  |  I love what an inventive time the 1890s was for bicycles. So many ideas being tried out, so many different types of frames. The old high-wheel Ordinary still existed, though wad being largely replaced by the Safety model. Crypto Bantams were a short-lived attempt, from about 1892 for a few years, to hold on to the principles of the Ordinary without the dangerous height of the wheel, by gearing the front wheel. Despite their apparent less than satisfactory performance on this cycling tour, and Holding's scathing opinion of them, a racing cyclist called Frank Shortland won in three consecutive years on his Bantam competing against Safeties:  |
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Holding and his three companions on the cycling adventure are very experienced sailors as well, having spent much time together all over the British isles for many years. So as part of their time in Ireland they'd naturally taken a couple of their sailing canoes as well - both, incidentally, designed by TH Holding himself.
It's rare that one sentence gets an entire page to itself but it seemed right for both of these, and for this to be a double-page spread of contrast.  Originally, I was just going to show the four figures cycling off into the distance, quite small, a bit like in this draft: ------>>> But no, I realised it simply had to look like fun or it would make no sense, it wouldn't work! Cycling had to look at least as appealing as the idea of sailing on a lake, which meant an awful lot more drawing! I also tried spacing the lines at the top to give more sense of... freedom? randomness? but I'm not really sure if that's worked so might possibly put them back as here in the draft. Next, we discover that two of the bicycles just aren't really fit for purpose... Not just an experienced expert at camping, sailing, and cycling but knowledgeable about history and all sorts of things including old churches. He comes back to the subject later in the book; this is just an aside, filling time in Foxford whilst waiting to start the trip properly.
There's a lot of odd language in this book. Which is one of the things I love about it. Occasionally it needs a footnoted explanation, but wherever possible I'm hoping I can draw my way out of any possible confusion. Here as the four of them set up a camp from their bicycles for the first time ever, Holding is explaining all the processes and necessities after the tent goes up, including his camp stove:  I looked up that word 'cuisine' and found its archaic meaning was indeed kitchen. Merriam Webster says Etymology: French, literally, kitchen, from Old French, from Late Latin coquina. Whether or not anyone else was using it to mean a portable kitchen like this I have no idea; probably not many were talking about such things anyway! Toward the end of his book (and mine, too) the interior workings of this apparatus are shown in full detail - two wicks, a water bath to avoid overheating... It's quite something!
Well, somehow I thought these pages would be quick and easy, being mostly technical. But boy was I wrong. Figuring out exactly what was meant by the wording, looking at diagrams of the tent, and trying to show the process reasonably clearly has taken... far more days than I care to admit! Here's are T.H. Holding's instructions from the book which I had to make sense of:
And here's how these words have been incorporated to show this process, across four pages:
It took so long that I confused myself and had to re-do parts of the third page - page 64 - twice. When I was working on page 65, I mistakenly thought the ground sheet was only being put down then. So I went back and removed it from page 64... and it was only when I looked again at the first page, after uploading it here, that I remembered they had indeed put it down in place first. So re-scanned my coloured-in version and spliced it back in again!
I think I've got this right in the end... It's late afternoon on the first day of the tour, very windy and looking like it's going to rain, and the four are having a hard time finding a suitable place to pitch their tent...
   After about five years of planning, researching, thumbnailing and pencilling... I've at last reached page 151 which is (I think!) the final page of Two Shillings a Day. Below is the draft of that last page as currently envisioned:
Now preparing for the inking and colouring... I'll aim to show regular progress here.
A delightful short film (3+ minutes) with a few quotes from and photos of Holding and some early camping sites, made by the CCC in 2014. |
What's this all about??I'm making a true-story graphic novel called Archives
February 2023
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