This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the country’s most brilliant, eccentric, talented, and influential artist-illustrators, the appropriately named genius Edward GOREY. Admirers instantly recognize his distinctive style and Victorian and Edwardian settings, including those witty animated openings for PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery series.
A small handsome 8” x 6” volume has just come out --From Ted to Tom: The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey, a compendium of (mostly) colored ink sketches on the address side of envelopes sent by Gorey, when he summered on Cape Cod, to his friend Tom Fitzharris in New York. Tom, a painter, was then living in Eastchester, in southern Westchester County, and later in Greenwich Village, and Gorey had a wild, imaginative time working in Tom’s addresses amid a cornucopia of fantastical designs. Tom now lives in East Hampton, when he’s not in the city giving tours at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The 50 pieces collected here, edited by Tom and numbered by the “poisonous and poetic” Gorey, as the famous literary critic Edmund Wilson once called him, are delightful, clever, affectionate, and drawn to detailed perfection.
The contents – short typed letters would be intimidating were it not for Gorey’s modesty, humor and satiric take on himself and the world. A Harvard and Chicago Institute of Art graduate and insatiable book collector, Gorey read just about everything, especially in the 19th century, much of it in French. At an early point in his life when he couldn’t get published, he invented his own press, calling it “Fantod,” which means a state of mind of irritability and tension. Later, he courted that state in his art and scenic designs for plays and ballets (the 1977 Broadway Dracula and just about everything Balanchine were among his many award-winning achievements). He produced over 100 books, many for savvy children, and illustrated the work of many other literary artists.
A familiar figure in his long fur-collar overcoat with deep pockets, long woolly beard, sneakers, earrings, and rings, Gorey was instantly recognizable to Tom, who introduced himself when he spotted Gorey in front of Town Hall in Manhattan one day. Friendship followed – trips to the ballet and theatre, restaurants, movies, time spent at each other’s apartment.” Ted to Tom: “You got lots of good books here; where’s the junk?”
The envelopes, with their unique calligraphy and playful designs, were carefully dated: day, date, time of day, and the typed notes inside contained quotations from literature and history, authors known and arcane. There were also banal accounts of activities on the Cape. A typical letter might begin, “As Cocteau (or someone else maybe like that said . . . “ or “Yesterday, I bought a terrific unsittable chair which the man was delivering this morning, but he hasn’t.” Or he might note that ink splotches on the envelope’s reverse were not a mystery, just a “mess.” Usually in black.
No letters were necessary, of course, when Ted and Tom were in New York and saw each other regularly for a year and a half in the mid-'70s, before Ted moved to the Cape permanently. He died in 2000. Tom has now beautifully arranged the envelopes and provided a brief introduction and reference notes. Although Gorey lived with cats – from two to six is the estimate - the animals represented in From Ted to Tom are almost identical dogs wearing “T” shirts, the cover showing both of them on unicycles. It’s a delicious gathering of art and love.
