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BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

I

»

BEHIND MY
LIBRARY DOOR

Some Chapters on Authors, Books
AND Miniatures

BY

Dr. G. C. WILLIAMSON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 48378

LONDON

SELWYN & BLOUNT, LTD.

21, YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI, W.C. 2

J\ LIBRARY C
V™JUL /.

Y

First published in 1931.

NOTE

Two of these articles have already appeared in
^he Nineteenth Century, in 1905 and 1908.

One has already appeared in the New Review,
in 1894.

They are here corrected, added to, and
reprinted at the request of friends and by the
kind permission of the proprietors and editors
respectively of these two publications.

The other material has not appeared in print
before, save that a part of Chapter XII. is to be
found in the privately printed catalogue of his
Collection of Watches which I compiled for Mr. J.
Pierpont Morgan, and of which only eighty-five
copies were produced.

G. C. W.

CONTENTS

CHAPTEB PAGES

I. OuiDA ..... I

II. George Gissing ... 15

III. The First One-Man Picture

Show in London . . 22

IV. Some new Information Respec-

ting Jean Petitot . . 38

V. How A Book was Lost and

Found .... 65

VI. Queen Christina's Miniature

Painter .... 71

VII. John Locke's Pocket Book . 85
VIII. The J. Pierpont Morgan

Catalogues .... loi

IX. Bradshaw . . . • 117
X. The Publications of Ye Sette

of Odd Volumes . .129

xi. horological literature . i40

XII. Old Quaker Watchmakers . 152

XIII. The Burlington Fine Arts

Club and The Grolier Club 180

XIV. Some American Book Clubs . 188
XV. The Last of the Old French

Court Calendars . •195

XVI. Swinburne .... 201

ILLUSTRATIONS

PACK

The Author (Photogravure) . . Frontispiece'^

Catalogue of Hone's Exhibition of Pictures

(Title-page) 23

Alexander Cooper — Facsimile Inscription . . 80

John Locke — Extracts from his Notebook . . 98

Thomas Wagstaffe — Silhouette . . , . 154

Thomas Wagstaffe — Facsimile of one of his Bills 178

♦NOTE ON THE FRONTISPIECE

A JOKE

The clever caricature of the author, reproduced at the
special request of several friends, was drawn by Vernon Hill.
Some conversation had taken place, when the author was
sitting for his portrait, concerning a certain Guzman ancestor
whose portrait has been painted by El Greco, and the artist
in a jocular mood declared that the doctrine of re-incarnation
was a true one, and "/ will draw you," said he, *' as you
were when you sat to El Greco." This portrait is the result.

BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

CHAPTER I

OUIDA

There are many books in my library bearing
inscriptions in the handwriting of the author,
and such volumes have a special and particular
interest. The interest is intensified when the
writer has passed into the Land of Silence. One
such lies before me at this moment. My name
is written upon its title page, and the following
words are added, " In token of many points of
sympathy between us — Ouida." The book is
" The Massarenes " which Ouida published in
1897, and which she herself regarded, so she told
me, " as the best book she had ever written."
It is extraordinary to notice how seldom
authors have any true sense of proportion,
when speaking of their own books, and how,
as a rule, they attach a fictitious importance
to some volumes. It is seldom also that the
opinion expressed by an author is confirmed
by posterity. In a letter quoted in the recent
memoir of Ouida, she says about this very
book, " There is not an iota of exaggeration

2 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

in my book, and I am thankful I have lived
to show English society as it is, the Englishman
of our old ideas is dead, or nearly so." Her
statement is curiously inexact. She was amazed
at my opinion that " Bimbi " contained some
of her best work, and regarded that as a volume
of trivial importance compared to others.

How well I remember my first visit to Ouida,
when, in 1900, I went over, at her request, from
Florence to interview her in her villa at Sant'
Alessio, near Lucca. It was not a very easy
day's excursion, the journey from Florence to
Lucca was a tiring one, and the day was hot.

I had to leave Florence quite early in the
morning, and on reaching Lucca, went at
once to obtain some refreshment, but did not
stay long, as I was anxious to give as much
time as possible to the forthcoming interview.
The house was difficult to find. It was a long
drive from Lucca, and until one got near to
Sant' Alessio, the people did not seem to
know for whom I was seeking, but at length
I arrived at a charming old-fashioned villa, and
was greeted by a perfect roar of barking from
the numerous dogs that Ouida had about her.
The gates were locked, the bell was at a distance
and not a loud one, and it was some time
before I could gain admittance, and even then,
having once obtained access to the house, it
was again some little while before I could see
my hostess.

OUIDA 3

I had come over on a mission from one of the
London pubHshers, who had been trying without
success, by correspondence, to arrange terms
with Ouida concerning the issue of a new book,
and had seized the opportunity of my being in
the neighbourhood to ask me to go over and
do my best to settle the business.

I was received by a little, excitable old lady,
dressed in greyish-white silk, and standing upon
a large white bearskin. Her skirt was cut short,
so as to reveal her exceedingly small feet, of
which I had already been told she was inordin-
ately vain. She wore silk stockings to match
her dress, and pale blue satin shoes, and pre-
sented a striking appearance. Her hands were
as beautifully proportioned as were her feet,
and the lace-edged sleeves of her gown were
quite short, to reveal her hands and wrists.
Her hair was white, her eyes appeared to me
to be a cold grey-blue, clear and remark-
able. She stood erect in stately fashion on the
big white rug, holding in her hands her own
little favourite dog, which she called Baby,
and having round her a group of other dogs,
all of them barking furiously. We could not
hear ourselves speak for a moment, then she
silenced her dogs, and we both sat down. I
stayed a long time with her, and we talked
well into the evening, till it was time for
me to return to my carriage, drive back to
Lucca, and home to Florence, and it was

4 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

exceedingly late before I reached the latter
place. I had one of the most interesting
conversations that I ever had in my life, it
was uninterrupted, and I really was unconscious
of the passing of time, until I rose to leave,
when I began to feel that I should have been
glad of some refreshment, and by the time
I reached Lucca, was eager to obtain at least
a cup of tea before I started on my return
journey. Unfortunately, however, my journey
back to Lucca was a slow one, because my
driver met a number of oxen, those great
white beauties with large appealing eyes, with
which the traveller in Italy is so familiar, and
as usual, they marched solemnly on exceedingly
slowly, and I was almost stopped in my
progress, only reaching Lucca just in time to
catch the last train back to Florence. Shortly
after my return, I had a long letter from the
famous novelist, the first of a considerable
series of letters, all of which I have retained.
In it she says, " I fear you had a tiring and a
tedious day, and I am shocked to think that I
never even offered you a cup of tea." In
another letter, later on, she writes, " How well
I remember your visit. I have always regretted
that I did not give you even a cup of tea. It
was monstrous." And, on another occasion,
referring to the same visit, she writes, " You
are very good indeed to thank me for such a
Barmecide feast as you enjoyed here."

OUIDA 5

I found Ouida a difficult person with whom
to deal. The book was ready, and I might
take it if I wished, provided I was prepared to
accede to her terms. I was told its title, but
I was not permitted to read a word of it. She
declined altogether to tell me anything of what
the book contained, or even to give me a rough
idea of its size, and it was quite impossible from
her manuscript to determine what that size
would be, because she wrote on huge sheets of
paper with vast spaces between each line, and
her hand-writing was very large, often only
two or three words stretching across a sheet of
foolscap.

I had taken with me one or two sample books,
and I found that she was not satisfied with any-
thing that I showed her, and later on, she wrote
to me, at some considerable length, concerning
the proposal that was made. She says, " Can-
not you make the publishers understand that I
am accustomed to be deferred to, and not dic-
tated to, over all the matters concerning the
issue of my works," and then going on to criti-
cise what I had shown her, she adds, " Compare
the exquisite get-up of the ' Critical Studies '
or of ' The Altruist ' with the get-up of the art
books which you were so good as to give me, and
to send me." One of the most charming of these
books, and one on which I rather prided myself,
she considered to be " extremely common, in
binding, paper and everything ! " " The letter-

6 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

press," she adds, " was very inferior," and then,
finally, she writes, *' Unless the boards are
bevelled, no volume can look well, and a narrow
book is always ugly. I hope you will endeavour
to make these publishers conform, not to their
ideas, but to my wishes."

In the same letter, she concludes by saying,
with regard to the same publishers, that " the
sum which they pay in advance gives them no
title whatever to choice in the matter of getting
up of my books. I am the final authority."
All these extracts serve to remind me how
difficult a person Ouida was on questions of
business, as her great obsession was her own
importance, and the right she had to demand
preferential treatment over any other author.
Notwithstanding this strange side of her
character, I have never met a more interest-
ing conversationalist, and our talk ranged over
a mass of subjects. Frequently, however, it
came back to one of her favourite topics, that
of animal life, and especially of the life, history
and character of dogs. Perhaps unwisely, I
had told her of a story of my own home,
in which I had been obliged, greatly against my
will, to destroy a favourite dog, because he had
suddenly developed a passion for snapping, and
his presence was dangerous to my children,
and to my friends, whom he attacked indis-
criminately. He had been the quietest and
most delightful of companions, but the veterinary

OUIDA 7

surgeon told me that there was a trouble in his
ear, which had caused this irritable temperament,
and he advised me with much emphasis to have
the dog destroyed. I adopted the most humane
process, the use of a lethal chamber, and per-
sonally was convinced that I had acted rightly.
Ouida was indignant. She persisted that I had
been very wrong. In one of her letters she says,
" I wish you had not told me of your poor dog.
I am so sorry for him. You say he did not suffer.
How can you know ? He must have suffered
much, if only in being taken to, and left alone in
that place of death."

In another letter, she says, " Pray do not con-
found canker with cancer.* The former is quite
curable. Dogs do not bite because they feel
pain. When you went to the sea, you should
have given your dog a friend to keep him com-
pany. You would have found him happier
when you returned. Neglect in such matters
is the cause of many canine ills. You did not
do right in having him killed."

She never would allow this subject to drop,
and returned to it over and over again, express-
ing an almost absurd indignation with me for
putting an end to the life of this dog, and
apparently caring nothing for my anxiety con-
cerning my children and my friends. In one
of the last letters I had from her, she says, " I
am grateful to you for not forgetting poor

* I had not done so. I knew well the difference between them.

8 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Sant' Alessio, and my dear dead Baby. I often
think of your poor little sacrificed dog, oftener
perhaps than you do. Even you, who love
dogs, do not regard dogs enough as sentient be-
ings, with rights and claims." Many of her
letters refer to her own dogs, and in one of
them, she tells me of the death of her own little
favourite, in the following words, " My beloved
Baby took his gay little spirit into silence and
darkness, to my infinite sorrow. Ten years was
too short a space for that radiant and happy
nature. It was the first pain he had ever known."
In another letter, in which she talks of her own
pets, she says, " Of those that you saw out of
doors with me, there are living and with me
Lillo, Rufiino, and Goldoni, and a new and young
black poodle called Marino. When he was three
months old, he was being played ball with by the
boys on the sands at Viareggio. They had tied
his four legs together, and screamed with laughter
when he fell and cried out. So I bought him,
and he is a very clever and nice little dog."
Even then, however, she ends up the letter,
" I often think of your poor dog, killed for a
mere idea .' "

At the time of my visit, the muzzling act was
in full force, and Ouida was furious about it,
and would not discuss it in any quiet way. She
said, " If I were to come over to England, I
should shoot Walter Long. I so hate him," and
then she added, " I suppose I should be put in

OUIDA 9

prison, and sacrificed because I love God's
creatures better than many men who are not
God's people at all." In one of her letters, she
wiites about this. " I hoped better things from
the new Government, for the entrance into
England of dogs, but Carrington is just as silly
and arbitrary as was Walter Long. I reminded
him," she continues, " of John HoUingshed's
saying that * rabies must have been spontane-
ous once,' but he is inexorable and, like most
inexorable people, utterly stupid. The great
annoyance given about dogs greatly diminishes
the number of those kept."

It was unfortunately a part of Ouida's nature
that she could never grasp any other side of a
subject than the one immediately presented to
her, and her passion for dogs absolutely blinded
her to the great danger of rabies, and caused
her to hold absurd ideas against the necessity
for trying to crush out that most terrible
disease.

She also violently attacked everybody who
did not agree with her, and especially anyone
who had not paid her as much deference as she
considered she deserved. Poor Lady Burton
came in for some very strong remarks in her letters.
She did certainly admit that this noble woman
had "a fine nature," but went on to say, "She
bored Sir Richard, and she ran into debt, which
he alone would never have done. She did not
know how to efface herself. She became more

10 ■ BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

or less of a nuisance " — and so on — all of them
wholly inaccurate statements, made from in-
sufficient knowledge, and showing a cruel
feeling towards a person whom she did not in
the least understand, and whose abilities she
was quite unable to appreciate.

While she was living, I said little or nothing
about my visit to her, because she impressed
upon me over and over again that she did not
wish any reference made to her in the public
press, and yet at the same time I am quite sure
that there was no one more anxious to be spoken
well of in public, and more desirous of having
mention made of herself, her life and her works,
than was Ouida.

Her tenacity respecting her name was another
strange characteristic. I had addressed her
once as Mademoiselle de la Ramee, on another
occasion, after I had seen her, when she told me
to write to Lucca, I wrote Mademoiselle Ouida
and added the name of her villa, and the name
of the little district, Sant' Alessio, and then I
got a very sharp letter to say, " Address only
Lucca, my post bag goes into the town. No
other name should be put than Ouida." When
she was at Viareggio, I wrote to her there, and
was again reprimanded, and I was told that, even
if she was away, I was only to write to Lucca.
" Ouida, Lucca, is address enough, and will
always find me, wherever I am ifi the world."

Of her latest publishers, she spoke in extra-

OUIDA II

ordinarily cordial terms. She had, as is well
known, quarrelled with many, and she was not
an easy person for any publisher to deal with.
She spoke with fair cordiality about one or two
whom she had met, but in one of her latest
letters, referring to the book which she did not
live to complete, she says, " Macmillan's have
been of a kindness and indulgence which de-
serves my deepest gratitude." In another letter
she paid this firm a very high compliment,
describing them as one of the best and fairest
of business houses, a compliment which many
can endorse.

My correspondence with her continued well
away down to the end of her life, to the final
sad days of Viareggio, and her letters were always
interesting and acceptable. The same old
subjects were continually referred to. In the
last letter but one that I had from her she says,
*' The rights of animals are disregarded, even by
many of those who are their friends," and then,
quite unable to resist the chance of giving me
a dig — " as you disregarded your poor little
Irish terrier's." In the same letter she compares
town and country, expressing in unmeasured
terms her preference for the country, and abus-
ing London, and all London life, saying that the
houses in London are nothing but barns. She
then goes on to criticise some remarks of Carlyle,
which I had quoted, and which happened to
have reference to the beauty and dignity of

12 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

work, and states that there was no beauty in
modern work, and no dignity, adding, " In most
instances its value is dubious. I think that most
of the work that is done in our time would be
better left undone. It is chiefly," she adds,
" rubbish, and of a thousand books issued there
are only ten (perhaps) worth the paper on which
they are printed, and in very many cases books
are never read," she goes on to say, " except by
those who already hold the opinions of the
writers. This is the great difhculty. You
cannot reach persons already enveloped in their
own opinions. Here and there perhaps, some
wavering mind may be strengthened, some hesi-
tating soul won over, but alas ! it is rare."

One of her very latest letters refers with strong
indignation to the article that appeared in the
Daily Mail concerning her life at Viareggio,
pointing out that her means were but small ;
and that the time had come when the nation
should help her. She writes to me with un-
measured indignation. " Need I tell you the
rage, the humiliation, the impotent disgust,
which the lies of the Daily Mail have excited
in me. It is infamous that newspapers can
make sensational articles at the cost of one's
good name. They ought to be sent to the tread-
mill. A correspondent," she says, " of the
Daily Mail came over here to interview me, and
I would not see him, hence, I suppose, his
revenge."

OUIDA 13

It was a strangely sad story. There is no
doubt that towards the end of her career, she
had got out of touch with Hfe. Her books were
not the success she had expected them to be.
She was crippled in means by her great extrav-
agance in previous years ; and then, when the
report was spread that she was in destitute
circumstances, she wrote indignantly, denying
that her necessities were pressing, and refusing
to accept any proffered help. I felt convinced
that, for all her pride, she needed it, but that
was her secret, and it was no part of my busi-
ness to pry into it. I was very glad to do the
best I could for her on the occasion of my
visit, and the correspondence which followed it
was a source of great interest and pleasure
to me.

I do not think that Ouida in person could
ever have been pretty, but, when I saw her,
she was undoubtedly impressive because her
complexion was of extreme beauty, pink and
white like that of a young girl. Her hair was
beautifully dressed, her eyes were clear and
full of expression, and the fascination of her
hands was quite irresistible. It was later on
in our correspondence that I reminded her of
her promise to send me one of her own books.
She said that she had then with her two or
three examples of every book of importance that
she had written, and, in consequence, I asked
her to pick out for me what she considered

14 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

to be her best book. Hence it was she sent me
" The Massarenes," and the volume is a treasured
memorial of an interesting visit and a fascina-
ting correspondence.

CHAPTER II

GEORGE GISSING

There are three books which stand near to one
another in my Hbrary, all of which relate to the
same person. One contains the saddest story
that has perhaps ever been told, of a literary
man ; another is, in my opinion, one of the most
beautiful books of meditation that was ever
written, while the third is a book of travel, one
of the most fascinating of its kind. The third
of the number is called, " By the Ionian Sea,
Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy, by George
Gissing." The book of meditation is entitled,
" The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft," and
the memoir is that wonderful book by Morley
Roberts, which he styles, "The Private Life of
Henry Maitland," and under these two latter
pseudonyms, as is well known, is hidden the
mystery of George Gissing. I have said that
it was one of the saddest stories that has ever
been written, and at the same time it was
one of the most strange because it has always
seemed to me, and probably to everybody
else who knew Gissing, a mystery that a man
who possessed such wonderful charm, such
extraordinary knowledge, and scholarship of

i6 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

such a high quality, should ever have made two
steps in life equally disastrous, the second in the
full knowledge of what had happened to him
under the first, and thereby have ruined his life.
I suppose it was necessary for Morley Roberts
to tell the story in full, and certainly, he has
performed the task well, for he has written
with discrimination and such reticence as was
desirable. He communicated the facts under
assumed names, but there was little of obscurity
in the veil, and it was easy for those who
had known Gissing to fill in all the details
of the painful story. Gissing's first wife had
died when I knew him. From his second he
had for some time been separated, and then,
later on, when again I met him, he was living
in that strange and absorbing friendship with
the lady whom Roberts called Therese. The
last letter I had from him was from St. Jean de
Luz, and came to hand not very long before he
died. It was dated February 23rd, 1903, and it
was in reply to what I had written to him about
his Ryecroft book. There were only two books
Gissing prepared in which he was able to let
himself go, and of these undoubtedly the chief
was the famous one " By the Ionian Sea," and
it is difficult to exaggerate its rare charm.
It is also diflflcult to define it. The volume is
undoubtedly a storehouse of varied informa-
tion. It is also a poetical appreciation, but it
is far more than that, giving us in indirect

GEORGE GISSING 17

fashion a great deal of evidence about the
author himself. He lays himself bare for our
enjoyment. He allows us to come into close
contact with his own sympathies, and to travel
with him in intimate friendship. We find him
moved by sonorous words of Latin and Greek
in strange and deep fashion. They stir his feel-
ings as they stir ours in his fervid sentences,
and he finds in them a noble solemnity and
historical significance that nothing else can
possess. The volume was written by a scholar,
who delighted to refresh his memory with the
old classical lore with which he was so familiar
in early days, and to allow the troubles that
had fallen on him all through his life to drift
away for a while. He was able, as we have
said — to let himself go, and the real George
Gissing was revealed in that book. Nothing
else shows him as he was, but the nearest,
after the " Ionian Sea," is that fascinating
book of meditations which he issued under
the name of Ryecroft, and which he says he
wrote merely for his own satisfaction. This is
a volume that a critic reads over and over again.
It interests, it nourishes, it calms. It is a per-
manent addition to the pleasures of a bookman,
and although one can see that the shadow
of his big trouble was hanging darkly over
Gissing when he wrote, yet it is a personal
testimony of joy, of escape, of contentment,
and in writing it he was at least able to feel that

i8 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

lie had the leisure to taste the simple realities
of life, and the inner spirit of his books.

