The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 105, July 2001 - April, 2002 Page: 4
741 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
the consummate diplomat who could calm the roiled waters that he
sometimes left in his tempestuous wake. When his eyesight failed in his
eighties Tom was frustrated not only by the inability to paint but the
inability to read as well. For one of so active an intellect, this was a stag-
gering blow. Audio books would not suffice; he was satisfied only when
Sarah would read to him.
Tom worked simultaneously on mural projects both in and out of
Texas in the late thirties, but made time in mid-1939 to provide pen-
and-ink sketches for a series of essays thatJ. Frank Dobie was preparing
for the Southwest Review. The subject was John C. Duval, first Texas man
of letters. As the series was being concluded in serial form, the editor of
the Review found a way to present them in book format. Asked for a sin-
gle drawing, Lea provided nine. Dobie remarked later, "Neither of us
[got] a cent out of the project, but a lot of fun." The frontispiece of
that book is a rendition of Big Foot Wallace and "Uncle John" Duval
seated, as Duval puffs a pipe and Wallace nurses a jug of corn liquor
and jabs a finger in the air to make a point. It is perfect stage setting for
the rollicking tales between the covers.
The mural work was ongoing, but only those in Texas are of concern
here. The one for the Odessa, Texas, post office, installed in 1940, is
called Stampede and is familiar to anyone who has ever examined the
pictorial cloth cover of Dobie's The Longhorns. Another from that same
era was for the post office in Seymour, Texas. It portrayed some of the
area's early settlers-Comanche Indians.
Success bred success when there followed the opportunity to illus-
trate Dobie's next book, The Longhorns. Preparatory to embarking on
the longhorn project Dobie and Lea made a swing through the south
Texas brush country, beginning in July 1940, to experience the lay of
the land they were portraying. Their travels took them to the leg-
endary hacienda, Randado, in Jim Hogg County. Lea, inspired by its
hauntingly evocative desolation, was moved to write a prose poem,
which he also illustrated. It was printed in an edition of one hundred
copies by Carl Hertzog and appeared the same year as The Longhorns
(1941). Here Lea demonstrated that he was just as gifted at communi-
cating in words as in pictures. Randado was reprinted in the TSHA pro-
gram for its 1947 annual meeting.
By the fall of 1940 America seemed headed for war. Roughly fifty
years after the fact, Mary Jo Carroll, widow of one-time TSHA executive
director H. Bailey Carroll, recalled that she and her husband were seat-
ed in the Leas' Raynolds Avenue living room when Tom received a
telegram from Dan Longwell, LIFE magazine's editor in New York ask-
ing if he would accept assignment as an artist-correspondent. Lea wouldJuly
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 105, July 2001 - April, 2002, periodical, 2002; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101222/m1/12/: accessed April 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.