Book Plates Part 7

touch. One of these engravers was, however, a famous man, whose work deserves more than pa.s.sing mention. I mean Raphael Morghen, the Florentine artist, who died in 1833, and who is said to have been able to engrave a plate when he was only twelve years old. It is curious to turn from his large engravings of the chief works in the gallery at Florence, to the unusually small work which enables us to reckon him here among the engravers of book-plates. This is a representation of the arms of the Duke of Ca.s.sano Serra, framed in a sh.e.l.ly frame, somewhat 'Chippendale' in appearance, but with the stiff, heavy 'Jacobean' wreath clinging closely to it. In a scroll which winds in and out of this wreath is the inscription: 'Il Duca Ca.s.sano Serra'; it is signed 'R. Morghen f[ecit].'

A careful investigation of the Vatican and other Italian libraries would probably lead to the discovery of some more papal book-plates. Sir Wollaston Franks tells me that amongst his numerous engravings of the papal arms, there is only one which he feels sure was ever used as a book-plate. The late Sir George Dasent, in _Notes and Queries_,[10]

describes what he considers the book-plate of Maffeo Barberini, Urban VIII.; but he does not tell us what leads him to the belief that the engraving is really a book-plate.

About Spanish book-plates not much is yet known, and it seems likely that the majority of examples usually cla.s.sed as Spanish were designed and executed in Flanders. The family of Bouttats--the original Bouttats had, says Walpole, twenty sons, of whom twelve became engravers--executed some of these book-plates. Amongst their work is one which Lord De Tabley styles 'a gloomy yet striking heraldic study'; it is signed 'P.

B. Bouttats, sculp.,' and was probably engraved about the middle of the seventeenth century. It shows us the arms of a bishop surmounted by a plumed helmet, above which again is a bishop's hat, with pendent ropes and ta.s.sels; beneath is the motto: 'Por la Le Bezerra por el Rey.' A particularly fine example of Flemish heraldic art is furnished by the book-plate engraved and signed by J. Harrewyn, of Brussels, and dated 1723; the inscription gives us quite a biographical sketch: 'Messire Charles Bonaventure, Comte vander Noot, Baron de Schoonhoven et de Mares &c^{a}; Conseiller de sa Ma^{te} Imp^{le} et Cath^{e} au souverain Conseil de Brabant par patante du 9 Mars 1713, Recu aux Etats n.o.bles de Brabant, fils de Messire Rogier Wouthier, en son vivant Baron de Carloo &c^{a}; et deputez ordinaire au dit corps de la n.o.blesse des Etats de Brabant, et de Dame Anne Louse vander Gracht, nee Baronne de Vrempde et d'Olmen, &c^{a}.'

Our knowledge of Russian or Polish book-plates is chiefly derived from the ill.u.s.trations shown in Monsieur S. J. Siennicki's work, ent.i.tled _Les Elzevirs de la Bibliotheque de L'Universite Imperiale de Varsovie_.

Here we have some examples of the book-plates both of distinguished laymen and ecclesiastics. The probability is that none are of an early date, and they are certainly not conspicuous as works of art. The Russian style is perhaps the more distinct, though in many respects resembling the French, especially that shown in the more p.r.o.nounced examples of the Louis XV. epoch.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Svenska Bibliotek och Ex Libris antecknigar af C. M. Carlander, med 84 ill.u.s.trationer._ Stockholm, 1889, and Supplement, 1891.

[10] Sixth series, vol. i. p. 2.

CHAPTER VIII

AMERICAN BOOK-PLATES

WHATEVER an American collects, he collects well: he works with a will and energy that loosens his purse-strings in a manner which makes the acquisition of valuable specimens a comparatively easy matter. It is well, therefore, that book-plate collecting has found its way over the Atlantic, and that there is now a goodly body of American book-plate collectors who are giving the requisite amount of attention to American examples, and who are not keeping to themselves the result of their labours. In the first edition of this book I wrote: 'No doubt, ten years hence, we shall know a great deal more about American book-plates'; and already the appearance of Mr. Charles Dexter Allen's[11] interesting and carefully composed account of them has enabled me materially to improve this chapter, which I have devoted to them.

The majority of book-plates which bear upon them American addresses, especially those belonging to the Southern States, many of which appear with the opening of the eighteenth century, are, without doubt, the work of engravers in the then mother-country.[12] The library owners of Virginia sent to England for these book-plates, or their sons ordered them there, whilst paying the orthodox visit to one of the universities, and brought them home, either for their own use or for the use of their fathers. The northern book-plates, though much later, are mostly the work of artists born and bred, or at least settled, in America.