However intimately one knew Gissing, there
were always phases of his character which eluded
definition. He scorned the Renaissance, and
yet most truly was he a child of the Renaissance.
He was a finished scholar, but yet possessing
strange and deadly animal passions, and this
curious combination brought him into intimate
touch with the Humanists, and with the early
Italian scholars. There were many elements of
pathos about his life. It had been crowded with
sadness, and yet, strange to say, it differed from
almost every other sad life with which I am
acquainted, in the fact that Gissing, so far as I
could tell, never seemed to have had a great,
an overwhelming passion, in life. It has been
well said that he was " never swept off his feet."
Had he been so, he would have been saved,
perchance, from the vortex of evil which caught
him up and spun him round, with increasing
pain at every moment, and yet this strangely
mysterious man, who never understood real
love, that love for a chosen woman of kindred
spirit to himself, possessed tender sympathy
and deep affection for the inanimate creation,
a lover of trees, lanes, and flowers, with a
strange absorbing love for all nature, and
coupled with that, an emotion for buildings
that represented the past, and that brought
up before him memories of classical allusion.

GEORGE GISSING 19

Add to this curious combination an intense
Socialism, a wild Radicalism, which revealed
itself at odd intervals, and you have a faltering
attempt to explain some of the mysteries of
Gissing's life.

When he wrote to me from the Pyrenees,
his love of Nature proclaimed itself in one very
definite sentence : " Oh, to live," said he, " in
Sussex or Surrey, to see spring come up over the
heaths. Here, certainly, we have primroses
and violets, yes, even here and there hartstongue
and spleenwort, but these things on the slopes
of the Pyrenees are indeed not the same as they
are in the lanes of England in April."

No man more appreciated kindly expressions
about his own work, and when I told him
what I thought of the " Private Papers of
Henry Ryecroft," he wrote, " That you, who
pass so much of your life among things nobly
beautiful, should be able to find some measure
of success in my attempts to tell of the beauty
I have seen and felt, cannot but gratify me. I
should like to add that your estimate of my
work, as a whole, seems to diifer refreshingly
from that which is more often brought under
my notice. After having been told by all
manner of authorities, year after year, that the
note of my writing is its depressing monotony,
and that variety of subjects and manner seem
wholly beyond my reach, it is, I confess, very
encouraging to hear from you a different opinion.

20 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

I suppose the fact of the matter is that very
few reviewers have read more than one or two
of my books. To those who, like yourself, keep
a certain number of them in mind I am indeed
grateful, all the more so, that I must needs
wonder how you do it, aniid the press of writing
which calls for your attention."

On another occasion, he had casually come
across some lines that I had written about his
book " By the Ionian Sea," in which I referred
to the tender sympathy which he had expressed
for the people of the district, and his clear
analysis of their characters, and he then wrote
a letter, from which I must not quote, because
it is so full of his own personal story. It came
right at the end of his life, when the shadow of
death was hanging over him, and the future
was very uncertain, and when he said he had been
" dodging the east wind, and struggling to gain
the glory of sunshine," he wrote as one imbued
with the very spirit of Greek tragedy, for in
those last few months at St. Jean de Luz,
bravely bearing up in the hope that the errors
of his life were atoned for, he felt that a joy was
entering into his career, to which he had for so
long been a complete stranger. Alas, however,
it was not to be so. The last letter I wrote
him received no reply, and then word came
that he had been called away. He had told me
that at last he was able " to rest and think,
and be happy," and that surely in another sphere

GEORGE GISSING 21

there would be " violets and birds with the fruits
of the willow and the tender green grass," that
would delight his eyes, and now that his sad
life is over, and he has entered into his rest,
one would hope that this strange, shy, fastidious
man, this kindest of companions, and this most
wonderful of conversationalists, has at last
entered into a fuller appreciation of that for
which he always longed, " rest, refreshment,

joy."

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW IN LONDON

Exhibitions by artists, consisting entirely of
their own work, or exhibitions at art galleries
of the pictures of one artist only, are nowa-
days of such frequent occurrence that it is
curious to think there was a time when such
shows were entirely unknown, and when it had
not occurred to any artist that he should group
together his own works in one room or in a
series of rooms, and exhibit them to the public.
It is also interesting to know that the origin of
these exhibitions was the result of a quarrel,
and one which made a great impression in its
time in art circles. I am referring to a period as
remote as 1775, and to the quarrel which took
place between Nathaniel Hone, a sensitive and
a passionate artist, and the Royal Academy,
which had only so recently been founded, and
of which he was one of the earliest members.

His own copy of the catalogue of his little
exhibition is in my possession. It is a rare
pamphlet, usually lacking the preface, in which
Hone tells the whole story of the exhibi-
tion, and Smith, in his " Nollekens and his
Times," speaking of it as a " work of the

22

THE

EXHIBITION

O F

PICTURES,

B y

Nathaniel Hone, R, A.

MOSTLY

Tlie WORKS of his LEISURE,

And many of them

In his own Possession.

Ni/i utile eji quodfacimui, fruftra ejl gloria.

PHjCDRUS.

M.DCC.LXXV.

23

24 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

greatest rarity," reprints it almost in extenso.
I should preface the story, however, by stating
that Hone was an envious, bad-tempered man,
and particularly jealous of the success of Sir
Joshua Reynolds. He believed that Sir Joshua
was possessed of very few original ideas, and
almost all his compositions were taken from the
works of other artists, especially from the old
masters ; and, desiring to do the President as
much harm as he possibly could, he painted a
picture, which he called " The Pictorial Con-
juror, displaying the whole Art of Optical
Deception." The picture does not appear to
be any longer in existence, and it is therefore
impossible to say exactly what was its subject.
Hone himself described it simply as the picture
of a Conjuror. It is said to have represented an
old man with a wand in his hand, commanding
the various pictures of the Old Masters from
which the President had plagiarised his com-
positions, to rise out of the flames. It has also
been stated that it represented an old man with
a child leaning on his knee, performing various
incantations, by means of which these pictures
of the Old Masters floated on the air about him.
One of the floating figures in the picture was
that of a nude woman, and it is stated that the
likeness was a very distinct one to Angelica.
The Academicians were very angry at the
picture being sent in. They regarded it as an
attack upon their President in very bad taste,

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 25

and they were also exceedingly annoyed at the
representation of Angelica. In consequence,
they rejected the picture, and refused to have
it. It was at first actually hung in the exhibi-
tion, and then Sir William Chambers, and
someone else on the Council of the Academy,
came to Mr. Hone and informed him that it
had been rumoured that he had made an inde-
cent figure or caricature of a female artist, and
according to Hone's own statement, " they
were sorry such an indelicacy should be offered
to the public," or words to that effect.

Here is Hone's statement concerning this part
of the controversy : —

" Many false reports having been spread re-
lating to a picture called * The Conjuror,' painted
by Mr. Hone, and offered to the Royal Academy
for exhibition this season, he is advised by some
very respectable friends to give a short state of
facts to the public, which he hopes will clear
his character from the malicious aspersions
attempted to be fixed on him, as well as excuse
him from the presumption of making an exhibi-
tion singly of his own works.

" After the picture in question had remained
several days, and actually hung up in the Royal
Academy exhibition, Sir William Chambers,
with another gentleman of the council of the
Academy, came to Mr. Hone at his house and
informed him that it had been rumoured that he

26 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

had made an indecent figure or caricature of a
eminent female artist, and that they should be
sorry such an indelicacy should be offered to the
public, or words to this purpose. Mr. Hone was
greatly surprised at the accusation, and assured
the gentlemen that he had always had the highest
esteem for the lady alluded to, both on account
her reputation as an artist, as well as for her other
accomplishments ; and that to remove the pos-
sibility of such a suspicion he would alter any
figure she or they chose, the very next day or
before the exhibition ; and that he had not in-
tended to represent any female figure in that
picture, except the child leaning on the Conjuror's
knee, and hoped they would do him the justice to
remove any prejudice the lady might have re-
ceived by the malicious or ignorant ; and that
he would himself wait upon the lady to that
purpose. The next morning two more gentle-
men of the council, with that other gentleman
who had been the night before with Sir William,
called upon Mr. Hone, who were all of them so
obliging to do him the justice to say, that they
had carefully looked at the figures, and would
clear him of the supposition of there being any
woman figure ; that they were well assured then
as before of his respect for the lady ; nor did he
trust to this alone, but went himself twice that
day to wait on the fair artist, to convince her of
the error ; but was refused admittance. He
thereupon sent a letter by his son, who delivered

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 27

it into her own hands, and whereof the following
is an exact copy : —

" * Madam, The evening before last, I was not
a little surprised at a deputation {as I take it)
from the council of our Academy, acquainting
me, that was most prodigiously displeased at my
making a naked Academy figure in my picture of a
conjuror, now at the Royal Academy, representing
your person ; / immediately perceived that some
busy medlar, to say no worse a name, had imposed
this extravagant lie {of whose making God knows)
upon your understanding. To convince you.
Madam, your figure in that composition was
the farthest from my thoughts, as I now declare.
I never at any time saw your works, btit with the
greatest pleasure, and that respect due to a lady,
whom I esteem as the first of her sex in painting
and amongst the loveliest of women in person.
Envy and detraction must have worked strangely ;
for yesterday morning, some more gentlemen from
the Academy assured me that your uneasiness
was very great ; I assured them, I would so far
alter the figure, that it would be impossible to
suppose it to be a zvoman ; tho^ they cleared me of
such a supposition themselves, as they understood
it to be but a male figure ; and that I would put a
beard to it, or even dress it to satisfy you and them.
I did myself the honour of calling at your house
twice yesterday {when I had the misfortune not
to meet you at home), purposely to convince you.

28 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

how much you had been imposed upon, as you
will perceive, when you see the picture yourself,
and likewise to convince you how much you have
been imposed upon, and with how much respect
I am. Madam, your most obedient and most
humble Servant.

" * Nathaniel Hone.
" 'Pall Mall,
" * i^th April, 1 775. To Mrs. Angelica Kaufman.^

" To which the day following the answer was
returned :

" * Sir,

" ' / should have answered yours immediately,
but I was engaged in business. I cannot conceive
why several gentlemen who never before deceived
me, should conspire to do so at this time, and if
they themselves were deceived, you cannot wonder
that others should be deceived also, and take for
satyr which you say was not intended — I was
actuated, not only by my particular feelings, but
a respect for the arts and artists, and persuade
myself you cannot think it a great sacrifice to
remove a picture, that had even raised a suspicion
of disrespect to any person who never wished to
offend you.

" * / am. Sir, your humble servant,

« < Angelica Kauffman.
" * To Nathaniel Hone, Esq., Pall Mall' "

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 29

It is clear, from this letter, that Angelica
considered that the portrait was intended to
represent her, that she was annoyed at the work,
and that she considered Hone ought to withdraw
it ; even though he had satisfied himself and
one or two other persons that he had not in-
tended to represent her in the painting at all.
Hone, however, was not going to lose his chance
of poking fun at the President, even though
he himself stated that one of the figures
did not represent Angelica. The opportunity
of pointing out that in his opinion Reynold's
compositions were most of them plagairisms,
was not one to be lost, and he absolutely refused
either to alter the picture, or to withdraw it,
and took up the ground that, as an Academi-
cian, " honoured by His Majesty's sign manual,
and whose character has been hitherto unim-
peached by the breath of slander, during a
residence in that capital of upwards of thirty
years," the picture should be accepted by the
Academy, and should continue to be hung in
their exhibition. The Academicians were, how-
ever, not at all satisfied with Hone's action.
They resented it, and on the Tuesday evening
before the exhibition, they had a special meeting,
with the result that, at nine o'clock that even-
ing, a letter was sent to Hone in the following
terms : —

" * Sir, I am directed to acquaint you, that a

30 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

ballot having been taken by the council, whether
your picture called " The Conjuror " should be
admitted in the exhibition^ it was determined in
the negative.

" * Tou are therefore desired to send for the picture
as soon as it may be convenient.

" '/ am, Sir, your most obedient and most humble
servant,

" * F. M. Newton, R.A., Secretary.

" * Nath. Hone, Esq.,

" * Exhibition Room, Pall Mall,
Tuesday evening, 9 o'clock.'' "

a i

Evidently this was not the first time Hone
had come into conflict with the Academy, for
in 1770 he had painted a gentleman in masquer-
ade, and he had introduced into the picture a
cross, to which the Academicians objected.
In accordance with their wishes, he altered
the picture, and changed the cross into a punch
ladle ; but, later on, he took out the punch ladle
and replaced the cross, and in his ov/n words
" the cross is here restored, as at first intended,
instead of a punch ladle, which was painted by
order of the Council of the Academy for its
admittance."

Hone then proceeded to take out an affidavit
in the following terms to state that he did not
introduce or intend to introduce, into his picture,
any figure reflecting on Angelica, or on any
lady whatever.

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 31

" * MIDDLESEX TO WIT. I, Nathaniel Hone
of the Royal Academy do make oath, that in
the picture of a conjuror, offered for exhibition
to the said Academy for the present season, I
never introduced, or intended to introduce any
figure reflecting on Mrs. Angelica Kauffman,
or any other lady whatever ; and I gave the
most explicit declaration of this to Sir William
Chambers, and three other gentlemen of the
Academy, who called at my house for the pur-
pose of examining into that circumstance ; and I
at the same time told them the figure they
pitched upon as giving offence, should be taken
out. NATH. HONE.

" * Sworn before me this 2nd day of May, 1775.
W. Addington. N.B. Ihe figure said to have
been intended for Mrs. A Kaufifman is not only
now taken out, but all the other naked figures, lest
they should be said to be likenesses of any parti-
cular gentlemen or ladies, which Mr. Hone never
meant, as the merit of the picture does not depend
upon a few smoked academy figures, or even those
well-dressed gentlemen who supply the place of
those figures which were said to be so indecent,
though Mr. Hone had shown the picture to ladies
of the most refined taste and sentiment, at his
own house? "

This did not, however, make matters any
better. The Academy held to its decision,

32 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

and Hone had to remove the picture. He
then took out the figure that was said to have
been intended for Angelica, and also, he states,
" all the other naked figures, lest they should
be said to be likenesses of any particular gentle-
men or ladies, which Mr. Hone never meant " ;
and the result of the controversy was that he
took a room, which in Smith's time was a work-
shop, behind the house of Messrs. Mouchett
and Wild, wine merchants, of 70, St Martin's
Lane, next to the old Slaughter's Coffee House,
^nd there he proceeded to have the first one-
man show in London ; exhibiting not only this
picture of "The Conjuror," but some other works
by himself, in justification for the position he
had taken up. He called it " an exhibition of
pictures by Nathaniel Hone, R.A., mostly works
of his leisure, and many of them in his own
possession."

The Academicians were very indignant with
Hone over the whole transaction. Smith des-
cribes Hone's later visit to Nollekens, saying
that he was a tall, upright, large man, with a
broad-brimmed hat and a lapel coat, buttoned
up to his stock, and that he walked up to
Nollekens with measured and stately steps, and,
folding his arms, saluted him with, " Joseph
Nollekens, Esq., R.A., how do you do ? "
" Nollekens," says Smith, " who never liked
him, answered, ' Well, now, I suppose you are
come to get me to join you in the Academy

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 33

to-night, against Sir Joshua, but you are very
much mistaken, and I can tell you more, I never
will join you in anything you propose. You
are always running your rigs against Sir Joshua,
and you may say what you please, but I have
never had any opinion of you, ever since you
painted that picture of " The Conjuror," as you
call it. I don't wonder they turned it out of
the Academy ; and pray, what business had you
to bring Angelica into it r You know it was
your intention to ridicule her, whatever your
printed paper and your affidavits may say.
However, you may depend upon it, she won't
forget it, if Sir Joshua does.' " Hone appears
to have expostulated with NoUekens, told him
he was ill-tempered, and announced that he had
brought him two prints, which he had recently
purchased, as a present. Nollekens was not
going to be bought over in this fashion, replying,
" Well, I don't care, you don't bribe me in that
way. I know what you are going to do to-night,
and I will vote against you, so you may take
your prints back again." Smith explains that
Hone, whom he called the enamel painter,
had lately commenced oil painting on a large
scale, and in that branch of art he was not as
successful as he had been with regard to his
miniatures. It was then that He found that
Reynolds was carrying away the chief patron-
age, and this made him so jealous that. Smith
says, " he took every opportunity of endeavour-

34 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

ing to defame him," with the result that has
just been stated. Whether the exhibition was
a success, we cannot tell. Smith says the
advertisement appeared in several of the public
papers, that the pictures were to be seen every-
day, Sunday excepted, from ten in the morning
until seven in the evening ; that admission was
one shilling, and the catalogues were given
away gratis.

The whole thing was an extreme annoyance
to Angelica, and it did Hone a good deal of
harm. The picture of " The Conjuror," accord-
ing to Miss Gerard, passed into the possession
of a French nobleman, who in 1790 re-sold it
for fifteen guineas to a dealer named Knight.

The exhibition, I may state, consisted of sixty-
six pictures, the first three items being frames of
enamels, containing in all thirty-nine portraits,
but to these the artist added the following note :
" Not one of the foregoing enamels have been
painted within these fifteen years, as Mr. Hone
gave up his leisure hours from that time to paint-
ing in oil." Following these three exhibits came
a portrait of an old man in crayons, painted, he
said, twenty-seven years ago, and a drawing
of a young girl painted over twenty years ago,
jhese two pictures being exhibited, he informs us,
°^:i proof how little the colours have changed."
ti A./ V ^° show the rapidity of his execution, he
° "ed a picture which he painted in 1760,
im, an.:^^ ^^^ ^ drawing of a Chinese man
come to .

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 35

which he produced in one hour, and then a series
of the pictures which he had exhibited at Spring
Gardens in 1766, 1767, and 1768, and a series
which he had exhibited at the Royal Academy
from 1769 to 1774, arranged according to
date. Following these came the entry about
item seventeen already mentioned, " Two gentle-
men in masquerade at the Royal Academy,
1770. The cross is here restored as at first
intended, instead of a punch ladle, which was
painted by the order of the Academy, for its
admittance." One would imagine that in this
picture, he had offended against the opinion of
the Academy by introducing a religious emblem
into his picture, and that he had been requested
to make some alteration in order to render the
work suitable for exhibition. He took, however,
the earliest opportunity of restoring the picture
to what he had at first intended it should be,
with a view of showing the Academy that he
did not care in any way for its criticism, while,
in order to make the matter more evident still,
he exhibited with the picture what he termed
a metzotinto print of the same.

