LOCAL HISTORY

Gleeson White

Anyone who’s commemorated with a blue plaque is worth a write-up. I quite fancy having one of these on my habitation. You know the kind of thing: ‘Val Roberts, a.k.a. ‘Mrs Steve’, immortalised in prose, better half of author Steve Roberts, lived here’. Gleeson White meanwhile is named on a Christchurch History Society Millennium Blue Plaque in the High Street. It’s outside the Regent Centre.

‘On this site until replaced by the Regent Cinema in 1931 stood Caxton House Bookshop, in which was born Gleeson White 1852-1898 artist, illustrator, author and first editor in 1895 of The Studio art magazine, who also traded here as a bookseller’. I can’t think of anything better than being born in a bookshop. That would make you a true bookworm. So, what else do we know about him?

Interestingly, although the plaque plumps for 1852 most Internet sources seem to coalesce on 1851 for when he was born as Joseph William Gleeson White. Educated in Christchurch,

Gleeson as he’s usually referred to, became a member of the Art Workers’ Guild, which had been established in 1884 by devotees of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1890 Gleeson adventurously headed off to New York City where he presided over ‘The Art Amateur’ (1891-92) before returning to England in 1893.

White became the first serving editor of ‘The Studio’, an influential art magazine, established the year he returned. Under his stewardship it became one of the era’s most important art mags. It was devoted to fine and decorative arts and would continue to be published right up to 1964. The founder was Charles Holme who took over as editor in 1895 and would eventually die in Hampshire in 1923. Gleeson may have stepped down as editor but he continued contributing to the magazine’s pages, in fact, right up until when he died in 1898, aged around 46 or 47, from typhoid fever. It seems that White’s ousting as editor came about because of his open support for controversial figures such as black ink illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, a TB sufferer who once convalesced in Bournemouth, and writer Oscar Wilde, another frequenter of the resort.

White also acted as editor to a number of other magazines and publications, including: the ‘Ex Libris Series’; ‘Connoisseur Series’; the ‘Pageant’; and the ‘Cathedral Series’. His books included ‘Salisbury Cathedral’ (1896) and ‘Master Painters of Great Britain’ in four volumes (1897-98). You can’t always believe everything you read and one normally reputable website refers to Gleeson as a ‘poet’ (I’m not sure I’ve found any other evidence of this) and also as a ’New Zealander’. Well I never. I’m thinking perhaps I could plonk anything on my blue plaque: ‘… better half of author, poet and Kiwi Steve Roberts …

By Stephen Roberts www.steveroberts.org.uk Twitter: @SRChristchurch