Tag Archives: The Heart of London

February 14, 2022 · 11:14 am

The scissor-cuts of Lisl Hummel

This article was originally circulated as HVM Society Snippets – No.239, 19th July 2019

H.V. Morton’s first book, “The Heart of London” was published by Methuen & Co., of London, on 11 June 1925. It comprises forty-nine essays and sketches of London people and places compiled from a series of seventy-five articles published in the Daily Express newspaper early in 1925. By then HVM was already establishing himself as a creditable feature writer for the Daily Express and a favourite of the newspaper baron, Lord Beaverbrook.

The book ran to at least 25 editions or re-printings by 1949. In October 1926 the fourth edition was produced in a larger format with 24 scissor-cut (silhouette) illustrations by the Viennese artist Lisl Hummel.

*St Paul’s Pigeons, Through the Columns of St Martin-in-the-Fields and At the Rag Fair, three of the scissor-cut illustrations from “**The Heart of London**”*

Recently I was lucky enough to be able to acquire a copy of the special scissor-cut edition and was able to see for myself these delightful additions to Morton’s observations of his beloved London. The silhouettes have a child-like innocence which complements Morton’s words, adding to them in a way that photographs couldn’t possibly do. They lend the work a slightly fantastical feel, as if we were not learning about actual places or events but rather reading a set of fables.

For this special edition, Morton wrote a special introduction:

LONDON has been pictured by countless pens and brushes, inspired and humdrum, but this is the first time that an artist has hunted the City with a pair of magic scissors. Miss Hummel is a young Viennese artist who has specialised in, or, as I prefer to call it, tamed, a most intractible material—black paper.
I think it will be generally agreed that the scissor-cuts in this volume are remarkable for their vitality, their beauty of line and their charm. Before I saw Miss Hummel at work with her magic scissors I had no idea that there could be so much to admire in a silhouette.
H.V.M.
London,
September 1926

Well, curiosity got the better of me and I thought I would do a little digging on the subject of Miss Hummel and find out why her illustrations seemed to resonate so strongly. It took me a while and, as is often the case when researching books, I was all too easily distracted while pursuing connections which, though enjoyable, had little to do with my original project. But eventually I built up a picture of the artist, albeit an incomplete one.

According to this source at AskArt.com (which references “Artists in California, 1786-1940” by Edan Hughes), Lisl Hummel was born in Austria on May 19, 1892 (the same year as HVM). During the 1920s Hummel was a student at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, CA. By 1930 she was married to Dr. Henry Barsook. She worked as a freelance artist in Pasadena into the 1940s and later moved to Oregon with artist Don Foth. She died in Santa Barbara, CA on May 30, 1990. Her works include landscapes with eucalypti and oaks.

This brief biography makes no mention of book illustrations, silhouettes or scissor cuts and suggests she was living in the US when she was involved in illustrating Morton’s work. Eventually however (information is sparse until you know where to look), I started to unearth a few other titles which she had been involved with and straight away the reason her illustrations seemed so evocative became clear. They are all children’s books, and I have a feeling there were a few battered copies around in my various family homes as I grew up. Although one at least is still in print, many seem quite rare these days but occasional copies can be found on the websites of second hand book sellers. Looking at the pictures of covers and illustrated pages to be found online there is a simplicity about them. Like the works of Morton they are unpretentious and accessible, there is no ‘side’ or hidden agenda about them and I could see why Morton’s “The Heart of London” seems to have been the only ‘adult’ work that Miss Hummel has collaborated on.

*Some of the other covers and illustrations by Lisl Hummel.*

For the record, the other volumes which I was able to find are as follows:

“The Little Pagan Faun & Other Fancies” by Patrick R Chalmers (a collection of stories from Punch, the dustjacket of the 1914 edition is illustrated with five vignettes from the book). Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York (circa 1914), also Jonathan Cape (1927).

“Toy Ships: Poems for children” by Florence B Steiner (with 25 illustrations). Publisher: The Graphic Publishers, Ottawa (1926).

“A Little Christmas Book” by Rose Fyleman (featuring ten scissor cut illustrations). Publisher: Methuen (1926) and George H. Doran Company, New York (1927).

“Poems for Peter” by Lysbeth Borie (an author from Philadelphia, this book is still in print today). Publisher: J.B. Lippincott & Co. (1928).

“The Four Young Kendalls” by Eliza Orne White. Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company (1932).

“The Good Natured Bear” by Richard Henry Horne. Publisher: Macmillan, New York (1945).

I don’t own any of these books, yet I feel, from looking at their descriptions, I know them and that they have made an impression on me. Anyone who ever watched The Singing Ringing Tree on a tiny old black and white television set as a young child will know exactly what I am talking about!