Following the pictures which had been ex-
hibited at the Academy came a series of sketches
and studies, and then six pictures which he in-
tended to have been exhibited in the Royal
Academy this year, and were actually liung in
the gallery, amongst them being the one called
" The Conjuror," which he says, in the catalogue,

36 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

was " refused by the Council of the Royal
Academy, though Mr. Hone had agreed to make
some alteration in the picture." The last few
items in the exhibition were drawings and works
in enamel, amongst these being a moth, a butter-
fly, a locust, a shell, and a Chinese figure.

A special point in the catalogue which greatly
interested me, was item No. 54, which read as
follows : — " ' Saint Pavarius,' the head finished
at one painting from the same man who sat
for * The Conjuror.' This poor but honest
fellow was formerly a pavior, for which reason
he is thus named, as have heretofore been St.
Veronica, St. Christopher, etc., from some parti-
cular action." The interest of this entry lies in
its connection with George Engleheart the
miniature painter, and with Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Engleheart copied a portrait painted by his
master Reynolds, which in his manuscript note-
book he called " Pope Pavarius," and in his list
of miniatures, " Pope Pavarion." It was not
known who this person represented, nor could the
name be explained by the Engleheart family,
who still own this copy of Reynolds' work
made by their ancestor. In writing the life of
Engleheart, I ventured on a conjecture that the
portrait probably represented George White
the pavior, an Irishman, " once a pavior, then a
beggar," as Tom Taylor says, whom Sir Joshua
had as a professional model, and a portrait of
whom, as captain of the Gang of Robbers, by

FIRST ONE-MAN PICTURE SHOW 37

Reynolds, painted in 1772, appears at Crewe
Hall.* This portrait, with its grimy haggard
features, resembled the miniature by Engleheart,
which he styled " Pope Pavarius," and which
he said was a copy of a work by Reynolds. It
is clear that the conjecture is reduced to de-
finite fact by the entry in Hone's catalogue,
and that Pope Pavarius, Pope Pavarino, St.
Pavarius, and George Wliite the pavior are one
and the same person, and that these various
names were given to him by the artists who em-
ployed him, and who poked fun at the work of
his earlier days.

Unfortunately, neither the original picture
of George Wliite, by Hone, nor the one painted
by Reynolds and copied by Engleheart, have
^f0t yet been discovered.

We do not know whether the controversy
between Hone and the Academy was made up,
but it evidently was adjusted in some way,
for Hone exhibited in the following year, and
continued to do so down to the time of his death,
which occurred in Rathbone Place, August 14,
1784, when he was sixty-seven years old. He was
buried at Hendon, where he possessed a small
estate.

♦Another portrait of him belongs to the Earl of Durham.

CHAPTER IV

SOME NEW INFORMATION RESPECTING JEAN
PETITOT

The influence which has been exercised in the
world of literature and art, by persons who be-
longed to the French Reformed Protestant
religion, and who were known as Huguenots
has been a source of justifiable pride to their
descendants and co-religionists, and this in-
fluence has been the subject of marked attention
in Geneva, the city where many of them took
refuge. The Huguenots are able to point with
considerable satisfaction to such men as Jean
Cousin the painter, Jean Goujon the sculptor,
the architect Salomon de Brosses, the enameller
Limousin, the potter Palissy, the ebeniste Boulle,
and the tapestry worker Gobelin, as well as to
the subjects of those few notes, the two cele-
brated workers in enamel, Bordier and Petitot.

The Historical Society of French Protestantism
has for the past forty years given considerable
attention to the publication of contemporary
information with regard to such important per-
sons, and it has more than once arranged for an
exhibition of documents and art treasures, in
the same interest. It has quickened the ener-

38

JEAN PETITOT 39

gies of a devoted body of Swiss writers, who were
eager to gather up all that could be known re-
specting the heroes of their faith, and who,
from time to time, prepared volumes, not
only on those whose names have already been
mentioned, but on such important residents in
Geneva as Theodore Beza, Goudimel the musi-
cian, Calvin, and Zwingli.

One of the latest of these workers was M.
Ernest Stroehlin, who gathered together some
new information on Petit ot,* which may per-
haps be of interest to English readers. He was
permitted to examine the precious little book
which Petitot left behind him for the benefit
of his family, and which was drawn out entirely
by his own hand. It is an octavo volume,
bound in parchment and covered in velvet,
containing 166 leaves, and was prepared in 1674,
in order that the artist might inform his family
of such facts in his own history as he thought
worthy of their remembrance. The greater part
of it is filled up with prayers and meditations,
and the little journal bears the title, " Pri^res
et Meditations chretiennes pour la famille, en
temps de sant^, de maladie, et de mort," but the
book contains, besides these prayers and medi-
tations, a great deal of genealogical information
regarding the Petitot- family, and two delightful
portraits, one of Petitot himself and one of his
wife, drawn in Indian ink. It passed after the

♦ Petitot et Bordier, Geneve, 1905.

40 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

death of the artist to one of his daughters, Marie,
who married, in 1693, a certain Jean Bazin, and
went to Hve at Rotterdam, and from her it has
come down, always in the female line, to her
descendants, through several families, and in
several places, the little book having been at
Amsterdam, the Hague, Montpellier, Brest, and
Bordeaux. It now is said to belong to a
certain Madame Roqueplane, the widow of
Vice-Admiral Prouhet. The volume was written
in 1674, eleven years before the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. It was not, however,
the only manuscript book which Petitot left
behind him, for he wrote a second volume of
" prayers and meditations during prosperity
and under adversity," in 1682, for the use of
his family. This is a quarto book, bound like
the other, but the details of its history are not
so clearly known. It belongs now to Monsieur
Chatoney, who bought it at the sale of the
library of Baron Jerome Pichom. It does not,
however, contain the genealogical information
which gives the special value to the smaller
volume.

The portrait of Petitot himself in the little
book shows us a man in an ample wig, having
a white linen collar with two tassels about his
neck, and wearing a dark-coloured cloak similar
to those adopted by the clergy of the Huguenot
Church. His expression is serious and meditative,
the eyes clear and full of life, the mouth small,

JEAN PETITOT 41

with very expressive lips, and the portrait bears a
striking resemblance to three other portraits of
the artist, all in enamel, one on the cover of
a gold snuff-box that belonged to M. Stroehlin,
signed, " P.F.," another, signed by Petitot him-
self in full, belonging to the Countess of Dartrey,
and a third in the possession of the Queen of
Holland. It also enables us to decide that the
portrait attributed to Mignard, belonging to the
museum at Geneva, which represents a man of
about thirty-five, in a large black wig, wearing a
rich lace cravat and a silk broche cloak, and
marked " Jean Petitot," is not a portrait of the
father, with whom at this moment I am deal-
ing, but of his son, who bore the same name.
The portrait of Madame Petitot, which appears
opposite to that of her husband, is a half-length,
representing her dressed in a silk costume, the
neck and throat bare, the hair brown and
curly. She has a calm, dignified appearance,
and the little volume is dedicated to her in the
following words : " Je vous fay present, ma chere
femme, de ce petit recueil de prieres et de medi-
tations, que j'ay faict pour le laisser k notre
famille, affin qu'il luy soit une aide pour les
porter h. la piet6."

The Petitots came originally from Burgundy,
and were one of those artistic families which
fled from France to Geneva. In similar
fashion, the Bordiers came from Orleans, the
Arlanda from the Auvergne, the Huaulds from

42 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Poitou, the Thourons from Rouergue, and the
Gardelles from Languedoc. Petitot's grand-
father was a medical man, whose christian name
was Guyon. He had an only son, who had the
curious name of FauUe, which name, by the
way, has frequently been rendered in books of
reference as Paul or Saul, but it was neither, and
is written most clearly in Petitot's manuscript as
Faulle. He was a wood-carver, and, in addition
to the ordinary work carried out in such an
occupation, was clever in making wooden models
of buildings. His father fled from France on
account of religious difficulties, and the son
settled down to steady occupation in Geneva,
and married there in 1598 one Etiennette
Royaume, by whom he had five children, four
sons and a daughter, the eldest son Pierre
(1600-1668), becoming a doctor of medicine, the
second, Joseph (1602-1665), a sculptor, the third,
Isaac (born 1604), also a sculptor, the fourth, Jean,
an enameller, and the fifth, Marie (i 610- 1677),
was the daughter, whose second husband was
one Pierre Prieur, a goldsmith, of whom up to
the present time remarkably little has been
known. Petitot speaks very highly of his
grandfather's character, and says he was " un
exemple de piete de zelle (sic), et de charity."
He died in 1628.

Jean Petitot was born on the 12th of July,
1607, and baptised on the 26th of the same
month in the evening, in the chapel of St. Ger-

JEAN PETITOT 43

vais, by the pastor, Grenet. He was appren-
ticed, he tells us, by his father, to a jeweller-
goldsmith, of the name of Pierre Bordier, who
was very little older than himself, but so clever
in his work as to have attained a consider-
able position in Geneva. As I have already
mentioned, the Bordiers came from Orleans as
emigrants in 1554, and their descendants still
live in that place. They appear to have been
weavers and tapestry workers, and people of con-
siderable skill, but one of them, Augustin, took
up the profession of a goldsmith, and it was his
grandson, Pierre, who became close friends with
Petitot. Th^ two young men, both apparently
taught enamelling by one Jean Royaume, were
not, however, satisfied with the progress they
made in Geneva, and determined to do better.
They therefore left Switzerland, and entered
France, and, after working for a while with Jean
Toutin the King's jeweller and enameller, came
over to England, where they were provided
with letters of introduction to the physician to
Charles the First, Turquet de Mayerne. This cele-
brated man had crossed the Channel to become
a royal physician, and was an accomplished
scientist, and very eager worker in chemistry,
interesting himself especially in enamel work,
and in endeavouring to copy the work of the
old enamellers of Limoges. He took great in-
terest in the two young men, who presented
themselves to him, and appears to have intro-

44 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

duced them to the King, made them free of his
own workshop, and placed at their disposal
various discoveries he had made. They re-
presented to him the faith of some of his own
near relatives, and a country with which he
was himself closely connected, and by every
means in his power he appears to have assisted
them. The first work which was entrusted to
them by Charles the First was the preparation of
a St. George intended to ornament the badge of
the Order of the Garter, but they speedily be-
came known for their portraits, and it was at
this time, in 1642, that Petitot prepared his great
portrait of the Countess of Southampton, who
was born Rachel de Ruvigny, and belonged to
an important Huguenot family, the enamel
now at Chatsworth, which Walpole calls " the
most capital enamel in the world." It is a copy
of a portrait by Vandyck, and is signed by
Petitot. It was at this time also that the artist
executed the fine signed enamel portrait of Mary
Villiers, Duchess of Richmond and Lenox,
dated 1643, which was at one time in the posses-
sion of the Crown, and is now in the Pierpont
Morgan collection, as well as portraits of the
Duke of Buckingham, Charles and his Queen,
Lady Morton, the governess to the Royal
children ; Mrs. Middleton, the Countess of Bed-
ford, Lady Cadogan, the Duke of York, and
other persons of eminence in this country, whose
portraits are to be found in various collections.

JEAN PETITOT 45

Petitot appears to have attached himself very
decidedly to Charles the First and his family ;
and immediately after the execution of the King
he left England for Paris, in company with
several members of the Royal Household, who
had to flee from the country. His friend
Bordier, however, remained in London, his
sympathies at that time being much more with
Cromwell and the Parliamentarian party, and
the result was that he received certain com-
missions from Cromwell, and his supporters,
especially the order for the Naseby enamel,
which was certainly his greatest work. It is
probable that the enamel portraits of Milton and
Cromwell in the possession of Lord Chesham are
the work of Pierre Bordier, rather than that of
Petitot, to whom they are generally attributed,
but the Naseby jewel was, so we are told by
Walpole, the work of Bordier, and is certainly
signed " P.B. fecit." This beautiful enamel was
presented to Sir Thomas Fairfax by the Parlia-
ment, after the battle of Naseby, in November,
1645. With the diamond sides, which are not
now in existence, it cost £700. After the
death of Fairfax it was sold to John Thoresby,
and in 1764 bought by Horace Walpole for ten
guineas. At the Strawberry Hill sale it was
sold for £21, to John P. Beavan, and, later on,
belonged to Lord Hastings, who exhibited it at
the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1889. It bears
on one side a portrait of Lord Fairfax mounted

46 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

on a chestnut horse, after a picture by Vandyck,
and on the other a representation of the battle
of Naseby. M. Clouzot in some recent articles
on Enamels offers some arguments against this
ascription. He believes the enamel was executed
by some other artist whose initials were P. B.,
but he cannot suggest any person, and Walpole's
statement must at present be considered to hold
the field. Pierre Bordier probably died in Eng-
land soon after 1649, as we hear nothing of him
from that time.

When Petitot reached Paris, he found there a
cousin of his friend, Pierre Bordier, one Jacques
Bordier, a goldsmith, who had enthusiastically
taken up the work of an enameller. He also had
been over to England, only remaining there a
short time, and then had come to France, and
the two men appear to have speedily become
close friends, and to have united in partner-
ship. Their work attracted much attention in
Paris, and they became the most famous painters
in enamel in the city, were given apartments in
the Louvre, and employed by Louis the Four-
teenth, and all the important persons about
his court. The friendship between the two
men, both of whom had been deeply attached
to the Stuart family, lasted for thirty-five years,
and was only put an end to by the death of
Jacques Bordier. Petitot thus wrote of it in
his journal : " De plus, comme une chose non
attendue en mon ^ge, tu m'as encore extraor-

JEAN PETltoT 4>

dinairement favoris6, O mon Dieu, en me con-
tinuant les moyens d'exercer mon art avec
quelque facilite en la compagnie de la personne,
liee avec moi d'amitie et d'association, des environ
un demisiecle, sans avoir aucune mesintelli-
gence ni division entre nous."

In an important work by Richelet, published
in 1680, Bordier and Petitot are spoken of as
being the two greatest painters in enamel in
Paris, the most popular portrait-painters of the
day, overwhelmed with work and busied in the
preparation of the tiny enamel portraits so
popular at that time, either as lockets or as orna-
ments set in the covers of snuff-boxes, etuis, or
instrument cases. Their personal character was
declared to be of the highest possible merit,
and the two artists appear to have been treated
with a greater amount of respect than was cus-
tomarily given to men of their profession. All
the greatest personages of that brilliant Court
sat to them, although as regards the portraits
usually attributed to Petitot alone, it seems
to be probable, from the artist's own papers
and from this manuscript journal to which we
make constant reference, that his partner Bor-
dier was quite as intimately concerned as himself
in their preparation. It would appear that the
actual drawing of the portrait was generally the
work of Petitot, but that the exquisite enamelling
process was largely superintended by Bordier,
and his skill alone rendered it possible for the

48 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

minute work of his colleague and friend to be
perpetuated in this wonderful form.

The King himself was represented over and
over again, his mother, Anne of Austria, and his
wife, Maria Theresa, their son the Dauphin, and
his wife, and their grandsons, the Duke of Anjou
and the Duke of Berry, his brother the Due
d'Orleans, his nephew, the future Regent, his
uncle Gaston d'Orleans, and his cousin the
Duchesse de Montpensier — La Grande Made-
moiselle ; Charles the First and Queen Henrietta
Maria, Charles the Second, the Duchess of
Portsmouth, James the Second and his sister
Mary, Princess of Orange, Christina Queen
of Sweden, the Duchess of Lorraine and her
brother the Duke of Guise, the Cardinals Riche-
lieu and Mazarin, the Grand Conde and his
wife, the Prince de Conti, the Due de la Rochefou-
cauld, the Duchesse de Longueville and the
Duchesse de Montbazon, the various nieces of
Cardinal Mazarin, Olympia, Marie, and Hor-
tense Mancini, Madame de la Valliere, Madame
de Montespan, Mile, de Fontanges, Madame
de Maintenon, Madame de Sevigne, and almost
every beautiful lady or important man connected
with the Court of France, or visiting Le Grand
Monarque.

Petitot married in 1651. His wife was Mar-
guerite Cuper, daughter of Sulpice Cuper, one
of the King's councillors, at that time governor of
Bordeaux, and the register of his marriage has

JEAN PETITOT 49

recently been found. It took place at Charen-
ton, on the 23rd day of November, 1651, in a
building which was devoted to the religious
services of the Protestants, and the officiating
pastor was Monsieur Drelincourt. Bordier was
already married, as, on the 27th of August in
the same year, he had espoused Anne Madeleine
Cuper, the younger sister of Marguerite, so that
the two friends had now become brothers-in-
law. Later on, the connection between the two
families was to become still closer, as eventually
Petitot's son Jean married Madeleine Bordier,
the daughter of his father's partner.

Some previous writers on Petitot had stated
that he was twice married, but the researches of
M. Stroehlin amongst the Petitot papers proved
that this was not the case, and the confusion had
arisen from the fact of Petitot's son marrying
his mother's niece.

Jean Petitot had seventeen children, and he
most carefully records the information respecting
them in his journal. His eldest son Jean was
born at Blois in 1653. In 1654 a second son
was born at Paris, named Jacques, in 1655 a
daughter arrived, called Marie, and in the same
year Madame Petitot was confined of a still-born
child. In 1657 came the second daughter,
Madeleine, in 1658 the third, Marguerite, in 1659
the fourth, Marie, in 1661 the fifth, Anne, in
1662 the fourth son, to whom the Ambassador
for Holland stood godfather, named Paul, in

50 . BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

1663 a fifth son, Francois, in 1664 a sixth daughter,
Caterine, in 1665 a sixth son, Andre, in 1668 a
seventh daughter, Charlotte, in 1669 a seventh
son, Sulpice Henry, in 1670 an eighth son,
Benjamin, in 1673 a ninth son, Estienne, in
1674 an eighth daughter, Madeleine Caterine.

The records in the journal particularly men-
tion the names of the godparents in the case of
each child.

In 1669, Petitot and Bordier were able to
render their own country certain special and
important political services, which were so
highly esteemed by the Republic that the
Syndics of Geneva created the two artists
free citizens of Geneva with all the rights and
privileges appertaining to such a position, and a
joint letter from the two friends, dated the nth
of January, 1669, was sent to the council, ex-
pressing the sincere gratitude which Petitot and
Bordier felt for this mark of esteem on the
part of their native town. The letter, which is
addressed, " Aux Magnifiques et tres honores
Seigneurs, Messeigneurs Les Syndics du Counseil
de Geneve," was given for the first time by
M. Stroehlin in his volume and followed by a
long series of letters which passed between
Paris and Geneva, mostly the work of Jacques
Bordier. He appears to have been not
only the active and practical partner in the
enamelling business, but to have developed
a remarkable capacity for diplomacy, and was

JFAN PETITOT 51

eventually created the official agent at Ver-
sailles for the Republic of Geneva, a position
which he held till the time of his death. He
threw immense zeal into this public work, exer-
cising himself with great energy to do all he
possibly could for his native State, and was
charged with some delicate negotiations between
France and Geneva, which he appears to have
carried through with great success. To such an
extent was he trusted, that he became on in-
timate terms with the Ambassadors from the
Protestant countries. Great Britain, Holland,
Brandenburg, and Prussia, and he appears to
have been regarded as the special protector of
the Genevan Republic, and as one with whom
consultations could be made with absolute dis-
cretion, inasmuch as he was a man of the most
perfect integrity, and held the complete confi-
dence of the Syndics of Geneva.

He was present at the marriage of his daughter
with his nephew Jean Petitot, who was follow-
ing his father's profession. This marriage, like
the two preceding ones, was celebrated in the
Huguenot " temple " at Charenton. It took
place in 1683, and was one of the last marriages
in that building. Jacques Bordier died at Blois,
in a house which he had inherited from his
father-in-law, Sulpice Cuper, in the following
year, just one year before the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, and was therefore spared the
grief of seeing the downfall of the diplomatic

52 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

union he had worked so hard to build up. The
Council of Geneva recognised his long services
by special resolutions and addressed letters to
his partner Petitot and to his son, expressive of
their gratitude to him for all he had done. He
was succeeded in his office as official agent of the
Republic by his son-in-law, Jean Petitot.