Foremost in interest and earliest in date of these American address-plates is that of William Penn, on which he styles himself 'Proprietor of Pensylvania.' This is designed in the ordinary 'Simple Armorial' style then common in England, and is dated in 1702. It is therefore subsequent to Penn's last visit to his 'plantation,' and cannot have been the work of an engraver on that side of the Atlantic.

After his death, the inscription on this book-plate was altered, for his son's use, to 'Thomas Penn of Stoke Pogeis, in the county of Bucks, first proprietor of Pensilvania (_sic_).' The expression 'first' must here be evidently read as 'chief' or 'princ.i.p.al.' The fact of this alteration is important for collectors to note, as copies of William Penn's book-plate are frequently offered for sale, which--they are palpably recent impressions--are said to be struck from the original plate; a statement which, from the fact mentioned, may be at once discredited.[13]

Next in point of date is a much more ornate book-plate, the inscription on which reads: 'William Byrd of Westover, in Virginia, Esquire.' It is an elaborate piece of work, excellently engraved in the style of the majority of English book-plates of 1720 or thereabouts, 'Simple Armorial,' but with indications of Jacobean decoration. William Byrd was born in Virginia, 28th March 1694; he was sent to England to be educated, and returned to his native country, having his mind 'stored with useful information to adorn its annals, his manners cultivated in royal Courts,' and with this book-plate, as a mark of his devotion to literature.

The famous Westover mansion, which may to-day be viewed from the James River, two hours' sail below Richmond, was for long the viceregal Court of Virginia. It was erected about the year 1678, by William Byrd, who left England when very young, and was father to his namesake, whose book-plate has just been described, the author of the famous _Westover Ma.n.u.scripts_, compiled in 1732-33.

Some five years before the probable date of the Byrd book-plate, we have note of that belonging to 'Robert Elliston, gent., Comptrol^{r} of His Majestie's Customs of New York in America MDCCXXV.' This book-plate is quite 'Jacobean' in style, and was no doubt executed in England, and sent out to the colony. It is too fine a piece of work to be the production of any colonial engraver of that date.

But the interest attaching to book-plates bearing upon them American addresses, and used by residents in America, is obviously not so great as that awakened by examples which were also actually produced in America,--examples which at once give us an insight into the state of the engraver's art, and of the artistic feeling then existing there.

The earliest of these is the book-plate of the 'Rev. John Williams,'

first minister of Deerfield, Ma.s.s., dated in 1679. The next, in 1704, that of Thomas Prince, an American born and bred, who graduated from Harvard College in 1707, and paid his first visit to England in 1709, so that his book-plate may be taken as genuinely American. In design it resembles dozens of English examples,--a rough woodcut border of national emblems, within which is the inscription, 'Thomae Prince Liber, Anno Domini, 1704'; the sequence of the words in the inscription, the reader will notice, being somewhat unusual. The Prince Library was bequeathed to a Society, which became known as 'the New England Library,' and which itself had a similar label prepared recording the gift. A part of the collection is now in the Boston Public Library.

But these two examples stand by themselves; it is not until the middle of the eighteenth century that any number of book-plates of American execution are found; after that, there are a really considerable quant.i.ty. Their style is not particularly distinctive; it is at first either Jacobean or 'Chippendale,' or a combination of the two styles; later, the 'wreath and ribbon,' and landscape and pictorial styles are introduced and treated much as in England. In execution, American book-plates are perhaps a trifle coa.r.s.e. The more prominent of their engravers seem to have been--Hurd, Dawkins, Anderson, Johnson, Callendar, Doolittle, the Mavericks, Revere, and Turner. Revere is the best known; he was a picture engraver of some merit; but for the most part the names quoted are those of men of little artistic reputation.

Nathaniel Hurd was probably the earliest of these engravers, and not the worst. He was born at Boston in 1729, the son of an American, who was a goldsmith in that town. Nathaniel was his father's apprentice; he devoted himself to working on copper, and so naturally would turn his attention to book-plates. Probably the earliest example, signed by him as 'N. H.,' and dated in 1749, was designed for Thomas Dering. This is the earliest signed and dated American book-plate yet brought to light; Hurd was barely twenty when he produced it. As a seal and book-plate engraver he worked hard and well; he died in 1777. One of his most original book-plates is that of Harvard College. A curiously short and wide s.h.i.+eld, bearing the college arms, is encircled by a band bearing the inscription, 'Sigill. Coll. Harvard. Cantab. Nov. Angl. 1650.'

Outside this circle are two leaf sprays, tied at the base and nearly meeting at the top. Both in conception and execution this is a very peculiar book-plate. The Dering plate, on the other hand, is interesting as showing how exactly the style of the mother-country at that period was copied in America. Here we have a pure 'Chippendale' book-plate of an unp.r.o.nounced type.

