First edition. Original red cloth

Component identifier:

Item 78

Content Summary:

The coloured dust-jacket cover by Hal Gye is bound into this copy. The artist has drawn illustrations which appear throughout the text.

Together with autograph notes by Hal Gye, 4 pages, about the book. 'There's not much I can write about this book. C.J.D. was a long time writing it - about five or six years I think. He kept putting it off; maybe he didn't feel like it, or couldn't write it. It's pretty well impossible for a man to go on churning out books of verse on the same subject, so to speak. I made the drawings long before the book was written; went up to Blackburn and drew the orchard picture...which I still think a delightful sample of my pen work...I doubled my fees for the illustrations in this book, and George Robertson wrote to me and said he had no objections to my new charges...You will notice that A left my name out of it; no statement that Hal Gye's illustrations graced the cover and pages. I remember that 'Den' said, very early, something that made me laugh, but happily it was a great complement to his artist. 'You do the drawings and I'll write verses round them'. Which I did...It was at the Mitre Tavern that I told 'Den' I knew of a good lane that would draw well for Ginger Mick then under way, and after our meal I took him there an strangely enough on the way back (we walked - no taxis for 'Den' then) strolled through the Eastern Market, where, recently, I unveiled the plaque honoring him, in the new Southern Cross Hotel. So life mooched on. Hal Gye, July 1963'.

Hal Gye, in his Story of C.J. Dennis (noted later in this book) has this to say:

'...Speaking of Edward Dyson, veiled hints to the effect that 'Den' had almost broken in on Dyson's domain and was indebted to Fact'ry 'ands travelled to the Dennis camp - and then came Spadger's Lane in Ginger Mick - and Spadger one of Dyson's characters in that same Fact'ry 'ands. I think now that 'Den' might have found a different name for the lane. It was a real lane, too, east end of Little Bourke Street, between Exhibition and Spring Streets. It was one of those mysterious looking alleys which had attracted my artist's eye. There was a little old house on the right of it that must have been built in very early days. It had an old white chimney and the walls were dirty white, and when it was moonlight the top of the chimney and the far side of the wall caught a patch of silver from the moon. All behind was black and silver, and down in the darkness a little red light gleamed. Beyond it all, lay the mystery of pug-nosed, squat buildings, sitting on their haunches, dim and foreboding. It was the subject for one of my Nocturnes (I took 'Den' up to see it) 'Down in Rosie's kipsie at the end uv Spadger's Lane'. But the little white house is there no more and the only thing that seems to be left of it is my coloured frontispiece, which appears in the pocket edition of Ginger Mick'.

This book contains a Glossary.

Hal Gye's fine line does not show to advantage in the illustrations to this book for they are printed on a rough surfaced paper. In fact all the Dennis books are printed on paper which does not wear well. It has a tendency to fox very badly.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The collection was purchased from Harry Chaplin in 1981.

Names:

Chaplin, Harry F.

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