All About the Bandar Log Press Incorporated

Most books are dead long before their authors or owners. There must be some element of permanent interest to insure their fame. Bibliographical treasures, often the products of private presses, must fulfill certain requirements before they can join the rare, the antique, and the priceless. In Western Americana the Joseph A. Munk Library of Arizoniana, in the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles; and the Bancroft Library of Berkeley, California, can pride themselves in collections that are the envy of critics, antiquaries, librarians, and private collectors.

The books dealing with Arizona that cause the heart of any book searcher to beat a little faster might include Reid's Tramp, a Journal of Ten Months' Travel Through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Sonora, and California. This book met print in 1858, and at this writing only four copies are known to exist. The Journal of John Udell, the odyssey of two elderly people traveling from the Missouri River to California via Arizona, is another unique tome. Only a few editions survive. Kansas Region, by Max Greene, was published in 1856 and is regarded as a treasure. The book is a chronicle of the author's trek to California along Arizona's Yuma route in 1850. Greene was a member of the wagon train that included Royce Oatman and his family. The Oatmans were later massacred by Apaches between the river port of Yuma and the Pima villages that dotted the trail. The town of Oatman, close to the Fort Mohave Indian Reservation, is named to commemorate the tragedy, although it is far from the actual site of the happening.

But there are other books, pamphlets and magazines that continue to elude and to fascinate: Hobbs' Wild Life in the West, Charles Poston's Apacheland, James C. Brown's Calabasas, the saga of a small town and military outpost that once flourished south of Tubac on the road to the Mexican border. To any such listing must be added the publications of the Bandar Log Press, an extraordinary enterprise that flourished all too briefly under the Arizona sun.

The products of Bandar Log possess the qualities that make for "rare books." Each work, exquisitely produced, has an element of permanent interest and emotional appeal, while at the same time being difficult to procure. It isn't simply that the Bandar Log books have been lost through the passage of time and its accompanying ravages. Rather that the Bandar Log Press produced so few editions of each work; usually under 300 copies sometimes considerably less. Such a custom is by no means isolated to the past. Famed Western writer and artist Tom Lea (The Brave Bulls, The Wonderful Country) has issued a magnificent work on Spanish exploration limited to but one hundred signed, numbered copies. Bandar Log's most famous work is the Poker Rubaiyat, a poem of twenty-four quatrains. The edition, when printed in Phoenix shortly after the turn of the century, was limited to 274 numbered copies. This, more than any other work, insured the lasting name of the now-legendary press. However, it is impossible to discuss this uncommon miniature publishing house without discussing Frank Holme, and Edwin B. Hill, owner, until the time of his death, of the oldest continuously operated private press in the United States.

ALL ABOUT

FRANK HOLME, President GEORGE BENTHAM, Vice-President KIRKE LA SHELLE, Sec'y and Treas.

GEORGE ADE W. W. DENSLOW HORACE TAYLOR RAY BROWN KIRKE LA SHELLE FRANK HOLME GEORGE BENTHAM

1402 BROADWAY, NEW YORK

It is odd that interest in Holme has increased so rapidly within the last decade, as if time had suddenly realized an error in judgment. His illustrations, etchings, lithographs, when they crop up, are snatched by collectors with a frenzied eagerness, as if they feared another might recognize the name of the artist and thus run up the price.

Frank Holme's work caught the spirit of a time, the 1890's. He did not think in terms of the future, only of the task at hand. Some called him a genius. Anyone who knew him admired him.