If anyone knows any more about Miss Hummel and her scissor-cut illustrations I would be delighted to hear from them. In the meantime it is well worth looking out for this unique edition of “The Heart of London” which comes up for sale occasionally, it makes a charming addition to any collection of Mortoniana.

With best wishes,

Niall Taylor, Glastonbury, Somerset, England

If you want to get ahead…

… get a hat!

HV Morton set great store by hats and was rarely photographed without one. In his 1951 “In Search of London” he made it clear that he considered hats a barometer of society. He wrote of “modern London” only a few years after he had reported there during the blitz that it was now a place “of jagged ruins and hatless crowds”, an altogether shabbier, graver and sadder place than it had been in previous times. To Morton London now felt “provincial”, a city where “it was no longer possible to distinguish a lord from a navvy, a poor man from a rich one”. A creature of a different age, Morton seemed to feel like a stranger in the city he had once been so familiar with.

A recent event however, somewhere in London, suggests the tide may be turning very slghtly, in a way Morton would have surely approved.

Michael Hagon, a member of the HV Morton Society, has a love of all things London and of HV Morton having acquired his first volume – Morton’s earliest book, “The Heart of London” – some years ago. He also happens to be the manager of one of the most venerated and historical shops in the world, Lock & Co Hatters of St James’s, which dates back to the 17th century.

Recently he wrote to me:

It may be of interest to you to know that we have just made a limited edition eight piece cap made from Escorial wool called “Morton”, the perfect cap to wear when exploring the “Heart of London”. I thought it was time HV was honoured at Locks!

I couldn’t agree more – the hat has a robust and stylish look and is a fitting tribute to one of the best known and best dressed interwar travel writers, Henry Canova Vollam Morton.

With best wishes,

Niall Taylor, Glastonbury, Somerset, England

This post was previously circulated as HVM Society Snippets – No.254

Armistice Day

Armistice Day Commemoration

(This was originally posted to HV Morton members as HVM Society Snippets – No. 145)

In February this year, in King’s Lynn, Norfolk; Florence Green died peacefully at the age of 110. A modest woman, she had worked much of her life at a local hotel and during her spare time was heavily involved with the British Legion – knitting clothes, blankets and toys for children. Before her marriage at the age of nineteen, she had also served as a mess steward in the Women’s Royal Air Force and, with her passing, the world lost its last living link with those people who served in the forces during the First World War.

Remembrance day is approaching. A commemoration of the day when, after more than four years of continuous warfare and roughly 20 million dead, the guns fell silent across the battlefields of Europe and the World on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in the year 1918.

The hope at the time was that this had been the war to end all wars. Surely, after such madness, the carnage would never be repeated? We know now this was in vain, and, little more than two decades following the signing of the armistice at Compiègne in France, the conflagration ignited again. It seems the urge to warfare may simply be part of the human condition.

Twenty-six years after the excerpt below, in his 1951 book “In Search of London”, HV Morton, in somber mood, described post-Second-World-War London as a city “of jagged ruins and hatless crowds”. The bare heads of its populace were symbolic of a people who were, “graver and sadder” than before – people, Morton wrote, whose courage had been “expended in many years of air warfare… the air raid wardens, the fire watchers, the firemen”. Knowing how the hopes for peace in the years following the Great War had been so thoroughly dashed, Morton briefly considered the possibility of yet another, third world war in the new atomic age.

The following contemplation of the Cenotaph in London is from Morton’s “The Heart of London” and was written only six years after the last shot of the First World War was fired:

The wind comes down Whitehall and pulls the flags, exposing a little more of their red, white, and blue, as if invisible fingers were playing with them. The plinth is vacant. The constant changing trickle of a crowd that later in the day will stand here for a few moments has not arrived. There is no one here.

No one? I look, but not with my eyes, and I see that the Empire is here: England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India… here — springing in glory from our London soil.

* * * * *

In a dream I see those old mad days ten years ago. How the wind fingers the flags…

I remember how, only a few weeks ago, as a train thundered through France, a woman sitting opposite to me in the dining car said, ‘The English!’ I looked through the window over the green fields, and saw row on row, sharply white against the green, rising with the hill and dropping again into the hollows — keeping a firm line as they had been taught to do — a battalion on its last parade.

The Cenotaph and no one there? That can never be.

With best wishes,

Niall Taylor (originally distributed 2nd November 2012)

—

HV Morton Society members who would like to, can read Morton’s 1927 account of a pilgrimage of 700 mothers of the fallen to the Menin Gate at Ypres in Belgium in the on-line archive.

For an explanation of the connection between the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the grave of the unknown soldier in Westminster Abbey, have a look at the British Legion website.

Tag Archives: The Heart of London

The scissor-cuts of Lisl Hummel

If you want to get ahead…

… get a hat!

Armistice Day

Armistice Day Commemoration

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