Henry Dawkins (who began life by designing metal b.u.t.tons) had been for a long time resident in America, when, in 1754, he engraved the book-plate of 'John Burnet of New York.' Like the Dering plate, Burnet's is interesting, and for the same reason; it is 'Chippendale,' but distinctly _later_ Chippendale, with cupids and other figures introduced. Dawkins was found guilty of counterfeiting, and begged to be hanged rather than suffer the imprisonment to which he had been condemned. Whether or not his request was granted we do not know.

That the heraldry on some of these American book-plates should be startling, is only to be expected. Take, for instance, the very interesting book-plate of Robert Dinwiddie, Deputy-Governor of Virginia from 1751-58, which was probably engraved a few years before the earlier date. Here we have the s.h.i.+eld divided fesse-fas.h.i.+on, and in the upper and lower divisions landscapes,--the first introducing an Indian archer shooting at a stag, and the lower a fort or castle with a s.h.i.+p at sea sailing towards it. Dinwiddie was a good servant to the English Crown both in Barbadoes and Virginia, and is said, like most successful people of his day, to be descended from an ancient family, though his immediate ancestors were Glasgow merchants. We are, however, not asked to believe, and we should not, if we were, that the arms are more ancient than Governor Dinwiddie himself, or that they _originated_ elsewhere than in his mercantile brain, though they may have been legally _granted_ by the Scotch College of Arms. The plate looks 'Scotch'--it is 'Chippendale,'

and, I suspect, was engraved in the mother-country by a Scotch engraver.

We may date it about 1750.

There are, of course, some American book-plates specially interesting from their possessors, and foremost amongst them is that of George Was.h.i.+ngton. For its description I cannot do better than quote Mr. Allen: 'The arms are displayed upon a s.h.i.+eld of the usual sh.e.l.l-like form, and the sprays and rose-branches of this style [Chippendale] are used in the ornamentation of the sides of the escutcheon. The motto, _Exitus acta probat_, is given upon its ribbon at the base of the s.h.i.+eld, and the name is engraved, in script, on the bracket at the bottom of the design.

In general appearance the plate is like scores of Chippendale plates of the period.' I am sorry to take, somewhat, from the interest which attaches to this book-plate, by saying that, as I look more closely into it and study the details of its ornamentation and its execution, I am convinced it was engraved in England and not in America; it must therefore be of an earlier date than that attributed to it. I do not think it is subsequent to 1760. Of course there is a forgery of this plate, though it was prepared, not because of the value of the book-plate, but to sell a number of books which were said to have belonged to George Was.h.i.+ngton himself, and to have been captured in Virginia. The fraud was, however, discovered. No doubt these forgeries are now palmed off as the great man's book-plate. Mr. Lichtenstein's words about the real book-plate and the sham are therefore important:--

'Original examples are noticeable for their sharp black impressions on dampened plate paper of a buff colour mellowed by age. Those of the imitation are printed from a plate which has the appearance of having seen considerable wear; besides being printed on a dry paper of a thin quality, and a bluish colour; by its modern appearance it is easily recognised, the engraving of the name being poorly done.'

I do not know if a series of 'Presidents'' book-plates could be shown to exist, but Was.h.i.+ngton's successor, John Adams, certainly used one, introducing into it a certain number of national emblems. The American eagle with outspread wings overshadows the whole design.

Of American women, in the early days of independence, only one is known to have used a book-plate. This lady was Elizabeth Graeme, the youngest child of Dr. Thomas Graeme, member of the Provincial Council, and in other ways a distinguished and wealthy citizen, who owned Graeme Park, an estate lying some twenty miles from Philadelphia. Elizabeth was born in 1737. At seventeen she was engaged to be married, but her engagement was suddenly--why, we learn not--broken off. To divert her mind, she set to work to translate _Telemaque_. She carried out the task, but it was never published, and lies to-day, as she wrote it, in the Philadelphia Museum. Her next engagement was to a man ten years her junior--a Mr.

Ferguson; him she married, but, her husband taking the Crown's part, they separated. By the time of her death, in 1801, she had grown needy, despite the fact that she received money from her literary productions, which were numerous. Though evidently a staunch Republican, she was the bearer of the famous letter from the Rev. Jacob d.u.c.h.e to Was.h.i.+ngton, in which the writer begged his correspondent to return 'to his allegiance to the King.' The book-plate, which is, in every way, curious and interesting, is Armorial.