Frank Holme was an uncommonly gifted man. His life was productive, rewarding, and blessed with creative power. He was born in Corinth, West Virginia, on June 23, 1868. At the age of seventeen he was employed in the art department of the Wheeling Register. Here he worked in every medium known to newspaper artists of the day: woodcuts, chalk plates and zinc etchings. From the Register he went to work for the Pittsburgh Press. While in the employ of the Press the devastating Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood occurred. On May 31, 1889, a dam across the South Fork, twelve miles above the city, gave way. Between 2000 and 3000 lives were lost. Holme was there, sketching the disaster, his drawings vivid and alive. The New York Graphic ran them and they caused a sensation. People began talking of Frank Holme. The issue caught the attention of W. D. Boyce, of the Chicago Blade, who offered the promising artist a staff position. It's important to remember that in bygone days newspapers relied on illustrations for pictorial display. The artist had to work swiftly and accurately, with a deft economy of line. Holme made quite a name for himself as a courtroom illustrator. The murder trial of Adolph Luetgert in Chicago in the summer of 1897 added more lustre to Holme's rising star. His work appeared in the world press, often pirated shamelessly.

He was also interested in stage personalities, and did marvelous impressions of Henry Irving, Joseph Jefferson of Rip Van Winkle renown, Helena Modjeska, and the French songstress Yvette Guilbert.

The famous actor Richard Mansfield refused to be sketched: "I'm busy - I cannot give you an hour to sketch me." "That's all right," replied Holme. "Can you give me three minutes?"

"And have you make a terrible likeness of me? Never." Fortunately Holme had taken along a friend who was able to engage Mansfield in conversation a minute or two longer. The next Sunday a half-page sketch of Mansfield appeared. Mansfield promptly offered $100 for the original.

Holme became deeply interested in the possibilities of various methods of illustration. He was a great admirer of Toulouse-Lautrec's work. He began to experiment with chalk plate, copper-plate etching, drypoint, photoengraving from pen-and-ink drawings combined with spatter work and greased crayons. Wash drawings, too. He never stopped perfecting his craft. His sketches during the Spanish-American War graphically took readers to scenes the text could never convey.

Holme was a gregarious person. No matter where he went he was surrounded by friends, and he made friends easily. His manner was warm and he could put people at ease.

He married Ida Van Dyke in 1893 and their West End Street home in Chicago was a gathering place for newspaper friends, artists, and writers. Holme also had a studio across from the house, a forty foot garret. Here he began to print the things that seized his attention. Quoting Ray Brown, one of Holme's staunchest admirers: "A little circle of devoted friends spent many of its evenings in that garret. The printers permitted, in fact coerced, friends into washing up the press, distributing type, and running the proving press. At the end of the first season nothing had been printed, but a multitude of worthy works had been started.

"On an evening in the garret when everyone was working except the two printers, one of them turned to me and said, 'We are going to have a book finished pretty soon, and we want an imprint and a name for the press. Can't you suggest a good name?' I quoted roughly from Kipling's 'Bandar Log' (The Jungle Book) how the monkey folk started out early in the morning through the treetops, finding some fine stick or bit of wood, which they carried along with them, exchanging conversation about what grand things they proposed to build with it and later in the day forgetting all about their ambitions and dropping it through the branches, and I intimated that there was to me a curious parallel between the effectiveness of the monkey folk and their own press products, and suggested gravely that they call it the Bandar Log Press, whereat George Bentham sat down and made a very fine little drawing, for a press imprint, of a monkey dropping a stick through branches of a tree, and they solemnly named it the Bandar Log Press."

A variation of this scene also lays claim to authenticity. This time a coterie of newspapermen are gathered in Holme's living room inspecting the artwork that is coming from the press. Kipling's influence is felt again. One of the gang looks at the output of artwork and exclaims: "Ha! Nothing finished. Bandar logs!"

From then on Frank and his wife, Ida, were affectionately known as Mr. and Mrs. Bandar Log.

The first Bandar Log was a hand-lever "Standard" press. The type was French Old-Style, Elzevir and Cheltenham. Type and the press were second hand. The very first book from Bandar Log was Just for Fun, a humorous collection of fourteen random poems, some anonymous; others penned by Eugene Field and James Whitcomb Riley. "Casey at the Bat" was included. The edition, verified by its last page, was restricted to only seventy-four copies and printed on hand-cut Italian paper.

