Album of whimsical drawings, late 19th century,

£450 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

One drawing is likely by the artist Gertrude Lindsay (c.1878-), a number of the others, initialled “M. L.” are possibly by her father Thomas M. Lindsay, who was the headmaster at The Belfast Government School of Art, afterwards art master at Rugby school. The Gertrude Lindsay drawing depicts the character Lily from the play A Pantomime Rehearsal by Cecil Clay, with a couple of the famous lines from the characters Lily (“ye teenie tiny toddling twinkling elves”) and Beddoes (“One moment please - the way you came in! - More like a person walking down a street than a fairy”). The play, A Pantomime Rehearsal, was performed at Rugby in “January 1904”. Rupert Brooke, who was at Rugby at that time, knew Gertrude Lindsay. When bedridden during the Christmas vacation (1906-1907) he confessed, in a letter to his cousin Erica, that he was as bored by idleness as by college work: “These holidays have been paltry and pottering as usual. The only thing of interest is that Gertrude Lindsay has been drawing me. … It represented me as of a round, fat, youthful, chubby, and utterly contented face, instead of the gaunt, sallow, aged, haggard, thin expression at which I always aim.” (Stringer, Red Wine of Youth: A Life of Rupert Brooke ). The majority of the drawings date from 1869-1890s and it is tempting to imagine that they were done by the art teacher father as amusements for his children, at least one of whom would follow in his artistic footsteps. His wife, Ruth Lindsay, was also an artist

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