Joseph Pennell: A Full Life

"Entrance to Vatican" by Joseph Pennell

"Joseph Pennell was fast reaching his allotted threescore years and ten. To him, however, idleness was a fatiguing occupation and his age, when he remembered it, was a goad to redoubled effort, so much remained to be done in so short a time. Dealers besieged him for prints. Engagements for lectures could not be overlooked. His printing was never better, his watercolors grew in power and beauty. He was as quixotic as of old in his fight for truth, his hatred of shams, and he looked forward eagerly to his labours on the Sesquicentennial Committee for the great glory of the graphic arts. Even I, living with him, working with him day by day, had no warning that the end was near.

And yet, there were signs. With the New Year he began to shorten his hours. Instead of being alarmed, I was pleased that at last he was willing to consider himself and not overtax his strength in finishing today what might be put off till tomorrow. Another sign was his willingness, after a hard day at the press or a long day in the class, to take a taxi home - instead of the subway. The first days of April provided pleasures that were to him a stimulant - old friends over for dinner, looking at prints with his class in the Met Print Room, afternoon teas. 

But on Saturday, April seventeenth, the doctor was telling me 'Your husband is a very sick man,' and within an hour a day nurse was at his side, and a night nurse engaged. A virulent form of influenza had struck which developed into pneumonia. By Wednesday I knew there was no hope, short of a miracle. He knew it himself, though he admitted it to me only once. 'Stay with me as much as you can,' he said, 'This is our last week together.' 

He, who was thought the most impatient of men, was throughout this cruel week patience itself. He did as the doctors bade him, was more concerned for his nurses' comfort than his own, for himself asked nothing, save that his bed might be moved into the front room where he would have before him by day and by night his Unbelievable City, his City Beautiful, New York that he loved. When the doctor decided it was better not, Pennell accepted the decision without a protest, though I realized how bitter was the disappointment. 

He talked little, but I knew his mind was wandering through the past. 'It has been a full life,' he told me after a long silence. 'A beautiful life,' I added 'Yes, a beautiful life,' he repeated. By Friday morning, April twenty-third, his physical strength was fast ebbing, but his mind had lost nothing of its vigour. He asked me to write an overlong delayed answer to a letter from his publisher, told me exactly what he would have me say, listened to my answer, approved, mentioned other letters that should not wait. But before half-past three that afternoon, the end came. He, who had never time to rest, was at rest forever more."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Letters of Joseph Pennell, Volume Two" by Elizabeth Robins Pennell.)