tender mercies of a sadistic schoolmaster. A new note of voluptuous mysticism now began to appear in Solomon's choice of subjects. Among the works produced at this time are several depicting the sombre,</page><page sequence="18">282 Lionel Lambourne robed figures of Rabbis in the synagogue, and priests in the Orthodox Church, which possess stylised, ritualistic qualities that pictorially anticipate the verse of the decadent poets of the 1890s, Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson. Two pictures of this type provide an interest? ing comparison. Solomon, in an unpublished letter to Swinburne, claimed that his painting 'The Scrolls of the Law', now in the West London Synagogue, represented a return to his earlier, Hebraic style. Yet in this painting (Fig. 14) and in 'The Mystery of Faith', Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight (Fig. 15), which both depict moments of major significance in the Jewish and Catholic rituals, certain obtrusive, decadent overtones have become apparent. The two works are also interesting for the indication they provide of Solomon's growing religious ambiguity, which ran parallel to his departure from conventional sexual 'mores'. Much 'critical' ink has recently been spilt on the sexual idiosyncrasies of Swinburne, and it is unfortunate that the present essay must contribute to this process, for there can be little doubt that he communicated his deep interest in flagellation and pornography to Solomon, and thus is partially responsible for the dominatingly homosexual overtones which are such a marked feature of the artist's later work. The story can be partially traced in the letters to Swinburne from Solomon in the recent Yale University edition of Swinburne's correspondence.12 These letters were occa? sioned by Solomon's successful campaign to get Swinburne to write a review of his prose poem 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep',13 in the Dark Blue Magazine, a short-lived aesthetic journal of the early 1870s. Solomon had written this work during a visit to Rome with Oscar Browning, an Eton schoolmaster, and its style reveals traces of his friendship with Walter Pater, a keen admirer of his paintings. The great Victorian critic of the Renaissance, whose 'Marius the Epicurean' and other essays be? came, in the oversimplified dogma of 'Art for Art's sake', the main inspiration of the aesthetic movement of the 1880s, parodied by Gilbert in 'Patience', was for several years a close friend of Solomon, who in June 1868 presented him with the drawing 'The Song of Solomon' (Fig. 16), now in the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin. It is often unwise to give books to friends to review. Swinburne wrote of 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep':14 'Read by itself as a fragment of spiritual allegory [it] seems to want even that much coherence which is requisite to keep symbolic or allegorical art from absolute dissolution or collapse. . . . Dim and vague as the atmosphere of such work should be, this vision would be more significant and no less suggestive of things hidden in secret places of spiritual reserve, if it had more body of drawing, more shapeliness of thought and fixity of outline.' These often quoted lines do, it is true, offer a fair assessment of Solomon's prose poem, so full of contrived and artificial passages of self-conscious 'fine writing'. Yet although Swinburne's criticism is a fair one, it is not perhaps as penetrating and sympathetic as the less well-known review of the work published in the Academy on 1 April 1871 by John Addington Symonds, whose later works, 'The Lotus Garden of Antinous' and 'The Valley of Vain Desires', were both to be considerably influenced by Solomon's book. Symonds wrote: 'In truth, the originality of any poetical or pictorial mythus, such as is embodied in this vision and in the series of Mr. Solomon's drawings, consists in its creator having viewed an old problem with new eyes, and communicated to the object some of the qualities of his own soul and of the age in which he lives. This, in our opinion, Mr. Solomon has done with eminent and unmistak? able distinctness. His Love is not classical, not mediaeval, not oriental; but it has a touch of all these qualities?the pure perfection of the classic form, the allegorical mysticism and pensive grace of the middle age, and the indescribable perfume of Orientalism. . . . Added to these general qualities we trace in this spirit of love a vague yet intense yearning, a Sehnsucht, which belongs to music and is essentially modern.' 