An interesting point about American book-plates--which ill.u.s.trates a distinctive feature in social life there--is the existence of a large number belonging to Friendly Societies, Mutual Improvement Societies, and inst.i.tutions akin to them; for the books forming the libraries of these bodies contain some of the most curious and characteristic American book-plates. Amongst the number may be mentioned those of the New York Society Library, the Farmington Library, the Hasty Pudding Society and the Porcellian Club in Harvard College, the Linonian Society and the Brothers of Unity in Yale, and the Social Friends in Dartmouth College.

None of these are particularly early, indeed the majority must be dated after the establishment of independence, but they are well worthy of study. Allegory runs wild in the book-plates--there are three mentioned by Mr. Dexter Allen--of the first-named Society, and Minerva is prominent in all. Let me endeavour to describe two, both the work of Maverick. In one she hands a volume of the Society's Library to an Indian, whose att.i.tude in receiving it suggests that he had never seen a book before; in which case its contents cannot have done him much good.

In the other she has just descended from Olympus, entered the library, and seized a volume from the book-shelf, which she presents to an apparently more appreciative red-skin. I say appreciative, for in return he hands the G.o.ddess his tomahawk. Minerva with a tomahawk! Can anything be more delightfully absurd?

One might go on with many pages of these descriptions, but enough has been said to show the burlesque spirit in which allegory is treated, doubtless quite unintentionally, on American Society book-plates. In that fact lies much of their interest. More happy in conception and execution is the homelier design appearing on the book-plate of the Village Library in Farmington, which, if not a beautiful piece of engraving, is at least free from grotesqueness.

'In this,' says Mr. Allen, 'we see the interior of a room in which a young lady patron of the library is storing her mind with those choice axioms which, if put in practice, far exceed the attractiveness of mere personal beauty; so says the couplet beneath the picture:--

'Beauties in vain, their pretty eyes may roll; Charms strike the sense, but merit wins the soul.

A writer in the _Ex Libris Journal_ points out that, after the Revolution, till about the year 1810, there were scarcely any American armorial book-plates. Perhaps one of the earliest is that of 'Samuel Elam, Rhode Island,' which appears to have been engraved about 1800. It is 'Pictorial' in style, and shows a s.h.i.+eld, bearing arms, resting against a tree-stump, with a landscape background. The majority of American book-plate possessors, from 1810 until the fas.h.i.+on of using a book-plate became common some little time back, seem to have been members of the legal profession.

During the last few years many American book-plates have been as wild and meaningless in design as the majority of those recently produced in England; although, as Mr. Allen's ill.u.s.trations show us, a few truly artistic and appropriate examples have appeared. One modern book-plate from across the Atlantic is sure to attract English eyes; for the owner's works are read as eagerly, and appreciated as fully, here as in the States,--I mean that of 'Oliver Wendell Holmes.' This, too, is appropriate for the man, consisting simply of a motto-scroll, on which is written _Per Ampliora ad Altiora_, and a nautilus--'the s.h.i.+p of pearl,' as he calls it; 'the venturous bark that flings

'On the sweet summer winds its purpled wings In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.'

FOOTNOTES:

[11] _American Book-Plates._ By Charles Dexter Allen. Bell and Son, 1895.

[12] The same remark applies to other book-plates bearing colonial addresses, such as that of 'Isaac Royall, Esq., of Antigua.'

[13] It may be remarked as curious that William Penn does not, on his book-plate, impale the arms of Hannah Callowhill, to whom he was married in 1695.

CHAPTER IX

INSCRIPTIONS ON BOOK-PLATES IN CONDEMNATION OF BOOK-STEALING OR BOOK-SPOILING, AND IN PRAISE OF STUDY

I PROPOSE now to speak about the inscriptions on book-plates, and I will divide them as follows:--(1) Sentiments in condemnation of book-stealing or book-spoiling; (2) sentiments in praise of books or of study; and (3) personal particulars of the owner of the book-plate, which last cla.s.s shall receive attention in a separate chapter. In all three cases ill.u.s.trations may be appropriately drawn both from English and foreign examples.

Let me begin by calling the reader's attention to the fact, which I commented upon in my first chapter, that in nearly all inscriptions on book-plates it is the volume in which the book-plate is placed, and not the book-plate itself, that is spokesman. Take the inscription on one of the earliest examples: 'Liber Bilibaldi Pirckheimer, Sibi et amicis.'

Bilibald Pirckheimer's book for himself and his friends! Here is an amiable intention; but the plan did not work, and we do not find the sentiment often repeated. In the good jurist's day printed books were not numerous, and they were costly. Then might a man be reasonably regarded as a dog in the manger, who shut the door of his bookcase against those anxious to benefit by the work of the printing-press; then mankind at large had not demonstrated the fact that general morality does not extend to returning borrowed books. Hence, I say, it was that on this early book-plate we have the expression 'Sibi et amicis.'