The Bandar Log Press

The BANDAR

IF YOU have lived in West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Ysleta, Texas, Chicago, San Francisco, or Arizona if you have been a newspaper man, an illustrator, or a book collector if you were alive in 1900 you may have heard the name Frank Holme.

Frank Holme had genius, a genius with pen and pencil and a genius for friendship. His friends in effect "incorporated" him in an effort to raise money and save his life; years after his death his friends and those whom he had inspired formed a Frank Holme Memorial Group. Holme was impractical and he never made much money; but a man with money could never buy what Holme got out of life. He was a strange genius who wandered west to Arizona and paused briefly in the sun.

When Holme died, at the age of thirty-six, one of his co-workers wrote in the Denver Post: "There was something remarkable about Frank Holme. People said good things about him before he died When such men as President Roosevelt, Chauncey Depew, Mark Twain, George Ade, John McCutcheon, Grover Cleveland, and a score of other prominent men in the art and business world paused to pay a tribute to Frank Holme, it is little wonder then that thousands and tens of thousands of people followed the work of one of the cleverest newspaper artists of the day."

LOG PRESS the Story of Frank Holme

The accident of ill-health brought Holme to Arizona and thus increased our special interest in him. But in the 1890's Holme made his reputation, chiefly in Chicago, as an extraordinary newspaper artist and a teacher of illustration. Holme knew newspapers, having been a reporter and a type-setter; and in a day when many newspaper illustrators "faked" their pictures, Holme drew "on location." Once, hard-pressed for lack of paper, he drew a news scene on his cuff; and hard-pressed also for time, he turned the cuff over to the engraving department.

"He has been in the thick of political campaigns, accidents, strikes, famous trials, national celebrations all the moving events of the day," said one of his contemporaries. "He has learned to draw steadily, perched on the unsteadiest coign of vantage; if need be, with rain pouring down upon his paper; with shouts of excitement ringing in his ears, or missiles flying past them; with rolls of smoke now obscuring, now revealing, blackened walls and crawling human beings that he must note in hurried glimpses."

Mr. Edwin P. Hill, of Ysleta, Texas, President of the Frank Holme Memorial Group tells us that Holme was born in West Virginia; experimented in wood-cuts, chalk-plates, and zinc etchings while working in the art department of the Wheeling Register; attracted wide attention through his pictures of the Johnstown flood in the New York Graphic; and moved to Chicago where he worked as reporter and "assignment artist" on five newspapers from one of which he resigned because a time-clock was installed. In Chicago he married, gave art exhibitions, founded the Palette and Chisel club, started his excellent School of Illustration, and, possibly of most interest to us, founded the Bandar Log Press.Founded? "Founded" is too solid a word to use in connection with the Bandar Log Press, the very name of which was taken from the Monkey-folk of Kipling's Jungle Book. Why Bandar Log? "Listen man-cub," said the Bear, and his voice rumbled like thunder on a hot night. "I have taught thee all the law for all the Peoples of the Jungle-except the Monkeyfolk who live in the trees. They have no lawthey boast and chatter and pretend that they are a great people about to do great affairs in the jungle, but the falling of a nut turns their minds to laughter, and all is forgotten . . ."

Yes, the Bandar Log people were monkeys who carried a stick half a day, meaning to do great things with it but forgot what.

So Frank Holme became, fondly, Mr. Bandarlog. And the first issue of the press, a collection of humorous verses entitled "Just for Fun" took a year or so to get through the press, its progress being interrupted by Holme's travels, his conversation, his various work, his zest for other plans, or simply his inability to persuade his friends to concentrate on his press-work.

Of this first Bandar Log book, printed in Chicago in an edition of 74 copies, Holme said, "The book's title 'Just for Fun' explains its purpose . In many points it will doubtless shock the practical printer, but it has taken long enough in the making to weaken any possible desire to do it over again. Besides, most of the composition was done by my wife . . ."

"Swanson, Able Seaman" was his second book to appear from the wandering Bandar Log press in 1901 at Ashville, North Carolina, where Holme had gone for his health. Will Ransom notes that most small private presses are not taken seriously by collectors or connoisseurs, but one, the Bandar Log press, has made a "poignant impression" on him. He defines a private press as "an enterprise conceived, and masterfully and thoroughly carried out by a creative artist who does his work from a sincere conviction that he is expressing his own personality."

