"The Sound of the Willows" makes people remember its writer Kenneth ▪ Graham, remembering the beautiful fairy tale about the homeland; "Winnie the Pooh", let people remember a text author A.A. Milne, remember the beauty and purity of friendship in the forest. But we should not forget the other illustrator who gave these two works life and classics, E.H. Shepard.
▲ E.H. Shepard
Although far from childhood, as an adult reading "London Children - E.H. Shepard's Autobiography", you can still find the shadow of childhood time.
The book is divided into two parts, the first part is "The Painting of Memory", which tells the author's childhood time and life records from the ages of 7-8, telling the story of a happy, loving child gazing into the adult world, capturing the innocence and enthusiasm of that era. It's a beautiful memoir, mildly self-deprecating, unpretentious in style, but warm, engaging, and evocative. While it's often hilarious, it's also often very moving.
The life of a 7-year-old boy raised in a tight-knit middle-class family in Victorian London, as Shepard puts it in the foreword, is also a memoir of the family's final year of complete happiness, which adds a special poignancy to the whole book; soon after (part two), Shepard's beloved mother falls ill and then dies, leaving her loyal family devastated. But what a happy family they were while she was alive!
The second part, Paintings of Life, beginning with the death of his mother when he was 10 years old, focuses on the time spent with his aunts after her mother's death, his student days, his joyful family holidays in various parts of France, Germany and England, and his beginnings as an artist. If "Painting of Memory" focuses on a year in Shepard's childhood, this part gives us an insight into the author's life and life after the age of ten. Because of the longer period of time covered in this book, Shepard will not be as loving about small events as he did in Paintings of Memory, or rather, he did so, but not so frequently. He tells such interesting details of life (bike trips, vacations with family, school bullies, difficulties in painting, his first studio, etc.) that in short his paintings are purely pleasant, and the writing style is simple and clear, true and not sentimental or negative.
Life was happy in the early days of Shepard's childhood, his father was an architect, he loved painting, his mother loved art, and he lived a big family with a harmonious atmosphere, freedom and ease. Living in such an artistic home, Shepard inherited his parents' multiple hobbies for painting, music, and theater. But life was unfortunate for Shepard, who lost his mother in childhood, his father at a young age, his wife in middle age, his son in his old age, and the two world wars he experienced. The injustice of fate, like the carving knife of the years, keeps scratching on the face, so that the old wounds are not healed, and new wounds are added. Therefore, in this autobiography, the happiest childhood time is recorded, and although in his later years, the author recalls with the painful ups and downs of life, he can still be seen optimistically looking forward to the future.
"London Child - E.H. Shepard" not only leads the reader to experience the growth process of a great artist and understand the source of his life's creation, but also allows the reader to clearly see a rich and sincere heart, a sound, stretched, enough to resist the wind and rain of the world, feel the power of childhood, and the shaping of family and times.