Midge and John Locke's Copy of The Square Egg by Ronald Searle

When Ronald Searle came to New York in February of 1969, he visited his friend the agent John Locke as well as his wife Midge. Searle must have taken down from the shelf one of Locke's copies of the U.K. edition of his latest collection, The Square Egg (1968) and inscribed and decorated it specially for the couple. The resulting ink and watercolor drawing is on the front free endpaper of the book and it's a beauty. It depicts a bird with eggs in multiple uncomfortable shapes and is dated "5 February 1969." I don't believe it was on the market previously. It was sold at auction yesterday.

"For Midge
&
John [Locke]
with love
New York
5 February 1969
Ronald"

The dust cover of the British edition has a drawing which makes good use of a rubber stamp.

Ronald Searle's printed signature on the cover

"For Midge
&
John [Locke]
with love
New York
5 February 1969
Ronald"

Online bidding opened at $25. Surely a teaser.

Ronald Searle
Live Auctioneers listing accessed September 13, 2025, three days before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/212727283_ronald-searle-signed-the-square-egg-1968-astoria-ny

I was reminded that presale bidding on the Live Auctioneers site does not have to reflect what is going on at the auctioneer's own site, and vice versa. It's good to check both. A much different story was unfolding on the Showplace website, where bidding was already up to one-hundred times the opening bid a full three days before the auction:

Ronald Searle
Live Auctioneers item description

And that's where the bidding stayed. The enthusiasm was palpable for a Searle book drawing. For the price to reach $2,500—one hundred times the opening bid!—with a 25% buyer's premium ($625), at least two bidders must have really wanted it. I hope it went to an avid collector, but I suspect the book was won by a dealer who may possibly separate the drawing from the book and offer it for sale at double the price. Such is often the fate of drawings by cartoonists with few available high quality works on the market and a strong fanbase.

Sold!

Searle used a very similar idea, but no color, in the drawing for his secretary Jean Ellsmoor's copy of the book in October 1968. The Lockes, of course, would never have seen this. In my post of March 1, 2022, I wrote, "It is, I believe, the quintessential example of a personalized copy of The Square Egg." The drawing is very fine indeed, but I now wish to retract my earlier statement.

"Well—let's hope that this
mixture turns out to
be the right shape.
To Jean [Ellsmoor] with love
from
Ronald
October 1968."

Note:  Over the years, I have posted images from a goodly number of Ronald Searle books with original drawings. They await your approval in the archives here.

05066

W. B. Park: The Balanced Meal

W. B. Park's drawing The Balanced Meal is fairly diagrammatic and has no shading. Purchased by The New Yorker in 1981, it saw print in the magazine only in 1984. The original art was sold on eBay in July.

The Balanced Meal
W. B. Park
Original art
The New Yorker, April 23, 1984, p. 113

Detail

W. B. Park's signature

W. B. Parke
eBay listing ended July 14, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/196479726826_skw=signed+Yorker&itmmeta=01J9T2QP6CHYTEKK6J334MGDTZ&hash=item2dbf1ab4ea:g:0vcAAOSwoS9mhJAG&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA0HoV

3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKlYz3l%2F5CrxAPhfrl1uJsYUWq%2BNGry7ikyy23LuxniHkqihCI55VZ8mefOScd4ILuvKT1NC9OIGkvs6cDgzv7L0AZimxrHmKvUDydBw

Gk164JC93Yh7qdT%2B4nE7VbkQ40OcwlEDx4A9gZsGu6yOzrYjF9WrvLzfZB4Amzk53Ws0fGvyLWOKXNmZTetaBljj0V%2B44qp36j3w0lBuri

VELhCnMq9fDf%2BFFkBS43CfN5Rfk%2BvXQAayl5Q%2BPEMsLkfF3Uc%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR6bj3sLOZA

W. B. Parke
eBay item description

[End of eBay listing]

The Balanced Meal
W. B. Park
The New Yorker, April 23, 1984, p. 113

The Balanced Meal
W. B. Park
Original art
The New Yorker, April 23, 1984, p. 113

With cartoons by Eldon Dedini and W. B. Park

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1983-06-20/flipbook/076/

Eldon Dedini's cartoons frequently poked fun at the generally unfunny Soviet Union. Whatever shading the Park drawing may have lacked, the Dedini on the opposite page makes up for. Neither has a spoken caption.

Lenin, Up Early, Freshly Showered, Makes His List for the Day
Eldon Dedini
The New Yorker, April 23, 1984, p. 112

04832

Ronald Searle: From the Collection of Paul P. Goldberg

Paul P. Goldberg's request for an autograph sketch from cartoonist Ronald Searle was in all likelihood received by the artist's New York agent John Locke and then forwarded to Paris. Searle not only granted the collector's request, he even affixed the proper French postage. Air mail, no doubt.

Ronald Searle
eBay listing accessed January 6, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176150137538?_trkparms=amclksrc%3DITM%26aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160811114145%26meid%3Dae4305fa14b94f09adc055c9be42e9a7%26pid%3D100667%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D8%26sd%3D176150137538%26itm%3D176150137538%26pmt%3D1%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2351460&_trksid=p2351460.c100667.m2042

Ronald Searle
eBay item description 

Ronald Searle
eBay bid history
The last bid wins it. Again.

The bidding with three days to go seemed very manageable:

Sold!

Note:  The winning bidder has gone public with this purchase on Facebook. Those who are friends with the new owner may see it here.