'Mr Solomon's prose poem is a key to the meaning of his drawings. It lays bare the hidden purpose of the artist, and enables us to connect picture with picture in a perfectly intelligible series.' Symonds here</page><page sequence="19">Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon 283 grasps the essential quality of the 'Vision of Love' which makes it still worth reading today for those interested in Solomon's work, for it contains the earliest and most explicit descrip? tions of the shadowy, neo-platonic ideal themes which he strove to express in the uneven paint? ings and drawings of his decline. For these reasons it is necessary to examine the work in some detail. The meagre narrative thread of the poem deals with the visionary travels of Solomon's spirit and 'soul' during the space of a night, or, as the work's sub-title puts it, 'Until the day break, and the shadows flee away'. This epigraph comes, significantly, from the 'Song of Songs', later to influence Oscar Wilde's prose style in 'Salome'. The action takes place in a dream, in which the 'visual images of those things which we know only by name' are made manifest. The unique flavour of the lengthy poems can best be conveyed by selecting particular visions, in the manner adopted by an early American writer on Solomon, the novelist Julia Ellsworth Ford. Her book Simeon Solomon?An Apprecia? tion, published in 1909,15 despite much sentimental padding, does contain the first muddled but sensitive and perceptive criticism of Solomon's intentions in his mystical period. Here are four characteristic 'visions' from 'A Vision of Love revealed in Sleep'. 'SLEEP' T perceived two presences, one reclining upon the other who gently fanned the air with great wings. And now a deep calm fell upon my spirit, such as one feels when the burden of a sharp trouble is averted, and my soul and I wept when we saw him who was being thus carried towards us; he lay lightly across the breast of his supporter, cheek reposing against cheek; upon his head two small fair wings, and round his brow were bound the flowers and buds of poppies; upon his face there shone a distant light of childhood; his parted lips breathed forth peace; the one who bore him smiled upon him, and rejoiced because of his burden. I knew that he who was winged was called Divine Charity, and his charge sleep'. 'PASSION' 'Then I looked out to sea, and there came towards us one whose name I knew was Passion, she who had wounded and sought to slay Love, but who, in her turn, was grievously wounded and tormented in strange, self-devised ways. The glory of her head was changed into the abiding place of serpents whose malice knew no lull; her wasted beauty preyed upon itself, her face was whitened with pale fires, a hollow image of unappeased desire; her eyes flowed with unavailing tears; in her right hand she bore a self-wrought sword of flame, and in her left the goodly fruits and flowers she held were scorched and withered, and crawled upon by evil things; her breath was as the breath of the hungry sea, and rest shall not be given unto her.' 'DEATH' 'Then I sought the face of my soul, and I saw upon its darkness the answer to my uttered question, and I knew that I stood in the presence of him who had done battle with love, Death, who would love us did he dare, whom we would love did we dare; for when he folds us about with the chilly white raiment, he sets the seal of his love upon us; and, as the bridegroom and the bride stand linked to? gether, overshadowed by the mystic saffron coloured veil, and one spirit makes them one; so, at that hour when time slips from us, are we wedded to him before whom I stood, and with the sacrament of his kiss he signs unto us himself, and makes us of one flesh with him.' 'A YOUTH WITH A BLOSSOMING STAFF' 'Ever and again his feet, wherefrom sprang glowing wings, touched the earth and caused it to bring forth flowers; his head was bound with fillet of violet, and violet blossoms breathed upon by Love, he carried a mystic veil of saffron colour, which depended from his head upon his shoulders even to the ground, and his shining body was half girt with fawn skin; in his hand he carried a staff, which was as the rod of the High Priest, for as I looked upon it</page><page sequence="20">284 Lionel Lambourne its barrenness burst forth in almond blos? som. . . .' In these and other allegorical visions, Solomon provides the key to the troubling, unanswerable questions that perplex us in looking at so many of his late paintings. Walter Pater, in his book Greek Studies, described Solomon's 'Bacchus', exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867, and now in Birmingham Art Gallery (Fig. 17), as 'a com? plete and very fascinating realization of the melancholy and brooding figure of Dionysus Zagreus, "the god of the bitterness of wine, 'of things too sweet', the sea water of the Lesbian grape become somewhat brackish in the cup." ' Life, with its savage ability to imitate art, was shortly to prove that Pater's phrase 'the bitter? ness of wine' was a prophetic one. Simeon's homosexual proclivities had for some time been becoming more marked. His ostentatious love of display, shown clearly in the previously un? published photograph of him wearing a turban (Fig. 18, Ben Uri Gallery), had led him to appear at parties in Greek robes, leaning on the shoulders of young male friends. Victorian London was a dangerous place in which to indulge in such behaviour, and gossip began to circulate about the now well-known artist. In 1870, with his friend Oscar Browning, an Oxford don, Solomon visited Rome, either in an attempt to escape from his own inclinations or, more probably, to avoid a scandal of which the details have not survived. While in Rome he wrote 'A Vision of Love'. Robert Buchanan, in his critical