He had a large family, but eight members of
it died in their youth.

Uninterrupted success had attended the part-
nership carried on by the two Genevan enamellers,
and they were able to accumulate sufficient
means to live in comfort, and to keep up country
houses at some distances from Paris. The
story, however, that was started by Senebier
when he wrote about Petitot, and continued by
Rigaud, to the effect that they amassed a
colossal fortune, has no foundation in fact.
It seems to be clear that many of their
finest works were never paid for, and that
the expenses of production with regard to the
beautiful objects for which they were famous
were exceedingly high. They were, however,
both of them economical men, working very
hard at their profession, and their success was
undoubted. They had not suffered any disabili-
ties on account of their religion so far as can be
ascertained, until the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, which took place on the 17th of Octo-
ber, 1685, but from that time disaster overtook
the Huguenots of France, and almost every

JEAN PETITOT 53

member of that faith, whatever his position or
influence, suffered on account of his reUgion.
The storm raged about the head of Petitot for
some months, and at length pressure was
brought to bear upon him that he should change
his religion. The King protected him as long
as it was in his power to do so, but eventually
the skill and the popularity of the old artist counted
for nothing in his favour, and he was arrested
as a heretic with his niece, Anne Bordier, in 1686,
and they were both confined in the prison of
Fort L'Eveque. By the instructions of the
King, the great Bishop of Meaux, Jacques
Bossuet, was sent to visit Petitot in prison, and
he pressed him very hard indeed, with all the
skill of which he was capable, endeavouring to
convince the old man of the error of his ways.
For a long time Petitot would have nothing
whatever to say to him, but presently his health
gave way, his strength had been undermined by
his captivity, and he had been transferred from
one prison to another more rigorous, when at last,
in poor health and in great despair of mind, he
consented to place his signature to an act of
abjuration. The magistrates of Geneva had
been making every effort on his behalf, and it
is clear that the King himself was extremely
anxious to seize some means by which Petitot
could be released. The act by which the artist
acknowledged his conversion afforded the King
the opportunity which he sought, but Louis the

54 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Fourteenth, unwilling to acknowledge the true
reason for the imprisonment of Petitot and his
liberation, informed one of his sons, who came to
thank him for the pardon given to his father,
that he was quite willing to fall in, for once,
with " the whim of an old man who desired to
be buried with his ancestors." Accordingly,
at the beginning of the year 1687, Petitot, in com-
pany with a part of his family, left Paris, where
he had been living for thirty-seven years, and,
after passing through serious perils, reached
Geneva in safety.

At first he was not received with acclamation,
and was looked upon as a man who had abjured
his faith as a result of the persecution. The
Consistory of the Church of Geneva took steps
to investigate the matter, and being informed of
all the circumstances, and understanding that
Petitot's conversion was now the subject of a
sincere and touching repentance on his part,
absolved the old artist from the crime of which
they considered he had been guilty, and received
him back again into their communion. He
made a solemn statement before them, that
what they considered his apostasy was the result
of the persecution he had undergone and the
serious condition of his health, both of body and
mind, in consequence ; and then his reception
back to the Huguenot communion was under
taken by the pastor of the parish church of
St. Gervais. His confinement, and the anguish

JEAN PETITOT 55

he had gone through, had, however, made
serious inroads upon his health, and it was
some months before the old man was himself
again. The climate of his native country, the
kind reception given to him by most of his friends,
and the manner in which his change of faith had
been set aside, soon conspired to put him into
better spirits ; and, despite the fact that a
great many in Geneva, including some of his
oldest friends, declined to have anything to
do with him, he soon recovered his customary
high spirits, and speedily set to work at his old
profession. He had lost the larger portion of
his fortune on leaving Paris, but had brought
with him all the appliances for his enamel
work, and he was just as skilful as ever. One
of the first commissions he received was from
John Sobieski, King of Poland, who had defeated
the Turks before the gates of Vienna. He
desired to possess a portrait of himself and his
Queen in enamel, and the aged artist acquitted
himself of the task brilliantly, and sent a
plaque, in which he had ingeniously combined
the two portraits, to the King of Poland. In the
picture the Queen was represented seated upon
a trophy of arms, holding in her right hand a
portrait of her successful husband, and the minia-
ture was as brilliant in colour and as exquisite
in execution as any work which Petitot had
produced during the days of his youth. Another
labour which engaged his attention was the

56 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

reproduction of a celebrated picture by Lebrun,
" The Family of Darius at the Feet of Alexan-
der," but this very large enamel he was never
able to complete. It is still to be seen in Geneva
at the museum, but should have been fired once
or twice more to have attained to the utmost
perfection of its beauty. Very quickly Petitot's
work began to be known in the neighbourhood of
Geneva, and numbers of well-to-do persons so-
journing in that city went to see the illustrious
artist, and commissioned their portraits at his
hands. His means rapidly increased, and he
was full of energy, when, on the 3rd of April,
1 69 1, he was seized with an attack of paralysis,
while in the very act of painting on the enamel
a portrait of his faithful and devoted wife. At
seven o'clock in the evening he died, and his son
Paul thus records the sad event in the same little
journal to which we have already referred : —

" Puisque notre p^re a mis, dans le commence-
ment de ce livre, une partie de ce qui lui est
arrive, il est juste que nous y ajoutions ses
derniers moments lesquels n'ont pas 6te moins
pieux et saints que pendant sa vie, puisqu'il n'a
jamais eu autre chose dans sa pensee, jusqu'au
dernier moment de sa vie, que de donner gloire ^
Dieu et d'embrasser son Sauveur, et qu'il a eu
pour derniere parole : ' Viens, Seigneur Jesus,
viens bientot ! ' Apres quoi le bon Seigneur
re9ut son esprit, lequel il rendit, apr^s quelques

JEAN PETITOT 57

heures d'agonie, le jeudi 3 avril 1691, a 7 heures
du soil, et a ete mis le samedi 5, a 9 heures du
matin, dans la tombe de Mme. de Blonay, dans
I'eglise de Saint-Martin, k Vevey. II avait
quatre-vingt et quatre ans, quand il est mort,
et travaillait le mardi de la semaine, dans la-
quelle il deceda le jeudi, au portrait de notre
mere, qui est ce qu'il a tou jours demand6 h. Dieu,
de pouvoir travailler jusqu'^ son dernier jour, ce
qui lui ete accorde, puisqu'il n'a ete qu'un jour
malade."

Nothing need be added to a record so simple
and so affecting.

Many persons have copied the work of Petitot,
but he has never had any real rival save in the
person of his own son ; and some of the works of
Jean Petitot the younger so closely resemble those
of his father, that it is impossible to distinguish
between them. The family genius in this respect
appears to have died out with the death of the
son, although the trade of a jeweller was carried on
by other members of the same family. The little
manuscript journal which has been made avail-
able for the purpose of this new information,
contains many other records relating to the
family than those which have been quoted, but
they refer to the descendants of Petitot's daughter
Marie, who married a certain Jean Bazin. The
writing of Petitot himself ends with the note in
1674, of the birth of his youngest child. A series

58 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

of entries were then made by his son-in-law,
continued after his death by his widow, and added
to by other members of the family, the last
entry bearing date 24th of July, 1840, and re-
cording the marriage of the lady who is the
present owner of the book. In addition to the
genealogical information contained in the journal,
there are five drawings by Petitot in it made in
Indian ink, representing the Birth of Christ, the
Crucifixion, the Entombment, the Ascension,
and a death's head, and to each of them are
appended explanatory texts. The remainder of
the book is occupied by a very long religious
exhortation addressed by Petitot to his family,
and by a series of shorter exhortations, prayers,
meditations, and passages from Holy Scripture.
Some of the prayers are taken from the works of
Du Moulin, others were written for Petitot bv
Monsieur Turtin, a pastor of Geneva, and others
again were composed by the artist himself.
His hand-writing was exceedingly clear and
legible. With the exception of the additional
entries made by his descendants, all the rest of
the journal is in Petitot's own hand, and he
was himself responsible not only for the two
portraits it contains, but for the title-page and
five illustrations. The whole volume affords a
pleasing record of a great artist, and lovers
of the work of Petitot will be grateful to
the Historical Society of the French Protestant
Church for having undertaken to print a great

JEAN PETITOT 59

portion of the journal, and to the late M.
Stroehlin for his volume on Petitot and Bordier,
and the investigations which have enabled him
to give so much definite information respecting
the story of the two men.

The exquisite enamels of Petitot are well
known to all collectors. They should perhaps
now be called works by Petitot and Bordier, as
it is perfectly clear that each partner was con-
cerned in their execution. There is an interest-
ing collection of them in the Louvre, numbering
over forty genuine examples, and about a dozen
which may or may not be from the same atelier,
and some of which no doubt belong to the
younger Petitot. At Chantilly there are seven-
teen, including four portraits of Louis the Four-
teenth, representation of various members of
the Conde family, two fine portraits of Madame
de Montespan, and one of her sister, the Abbess
of Fontevrault, and a portrait of Ninon de
L'Enclos ; but the largest collection in existence
is to be found in the Jones section at the Victoria
and Albert Museum. Here there are no less
than fifty-eight examples, including some of
the most beautiful works Petitot and Bordier
ever executed. At Windsor there are seventeen,
and others are to be found in most of the great
collections of miniatures. The Baroness Bur-
dett-Coutts possessed several, including delight-
ful portraits of Charles the Second and James
the Second, the latter of which was a present

6o BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

from the then Duke of York to Mrs. Godfrey.
The Earl of Berkeley, Lord Wemyss, the Duke
of Richmond, Lord Chesham, Lord Cadogan,
Earl Beauchamp, and the Duke of Rutland, are
amongst those who possess fine examples of
these precious enamels, but the best private
collection is in the possession of the Countess of
Dartrey, and it includes a portrait of the elder
Petitot, signed " Petitot le Vieux par luy-meme,"
one of the younger Petitot signed, " Petitot fait
par luy-meme, d'age de 33 ans, 1685," and two
portraits of the wife of Jean Petitot the younger,
on one of which is the inscription, " Petitot a
fait a Paris Janvier 1650 ce portrait qui est celui
de sa femme."

Lady Dartrey also possesses portraits of
Madame de Sevigne, James the Second, the Due
d'Orleans, the Countess of Bedford, the Duke
of York, Madame de Montbazon, the Princesse
de Bernouville, and of several persons whose
names are not known, including a very beautiful
one of an ecclesiastic. In the possession of the
Queen of Holland is the second portrait of Petitot
the elder, signed and dated 1650, and portraits of
the Princess of Orange, of William the Third,
of Louis the Fourteenth, and of Madame de
Maintenon, while M. Ernest Stroehlin, in his
collection in Geneva, had the third portrait
of the old artist, and half a dozen other fine
examples of work of Petitot and Bordier. One
of the most superb enamels the partners ever

JEAN PETITOT 6i

executed bel^jngs to the Countess of Carnarvon.
It i«? a p;rld snuff-box, and bears on the top,
on the bottom, and on each side, a series of
beautiful portraits of the celebrated ladies of the
French Court. There were very many works by
Petitot-Bordier in the Hermitage collection at
Petrograd, and others were to be found in
Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, and Budapest.

Until within recent times the work of Petitot
has only been known in enamel, but three
important drawings on paper have been dis-
covered, and all three are in the famous Pierpont
Morgan collection. The largest represents the
Comtesse de Feuquieres, the friend of Mignard,
and of Madame de Sevigne, and is inscribed in
ink on the reverse, " donn6 par M. Petitot 4
madame La Comtesse de Feuquiers [sic] en
1673." This is in the same handwriting as
appears in the manuscript book, and is there-
fore evidently that of the artist himself. The
other two drawings are even more interesting.
They represent Anne of Austria and Philippe,
Due d'Orleans, and are signed by initials, in a
monogram, which appears to be J. P. It is
suggested that these are the original drawings
for two enamel portraits of these persons
which appear in the collection at the Louvre.
That of the Due d'Orleans exactly resembles
the enamel which happens to be the only por-
trait of the Due, by Petitot, known to exist.
The other, of Anne of Austria, is almost exactly

62 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

like the enamel, but in the drawing the Queen
has a crown on her head, which is represented
as slipping off backwards, and which does not
appear in the finished enamel. A French critic
has suggested that this drawing is the work of
Pierre de Jod6, who engraved a portrait after
Nocret of Anne of Austria, but as the two
drawings are identical in size, colouring and
technique, and as the one of them exactly
and the other very closely resembles the
finished enamel save in the omission of the
crown (which did not add to the charm of the
portrait and the omission of which distinctly
improved the enamel), I was disposed to accept
them both as the preparatory sketches by
Petitot for his enamel portraits ; and these two
and the one just mentioned constitute the only
three drawings at present known to exist. In
the Pierpont Morgan collection is one other re-
markable drawing, which has been attributed to
Samuel Cooper. It exactly resembles Petitot's
famous signed miniature of Mary — Duchess of
Richmond and Lenox, already referred to, which
is, by the way, the largest work of that artist
save the one at Chatsworth, and is one of
the chief treasures of the collection. The draw-
ing very closely resemblances a similar one at
Welbeck, and each of them is almost an exact
copy of the picture by Vandyck at Windsor
Castle, save that they omit the attributes of St.
Agnes, the lamb and the palm branch. It
\

\

JEAN PETITOT 63

would seem possible that Cooper made a water-
colour drawing from the Vandyck, in order that
Petitot might make his enamel, or it is possible
that Petitot also made a copy of the Vandyck.
The two drawings, the one at Welbeck, and the
one in the Morgan collection, are not abso-
lutely identical. The colouring of the latter
one is richer and bolder than that of the one at
Welbeck, and it differs in some minute points
from the original Vandyck. It is absolutely
identical, however, with the finished enamel,
and I am inclined to suggest that the one at
Welbeck is the work of Cooper, and the other
the work of Petitot or of Bordier, but this
suggestion is made tentatively, as perchance
some further information may come to light
which will assist in determining the attribution.

A few words may perhaps be added respect-
ing Paul Prieur, who was referred to at the
beginning of this article. In 1669 he was in
England painting a miniature of Charles the
Second, and another of Lady Castlemaine, both
after Cooper, and executed for the King of
Denmark, for whom he had been working for
some time. In 1670 we hear of him in Poland
painting a portrait of King Michael Korybut
Visniowiecki for the Danish monarch, and then
in 1671 he was back again in Denmark executing
some remarkable commissions for portraits of
the elder children of Frederick the Third, which
can now be seen in the Rosenborg Castle collec-

64 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

tion. By Christian the Fifth he was sent to
execute other commissions, is believed to have
visited Spain, and thence to have journeyed to
Russia, where several examples of his work, all
dated 1676, were to be seen in the Hermitage.
In the following year he was back again in Den-
mark, where he died. He is said also to have
been a member of the Huguenot persuasion,
and to have possessed secrets for the composi-
tion of certain brilliant colours in enamel work
(especially for a blue) which were not known
to his competitors. His work in this country
is of great rarity, Lady Dartrey possessing the
finest example, but there are two remarkable
enamels by him in the Pierpont Morgan collec-
tion. There is also one of his enamels at Win-
sor Castle, and Dr. Propert had two, while
several of his beautiful enamel badges for the
Order of the Elephant belong to the King of
Denmark.

CHAPTER V

HOW A BOOK WAS LOST AND FOUND

In front of me lies a tiny service book, entitled
" Diurnale Cartusiense," a fat little volume of
526 pages, with a supplement added of 114 more.
It was printed in 1879. ^^ ^^^ given to me in
1894, and recalls a curious and interesting story.

The monks of the Carthusian Order were
among the earliest to welcome and use the
new art of printing, and they constitute the
only Order in the Catholic Church which has
remained a printer to this very day, for the
monks still produce, in their own monastic
printing-press, all the service books for their
own use, and from that press have been issued
some of the finest of modern liturgical books.

The story of Carthusian printing begins in
1606, when the Prior of one of the houses in
Picardy printed four large Responsoria, each
in four volumes, from type which he had himself
made by melting down old vessels and candle-
sticks of copper. In 161 2 he left the religious
house in Picardy and went to Pavia, there to
assist in printing liturgical books for the same
Order, carrying with him his home-made type.
He was commissioned by the Father General

65

66 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

of the Carthusians to print service books for
the night office, in sufficient numbers for the
use of all the monasteries of the Order, and the
great book he produced continued in use for
over two hundred and fifty years, and was
not entirely reprinted until 1876, when a new
edition of it was required. It can easily be
imagined that although the books were great
folio volumes, and printed on very substantial
paper, and carefully handled, and only needed
in the churches connected with Carthusian
monastries, the constant use for two hundred
and fifty years produced the invariable result,
and the volumes were more or less injured,
torn and defaced. Fortunately, the monks
knew their office, and by dint of saying it
continually, the words became so familiar to
them that upon many occasions they did not
use the books at all, and to this familiarity must
be accredited the fact that so many of the old
volumes remained in existence when the order
came to reprint. The Vatican decided in 1870,
that certain slight changes were to be made in
the service books, and that it was time a new
edition was prepared, and then the question
arose as to finding a perfect copy of the old book
of 161 2 from which the new one should be pro-
duced. As might be expected none of the mon-
asteries possessed a perfect copy. Some of them
were more or less complete. Many had manu-
script additions made to them. Of some, half a

A BOOK LOST AND FOUND 67

page here and there was missing, or there
was wanting to many pages the corner or a
large portion of the page. Frequently the
Fathers had used other books to supplement the
great folio, where pages or portions of pages
were deficient, and despite the most careful in-
vestigation, Dom Eusebe Bergier, who travelled
round from monastery to monastery, was quite
unable to obtain a perfect copy, and small
w^onder, considering that the book had lasted
for such a long period. Then another monk
Father Charles Marie, was entrusted with the
duty of going to all the Carthusian Houses in
Europe, examining every copy they possessed
of the edition of 161 2, extracting perfect leaves
from the different volumes, and making up, if
possible, a complete set from the imperfect
volumes which still remained. This task took
a long time to accomplish, but it was done at
last, and one perfect folio volume of the service
book of 1612 was made up, and brought to the
Chartreuse at Montreuil, Notre Dame des Pres,
where at that time the printing works were
established, and from this one perfect copy the
new edition of 1876 was produced.

When I was working at an essay on the books of
the Carthusians I came upon the information
concerning this precious volume. I had seen
many fragments of the old folios both at the
Carthusian Monastery in France at which I was
then working, and at the others which I had

68 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

visited in France, Italy and elsewhere, but no
trace could I ever find of the one perfect copy
which, however, it was quite certain must have
existed not twenty years before I was writing my
essay, and therefore was hardly likely to have
perished. When it is remembered that these
books were elephant folio, monstrous great
volumes, it will be the more easily understood
that the destruction of such a huge book was
not easy, and I made up my mind, not only
that it must exist, but that in all probability it
existed in the very house where I was, because
it was there that the edition of the later book
had been printed. I set to work to search, but
I could find no trace of it in the library. I then
had special permission to go round to the various
Fathers in their cells and talk to them about it,
and one old Father, of considerably advanced
age, asked me whether I had searched in an
underground paper store which still existed
beneath the library ? Some of the younger
Fathers doubted the actual existence of this
paper store, they had never heard of it, and
never seen it, and for a while I could not find
out where it w^as, but eventually the Prior of the
Monastery, taking the trouble to look through
certain keys, discovered that one of them bore
a label relating to a paper store, and a door which
had not been opened for some twenty years was,
at my request, unlocked, and I entered a caver-
nous cellar. It was full of odds and ends of all

A BOOK LOST AND FOUND 69

kinds connected with printing, piles of proof
sheets, discarded and unimportant, all kinds of
rough packing paper, cases, boxes and bits of
machinery, the odds and ends of a big printing
office, cleared out when the great work was
accomplished, hurriedly packed away, waiting
for an opportunity of investigation, and then
apparently entirely forgotten. There was noth-
ing for it but to search, and with the help of two
of the lay brothers, the examination was made,
and down at the bottom, close to the floor, in
what was fortunately, a very dry place, the
precious book was found, and in triumph I carried
up to the Prior the only perfect copy in exis-
tence of a magnificent piece of printing issued in
161 2, and showed him a book which he had never
seen, and which constituted a landmark in the
history of his Order.