Holme was subject to wanderlust: from Chicago to San Francisco, Vancouver to West Virginia; always sketching, always gathering an ever-widening band of admirers, Teddy Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland included.

While in Vancouver, Holme wired a sketch to the Chicago News. It was the first time anything of the kind had been attempted. The News paid the telegram charge of $14, grudgingly ordering Holme never to repeat the offense, an admonition that prompted one Holme supporter to note: ". . . a bit of procedure that callously ignored the fame accruing to the newspaper for the pioneer drawing."

"Lungers Camp," Phoenix, where Holme (extreme left) lived in 1903. Of his life in Arizona he wrote: "We get up reluctantly about 8 a.m., breakfast, then loaf around the tents - maybe take a short walk on the desert, more often stretch out on canvas cots and go to sleep in the sun; lunch at twelve and then we sure go to sleep for an hour or so, then sit up and swap lies or shoot craps or ask each other questions to be answered and proved by the 'World Almanac.' After supper we visit each other's tents and swap more lies, or sit by the stove to read or write letters till bed time about 9 o'clock."

Prior to leaving Chicago, Holme had the type carefully packed (he thought) and shipped on to West Virginia. Unfor tunately, on route to its destination the shipment broke open and most of the type was lost in transit. Holme's reaction was typical of the man: "Well, letter by letter as it dropped out on the trip across country, it probably sprouted a lot of other Bandar Logs."

Returned to Chicago, Holme founded the well-known Palette and Chisel Club. He held three exhibitions of his work and founded his highly regarded School of Illustration in 1898, an institute that developed the talents of countless newspaper artists. Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge, the Bill Mauldin of World War I, is perhaps the most notable graduate. He came to Holme as a student when he was ten. Critic Fanny Butcher, of the Chicago Tribune, reviewing Baldridge's book Time and Chance (1948), makes this comment: "It was a home not of body but of the spirit. He (Balderidge) became the youngest student of a great human being, Frank Holme, director of the School of Illustration and a member of the brotherhood of art. Frank Holme gave the little boy an ideal, that of looking for truth and depicting it as he saw it."

Holme worked at a feverish pace. For him there never seemed to be enough time to accomplish all he had set out to do. His overwork eventually culminated in tuberculosis of the lungs, and doctors ordered a complete rest. Holme spent two years in Asheville, North Carolina, but he couldn't bear inactivity. Despite all warnings he returned to printing.

The Bandar Log Press rode again. Key plates were cut on location and printing done on a hand press loaned by a newspaper man who happened to be in Asheville at the time.

The second Bandar Log publication was Swanson Able Seaman. Swanson was authored by Charles Dryden, the most famous and perhaps the best baseball writer of his day. The cuts were made by Holme with the aid of a jackknife. This publication, subtitled "The Melancholy Fate of a Hapless Mariner," had a run of 100 copies over Just for Fun - 174. The last page boasted a smiling personal comment by Holme: ". after which (the printing) the types were put back where they belonged and the refined and elegant wood blocks were done into kindling wood in an endeavor to counteract the balmy climate of the Sunny South." Mistakenly, many believed this work was produced in Phoenix, but the facts are otherwise. This publication, together with Where is Ray Brown? was produced in Asheville, N. C. Ray Brown remains the rarest of all the Bandar Log editions. At this writing, but one copy is known to exist in Arizona, in the possession of Holme's grandniece, Mrs. John Webb, of Paradise Valley. As with the Poker Rubaiyat, the verses were penned by musical comedy lyricist Kirke LaShelle, and lament the fact that the author has returned to Chicago after a long absence and cannot find an old friend. The work is handsomely illustrated in checkerboard colors and ranks second to the Rubaiyat in quality and scope. Continued on page 36 Editor's note: THE POKER RUBAIYAT follows on the next two pages. The text is complete 24 stanzas. The reduced scale illustrations are reproduced from full page colored woodcut prints in the 113th of the original 250 copies. From the colophon: The illustrations were made by F. Holme and hacked out by him with a 3-bladed jacknife 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 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.