essay The Fleshly School of Poetry, chiefly remembered for its savage attack on Rossetti, singled out Solomon's paintings in particular for their unhealthy tendencies, and this, together with adverse criticism from Sidney Colvin, led Simeon to seek alcoholic solace for his complex problems. The inevitable result followed in 1873. On the night of 11 February,16 Simeon Solomon was arrested in a public urinal in Marylebone, charged with, among other things, indecent exposure, and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment, although the sentence was subsequently suspended, probably through the influence of family friends. Solomon was then probably confined for a while in a private asylum. The affair was to a certain extent hushed up, but Pater's decision to suppress the conclusion to the first edition of his book The Renaissance, in which he gave his famous advice to youth to 'burn with a hard, gem-like flame', may well have been influenced by the sordid fate of his impression? able artist friend. Solomon, having toppled from the tightrope of Victorian social convention, now adopted an almost existentialist attitude to life, uncannily similar to that of Joyce Cary's character Gulley Jimson, in the novel The Horse's Mouth. He struggled to maintain himself by producing countless drawings, which often reveal the shaky hand of the alcoholic. It has become customary for art historians to completely dis? count the merit of these late works, and it is true that they are often execrable examples of enfeebled and turgid draughtsmanship. At their best, however, they possess a unique and compelling power that can be compared with the work of the French Symbolist painters, Odilion Redon and Gustave Moreau, and the Belgian Ferdinand Khnoph. The epicene, androgynous faces that loom hauntingly from these curious works, illustrating such themes as 'Love and Lust', or 'How Beautiful is Death, and his brother Sleep' (Fig. 19, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow), also had a curious influence, not on painters but on the poets and writers of the 1890s. One such drawing (Fig. 20, City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham) is an illustration to Keats, one of Solomon's favourite poets, and provides a fascinating link between romanticism and the decadence. The drawing, though feeble, is a close pictorial transcription of these lines from 'Endymion': For on a silken couch of rosy pride, In midst of all, there lay a sleeping youth Of fondest beauty;. .coverlids ... Fell sleek about him in a thousand folds? Not hiding up an Apollonian curve Of neck and shoulder, nor the teeming swerve Of knee from knee, nor ankles pointing light; But rather giving them to the filPd sight</page><page sequence="21">Abraham Solomon and Simeon Solomon 285 Officiously. Sideway his face reposed On one white arm, and tenderly unclosed By tenderest pressure, a fair damask mouth To slumbery pout. Such works, and excellent facsimiles of them produced by the Victorian photographer Frederick Hollyer, were immensely popular with the Oxford undergraduates of the 1880s and 1890s. Robert Ross, in Masques and Phases, has an amusing description of Eights week, when the families of the undergraduates arrived, and the Simeon Solomons came down from the wall for the week, to be replaced by reproductions of Burne-Jones. Oscar Wilde, writing to Bosie Douglas from Reading Gaol in 'De Profundis5, reproaches him with the loss of his Simeon Solomon drawings, one of which was 'Love among the Schoolboys' (Fig. 21), reproduced by kind permission of Mr. John Sparrow. Wilde is known to have been interested in Solomon's career, which in several respects anticipates his own more spectacular fall. Lord Alfred Douglas's poem 'Two Loves', which figured so notoriously in the Wilde trials, reads almost like a description of a Solomon drawing in the Victorian and Albert Museum entitled 'Amor Tristis': Sweet Youth, Tell me why, sad and sighing, dost thou rove These pleasant realms? I pray thee tell me sooth, What is thy name ? He said, 'my name is Love', Then straight the first did turn himself to me, And cried: 'He lieth, for his name is Shame. But I am Love, and I was wont to be Alone in this fair garden, till he came Unasked by night; I am true love, I fill The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame'. Then sighing said the other: 'Have thy will; I am the love that dare not speak its name'. Solomon's last years, from 1884 to his death from alcoholism in 1905, were spent, apart from brief intervals in hospital and one day in prison for drunkenness, in St. Giles Work? house, Holborn. A letter from the Superintend? ent of Guy's Hospital to the Receiving Officer of the workhouse,17 requesting that Solomon should be admitted as a pauper, gives a vivid glimpse of this truly decadent figure: 'Simeon Solomon is an artist in broken down circumstances, and the state of his health utterly incapacitates him from following his employment ... he is simply suffering from ulcers on the legs and requires only rest and bandaging. . . . He ought to get well in six weeks' time and be able to begin work again.' No account of Simeon Solomon's character can be