Doctors finally decided that Holme should come to Arizona and so the first private press arrived in Arizona in 1902-the first in Arizona, and probably the first in the world incorporated in order to help save a man's life. For the loyal friends of Holme did incorporate the press and sold $25.00 shares in it to raise funds for his fight against tuberculosis. Among the shareholders were George Ade, Mark Twain, Charles Dana Gibson, and Booth Tarkington-Mark Twain came in late after all the stock was sold and had to pay $50.00 for his share. Other shareholders, whose art work

The stockholders have, with truly remarkable unanimity, declined to assume any responsibility whatsoever, either for the subject matter or the appearance of the publications issued by the press, and have dumped it all upon one individual, who bears it lightly, singing as he works at sorting out “pi” or cleaning rolle: with benzine.

Adding the Bandar Log Press and giving some of his ideas on printing.

Typical Holme illustration for George Ade; from the University collection.

HOME TO THE Center, for The Game is on: Chip: For a Pot is never lost till won Separate cheerfully; and if you lose, Smile, for another's just behind this one.

Come, take a Hand; Forget your frigid Feet:

There's something doing when the Greeks do meet;

The Game has but a little while to rus

The Game has but a little while to run

A page of text from the Poker Rubaiyat showing a wood-cut initial and the first two quatrains of this colorful book.

OLD TIME SPORT A woodcut by Holme from the Poker Rubaiyat, the most ambitious product of the Bandar Log Press. The work contains twelve full-page cuts in nine colors and has long been a collectors' item.

cards at the same time, thus combining busidelightfully showing, for instance, the “Bluffness with pleasure.” er's foolish face,” or a player taking more money We shall presume that in 1903 you paid five dollars for this curious little booklet, and so today you have a collector's item worth several times the five dollars you paid for it. The New York World called it “Capital stuff.” So it was -and so it still is, a book of quatrains about the game of poker written in the style of the Rubaiyat, with its full-page colored woodcuts “from the unwilling vest.” Kirk LaShelle wrote the quatrains; Frank Holme produced the woodcuts “hacked out by him with a 3-bladed jackknife on poplar lumber carted across-country clear from New York for the purpose.” Here is the wistful ending of this book for poker-lovers: “Oh game of my delight that ne'er can wane, The rattling chips are Music sweet of strain; How sad to think a Time perforce must come When Chips and Cards will lure me all in vain.

“Then, as you sit around the Board-alasWith full intent each other to harass, Deal out a Hand where I was wont to sit And whisper when it comes to me 'He'll pass'.

The University of Arizona Library owns a large group of art books from the personal library of Holme, a number of his original drawings, and six of the seven scarce items issued in Arizona by the Bandar Log Press in very limited editions. Three of the little books for the projected series in the “Strenuous Lad's Library” were written by George Ade, burlesque of the then popular dime-novels, and after forty years are still hilarious fun.

Here end the Poker Rubaiyat made by Kirke La Shelle. The illustrations were made by F. Holme and hacked out by him with a 3-bladed jackknife on poplar lumber carted across-country clear from New York for the purpose. The key-blocks for the initials were made on chalk plates and the whole was made into a book by him at In these little yellow-paper-bound booklets, illustrated with Holme's woodcuts, you can follow the surpassing adventures of Clarence Allen, the Hypnotic boy journalist; or Rollo Johnson, the boy inventor; or Handsome Cyril, the Messenger boy with the warm feet. When a beautiful chestnut-haired girl falls into the villain's clutches, Handsome Cyril finds that he is not of the common garden variety of messenger boys. For he can, almost simultaneously, make a courteous bow, come through with a left to the jaw, support a fainting lady, and make his lip curl while the villain curses him.

The last item from the Bandar Log Press, in 1903, is an amusing short story of Indian love called “Her Navajo Lover” written by Will Robinson, the first book by this later well-known Arizona author. Again the woodcuts are by Holme, and the book is bound in a paper cover colored in grey, black, and red like a Navajo blanket.

“It was an early date,” says Rudolph Gjel-leosness, former University Librarian, “for the establishment of a special press in Arizona, then pioneer territory. Special presses flourish best where there are leisure groups interested in (and having time for) artistic achievement, and resources to promote and encourage creative endeavor.” Holme was a creative artist expressing his personality-a personality which made considerable impression on his contemporaries. One Phoenix, Arizona. Printing was begun December 1, 1902 and finished January 30, 1903. But 274 copies were printed, all on hand-made paper, after which the types were distributed and the plates and color blocks destroyed. 104 copies are for stock-holders of the press and 150 are for sale. This copy is Number 1/3 THE BANDAR LOG PRESS INCORPORATED