A Book in Old Scarlet: Bodkin and Eden's 'A Guide to Caper'

A Guide to Caper (1924) by Thomas Bodkin (words) and Denis Eden (pictures), which celebrates its centenary this month, is a book of vignettes of a city inhabited by bears. Caper, we are told, is not its real name.

In his introduction Bodkin pays tribute to a childhood book he calls (in capitals) a PRECIOUS BOOK, bound in ‘Officers’ Scarlet’. It consisted upon opening of one long—very long—fold-out page with a series of panels illustrating an English spa town. This might have been one of the well-known ones such as Bath or Malvern, or it might have been imaginary. The boy would pore over these pictures and delight in them. It also had a charming aroma he has not been able to rediscover. 

It was because of this book that he and his friend, Eden, decided to make one of at least approaching the same kind (though not folding-out), about a place that is only found by going the wrong way. This also is bound in bright scarlet, though in copies I have seen this has tended to fade over the years. 

As in some of the tales of Lord Dunsany, illustrated by Sidney Sime, the visitor enters through a great city gate, and beyond this may be seen towers, domes, spires and turrets. Other pictures depict The Chemists’ Quarter (though there are no chemists), The Palatine Avenue, The Fountain in the Fruit Market, The Museum, The City Under the Stars.

Eden’s twenty-one pictures are delightful, full of unusual small details, so that there always seems something else to discover. They faithfully reflect Bodkin’s text, so it is evident the two worked closely together. But not everything is described in the prose, so that the reader might well notice other things, or even have a different view about what is depicted: there could be many versions of Caper. There is also the sense that, though the text is written for children, the author has half a sly eye on adult readers too. 

There is something else unusual about this book. Fairy tales and fantasies usually involve princes and princesses, lords and ladies, and the sumptuous courts kept for them by servants. Not here. No royalty nor aristocracy, no priesthood, is represented. Though there is a ruinous Royal Palace, ‘There are no kings now in Caper, only a Ruler who is called the Mayor of the Palace. The chief inhabitants take turns at being Mayor. Each one holds the office for seventeen days at a time.’ They mostly spend the time sleeping.

Caper does not seem to need much governing, for the citizens run things. As in any mortal city, there are those less fortunate: cripples, the poor, the tired, the aged. But the city has an almshouse, a soup kitchen, a public park and a public playroom, a museum, a guild or friendly society, and other benevolent institutions. It is, in brief, a Commonwealth. This is quite a contrast to the power, wealth and pomp taken for granted in most fantasy realms.  

None of this near-realism, if we may say that of a book about bears, detracts from the charm of the vignettes: in fact, they are enhanced by it. We feel that though this is a toytown place it has a certain odd plausibility and a slight air of melancholy which makes it more haunting.

Besides, the author and artist also indulge in flights of whimsical fantasy. The Bookshop in the city is: ‘the biggest and the best shop in Caper . . . the Ursors are great readers . . . As there is only one book shop in Caper it has to keep open almost all night, in case any Ursor might finish his book before it was time to go to bed and want to begin another.’ This strikes me as a Good Idea. Books are inexpensive: ‘Quite good books can be had for a flower or a sugar-topped biscuit’, though, says the narrator, ‘I have heard of a book so rare that the price of it was a young tree.’

The artist seems to be William Denis Eden (1878-1949), a student at the Royal Academy from 1898 to 1901. At the end of the book is a note: ‘The original drawings reproduced herein are for sale. For particulars apply to Denis Eden, Esq., care of the Publishers, 97 & 99, St. Martin’s Lane, London.’ It is rather tempting to write even now and ask if they have any lurking in their archives.

He illustrated at least one other book, Whistles of Silver (1933) by Helen Parry Eden, presumably a relation. In a copy of the Caper book I have, Eden has hand-drawn an emblem on the half-title, depicting a bear framed in a circle formed by his own name.

Thomas Bodkin was an art historian from an Irish background with several studies to his name. He also introduced The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1922) with illustrations by Harry Clarke and wrote a foreword to a study of the artist Glyn Philpot (1951).  A Guide to Caper was reprinted in 1945. It seems a pity they did not work together on other books.

(Mark Valentine)