04617

Marcelle Methlin's Copy of Hommage à Toulouse-Lautrec by Ronald Searle

Ronald Searle published Hommage à Toulouse-Lautrec in 1969. The book reproduces a fanciful series of drawings and lithographs which depict the diminutive artist and his scantily-clad models in the brothels of Paris. It's safe to say this cartoon book is unlike anything else Searle created. It's unlike anything else, period.

Marcelle Methlin of the Restaurant des Beaux-Arts in Paris provided Searle with fine food and drink, and Searle in turn provided him, presumably the Marcelle in the dedication below, with outstanding personalized copies of his books. They're on a first-name basis, of course. It is Christmas of 1969. Searle adds a full length ink drawing of his Toulouse. The dedication "Pour Marcelle with love" neatly covers two languages.

Four smaller lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec in portrait orientation were included with a limited edition of the book and are not too difficult to find today, coming from an edition size of 200. The larger suite of lithographs, those in landscape orientation like the book's cover, suffered a different fate. Most of the portfolio edition of 70 seems to have disappeared, as told to me by Searle's agent John Locke. At any rate, Searle was unable to determine what became of them. He had only a small number of the artist's proofs remaining in his possession, full suites of which he put on the market for $10,000.

Ronald Searle
eBay listing ended September 24, 2023

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124015197989?hash=item1cdfe1bf25:g:M5MAAOSwMLtd3mf8&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA0P3%2BpCrzAg1QEUIx8ZEAiziSgGGK57qF%2FkJ0iGzxEBVGGzOdnxJkNZTrxW5zdb9h%2BmPjPOTwIbN5Ndftg%2F7xM5dcCWLot633TPfLR7UV3ISKe90syX75xHTxk

iw%2BT2XXFB8pfc0jNWNPFWfde11kfzHGCt73eaa2nENOsYIStypnoWK%2FeOBxROxONwZyHEfwRH0my9wTHbsGZWT1S2M%2BGVotZIl%2BxcYlYQQTQyfhvbnPY0OUMHlVl5zEEP%2FPB47Ry4I%2FL%2BWk76TfNwOLaLhPh1s%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR4i--q3pYg

Sold for a best offer of 1,500 Euros

I asked the eBay seller for any additional information he might have about these three extraordinary books from the library of Marcelle. The seller knew nothing of Marcelle. He reported that the books turned up at a flea market in Paris five years ago. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Note:  I might as well add this to my virtual collection of "best copies." If you know of a contender, by all means send me some images. This blog, rumor has it, is always eager to show outstanding work by Ronald Searle, including personalized copies of his books.

"Bohème," you will recall, is Matt Jones's 2014 post for Perpetua, a.k.a. the Ronald Searle Tribute blog, complete with photographs of the Restaurant des Beaux-Arts, now defunct. According to Matt, Marcelle Methlin hosted many cartoonists and satirists. I would like to hear from anyone with personal recollections or other books from his library.

As long as I brought it up, anyone knowing the whereabouts of the "lost" edition of Searle's Hommage à Toulouse-Lautrec portfolio of six lithographs should get in touch. As mentioned above, the suite of lithographs was published in horizontal orientation in an edition of 70. Those few individual prints that I do see online seem to have been distributed by the Ferdinand Roten Galleries of Baltimore. I do like looking for needles in haystacks. By the way, Matt Jones writes of "Toulouse Lautrec & the Whores of Hamburg" here.

04477

Ronald Searle's Sunset Strip

Ronald Searle's Sunset Strip is an unusual illustration for the artist, a dizzying commercial landscape unpopulated with any figures or even automobiles. It was created for TV Guide in the 1970s and the original art was listed by Taraba Illustration Art as early as 2012.

Ronald Searle
Sunset Strip
Original art
TV Guide

Detail

Ronald Searle
Taraba Illustration Art, LLC
Accessed November 18, 2012

Dead Link

Fortunately for us, contributor David from Manhattan was able to sort out the TV Guide publication history. He writes:

Searle illustrated an article, "Sunset Strip—Decline of a Legend" back in June 22, '74. Not TVG's finest hour with how it was cropped. Dimensions are 13 3/4 x 10, paper laid on board. He wrote a caption at bottom, and applied his handstamp on back, but not signed. Which leads to a question for you. Amidst the urban jumble, there appears to be what looks like a large "RS" with an arrow pointing to it. A bit of sly humor on the artist's part, or is the current owner getting carried away?

Here again is the art:

Ronald Searle
Sunset Strip
Original art
TV Guide, June 22, 1974

What irritates me most about TV Guide's reproduction is actually not how severely the image was cropped—I think it was created with that possibility in mind—but rather how much of Searle's exuberant detail was muddied in the printing process.

Ronald Searle
"Sunset Strip—Decline of a Legend"
TV Guide, June 22, 1974

TV Guide's crop line cuts directly between these two towers. Even in the preserved right half, the drawing's frenetic energy was largely lost anyway in the process of printing:

Detail

Is there a hidden RS? Anything's possible.

In Searle's handwriting

Yes, Searle's American agent John Locke had a prestigious BUtterfield-8 phone number. This prefix was culturally immortalized by the John O'Hara novel and subsequent movie of that name. Locke typically would answer his phone by saying, "8010."

Note:  Thanks to David from Manhattan for all the scholarship he puts into his contributions here. This is David's thirty-sixth contribution to Attempted Bloggery.

For more on Searle's TV Guide work, tune in to Matt Jones's 2007 post "Magazine Illustration Part 1: TV Guide" on Perpetua, the Ronald Searle Tribute blog, here.

Ronald Searle's centenary will be celebrated on Tuesday, March 3. As any fule kno.

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Ronald Searle

TV Guide

David from Manhattan

Attempted Bloggery's Sundowning Index

03184