Then it was that he made me a present of the
little book that now lies before me, a volume
which cannot be bought, and is never issued to
the public. It is printed for the sole use of the
Order, and is never issued outside the monasteries.
It is the daily office book of the Carthusian
monk, is carried in his pocket from the moment
he takes the habit to the moment of his sepul-
ture. It is in daily and constant use, seldom
out of his hand, and when he dies, it is buried
with him. My copy was bound at the mon-
astery by the monks themselves, whole bound in
delightful brown morocco, and as the Prior told

70 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

me, is the only copy that has been given to
anyone outside the Order, except the copy
that is regularly sent to the Vatican, and it
was handed over to me as the only gift the
Prior could make to me, and as evidence of his
gratitude for the trouble I had so gladly taken
to find the missing copy of the 1 612 folio.

To anyone who loves fine printing all the
books of the Carthusians are worth examina-
tion. Many of them, for choir use, are great
folios. Others are sumptuous quartos, printed on
paper specially made for the Order, with ink,
brilliant black and glorious scarlet, also specially
made, and the work executed with the most
absolute perfection of form and accuracy, be-
cause it is done Ad Major am Dei gloriam. Even
the smaller books, the little one that is given to
the Fathers, the larger ones which form the
library of his theological works, and the few —
very few — which are printed for other religious
societies, are all produced with the same attempt
at perfection, everything, both as regards print-
ing, paper and type, being done as well as
possible, so that Carthusian books are among
the best produced of printed books.

CHAPTER VI

QUEEN Christina's miniature painter

In December, 1904, the Swedish Minister had an
article in the Nineteenth Century Review relat-
ing to Queen Christina, but there is one special
interest that the Queen has for English students
to which but little attention has been given,
and which is not alluded to in that article. Queen
Christina was a notable patron of art, and had
attached to her Court several portrait painters,
one of whom was an Englishman. Compara-
tively little has hitherto been known about
this English painter, Alexander Cooper by
name, and some recently discovered facts re-
specting him may be found of interest. He was
a brother of Samuel Cooper, the greatest minia-
ture painter that the world has ever seen, whose
name stands for the finest work that this parti-
cularly English branch of art has ever achieved.

Horace Walpole tells us that Alexander Cooper
was the nephew of John Hoskins, and the
brother of Samuel Cooper, and that he " went
abroad, resided some time at Amsterdam, and
at last entered into the service of Queen Chris-
tina." He adds that he " painted landscapes
in water-colours, as well as portraits," and re-

7»

72 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

fers to a landscape with the story of Actaeon and
Diana, which was in his time at Burghley, but is
now no longer to be seen there. The great con-
noisseur had in his possession a miniature of a
lady which was, he considered, the work of
Alexander Cooper, and at the Strawberry Hill
sale it was sold at two guineas. The only other
reference that Walpole makes to Cooper is in
connection with his note on Henry Hondius, the
engraver, where he states that Hondius, in 1641,
engraved a print of William, Prince of Orange,
from a painting by Alexander Cooper. Beyond
this information we have only a scrap or two
from the compilers of biographical diction-
aries. One tells us that the artist resided for a
time in London with his brother ; another that
he was born in 1605, and was therefore four years
older than Samuel Cooper ; and a third that he
left England when quite a young man, and never
returned to this country.

To this somewhat trivial collection of state-
ments I have been able, to add considerably,
as the result of investigation in State archives
in Holland and Sweden ; and a narrative of a
part of the artist's life, hitherto unknown, has
now been revealed. The history of his career
in Sweden commences in 1647, but we have a
little information concerning his work in 1632
and 1633. During those years Cooper was resi-
dent at the Hague, and was painting a series of
portraits for the King and Queen of Bohemia.

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PAINTER 73

These delightful little miniatures were the
property of the Ex-Kaiser and set in a series
of twelve circular discs, which fold one over
the other, and form, when folded together, a
little pile about a couple of inches high. The
top and bottom discs bear the royal crown
and monogram and the date, 1633, in white on a
black ground, and at the back of each portrait,
in the same coloured enamel, are the name and
age of the person whose portrait is contained
in the disc, and also the record when it was
painted. The edges of all the discs are enamelled
in the same way in a pattern of transverse lines
in the Bohemian colours. The portraits of
Frederick the Fifth and his wife are thus in-
scribed : " Frederick R.B., aetat, 36, 16
August, 1632," and " Elizabeth R.B., aetat,
36, 9 August, 1632." That of the King was
painted in the very year of his death, as on the
28th of November, 1632, he died of an infectious
disease he had contracted at Frankfort, which
took him off at Mainz as he was on his way into
Holland to his wife and children.

The other portraits in the series represent the
children of this amiable and accomplished royal
pair, but three of them, those which should
represent Prince Gustavus, Prince Edward, and
Princess Sophia, are no longer in their frames.
It is quite possible that they were never exe-
cuted, but seems more likely that they have
been lost. All the rest are, however, in their

74 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

place, and are delightful portraits of serious,
and thoughtful, children. On each is inscribed
the age of the child, and the date on which the
portrait was painted. The eldest son, Charles,
was painted on the 22nd of December, 1632,
when he was fourteen years old. He was the
prince who was so enthusiastic a supporter
of English drama, who quoted Shakespeare
freely, and translated and acted in Ben Jonson's
Sejanus. Prince Rupert " of the Rhine " was
but twelve when his portrait was taken on
the 27th of December, 1632, and his brother
Maurice, equally distinguished in the English
civil wars, was a year younger, and was painted
on the 6th January, 1632. Philip, who was
killed in battle in Germany when twenty-three
years of age, was painted on the 26th of October,
1632, and was five years old at the time. Of
the other four sons we have no portraits. The
eldest, Frederick Henry, was never painted by
Cooper, as he was drowned in 1629 ; the fifth son
died in infancy ; and, as just stated, the por-
traits of Edward and Gustavus are missing.
The disc that should contain the one of Prince
Edward is inscribed " Aetat. 8, 6th of October,
1632," and that for Prince Gustavus " Aetat.
I, 4th of January, 1633."

There are three portraits in the series of the
daughters — Elizabeth, the friend of William
Penn and of Descartes (who dedicated to her,
his Principia), painted when she was thirteen,

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PAINTER 75

on the 26th of November, 1632 ; Louisa,
afterwards Abbess of Maubuisson, who was
painted at the age of ten, on the 8th of April,
1632 ; and Henrietta, afterwards Princess of
Transylvania, who was but six when her por-
trait was painted on the yth of July, 1632. It
would have been especially interesting to English-
men to have seen the portrait of the youngest
daughter, Sophia, as she was the ancestress of
the Hanoverian sovereigns, and of the dynasty
that now occupies the throne of England. The
disc that should contain her portrait is inscribed,
" Aetat 2, 14th October, 1633."

These portraits tell us that Cooper was a
frequent visitor at the house of the Queen
of Bohemia. It is probable that shortly after
that time he was in England, for there is a
miniature in Holland by him representing James
the Second as a young lad, which must have been
painted either about 1647 ^^ when James was
on a visit to Scandinavia during Cooper's resi-
dence in that country. In 1645 Cooper was
in Holland, as Dr. van Riemsdyk discovered a
note of a payment to him of 100 florins. Foster
gives this information. It is probable that
Cooper came to Stockholm in 1646, and in 1647 ^^^
name appears as " Abraham Alexander Cooper,
the Jew portrait painter." This entry gives us
two fresh facts respecting the artist. Until it
was discovered we were not aware of his first
name, nor of his Jewish nationality ; but it is

76 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

clear that Kis talent prevented him from ever
suffering by reason of his Semitic origin. By the
5th of July he had become portrait painter to
Queen Christina, and the orders to the Treasury
appear in the archives, signed by the two trea-
surers of the kingdom of Sweden, ordering pay-
ment of his year's salary of 200 riksdalers. The
payment appears to have been made on the
loth of the same month, and the receipt in Ger-
man is still preserved ; but it is interesting to
notice that Cooper signs it " Alexander Cooper,"
having, apparently, dropped his first name.

There was another portrait painter employed
by Queen Christina at the same time, known as
Dawid Beck, and in an entry dated the 15th of
September, 1647, there is a note of a payment to
be made to Cooper of 200 riksdalers on his
present year's salary account, and to " Dawid
Beck," of 150, the two men being grouped to-
gether as her Majesty's portrait painters. There
are other entries in succeeding account-books of
similar payments, most of them being made
" on account," and it is clear from them that
the artist's allowance increased year by year, but
that it was inconvenient to pay him his full sti-
pend at one time. In 1650 he appears to have
had an extra sum given to him as a signal mark of
the favour of the Queen, the record being as
follows : " October i6th. According to the letter
of her Royal Majesty our gracious Queen, dated the
15th of this month, orders are given Secretary

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PAINTER 77

Samuel Nilson, to pay portrait painter Beck
300 riksdalers silver, which her Royal Majesty
has graciously appointed him for gala dress at
her happy coronation. Mutatis Mutandis, for
Portrait Painter Cuper."

From the date of this special payment in-
formation as to Cooper's connection with the
court has to be obtained from another set of
archives. His stipend in future was not paid
through the Treasury as it had been hitherto, but
through the Court cash accounts, and this would
seem to imply a somewhat closer connection
between the portrait painter and the Queen.
He received 1,200 dalers for his stipend in 1 651,
his companion Bock (or Beck) having 900 ; and
about that time he appears to have painted a
portrait of the Queen, mounted in a gold chain
and locket, which was presented to " Adjutant-
General Niclaes Desmel, of General Konigmarke's
army." It appears likely that the artist painted
several portraits of Queen Christina. Two
certainly were painted for one of the royal
princes, and it seems possible that the person
who commissioned them was the nephew of
the Queen, who shortly afterwards became King
in her place. Amongst a bundle of papers
marked with the date 1652 are two accounts
sent in by Alexander Cooper to Grypsholm, and
filed amongst the accounts of the royal house-
hold. They may be roughly translated as
follows : —

78 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

What I have done for your Royal Highness,
my Gracious Prince and Lord.
For five paintings in miniature, at 40 riks-

dalers . . . . . . . . . . 200

For crystal glasses to them . . . . . . 28

For the case for the bracelet . . . . . . 5

For the other bracelet, diamond and gold . . 70
For wages to Mon. Duwall for work done by

him . . . . . . . . . . 10

For Mr. Munckhofen's painting in oil . . 40

353

Your Royal Highness's obedient and faithful
servant,

Alexander Cooper, painter for Her Majesty
the Queen of Sweden.

The other is as follows : —

Another for your Grace, Highness, and Duke,
for miniature and oil works.
One painting for your Highness and Duke,

which Monsieur Taube received and

took with him into France . . . . 40

Two pictures of Her Majesty, which your

Princely Grace received . . . . 80

Still another of your Grace for Count Magnus

which you had . . . . . . . . 40

Still a small one for bracelet . . . . 40

Still two more, made ready for you ... 80

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PAINTER 79

Still one of the Queen in oil, for your Princely

Grace . . . . . . . . . . 20

300
Alexander Cooper.

The Count Magnus mentioned in the forego-
ing account is evidently Count Magnus Gabriel
de la Gardie, whose portrait Cooper painted,
and to whom he wrote a very pathetic letter
importuning the Count that he would give
orders for the payment to the artist of his
salary for 165 1 and for half of 1652, which was
due to him. In this letter, which is copied into
the archives, Cooper states that he was, "through
the good will of God, ill and confined to his bed,
and in the greatest need of the money."

Just before Queen Christina abdicated. Cooper
was set to work to paint a portrait of the new
King, Charles the Tenth, and there are many
references in the minutes of the Treasury Board,
to which volumes one has now to go for the
quoted references to the artist's career, re-
specting presents of gold chains, medals, and
portraits that " ought to be given " on the
occasion of the ceremonial to the various am-
bassadors. He appears to have prepared at
least three portraits of Charles the Tenth, two
of which were set in diamond etuis, and one of
them, we are told, was given to the French
Ambassador in 1654. After King Charles had
been formally placed upon the throne, Cooper

8o BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

received further commissions, having evidently
entered the service of the new monarch. There
is an original order, both signed and sealed by
the King, preserved in the Treasury books,
ordering Cooper to make three portraits of his
Majesty, and dated the 3rd of July, 1655. All
three appear to have been set in diamond etuis,
and were given away as presents in the following
January — one to the Swedish Ambassador to
Russia, Gustaff Bielke, another to Major-General
Fleetwood, " who went to England," and the
third to the Danish Ambassador, Major-General
Wilhelm Drakenhelm.

^^^tu, ivm^ ^^e4dPleu%r

or eri£, S^ JCftU^ef^e4U

There are, so far as can at present be
found, no further references to portraits of
Charles the Tenth by Cooper in the Swedish
archives, but there are a piteous series of
applications for arrears of stipend due to

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PAINTER 8i

him after Queen Christina's departure, for por-
traits of the Queen and for other work. A
receipt entirely in the handwriting of the artist
is fastened on to one of the pages of the book
of accounts, and is, so far as I am aware, the
only scrap of paper in existence bearing the
artist's own signature. (See illustration on
previous page.)

During all this time Cooper was resident in
Stockholm, and in 1652 there is a reference to
his address in the tax-books of the city. He is
spoken of as " Mons. Cuper," who lived " in the
house of the surgeon in the inner quarter of the
city," but he was declared as being " fiee from
all taxes," and it is therefore possible that, as a
Court official, he was exempt from such charges or
in receipt of a special favour from his Sovereign
granting him this privilege. In 1656 he left
Sweden for Denmark, and entered for a time the
service of King Christian the Fourth, executing
various commissions for the King ; but in 1657
he was back again in Stockholm, and there he
appears to have resided during the remaining
three years of his life. He died in 1660, in the
early part of the year, somewhere before March,
although the record of his decease does not give
the day nor the month of his death. It declares
in pathetic language that he died " at his rooms
in the inner quarter of the city, alone, while at
work, and with his brush in his hand." It would
therefore appear as though he was overtaken by

82 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

some sudden illness while in pursuit of his pro-
fessional work.

This is not the place in which to enter into any
criticism of his painting. It may, however, be
stated that in many respects his miniatures
resemble those of his far greater brother,
Samuel Cooper, but they are stiffer, more
formal in composition, and harder and rougher
in technique, than are the works of Samuel,
while the colour scheme is always somewhat
weaker. For many years the works of the
two brothers have been confused, but when
once the striking divergence between them is
realised it is impossible for a connoisseur to be
deceived. Very few miniatures by Alexander
Cooper are known, and those that exist are for
the most part in Holland or in Sweden. There
are beautiful signed works belonging to the Queen
of Holland, and two in the Rijks Museum at
Amsterdam. There is a portrait of Gustavus
Adolphus, in the possession of the King of
Sweden, which must have been painted before
1632, as the King died in that year, and which
was therefore done before we have any trace of
Cooper being in Sweden. It is a signed portrait,
and unmistakable in its characteristic. Another
portrait of the same monarch is at Gothenburg,
having been presented to the museum by the
descendants of a general to whose ancestors it
was given by the King himself, and with it in the
same museum is the portrait of Count Magnus,

\

QUEEN CHRISTINA'S PAINTER 83

to whom Cooper addressed the letter that has
been referred to. Two works by the artist are
in the Whitcombe Green collection ; there is one
in the royal collection at Windsor, two or three
are at Montagu House, two belong to Earl
Beauchamp, and there is one at Welbeck Abbey.

There is also a delightful miniature by him in
the famous Wicanders collection in Sweden. It
represents Gustav Otto Stenbock and came from
the De la Gardie family. It is illustrated in
colour in Dr. Asplund's sumptuous catalogue of
his friend's collection.

There are several of his portraits in Finland,
and there is a series of pencil drawings attributed
to him in a private collection in London, but
beyond these works very few can be definitely
attributed to this little-known artist. It is
curious that not one of the portraits that he
painted either of Queen Christina or of Charles
the Tenth is now known, and, so far as we
know, they do not exist in any of the important
private collections in Sweden, most of which
have come under my inspection. It is possible
that they were, most of them, given away to
ambassadors, and they probably still remain in
the hands of their descendants, although it is
very likely that the name of the artist responsi-
ble for these portraits are not attached to them.
None of the portraits of Queen Christina pre-
served in England can be attributed to Alexander
Cooper, so far as I can at this moment state.

84 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

It would be interesting to surmise the reasons
that attracted him to the Court of Sweden, and
it is possible that the portrait he painted of
Gustavus Adolphus may have come under the
notice of Queen Christina and have led to his
receiving an invitation to work for her.

Alexander Cooper appears also to have
painted miniatures in enamel and this informa-
tion has only come to light within the past few
years. Baron de Bildt, the Swedish minister in
Rome, has discovered in Queen Christina's
correspondence with Paolo Giordano, Orsini
XL, Duke of Bracciano, some allusions to gifts
made by the Queen to the Duke, some of which
were miniatures, and among them was a portrait
of herself by Alexander Cooper in enamel sent
in November, 1 65 1.

A second portrait — this time in coronation robes
— followed, and she promised a copy in minia-
ture by the same painter, of one of her Titians.

We know so little of the career of the minia-
ture painters of the seventeenth century that,
when fresh information comes to light, it seems
desirable that attention should be directed to it.
Close investigation may perhaps some day
result in some similar knowledge coming to light
regarding the far greater brother, Samuel Cooper,
so frequently mentioned by Pepys in his Diary,
and to whose hand we owe the grandest
examples of miniature painting that have ever
been executed.

CHAPTER VII

JOHN Locke's pocket book

It is a rough scribbling book that has belonged
to one of the greatest of England's worthies, the
chiefest of her metaphysicians, and it contains,
in brief form, information bearing upon his life
and the customs of the age in which he lived.

Its contents serve as a touchstone upon which
to test already accepted history, and possibly
may help either to support or to destroy cer-
tain theories as to the life and times of Locke
usually accepted as correct.

At the time that Mr. Fox Bourne wrote his
exhaustive and masterly biography of Locke,
this book was unknown to him, and it was a
peculiar pleasure to me to lay before Mr. Bourne
some new information bearing upon the subject
of his devoted study.

To the great life of Locke already mentioned,
and to much information given to me by its
author, I was indebted for many notes for this
article, and I expressed to Mr. Fox Bourne at
the time, my warm gratitude for his considerate
and thoughtful courtesy.

The volume itself is very tiny, measuring
only 3j by 2 inches, is whole bound in brown
o 85

86 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

leather, with two small brass clasps, and bears
upon its cover in embossed gilt letters the date
1669.

