Indignation flared in 1921, when two 7in by 5in etchings included in the Royal Academy (RA) Summer Exhibition turned out to be the work of a 15-year-old girl. The umbrage was dismissed. ‘We judge the work, not the persons,’ declared jury member Claude Shepperson. ‘We do not know the painter’s name, and it does not matter if the artist is three or 300. Looking at the work from an artistic standpoint we had no hesitation in accepting it. It is no fault of ours that Miss Soper, aged 15, can hold her own with the giants of old age. We are proud of the girl.’
In time, the art of Eileen Alice Soper would find a place in millions of homes, for she would illustrate the covers of all 21 of Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’ adventures, published from 1942 to 1963; her wholesome and outgoing youngsters reflecting the period style and taking a firm place in the nation’s illustration heritage. However, long before the Blyton contract, Soper’s sketches of younger children had charmed people both here and in the USA. Exhibitions in Los Angeles and Chicago drew rapturous praise, with one critic declaring her a genius and her portrayal of ‘dream children’ a miracle and another describing her as ‘a schoolgirl among the masters’.
English art critic Haldane Macfall praised her ‘purity of artistic intention thoroughly attuned to the years of innocence’ and ‘wholly devoid of the mechanical stuff of the art schools’, a relevant comment as her natural talent had developed under the tuition of her father, George, a brilliant portrayer of working horses.
The artist at the wheel of her beloved AC ‘ACE’ in 1925
'Soper was far too busy and even turned down a commission to illustrate "A Child's Garden of Verses" by Robert Louis Stevenson'
Growing appreciation brought a flood of requests, but Soper was ‘far too busy’ and even turned down a commission to illustrate A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. The year 1924 saw a particular accolade, when Queen Mary visited the RA spring exhibition and asked for an immediate print of her Flying Swings etching.
Success was proving material. Aged 22, Soper bought a Vauxhall tourer. She not only enjoyed driving (she kept a clean licence for 65 years), but added mechanical skill to her virtues, servicing cars herself. She toured extensively with her father, the pair sketching and painting the natural world.
Motoring revealed a foible, however, for she considered herself frail, had an obsessive fear of hospitals, and would make a detour to avoid passing one. She also thought that cancer could be contracted by breathing and did not welcome general human contact. She is not thought to have formed any romantic attachment and remained a spinster — as did her sister Eva, a potter, with whom she lived.
Soper never went abroad, ate no meat, had pet dogs, hated cats, had no formal religious adherence and abhorred alcohol, swearing, smut and ‘freak’ modern art. She wrote to well-known figures requesting autographs — and obtained Hilaire Belloc’s. She had also long written verse and, although her efforts failed to impress those whose advice she sought, including playwright and novelist John Galsworthy, she forever scribbled lines on bits of paper that lay to hand.
'Wildings became a wildlife haven. Mice ran free through the house; birds flew in to perch on heads and shoulders and be hand fed'
The Soper family lived in a house at Harmer Green near Welwyn (then a village) in Hertfordshire that was designed by George and set in a semi-wild garden. Eileen and Eva spent their lives there and, after their father’s death in 1942, they christened it Wildings. It became a wildlife haven, attracting many animals. Mice ran free through the house; birds flew in to perch on heads and shoulders and be hand fed. Eileen skilfully sketched every species that appeared.
She developed a special passion for badgers, spending cold, dark hours draped in foliage with a red-filter torch to observe them. Cubs took food from her hand and escorted her home across the field. ‘Here, in company with those merry wanderers, I had met the fabulous spirit of midsummer night,’ she wrote. Among other books, the richly illustrated When Badgers Wake established her as a naturalist author.
Soper died in 1990, the same year as her sister, aged 84. Executors found Wildings in damp disrepair and the garden vastly overgrown. Rooms were piled with boxes and bags of hoarded papers, and mice nested everywhere, but a trove of artwork lay within. According to Duff Hart-Davis, author of Wildings: The Secret Garden of Eileen Soper, several thousand works by father and daughter were rescued, with an estimated value of £900,000 (£2.6 million today) and are now sought after.
In one room, some 3,000 jam jars were stored, but not for jam. She had eschewed their disposal as rubbish, fearing they would be smashed on a council tip and cut the paws of her beloved badgers.
Works from the Soper Collection can be viewed at the Pannett in Whitby, North Yorkshire. The collection is on loan from the Chris Beetles Gallery, which holds the copyright and exclusively represents The Estate of George and Eileen Soper
