Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 4))

EVANS—AN APPRECIATION.
YES: NO doubt Evans is a photographer. But then Evans is such a
lot of things that it seems invidious to dwell on this particular facet of
him. When a man has keen artistic susceptibility, exceptional manipulative
dexterity, and plenty of prosaic business capacity, the world offers him a
wide range of activities; and Evans, who is thus triply gifted and has a
consuming supply of nervous energy to boot, has exploited the range very
variously.
I can not say exactly where I first met Evans. He broke in upon me
from several directions simultaneously; and some time passed before I
coördinated all the avatars into one and the same man. He was in many
respects an oddity. He imposed on me as a man of fragile health, to
whom an exciting performance of a Beethoven Symphony was as disastrous
as a railway collision to an ordinary Philistine, until I discovered that his
condition never prevented him from doing anything he really wanted to do,
and that the things he wanted to do and did would have worn out a navvy
in three weeks. Again, he imposed on me as a poor man, struggling in a
modest lodging to make a scanty income in a brutal commercial civilization
for which his organization was far too delicate. But a personal examination
of the modest lodging revealed the fact that this Franciscan devotee of
poverty never seemed to deny himself anything he really cared for. It is
true that he had neither a yacht, nor a couple of Panhard cars, nor a liveried
domestic staff, nor even, as far as I could ascertain, a Sunday hat. But you
could spend a couple of hours easily in the modest lodging looking at
treasures, and then stop only from exhaustion.
Among the books were Kelmscott Press books and some of them presen-
tation copies from their maker; and everything else was on the same
plane. Not that there was anything of the museum about the place. He
did not collect anything except, as one guessed current coin of the realm to
buy what he liked with. Being, as aforesaid, a highly susceptible person
artistically, he liked nothing but works of art: besides, he accreted lots of
those unpurchasable little things which artists give to sympathetic people
who appreciate them. After all, in the republic of art, the best way to pick
up pearls is not to be a pig.
gut where did the anchorite’s money come from? Well, the fact is, Evans,
like Richardson, kept a shop; and the shop kept him. It was a book-
shop. Not a place where you could buy slate-pencils, and reporter's
note-books, and string and sealing-wax and paper-knives, with a garnish of
ready-reckoners, prayer-books, birthday Shakespeare, and sixpenny editions
of the Waverley novels; but a genuine book-shop and nothing else, in the
heart of the ancient city of London, half-way between the Mansion House
and St. Paul's. It was jam full of books. The window was completely
blocked up with them, so that the interior was dark; you could see nothing
for the first second or so after you went in, though you could feel the
stands of books you were tumbling over. Evans, lurking in the darkest

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