It contains John Goldsmith's almanack for
that year, and bears the following imprint : —
" London : Printed by Tho. Radcliffe and Tho.
Daniel for the Company of Stationers, 1669."
The almanack is followed by various quaint
tables — ^The Kings of England — Moveable Feasts
and Fasts — Chronology of important events —
Terms — ^Tides — Discounts. A curious distance
table showing the distance of various towns in
each county from the City of London, a list of
Fairs, and two strange astrological devices,
with their explanations, complete the printed
matter. Beyond this are some 38 pages of MSS.
Inside the cover are four impressions in red
sealing-wax of as many seals or rings. To one is
attached the following note, written in ink : —
" This was Locke's seal with the arms of his
family." The seal is that of a shield bearing the
following arms : " Per fesse azure and or on a
pale, countercharged 3 hawks with wings en-
dorsed of the last." This achievement, I am
informed at Heralds' College, was granted to
Michael Locke on 5th July, 1-2 Philip and Mary.
The remaining three impressions appear to be
those of stones engraved with classical figure
subjects, and were probably taken from rings.

On page i of the inside cover is a note to this
effect : —

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 8y

" This pocket book belonged to Locke, and
was given to H. L. Long by Lord Lovelace, and
by him to me, C. E. Long, February, 1840." How
the book came into the possession of Lord Love-
lace I have not been able to ascertain, but as
Peter King, nephew (maternally) of John Locke,
was the first Lord King and ancestor of Lord
Lovelace, who is eighth Baron King, I presume
that the book was found amongst some family
papers belonging to the great Chancellor, in
whose early education at Leyden his uncle,
Locke, took so great an interest. Lord Lovelace
gave the book to his old friend, Henry Lawes
Long, Esq., J. P., of Hampton Lodge, Surrey,
an eminent man of letters of his day, and well
known a few years since in all literary circles.
He married Lady Catherine, youngest daughter
of Horatio, second Earl of Orford (of the second
creation), and died in 1868. After his decease,
the book came into the possession of Miss Long,
of Landthorne Hatch, Farnham, who placed it in
my hands for examination, and permitted its
exhibition to the Royal Society, to which learned
body the book had a peculiar and special interest.
It is curious to notice that Peter, First Lord
King, Baron Ockham, in the county of Surrey,
and Lord High Chancellor, was born in 1669,
the very year of the date of our pocket
book.

The pages of the MSS. are all carefully num-
bered, and the notes are made with system,

88 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

cross references from one page to another occur-
ring occasionally.

Locke in 1669, '^^^ resident in the family of
Lord Ashley, and appears to have been con-
sidered family physician, tutor, and private
friend, besides acting in some sort of honorary
position of secretary. I am inclined to suggest,
therefore, that many of the memoranda in the
book relate to matters connected with Lord
Ashley's household, in which he was probably
acting for his employer and managing certain
business arrangements.

The first note reads : " Stove. Mr. Hunt, an
Ironmonger upon Great Tower Hill," and may be
only a memorandum of an address.

Following it comes this further note : " T.
Stringer, Jan. 9, I owe Mr. Stringer, upon
account, £80, v(ide) an(no) (16) 68, page 55 ; paid
March."

Mr. T. Stringer was Lord Ashley's private
secretary and steward as well as Locke's personal
friend, and it is suggested that this entry, as well
as several others of similar character which
follow it, relate to matters of account between
Stringer as steward and Locke, who kept accounts
for Lord Ashley, and his son Anthony. They
may be, on the contrary, notes of personal
transaction, as Locke was upon terms of very
close intimacy with Stringer, who was evidently
a very valued servant. When Ashley became
Chancellor, in 1672, Thomas Stringer was des-

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 89

cribed as steward of the house. Locke used
often to go and stay with Stringer at a country-
cottage which he possessed, and the great meta-
physician was considerate to the family of his
old friend, as the following notes from his diary
of 1679 ^i^^ show : —

" Paid, IS. 6d. for a drum for little T. Stringer."
" Paid for playthings for little Stringer, 3s."
On page 12 are memoranda as to the purchase
of certain books from a person of the name of
Spencer. They are as follows : — ^' Wilkins
Charact." £1 2s. ; " World in the Moone," 6d. ;
" Transactions " (probably of the Royal Society,
£1 2s. ; " Cowley " (probably the poems of),
14s. ; " Almanack," 5s. ; " Sir Paul Neile Syno-
pisoghica," [sic] 4s. (binding is. 8d.) ; " Friendly
Debates," 3s gd. (binding 3s. 6d.) ; " Stilling-
fleet's Sermons," 5s. 6d. ; " Duke on the Sacra-
ments," 3s. ; " Taylor's Ground," 2s. 6d. ;
" Donne's Poems," 4s. 6d. ; " Nipotisms," 3s. ;
ditto, 3s. ; " Hobbes," £1 ; " Binding of Books,"
5s. ; " Agricola," i6s. ; " Transactions " (pro-
bably Royal Society again), 6s. 2d. ; " Friendly
Debates," is. 9d. ; " Cartes Epistolae," 12s. ;
"Evelyn's Architecture," 13s. 4d. ; "The Gaz-
ette, No. 225," 1 8s. ; ditto, 69, 2s. ; " Memoir of
P. Guif," 5s.; Reynolds, " De Voce," is.;
" Three Discourses," is. 6d. ; Parker's " Dis-
courses," 3s. 6d. ; " Book on Witchcraft," is. ;
"Calilai Opera," English; " Hobbe's Works,"
Latin ; " Josephi Laurentii Polymathia, folio?

go BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

1666 " ; " Agricola, chirugia parva " ; a French
author of " Architecture : comparing the ancient
with the moderne " ; " Timaeus de fibulae ubi
modus curandi," 4to " Hoffmann " ; " Anag-
lypta " ; " Bona Alberga herb, MarcelJus Cum-
anus " ; " Galdus piscis " ; page 6.

The last few items may probably be merely
notes of books for future reference or purchase,
and not actual purchases, as to them no price is
appended ; particulars of size are occasionally
given, and in one instance a reference to a page.
It is not easy to identify many of the books in
this list. Some few of them, however, are well
known. " Characters " and '* The World in the
Moone " were written by Dr. John Wilkins,
Bishop of Chester. The first is spoken of as a
masterpiece of invention, and very chimerical,
the second was written to prove that the moon was
inhabited. Cowley, whose works Locke pro-
bably refers to, was a well-known man, and one
of the founders of the Royal Society. " Friendly
Debates" was, I expect, one of the numerous
controversial pamphlets of the day. " Stilling-
fleet " was Edward, Bishop of Worcester, 1689-
99, formerly Dean of St. Paul's, and one of the
greatest pillars of the English Church in his day.
" Dyke on the Sacraments " was written by
Jeremiah Dyke, of Epping, a Puritan, and the
father of another Puritan, Dr. Daniel Dyke,
ejected from his living for his nonconformity.
" Donne's Poems " evidently refer to the works

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 91

of Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, 1 573-1631,
" Nipotisms " (sic) was a book written against
the practice of Nephewism, a term under which
the Popes of the time were charged by the Re-
formers with conceaHng their illegitimate sons.
" Hobbes " doubtless refers to the work of
Thomas Hobbs of Malmesbury, 1588-1679, the
author of " The Leviathan " and other works, on
which were founded a system of philosophical
government called Hobbism. " Agricola " I
take as referring to the German reformer and
scientist, 1492-1566, who was censured in his
time for propagating antinomianism. " Cartes
Epistolae " is most likely the letters of Rene
Descartes (Cartesius), the French Philosopher,
founder of a school that has even now many
disciples. " Evelyn's Architecture " is the
" Parallel of Architecture," translated by John
Evelyn, the Diarist, and author of " Sylva."
Of " Galileo " (spelt by Locke in an Italian
phonetic form) I imagine the part of the work
referred to would be the mathematical series,
published by Thomas Salusbury in 1661.

There is an entry in the diary further on relat-
ing to Lord Ashley's wedding that is of peculiar
interest. It is as follows : —

" A. Ashley, married 22nd Sept. to the Lady
Dorothy Manners, and that day I was witness to
the Deed sealed by the Earl of Rutland, Lord
Roos, Lady Dorothy, Thomas Stringer, C. Dur-
and, — Alsop, and delivered to the Lord Ashley."

92 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

It was in connection with this wedding that
Locke is said to have acted the part of match-
maker.

In the summer of 1669, he accompanied Lord
Ashley, so Mr. Bourne mentioned in his " Life of
Locke " aheady referred to, " on a visit to the
Earl of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, and there
opened negociations for the marriage of his pupil
with the Earl's daughter Lady Dorothy, then about
twenty years old, and these negociations he
brought to a successful issue." The wedding took
place at Belvoir, and in Lord Ashley's letter to
Locke, consenting to the arrangement, the follow-
ing pretty passage occurs : " My best blessing to
my dear son, and desire him to present my most
affectionate service to my Lady Dorothy, who
has highly obliged me in all her carriage in this
affair, having done all with so much sweetness
and prudence as gives me the assurance of the
greatest happiness in her both to myself and
family " ; and then, continuing. Lord Ashley says
to Locke : " You have in the greatest concerns of
my life been so successively and prudently kind
to me that it renders me eternally your most
affectionate friend and servant." As Mr. Fox
Bourne remarked, it seems a little out of place
to find Locke as a matchmaker, but he appears
to have done his work gracefully, and made,
at any rate, a good selection.

In connection with this wedding there are a
few more entries in our little diary, all of interest.

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 93

In August 5th Locke notes the receipt from Lord
Ashley of £20, " for Belvoir," money, I expect,
intended to defray the needful payments in con-
nection with Anthony Ashley's visit in search of
a wife.

Below that is carefully recorded the payment
away of this money, and it is a curious list of
vails, or gratuities to servants at a great house in
the seventeenth century : — " The keeper, los. 6d. ;
housekeeper, £1 ; cooke, £1 ; pantler (one who
had charge of the bread and pantry), £1 ;
butler £1 ; groom for the chair (sedan chair),
£1 ; coachman, £1 ; groom, £1 ; two laundry
maides, £1 ; under butler, los. ; under groome,
los. ; gardiner, los. ; postilian, los. ; porter,
los. ; physic, 13s. 6d." The fees are well grad-
uated, according to the position of their respective
recipients, and were decidedly handsome in
amount, according to the then value of money.
The references to sedan chair and " postilian "
bring up before one a picture of the vehicles of
carriage of those days.

The entries in the pocket book a little further
on make it clear that Locke had in October
returned to London and was assisting in a
political transaction of no small importance. On
October 2nd, he writes : — " I was witness to
Lord Ashley sealing a deed bearing date October,
1669, between the Lord Keeper on one part, and
Lord Ashley and Sir Henry Vernon on the other
part." This deed, it is evident from date and

94 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

parties, had reference to the establishment of
the settlement of Carolina, in which, all earlier
patents revoked, the district was given over by
Charles II. to the Lord Chancellor (or Lord
Keeper) Clarendon, and thence to eight Lord
Proprietors, of which Lord Ashley was the most
powerful and influential. Locke, in this settle-
ment, took much interest, and, acting as secre-
tary and chief adviser, was able, on behalf of
the colony, to display his versatility of talent and
the super-abundance of his energy.

To Locke was entrusted the drafting of the
scheme of Government and constitution, and no
colony was ever started with a more elaborate
scheme of political, social, and religious organisa-
tion, the original draft of which, in a small
vellum-covered volume of 75 pages, is still pre-
served amongst the Shaftesbury muniments,
Series VIII., No. 3.

Locke was an important and early member of
the Royal Society. According to Birch's His-
tory (1756, Vol. II., p. 323), he was proposed
November 19th, 1668, and elected November
23rd. His proposer was Sir Paul Neil, a friend
both of Boyle and Lord Ashley, and one of the
most energetic members of the Society from the
time of its incorporation in 1663.

Ten weeks after his election, i.e. on February
nth, Locke was chosen one of a Special Com-
mittee of eleven appointed for considering and
directing experiments. On November 3rd, 1669,

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 95

he was elected a member of the Council, and on
the following day appears this entry in his diary: —

" Royal Society — Paid to D. Colwall £2 3s.,
all dues to the Royal Society to Michaelmas last,
and received an acquittance of him." The
amount is two guineas subscription and one
shilling extra, which is probably for sl diploma or
letter of election.

Daniel Colwall, in 1669, treasurer to the Royal
Society, and in 1703, one of the founders of its
Museum, lived in an old house in Guildford, once
forming part of the house of the Dominican
Friars in that town, then known as the Friary.
In that house the unfortunate gentleman
ended his life by a pistol shot, and the chair
stained with his blood was long preserved in
the Friary. The ghastly relic was afterwards
acquired by George, Earl of Onslow, and pre-
sented to the master's apartments in the hospital
of the Blessed Trinity, founded in Guildford by
George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, and
there it is still to be seen with the dark blood-
mark upon it. Colwall was buried in the middle
of the south aisle of St. Mary's Church, Guild-
ford. It is a somewhat remarkable burying
place for the body of a suicide, but I suppose
that Colwall's important position, learning, and
celebrity, gained for him the privilege usually
denied to those who commit self-murder.

Locke inherited from his father, in 1660, while
yet a student at Oxford, certain property in

96

BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Pensford, Somersetshire, and seven years later
this estate appears to have been added to, pos-
sibly by the decease of other relations.

In the Shaftesbury papers is a list in Locke's
writing of his tenants in 1667 ^^^ 1668, and
giving their rentals and the expenses of the
property. The aggregate rental appears to have
been £73 6s. lod., which at the present time
would be worth quite three times that amount.

The property was managed for Locke by his
father's younger brother, Peter, as Locke
could but seldom visit his estate, and the pages
of the diary headed " P. Locke " have evident
reference to this estate.

On page 4 is an entry of the receipt on Novem-
ber 2, 1668, of the following rents due to Michael-
mas, 1668 : —
Tom Anthony, Jqr.
Fr. Liance, in part
Jam(es) Atkins, in part
T. Jones
An Hoping
Fr. Lyance, in part
Robt. HaroU

£2

10 0

5

I

0 0
8 0

I

0 0

4

18 0

7
9

3 3
8 I

£31 7 4

The money Locke states he received by the
hand of T. Stringer, who probably brought it
from Pensford to London. The necessary charges

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 97

on the estate were paid out by Robert Haroll,
one of the tenants, and there are several lists in
the diary of such charges.

In 1666, Lord Ashley was very ill, and was
desirous of trying the waters of a spring at Astrop
near King's Sutton, in Northamptonshire, just
then brought into notoriety by another of Locke's
fellow students, Richard Lower. Lord Ashley
was coming to Oxford for the meeting of Parlia-
ment, and Thomas, who was attending him,
wrote to his friend Locke from London begging
that, as he could not at that time return to
Oxford with his illustrious patient, Locke, would
procure twelve bottles of water for Lord Ashley's
consumption whilst in the city.

The waters were ordered by Locke, but did
not arrive in time to be in readiness for Lord
Ashley's arrival ; and Locke, vexed at the
occurrence, and desiring to excuse his friend. Dr.
Thomas, from the blame of it, waited upon Lord
Ashley. Introduced by Bennett, he made a
most favourable impression upon the nobleman,
who invited him to supper, and to drink the
waters with him during his sojourn in Oxford,
and in so trivial a manner originated their
friendship.

The intimate acquaintance so commenced in-
creased day by day, led to considerable patronage
of Locke by Lord Ashley, and, widening into a
firm friendship, only ceased at death.

Thomas seems, in 1669, ^^ have asked Locke to

98

BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

procure certain things for him in town, and it is
notes of these purchases that Locke made in his
diary. The following are the important en-
tries : —

"A crucible, li 3s. 6d., velvet cap, 17s. 6d. ;
watch, £9 IDS. od." Various purchases of miner-
al, for which certain unusual chemical signs are
used which are not clear. Also purchases of
Crocus, or some other drug designated as " Croc.
Gr." The total account came to £11 i6s. id.

Suit I? CaJ^-y^UJ'^ O'l-C

^ • 0*0. I

• - ....

^-^

JOHN LOCKE'S POCKET BOOK 99

At the end of the book are certain odd memor-
anda.

An address is recorded : —

" Tho. Hopkins, at the Black Horse, in Col-
lege Green, Dublin."

There is a memorandum, to enquire the price
of some chemical for Thomas, and then, beyond
that, another : —

" To send to Mr. Hughes from Burley to
send all the greyhounds that were ordered to
be sent to Mr. Ashley to Belvoir to my Lord
Northumberland with the others, and to send
back a letter to me of the receipt of the mare and
colt."

This, I expect, was a note made for Lord
Ashley of a letter Locke was desired to write.
Notes follow of payments made to " Grooms at
Burley," so that evidently Locke and his pupil
visited Lord Exeter's great house, " by Stam-
ford town."

One more page is of interest. It is headed
" Mr. Concers," and is an account for three years,
1667, 1668, 1669, for the purchase of drugs pro-
cured probably for him in London. The page is re-
produced opposite ; and by the side of the account
is this note. " Received July 26th, paid me in
money and medicines the full of this bill, and
all ended. J.L."

Taking a general view of the whole book, the
most noticeable feature to me in it is the extra-
ordinary neatness, regularity, and precision of

100 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

the entries, betokening a mind of great exactness
and lines of thought kept under careful command
and within definite rule. The entries of loans
bear the words paid, or settled, or part paid, and
a cross reference to the page and year of the
diary recording the close of the transactions.
Initials heading the pages ; his own initials against
the totals of various accounts ; the constant use
of references to and from other diaries, and
backwards to preceding pages of the same book ;
the use of a tiny piece of blotting paper, trans-
ferred from page to page ; the diminutive size
of the book, and the fineness of the writing, are
all signs of this exceeding precision, and there-
fore of interest.

One entry of great clearness will illustrate the
whole : —

" Mr. W. Spencer.
" Received of him, 20 July, by the hand
of his servant, 15s., for the volume of
plays I bought for him, and so all ended.
J.L."

Of so great a man as Locke it is always re-
freshing to gather up fresh crumbs of informa-
tion.

The book contains only scraps ; my work has
been to gather them up, sort them, and identify
the part of history to which they belong, and
so to aid in a fuller understanding of the life and
character of one of England's greatest and noblest
philosophers.

CHAPTER VIII

THE J. PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES

It has been said that since the times of the
Medici, there has never been a virtuoso who can
be compared with the late Mr. J. Pierpont Mor-
gan, and that his career as collector and connois-
seur can only fittingly be put side by side with
those of the members of that great Italian family.
Another writer has compared the Morgan col-
lection of treasures with those which have been
gathered together by the various members of the
Rothschild family, and here we are perhaps
on firmer ground. Not very much is known
about the collections made by the Medici, but
a good deal is known, and much more can be
ascertained about the famous collections which
have been brought together by different mem-
bers of the great Frankfort banking family. It
must not, however, be forgotten, that the
Rothschilds are 2i family, that Mr. Morgan was
a single individual, and that, however great
have been the collections brought together by
the various members of that very wealthy family
of connoisseurs, yet we have to compare the
work of a dozen persons with that of one collector.
The more that we do so, the greater does the

102 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

marvel appear that any man, working alone on
his own responsibility, and within the space
of one lifetime, should have brought together
into one place a collection which embraces the
choicest examples from perhaps fifty different
fields of craftmanship. It must be granted,
of course, that one of the great sources of Mr.
Morgan's success was determined by the avidity
with which he purchased other collections,
adding one to the other, and in many cases
acquiring a group of objects which had been
obtained by a succession of owners, had been
weeded out in order that only the best should
be retained ; and as a result, afforded a repre-
sentative selection of fine things relative to a
particular artist or epoch. Having the means
to acquire several of these collections in their
entirety, he was able to avail himself of the work
of past generations of collectors, and present a
complete view of a special subject impossible for
any person who had started collecting within
recent days.