considered complete which does not stress his deeply ironic and humorous attitude to life. This led him to publish two 'spoof lectures on Astronomy and Chemistry and a one-act farce on the erection of Cleopatra's Needle. But his humour is seen at its most mordant in the brief autobiographical sketch which he wrote for his American admirer, Julia Ellsworth Ford: A HISTORY OF SIMEON SOLOMON From his cradle to his grave As an infant he was very fractious. He developed a tendency towards designing. He had a horrid temper. He was hampered. He illustrated the Bible before he was six? teen. He was hated by all of his family before he was eighteen. He was eighteen at the time he was sent to Paris. His behaviour there was so disgraceful that his family?the Nathans, Solomons, Moses, Cohens, etc., et hoc genus homo?would have nothing to do with him. He returned to London to pursue his disgraceful course of Art, wherein he dis? played such marvellously exquisite effects of coleography that the world wondered. He then turned his headlong course into another channel?that of illustrating books for youths. His 'Vision of Love revealed in Sleep' is too well known. After the publica? tion of this his family repudiated him for ever. His appearance is as follows: Very slender, dark, a scar on one or two eyebrows, a slouching way with him, a certain nose, one under lip. That is S.S.</page><page sequence="22">286 Lionel Lambourne He died on 14 August 1905 and is buried in Willesden Jewish Cemetery, as is the painter Solomon Joseph Solomon, the successful portrait-painter and camouflage expert of the First World War. He was no relation to the Solomon family with which this article has been concerned, although Simeon did influence his life in rather an amusing way. Lord Swayth ling, a wealthy patron of Solomon Solomon, once received a begging letter asking him to call at an East End address, bringing food and drink, if he wished to see the writer alive. It was signed S. Solomon. On his arrival at a tall tenement building he mounted countless flights of stairs to find, on the top floor, not the rather personable Solomon Solomon, but the decadent figure of Simeon. Because of this, he advised Solomon Joseph Solomon to sign in full, which he did for the remainder of his career.18 The visitor to Willesden Jewish Cemetery will find in the two graves of Solomon Joseph Solomon and Simeon Solomon time's sardonic comment on the lives and reputations of the two artists. The tomb of Solomon Joseph, a large and well-preserved marble structure, pre? sents a vivid contrast to the crumbling, broken tombstone on Simeon's grave, illegible but for the mysterious letters 'SIMEO . . .'. *** This paper was delivered to the Society on 3 February 1965. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The passages quoted from the letters of George Du Maurier are reproduced by kind permission of Daphne Du Maurier, Lady Browning. NOTES 1 I am greatly indebted to Mr. Raphael Salaman for much information on the early history of the Solomon family. 2 Details of Abraham's career obtained from the Dictionary of National Biography article and the Art Journal, 1862, pp. 73-75, and 1863, p. 29. 3 My Autobiography and Reminiscences, by W. P. Frith. 2 vols. R. Bentley &amp; Son, London and Guildford, 1887. Vol. 1, pp. 52, 53. 4 Exhibited 1848 at the Royal Academy as 'A Ballroom in 1760'. 5 Art Journal, 1862, pp. 73, 75. 6 This letter, and all subsequent letters by George Du Maurier, are quoted by kind permission from The Toung George Du Maurier, a selection of his letters from 1860 to 1867, edited by Daphne Du Maurier, and published by Peter Davies, London, 1951. 7 Quoted by Bernard Falk in his account of Solomon's life in Five Tears Dead, published by Hutchinson &amp; Co., London, 1937, by far the fullest account of the artist's life yet available, and a work to which all subsequent writers on Solomon will always be indebted. 8 G. P. Boyce, 'Letters and Diaries', published in the 19th Annual Volume of the Royal Water colour Society's Transactions, 1941, p. 34 et seq. 9 English Female Artists, by E. C. Clayton. 2 vols. Tinsley Brothers, London, 1876. 10 Bernard Falk, The Naked Lady-?A Biography of Adah Isaacs Menken. Published by Hutchinson &amp; Co., 1934, p. 199. 11 Lady Georgina Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Vol. 1, p. 260. Published by Macmillan &amp; Co. Ltd., London, 1904. 2 vols. 12 The Swinburne Letters, edited by Cecil Y. Lang. 6 vols. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1959-. Mainly Vol. 2. 13 'A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep', printed for the Author by F. S. Ellis. London, 1871. 14 Dark Blue Magazine, July 1871. Reprinted in The Bibelot, Vol. 14, No. 9, by Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Maine, 1908, the most easily available text. 15 Simeon Solomon?An Appreciation, by Julia Ellsworth Ford, New York, Sherman, 1908. 16 Middlesex County Records. 17 Greater London Council. Report Book of the Relieving Officer of St. Giles Union. Folio 65320. Letter dated 15 July 1885. 18 Solomon J. Solomon?A Memoir of Peace and War, by Olga S. Phillips, published by fferbert Joseph, London, 1933.</page></plain_text>