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 ‘At Homes’. ‘Sumurun’, adored by Shaw, was apparently a dancer who performed at Mrs Rackham’s ‘At Homes’. Holidays were usually spent on the Continent, especially in Germany, where they visited Bayreuth for the Wagner festival, and in Switzerland. In 1909 they went to Spain; and in that year Rackham enlarged his circle by becoming a member of the Art-Workers’ Guild. Thereafter he was a regular attender at the Guild’s meetings.

His work was exhibited almost annually at this time in one or other of the cities of Europe. He won a gold medal in Milan as early as 1906. In 1912 he won a medal at Barcelona and held a special exhibition in Paris of his Wagner drawings at the invitation of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, which made him an Associate and awarded him another gold medal. Works by Rackham were acquired for the galleries at Vienna and Barcelona, and for the Luxembourg, Paris.

He was now receiving letters from admirers all over the world. Those that children always gave him pleasure; he replied to them straightforwardly and seriously, without any ‘talking down’ to his youthful correspondents. (This accorded to his usual practice in conversation with children.) In 1910, for example, a little girl entirely unknown to him, Rachel Fry, aged twelve, who loved his books, thought that it would be wonderful if Arthur Rackham could come to stay with her at her home near Ipswich. She received the following reply: ‘16 Chalcot Gardens, South Hampstead, N.W.

‘My dear Miss Fry,

‘I should have answered your kind letter before, but that I have been away from home for a few weeks – and not so very far from where you live, as I have been at Walberswick on the Suffolk coast.

‘It is very kind of you to want me to come & stay with you, but I