It may be noted in passing that, he gathered
about him a group of experts to advise him
in certain sections, keeping them for the most
part, rigidly within their own special groove, and
consulting them upon the questions which they
understood better than other people, and, as he
was able to pay the highest price for the finest
things, he secured, as a rule, what he wanted. It
was not worth while to plant upon him forgeries

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES 103

because when the prices paid were so large, the
risk was proportionally serious, and one which no
collector, and certainly no dealer, was prepared
lightly to undertake. It was fittingly said by a
recent writer that it was very difficult to know
what Mr. Morgan collected, because it was
almost impossible to think of any group of art
objects which he did not collect. His reach was
a wide one, his love of beauty extended into
all classes of craftmanship, and his desire to have
the very best in every way was overpowering.
In one respect, he may fittingly be compared
with the members of the great Jewish banking
house already mentioned, because, like the
Rothschilds, he was eager to help others who
followed after him in the study of art, by pre-
paring catalogues of what he himself possessed,
and describing his various treasures with all
the necessary technical detail. He went, how-
ever, far beyond these great modern collectors,
and it may perhaps be said that no collector
has produced, for the benefit of posterity, a
series of books which can be compared to the
group of catalogues which Mr. Morgan caused
to be compiled by various experts whom he
gathered about him.

Most of the volumes of this fine collection lie
before me, and they constitute a library in them-
selves. They vary in size and in proportion.
Some are of enormous size, royal folio, and even
larger than royal folio ever was, because the

104 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

height of the great volumes on pictures is twenty-
two inches and a half, and the royal folio ends
at twenty inches. Others are octavo and
quarto, while one certainly is a duodecimo, and
the group, which comprises over fifty volumes,
contains books which range between these sizes,
and are illustrated more or less completely in
different methods of book illustration.

It would ill befit me to say anything whatever
in these pages concerning the contents of the
six volumes for which I was responsible, but I
may perhaps be permitted, in glancing at the
whole series, to say something about their illus-
trations, more especially as these constitute one
of the most important features of the six books
in question. Illustrations always appealed to Mr.
Morgan. He loved his treasures, and he liked
to see adequate representations of them, and
with regard to certain volumes of the catalogues,
his own statement was that he wished the
illustrations to be made as perfect as possible
in order that, should anything happen to the
original objects, should they be lost in the ocean,
or should they perish by fire or earthquake, the
illustrations would remain, and would be of
sufficient accuracy and importance to enable
students to work from them with almost as great
an advantage as if the actual objects were before
them. He went further, because, knowing that
it would be impossible for European students to
give close attention to many of the objects he

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES 105

possessed, when they had been transported to his
distant home, he distributed these catalogues
with a lavish hand through the great libraries
of Europe, sending them to places in many in-
stances so remote as Petrograd and Breslau, as
Bucharest and Copenhagen, so that the students
of Europe could go to the Universities and
museums near at hand, and acquire the knowledge
they desired.

He also presented these sumptuous books to
the colleges, libraries and museums of his own
much beloved United States, and even Egypt
profited by his generosity, India was not for-
gotten, and South America certainly on one
occasion received a remembrance of his bene-
volence. Merely to glance at the titles of these
catalogues shows how far-reaching were his in-
terests. In ancient art to begin with, there are
books upon Greek and Roman bronzes, antique
glass, papyri, and upon a wonderful manuscript
of the Gospels.

The tiniest book in the series, the duodecimo
of thirty-eight pages with twenty-one plates,
issued in New York in 1908, is the work of Mr.
C. H. W. Johns, and relates to the wonderful
Ur-Engur bronze of the fourth century, an object
of the greatest possible interest and importance.
Issued in the same year, and by the same writer,
there was a catalogue of the objects with cunei-
form inscriptions which had been gathered to-
gether, and which form part of this wonderful

io6 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

collection, and there were six volumes issued in
1903 by Mr. Froehner, concerning the collection
of antique glass, three relating to the Amherst
collection of papyri, which Mr. Morgan bought
en bloc from Lord Amherst of Hackney ;
and three more, the work of the scholarly
Mr. Seymour de Ricci, which refer to the three-
fold collection of antiquities, Gallo-Roman,
Merovingian and Germanic, the great collector
had acquired.

The volume written by Mr. Hoskier on the
beautiful early manuscript of the Gospels, of
which Mr. Morgan was so justly proud, is a
triumph of typography in its own particular
way. When the Pope started the commission
for the study of the Vulgate, there was a great
desire expressed on the part of Cardinal Gasquet,
then Head of the Commission, that facilities
might be afforded him and his helpers of study-
ing this precious early manuscript. Photographs
of it accordingly were made, because Mr. Mor-
gan was always ready to assist scholarly and
scientific research, but when the photographs
had been prepared, it seemed to him that it
would be far better to go further, to produce
a complete book on the manuscript, and to illus-
trate in coloured facsimile its glorious purple and
gold, and its uncial writing, in order that every
aid should be afforded to the students who
were working at the manuscript of the Vulgate,
and that they might have before them, in the

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES 107

most perfect form, easily available, a work
dealing with this manuscript, compiled by some-
one who was facile princeps in all matters con-
cerning it. This was the origin of Mr. Hoskier's
work, and it exemplifies one interesting trait of
Mr. Morgan's character.

In a few instances, when he purchased his
various collections, catalogues more or less com-
plete were in existence. Sometimes they were
in manuscript, others had to a certain extent
been printed, and in one or two cases the cata-
logue had been already prepared prior to Mr.
Morgan's purchase of the collection and accom-
panied it, but as a rule, even if this was the case,
the Morgan hall-mark was given to the volume
by its re-issue or by the splendid manner of its
production. As an example of this, let me take
the catalogue prepared by Mr. Bernard Franck,
concerning his collection of eighteenth century
lYory tablets in wonderful gold and enamel
cases, known in France as Garnets de bal. Of
this catalogue, only fifty examples were printed,
and the book in consequence is a rare one.
Mr. Franck had given away one or two copies
of the catalogue before he sold the collection.
Mr. Morgan acquired all the remaining copies
with the collection and distributed them with
the utmost care, but before he did so, he added
to the catalogue. The title-page tells us that it
described 124 Garnets de bal du huitieme sihUy
and that Mr. Franck had been forming the

io8 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

collection between 1875 and 1902, and had
obtained examples of every variety with which
he was acquainted, but when we turn to
the end of the book, we find not only 124
illustrated, but 130, because Mr. Morgan ac-
quired six superb examples, entirely different
from any that were mentioned in Mr. Franck's
catalogue, and, as he purchased them almost at
the same time as he bought the Franck collection,
he decided to have these others illustrated at
the end of the book. The pages illustrating
these were printed in the same type as all the
other part of the book, although they were
printed in England, and the rest of the book in
France ; but an exact replica of the type used in
France was made for these extra pages, the
illustrations were printed in exactly the same
way as all Mr. Franck's illustrations, the extra
leaves were of the same paper, and the whole
thing was so bound up jthat, unless one knew
the story of the addition to the volume, one could
only tell that these pages had been added by the
very slight difference in the colour of the gilding
on the edges, and by the fact that the new
pages are somewhat stouter, and have not the
curve of the earlier ones.

In another instance, the catalogue which had
already been commenced by an expert of long
experience, was completed after his death by
another and full tribute was paid to each of the
workers, one of whom had commenced his task

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES icg

long before Mr. Morgan acquired the collection
in question. One writer only just lived long
enough to see his own sumptuous catalogue is-
sued. Few volumes are more beautiful in the
whole range of this series than the one prepared
by the Count Xavier de Chavagnac, dealing with
the French porcelain, and notably with that of
Sevres. Count de Chavagnac was the greatest
authority on his subject, and he took infinite
pains in preparing his sumptuous catalogue to
give the most perfect descriptions of the objects
in question, to obtain from the archives of the
Royal factory full information respecting their
dates, the artists who decorated them, and their
history, so as to make the book one of standard
reference where French porcelain, either of
Sevres, Chantilly, St. Cloud, or Vincennes was
concerned.

Its illustrations are mar-^'els of French colour
printing. Nothing better was ever produced by
a mechanical process. A special frontispiece
was engraved, and a special cul-de-lampe, and
these in accordance with French fashion, were
printed in two states, one on the finest of thin
vellum, before letters, and one after letters on
fapier Japon. The whole book was produced
on paper specially made for the purpose, at the
National Printing Office of France, with the
authorisation of the Minister of Justice, and
only 150 copies were printed, of which twenty-
five special ones were bound in morocco, and

no BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

No. 1 6 of this extraordinary issue is in my
possession.

The Count only lived long enough to see his
precious book through the press, and to handle
the first copy of it, and he was never able to
hear the glowing eulogies which its owners pro-
nounced upon the book to which he had devoted
so many years of his life. So suddenly had he
died, that it was not known for certain in Paris
whether the book was actually complete, and
more than one scholar in Europe was approached
with a view to completing the work, if it was left
unfinished, as had been surmised.

Some knowledge of the difficulty in producing
an illustrated book enables a real bibliographer
to appreciate to the fullest extent the three fine
volumes which comprise the catalogue of manu-
scripts and early printed books, forming part of
Mr. Morgan's library, and issued in 1907. These
volumes are the work of that well-known au-
thority, Mr. Alfred J. Pollard, of the British
Museum, and they have one feature which dis-
tinguishes them from every other catalogue of
the kind. I speak under correction, but I have
the strongest possible belief that they are the
only books of their kind where the illustrations
or facsimiles appear actually facing or side by
side with the descriptions of the books to which
they refer. In many books of this sort, it has
been found impossible to have the illustrations
adjacent to the descriptions. In these Morgan

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES iii

volumes it was determined that no difficulty-
should prevent this, and infinite trouble was
taken in arranging and in altering and planning
the description of the books, so that, side by side
with the descriptions, and facing them on the next
page, should occur such illustrations of the books
as the volume contained. No one who has not
been accustomed to such work can understand
the difficulty entailed by this task, but it was
triumphantly carried out by its learned author,
and as a general result, the volumes are far
more useful for the purpose of reference than
any other similar books of the same character
with which I am acquainted.

Here again, and in an even more sumptuous
catalogue of the manuscripts prepared by Dr.
James, no pains were spared by way of illustra-
tion. The best of colour processes were adopted,
the best of facsimile work used in the repro-
ductions of the colour-plates, and in these four
books, and the equally sumptuous volume on
the Toovey collection of book-bindings, the illus-
trations are as fine as any mechanical process
could possibly ensure.

When Mr. Morgan came to deal with his pictures
he wanted to have something rather different
in his catalogue from what had ever been pro-
duced, and suggested that the frames in which
the pictures were exhibited should be included
in the photogravures. The result has been
particularly satisfactory. The pictures look far

113 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

better in their frames, than if they had been re-
presented without them. The book is, of
course, in its three huge volumes, somewhat in-
convenient to handle, on account of the large
size of the plates, but these are wonderfully
printed, and give a better view of the pictures
to which they refer than is perhaps the case in
any other similar catalogue. In these three great
folio volumes, the work of Mr. William Roberts,
the pictures are represented by eighty-nine photo-
gravure plates, and by coloured frontispieces.
Mr. Humphry Ward wrote the introduction to
each volume, and the biographical and descriptive
notes which Mr. Roberts added to his account
of each picture have great importance, and
serve to give all future students absolute and
authoritative data upon which to base their
knowledge.

It should be added that for convenience Mr.
Morgan had all the letterpress contained in
these three huge volumes reprinted in an 8vo
volume, and bound in green morocco. This
book was privately printed like the other and
presented to various scholars and Libraries.

Similarly important, and almost as huge in
size, are the three volumes on the collections of
bronzes. Dr. Bode was responsible for the first
two volumes dealing with the bronzes of the
Renaissance, and Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith, of
the Victoria and Albert Museum, for the last
which deals with Greek and Roman bronzes.

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES 113

To the final volume, there is a pathetic interest
attached, because the book has only been issued
since the decease of the great collector, and he
himself possessed in his library only the incom-
plete and advance copy of the illustrations, and
a small part of the letter-press. Those of us to
whom Mr. Morgan promised the book, did not
receive it till nearly a year after his death, and
it is sad to reflect on the fact that this great
volume, superbly illustrated with its long series
of coloured photogravures, was never in its
complete setting in the hands of the connoisseur
who commissioned its production.

The silver plate, a magnificent collection, was
catalogued by Mr. E. A. Jones in two great
books, one dealing exclusively with the Gutmann
collection of German plate, and the other with
all the rest. These volumes are splendidly
illustrated by gravure plates.

The carved woodwork and metal work and
other treasures of the Hoentschel collection
were dealt with by Messrs. Perat6 and Briere
in 1908, in four volumes with 268 gravure plates
and some colour plates.

The Chinese porcelains comprise three volumes,
the two issued in 1904 and 191 1, the work of
Mr. Morgan's old and valued friend, Mr. W. M.
Laffan, and the one which was issued in 1907,
partly by Mr. Bushell, and partly by Mr.
Laffan, and here again we have to record the
fact that Mr. Laffan did not live long enough to

114 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

be able to complete, all the work in connection
with it to which he had set his hand.

Mr. Laffan knew his subject exceedingly-
well, few men knew it better, and the volumes
for which he was responsible are important con-
tributions to the history of the porcelain of the
great Eastern Kingdom.

Another very beautiful book is the one
on the Fairfax Murray Old Master drawings,
two volumes, delightfully illustrated in fac-
simile.

Then there are catalogues by Molinier of the
Oppenheim collection and the Mannheim col-
lection, the great treasures of which Mr. Morgan
acquired.

There is also the little catalogue by Mr. Sey-
mour de Ricci of the tapestries, and a smaller
catalogue of these tapestries in French, and
there is yet to appear the final work by the same
author on this series of Renaissance tapestries,
unequalled in their importance by any other
collection, because the work commenced by
Mr. de Ricci before Mr. Morgan's death was
not completed by him until after that event
had taken place.

Dealing with a somewhat abstruse subject
was the catalogue compiled by Mr. Kondakoff
on the Byzantine enamels, a very scholarly
work, which will always be referred to by
students who wish to give special attention to
this recondite and somewhat obscure field of art.

PIERPONT MORGAN CATALOGUES 115

and also one by Mr. Walters on certain special
Enamels of the same period.

As regards the miniatures, the jewels, the
carved woodwork and rock crystal, and above
all, the watches, mechanical process was not
accepted. Mr. Morgan was not satisfied that
any such process could adequately represent
these special treasures, and in the end artists
were employed for the purpose of painting the
coloured reproductions, were trained and taught
how the work was to be done, and set to work
to copy, with absolute fidelity, the original
objects set before them, so that in the two
editions-de-luxe of these six catalogues those
printed on real vellum and on Japanese vellum,
there are hand-coloured illustrations, rivalling
in accuracy the originals, and in the case of
objects in metal, produced in gold and silver
leaf, engraved, tooled and decorated, so that
they should facsimile the actual object which
they represented.

It was only in these six volumes that Mr.
Morgan decided to employ hand-work, and the
result gave him great satisfaction.

Certain copies of the book for more general
circulation were produced without the hand-
coloured illustrations, with a large number of
photogravure plates, but the sumptuous ones
were reserved for presentation to various
monarchs in Europe, members of his own family
and the great museums of the world.

ii6 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

These books are thick quarto volumes, the
sumptuous issue fastened with clasps and with
silver mounts, and each book set in its own slip-
case.

A curious little catalogue not often to be met
with and of rarity, because so few copies were
printed concerned his collections of rare wines
and vintages of the most famous years, and of
the highest importance for quality, bouquet and
charm.

Here are described famous wines known only
to a few connoisseurs, in many instances to be
found only in Mr. Morgan's cellars, parcels
strictly limited in quantity all that could be
obtained representing the most famous vineyards
of Europe.

There were no such Madeiras or Tokays, no
such old Claret in Magnums, no such Sherries
in Demijohns, and certainly no such eighteenth
century Cognacs and Armagnacs to be found
as this little book records, and hardly can any
cellar compete with a list so carefully selected
and so wonderfully complete.

The whole series of catalogues gathered up to-
gether forms an imposing monument to the
greatest collector who has ever lived, and one
which will endure as long as there are any students
of art, who desire at first hand to obtain authori-
tative information upon the subjects of special
interest to them.

CHAPTER IX

BRADS HAW

I WONDER how many of those who are in the
habit of constantly using Bradshaw's Railway
Guide have ever noticed that the date on each
of its issues is given, not in ordinary form, but in
the manner especially adopted by the Quakers,
so that in lieu of saying the 20th of June, the
date is given as the 20th of Sixth Month, and
that in the case of the monthly issue, the name
of the month does not appear, but the time-table
bears the figures of the 4th or 5th or 6th Month,
as the case may be. I wonder also how many
have ever examined the first of the editions of this
famous book, or thought that there were first
editions of it, and how surprised they would be
if they compared the present portly volume with
the tiny thin book which was really the first
issue of Bradshaw's Railway Guide. This very
first edition of all was a little book issued at
6d. on the 19th day of the Tenth Month in 1839,
and what has been called the second edition
was issued on the 25th of the same month in the
same year. In between these two books, there
appears to have been issued another for the little
volume, printed on the 25th of the month, is
I 117

ii8 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

called No. 3, but of No. 2, only a single copy is
known still to remain. It has just been discovered
in the possession of Bernard Quaritch, Limited.
It was regarded as of such slight importance that
copies were not kept, and no public or private
library has at present, so far as I know, been
able to produce any copy of Bradshaw's Railway
Time-Tables bearing the statement that it was
No. 2. As a matter of fact, in all probability,
the two books to which I have just referred were
not first and second editions, because the rail-
way time-tables, issued by George Bradshaw, were
in two forms, one for the Liverpool and Manchester
districts, and one for London and Birming-
ham districts, and, to a certain extent, the two
overlapped one another. One was issued at
6d. the other at a shilling. It is not easy to
account for the difference in price, because
there was very little between the sizes of the
two volumes, although certainly the shilling one
was slightly the stouter of the two, but not suffi-
ciently so to account for the doubling of the
price. It was probably ascertained, immediately
after the issue of the first book, that 6d. was not
a sufficiently high price for it, and other issues
were made is. The first little book is bound in
green cloth, is 4J by 6 inches, and is lettered in
gold on the side " Bradshaw's Railway Com-
panion." The other is bound in purple cloth,
45 inches by 3 J, and it has on the cloth an
attached label in which is lettered in green relief

BRADSHAW 119

on gold, " Bradshaw's Railway Time-Tables,
price one shilling."

Who, we might ask, was the man whose
name has passed into a household word, the
issuer of this first little railway time-table,
whose name it still bears ? He was George
Bradshaw, a Quaker, who lived in Manchester
in 1835, and followed the calling of an engraver
of maps and plans of cities. He was the son
of Thomas Bradshaw and his wife Mary Rogers,
and was born near Salford on the 29th of
July, 1 80 1. His parents were of humble origin,
but they determined to give their son a good
education, and after being instructed for a
while by a Mr. Coward, a Swedenborgian minister,
to whose Church his parents were attached, the
boy was sent to school at Overton, a school kept
by Mr. Scott. Later on, he was apprenticed to
an engraver in Manchester, named Beale. In
1820, his parents went to Ireland, and George
Bradshaw appears to have accompanied them,
and there commenced work on his own account,
as an engraver, but the business was not success-
ful, and he returned to Manchester. Here he
set to work at land surveying and the pro-
duction of various maps, the first of which
was of Lancashire, and that one was followed
by maps of the canals of Lancashire and York-
shire, which a recent writer has described as in
all probability " still the most complete record
of our inland navigation."

120 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

By this time, George Bradshaw had left the
Swedenborgians, to become a member of the
Society of Friends, and was active in the cause of
peace, in working in schools for poor children,
especially on Sundays, and was also associated
with a very well-known temperance advocate
of the day, Elihu Burritt.* In 1839 Bradshaw
married Martha Derbyshire, also a member
of the Society of Friends, and it was then that
he commenced to issue his time-table, and is
believed to have done so, in the first place,
with a view to illustrating his beautiful work
as a map engraver. He tells us, in the very
first issue, that the necessity for the book
was so obvious, to need no apology, that he
published it by the assistance of the several
railway companies, and that therefore the in-
formation might be depended upon as being
correct and authentic, and he himself vouches
for the accuracy of the maps and plans with
which it was adorned. He announced that the
next issue of the book would be on the ist of
First Month, 1840. There were three editions
of the first book. The first, dated 19.10.39, con-
tained however only the Liverpool, Manchester
and Northern Railways, the second dated 29.10.39
the Southern Railways, the third volume was
an amalgamated edition of the Northern and
Southern tables. The price was raised then to a

* When a boy I heard this man give a temperance address at
the Crystal Palace.

BRADSHAW 121

shilling, and the figure 3 appears on the right
corner of the title. All three books were pub-
lished concurrently for a year or two. Their popu-
larity decreased as the Monthly Guide became
estabHshed, and the Companion died about 1848.
In 1 841 he started another, which is really the
more direct progenitor of the time-table of the
present day, and which bears the same title
" Bradshaw's Guide." He relinquished the
phrase " Railway Time-Table " and " Railway
Companion " which he had adopted in the first
two little books, did not attempt any binding
in cloth, or the issue of elaborate maps, but
brought out boldly on the ist of 12th Month,
1 841, what he simply called " Bradshaw's
Guide " and which consisted of thirty-two pages
of print, at once the cheapest and most complete
book that had been published on the subject.
A little later on, in 1843, he came back again to
his old love of maps, and introduced into it ten
coloured maps, and some plans, and from this
guide-book descend in steady progress, the pre-
sent books so familiar to all of us. I need not
pursue the long story of the changes, in fact it is
not possible for me to do so, because no one quite
understands the evolution of this particular
book, inasmuch as the September issue of 1844
bore the number of 146, as though it had been
the 146th issue, and yet the evidence is quite
contradictory, as the previous number, so far as
can be traced at present, was No. 40. What there

123 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

was in between, or what accounts for this curious
jump in figures, no one can tell. The story-
has never been elaborated from a bibliographical
point of view, and perhaps it is hardly worth the
while of any bibliographer to give it the requisite
attention, but the three little books issued in
1839, will bear some careful consideration, and
there are many curious features about them
which are of interest in the present day. One
thing that at once strikes the observer is the
extreme beauty of the maps and plans. They
are very small, and not easy to use on account
of their abundance of detail, but they are
marvellously accurate and extraordinarily well
engraved, evidence that Bradshaw, even in
his earliest days, was desirous of giving the
best that he could to his customers. Then,
when we begin to examine the letterpress, there
are many strange references. The once accepted
tradition that no official of a railway company is
to receive a tip, existed even in those early days.
We find amongst the important notes that " no
gratuity, under any circumstances, is allowed to
be taken by any servant of the company." It
is also quite evident that the trains went slowly
and that the people who travelled by them
were restless, and inclined to move about at the
various stations, because we are told that, " to
guard against accidents and delay, it is especially
requested that passengers will not leave their
seats at any stations except on the way between

BRADSHAW 123

London and Birmingham at Wolverton, where
ten minutes is allowed for refreshments." In
these early days, the seats were numbered,
the number appeared on the ticket, and a pas-
senger might claim the seat corresponding to
his ticket, and when not numbered, he might
take any seat not previously occupied. It is
curious, however, to notice that the passenger
was not always provided with a seat inside the
carriage, and that there were outside seats, for
which a lower scale of fares was charged. He
could, if he preferred, ride in his own carriage,
and that carriage could be put on to the railway.
In that case, he did not have to pay first-class,
but " gentlemen riding in their own carriages
are charged second-class fare, and servants and
grooms riding with the horses, fourteen shillings
for the fare between Birmingham and Man-
chester." The railway officials were just as par-
ticular about their tickets then as they are now,
perhaps even more so. We read " The check
ticket given to the passenger on the payment of
his fare will be required from him on leaving the
coach, or at the station next before his arrival at
London or Birmingham, and if not then presented
he will be liable to have the fare again de-
manded." There were no smoking carriages,
and we read in the time-table, " No smoking is
allowed at the station, nor in the Company's
carriages." The regulation about children is
rather curiously worded. We are told that

124 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

" infants in arms, if unable to walk," are free
of charge, and one immediately begins to wonder
as to what class of infant in arms would be able
to walk ! It was evidently a great favour to the
public that waiting-rooms should be provided,
and attention was particularly drawn to the fact
that there was an attendant in charge, the matter
being mentioned twice in one sentence. " At
the Wolverton Central Station, a female is in
attendance, where refreshments may be obtained
at the Birmingham Station, refreshments are
provided, and waiting-rooms with female atten-
dants."

The second-class carriages were open at the
side, without lining, cushions, or divisions in the
compartment, but the second-class carriages that
were used on the night mail train were closed,
and entirely protected from weather. On that
train it was mentioned that " each carriage has
a small roof lamp."

With regard to luggage " passengers," we
read, " are especially recommended to have
their names and addresses or destination legibly
written on their luggage, when it will be placed
on the top of the coach in which they ride, unless
it be in a bag or other small package, so small as
may be conveniently taken into the carriage,
and placed under the seat opposite to that they
occupy." I believe I am correct in stating that
at the present day no passenger has the right to
place his luggage in the rack over his own head

BRADSHAW 125

in the railway carriage. The place where he
should put it is in the rack opposite, the idea
being that he can keep his eye upon it, and it will
be seen that this was the case in the early days of
railway travelling, as the small packages were
then placed opposite to the passengers, although
they were under the seats, and not above them.

There are many examples similar to these
which prove how conservative we have been in
England in the matter of railway regulations.
When they have once been planned and agreed
upon, they remain, and it takes almost an earth-
quake to alter them. Allusion has already
been made to the old-time fiction that no ser-
vant of a railway company is allowed to accept
a gratuity, and the present custom, which has
singularly little to recommend it, and which
states that a ticket, once issued, cannot be
transferred to anyone else, and cannot be used
upon any other day than the one whose date it
bears, is another survival of the early regulations.
The little time-table before me states that " A
passenger, having once paid his fare, and taken
out a ticket, may go by any of the trains that
day, but the ticket will not be availale on the
following day, unless in any very special in-
stance."

An odd feature appears with regard to children's
fares. The book states that " children under
seven years of age for first-class carriages are
charged second-class price, but for second-

126 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

class carnages are charged third-class price."
Probably the result was, however, very much
what it is in the present day, when the child's
fare is half-price for an adult.

The division of the trains was, of course,
different from what it is now, as in the time-table
we read of first-class and second-class trains, as
well as quick trains, mail trains and mixed trains,
these phrases referring in some cases to the speed,
and in other cases to whether the carriages are of
all classes, or some are open and some closed. The
table of trains is of course a very short one, and
the little books only relate to certain districts, the
green book giving the trains from Liverpool to
Manchester, from Manchester to Littleborough
and back, from York to Leeds and Selby and
back, from Preston to Liverpool and Manchester
and back, and from Manchester to Bolton and
back, together with the fares and hackney coach
fares from Lime Street Station, Liverpool, and
various places in the city.

The second book gives the fares from London
to Birmingham and back, from London to
Twyford and back, from Birmingham to Liverpool
and Manchester and back, from Liverpool to
Manchester and back, and from Newcastle to
Carlisle, and also, in a very much abbreviated
form, the trains for Birmingham and Derby,
Manchester and Leeds, Manchester, Bolton and
Bury, Nottingham and Derby, Sheffield and
Rotherham, London and Twyford. In addition

BRADSHAW 127

to this, we have, in the second book, the
hackney coach fares from Euston Station to
various places in London, divided into two
groups, either for a coach or for a cab, in the
same sort of table as for the various distances in
Liverpool.

A little later, a volume was issued which con-
tained the railways from London to Brighton,
but the very idea of travelling with a season
ticket seemed to be inconceivable, for after
announcing that only first-class trains stopped at
first-class stations, a phrase which is not very
easy to understand, and then having described
the trains as containing their best carriages —
" glass coaches," it went on to state that an
annual subscription ticket from London to
Brighton and back would cost one hundred
pounds ! "

It is sometimes difficult for us to understand
that so short a time has elapsed since the first
railways were introduced into England. Very
rapid progress has been made in all matters
connected with them, yet, in the midst of all
this, there occur well-defined rules which were
laid down at first, and have not been altered to
the least extent.

George Bradshaw continued to issue his guide
up to the time of his death, and was the founder
of the firm which is still responsible for this
very useful book. He himself, having taken
great interest in Peace Conferences, attending

128 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

various important meetings in Frankfort, and
various places abroad, began to lend a helping
hand to the ocean penny postage movement,
and was present at a Conference held in its
support in Manchester, in 1853.

He was at that time keenly interested in Con-
tinental Bradshaws, which seemed to him to ofler
a wider sphere of circulation than the English
one, and, anxious to gather up information him-
self on the spot concerning the Continental rail-
ways, went off to Norway, about the railways
of which country little was known at that
time. Cholera was raging in Christiania, and
three days after Bradshaw's arrival in that
place, he died from this fatal malady, when he
was but fifty-three years of age but his name
will probably endure till the last train has
finished running.

N.B.— While this chapter was in print, I found out that
my friend Mr. E. H. Dring was preparing to study the
bibliography of Bradshaw, and I am greatly indebted to him
for some new information which I have incorporated on
pages 120 and 121. He is studying the whole subject, aided
by several unique works in his possession, and he will, I hope,
in due course produce a finished bibliographical treatise on
these interesting and very rare little books.

CHAPTER X

THE PUBLICATIONS OF YE SETTE OF ODD
VOLUMES

There is a fascination about tiny books, and
this seems to be intensified when they are short
and square and squat " dumpy twelves " as
some writer has styled them. There is also of
course an especial charm about privately printed
volumes, books that the ordinary purchaser can-
not buy from the booksellers, and which are
only issued for the members of a society. Both
these elements of attraction are united in the
privately printed Opuscula of the Sette of Odd
Volumes. The books are difficult to get. Very
few people have a complete series, because one
of the books is so rare that it is almost
impossible to purchase a copy of it. I have
been collecting these dainty little volumes for
a long time, and I think that I am nearer to per-
fection in my series of Odd Volumes than any
other member of Ye Sette can claim to be, and
yet one never can tell. It is only a few months
since that there was sold to a member of the
Society in one of the auction rooms in London
two copies of one of the volumes (No. 7),
printed on large paper, and each differing from

129

130 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

the other, both in the size of the paper, and in
bibliographical peculiarities. No one had known
that there were more than 133 copies of that
book printed, and no one had guessed that out
of that 133 there were any on large paper. Per-
chance these were proofs, or perhaps copies
printed for the author himself, but they had
never been heard of before, and such a circum-
stance may, of course, happen again.

Ye Sette of Odd Volumes claims to have
existed from time immemorial. As a matter of
fact, the " time immemorial " goes back to
about 1875, but it has managed to do a good
deal of work in its time, and only a little while
ago held its 370th dinner.

The first of its privately printed books was
issued in 1880, and was called " B.Q." — a
biographical and bibliographical fragment re-
lating to its first President, the well-known and
greatly respected Bernard Quaritch. Since then
the little series has gone on extending, and the
last volume that was issued to the members of
the Sette was numbered 73.

The books deal with all kinds of subjects. They
are, for the most part, papers or essays that were
read by members of the Sette at the meetings,
usually after dinner, and as the persons forming
the Sette have generally been selected because
they knew more about some one special subject
than anyone else, so the papers and essays con-
tain something definite in the way of information

YE SETTE OF ODD VOLUMES 131

on the author's own subject, that is not to be
found elsewhere. There are papers on " Intaglio
Engraving," on " Caligraphy," " Blue and
White China," " Neglected Frescoes in Northern
Italy," "Automata," "The Royal Society,"
" The Sweating Sickness," " London Anti-
quities," " University Magazines," " Odd Num-
bers," " Ships," " Queen Anne Music," " Frost
Fairs on the Thames," " Liturgical Literature,"
" Children's Books," " Coloured Books," " Pla-
giarism," " Magic Mirrors," " Organ Music,"
"Arabs," "Scottish Witchcraft Trials," and
many other subjects, and they are all printed
with the same characteristics, and all about the
same size, not absolutely regular on the book-
shelf, because some are rather taller than others,
some more fat, and others a trifle more dumpy,
but there they are, a charming and a precious
little set of books.

The rarest of all is the first edition of a little
pamphlet by Professor York Powell, called
" Some words on Allegory in England." So
rare is this pamphlet that a second edition
of it, forming Opusculum 37, was issued after
the death of the author, and the opportunity
was taken of including in this reissue some
charming reminiscences of York Powell, a table
of the chief events in his life, and some general
information about the precious little pamphlet
which constitutes the rara avis which all collectors
of Odd Volumes are anxious to acquire.

132 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

The original first edition was issued in Sep-
tember, 1895, and less than fifty copies were
sent out to the members. It was only a thin
square pamphlet of twenty-five pages, in a rough
brown paper cover, and it was distributed by the
writer with his good wishes. It was not issued
according to the inflexible laws which govern
Ye Sette of Odd Volumes, it offended against
all the canons of Ye Sette with regard to its
publications, and was really an efflorescence,
and would have become a source of serious
trouble to the conscientious bibliographer and
collector. The Librarian of Ye Sette, Brother
Quaritch, recognising the value of the paper,
but shocked at its unorthodox vesture, and
unwilling to let it wander away without a label,
or anything to mark it as an Opusculum, caused
to be printed and issued a little leaflet of four
pages, not quite the same size as the original
pamphlet, and not on the same paper, with the
ordinary and legitimate statement that it was
one of the privately printed Opuscula of Ye
Sette, and he sent round to each of the Brethren
who had received from the author the little
pamphlet, two copies of his leaflet of four pages.
Some had already destroyed the pamphlet, not
realising its interest, and not recognising it
as one of the Opuscula. Some had mislaid it,
and the result is, that some people have got the
pamphlet, and not the leaflet, and some have
the leaflet (one copy, or perhaps two), and not

YE SETTE OF ODD VOLUMES 133

the pamphlet, and as very few of the Brothers
who are now on the roll of Ye Sette of
Odd Volumes were members when the Brother
Ignoramus issued this little book, in September,
1895, the difficulty in obtaining the precious
little paper, of which only sixty. were printed,
is evident. I believe there was one man who
had two copies of it. One I have seen. The
other, he told me, he believed he has put away so
safely that he could not find it ! It is the greatest
treasure in my set of the books, and my copy
happens to be a specially inscribed one.

Another of the rare books is one on " Queen
Anne Music " which was issued in 1883. There
were only a hundred copies and it is a little
pamphlet of forty pages. It very seldom comes
into the market, and always fetches a very high
price.

The collector who is trying to gather together
a set of these privately printed books will be
puzzled, when he looks at the list, to find that
the numbers jump from 33 to 35, and that there
is no No. 34. As a matter of fact. No. 34 is
another of the very rare pamphlets, and not one
of the original set of Opuscula. It is called,
not an Opusculum but an " Obfusculum." It is
declared as having been " secretly issued "
to the members of the Sette, and is endorsed as
" Not fit for publication." It is a little pamph-
let of thirty-four pages, dated 1894, of which
seventy-one copies only were printed, and it

134 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

consists of a very clever, although somewhat
sarcastic treatise concerning one of the mem-
bers of the Sette, who was not able to print
his paper for the other members, because of
certain unfortunate and unforeseen accidents.
Some members of the Sette, putting their heads
together, issued in this pamphlet what they
pretended was the paper read by the learned
member. They invented all kinds of extraor-
dinary foot-notes, and added to this sham paper
a series of numerous verses, the work of various
members of the Sette, all of them upbraiding the
unfortunate person who had not printed for the
other members his very interesting paper, and
who stated that he was quite unable to do so.
This amusing little squib was unofficially issued
and circulated amongst the members of the Sette.
It is called No. 34, and occupies that place in
the series of volumes, but it was unauthorised,
and is very difficult to obtain.

The bold man, however, who sets to work to
collect the privately printed books of the Sette
of Odd Volumes, must not confine his attention
to the little series to which I have just alluded,
because there are four other sets of books issued
by this Sette, all of which he will want to possess.
There are first the annual Year-Bokes. The
earliest, separately issued, dealt with the eleventh
year of the work of the Sette, because the previous
years had been carefully described in other
volumes which came in amongst the Opuscula,

YE SETTE OF ODD VOLUMES 135

before it had occurred to the members to issue
the Year-Bokes as a separate compilation. The
result of this arrangement is that Opusculum
No. 3, a very fat little book, tells the story of the
History of the society from 1878 to 1883, and
Opusculum No. 18, continues the interesting
narrative down to 1888. Then in 1889 begins the
first of the Year-Bokes, and year by year they
went steadily on, until we come to Year-Boke
No. XIX. which was produced in 1910, and then
there occurs a gap. No. XX. has never been
issued. It will come out some day, but when,
nobody knows. Again Nos. XXL, XXII. and
XXIII. are also still on the stocks ; the
delinquent Presidents, who were responsible for
the missing Year-Bokes, are constantly being up-
braided by the other members, and there is yet
hope of seeing these missing books issued.

No. XXIV., which dealt with the 34th year of
the Society's procedure, has been issued ; and
three more volumes are in course of compila-
tion—Nos. XXV., XXVI. and XXVII.

These books are not bound in the same way as
the Opuscula. They have brown leather backs,
with bands of the two colours, blue and red,
which constitute the selected colours of the
Sette.

Of one of these Year Bokes, No. II., there
are two editions, one expurgated and the other,
a far rarer volume, unexpurgated and with-
drawn from circulation. The first issue was

136 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

considered to be libellous. It is, of course, a
treasure every collector desires to acquire.

Still, that is not the end. There are four
other series. There are a certain number of
delightful little papers, rather shorter than those
issued in the Opuscula, and not quite of such
importance, that were issued as Miscellanies.
There are twenty of them, and some are seldom
to be met with. No more will be issued.

Then there is a set of booklets, which it is
much more easy to collect, as they are given
away at the dinners of the Sette to all the guests
that are present, and therefore printed in very
much larger numbers than any of the privately
printed volumes referred to. Of these booklets
there are forty-four, the first issued in 1890,
the last in 1920. Some of them, to the careless
bibliographer, seem to be alike, but there are
certain divergencies. Some have a line printed
in red where another one has it in black, and there
are errors and misprints which have to be attended
to by the careful collector. They give a little
history of the Sette. They detail the list of its
publications, and of its members. They give
its rules and its regulations, and constitute de-
lightful little memorials of the various occasion
upon which they are presented.

Then there is the set of Extras, and nobody
knows quite how many there are of these. Some
are leaflets of only three or four pages. Others,
such as the Order of Initiation, one of the very

YE SETTE OF ODD VOLUMES 137

rarest, is a little pamphlet of fifty pages. Others
steer in between, for example, the Private and
Confidential Report of the Publication Com-
mittee, which was issued in 1910, is a little
book of twenty-seven pages and is unusually
difficult to obtain. Several of them are Vale-
dictory Addresses, delivered by Presidents when
vacating the Chair of Office, and sometimes these
are pamphlets of eight pages, and sometimes
larger ones of twenty-two. One of two of the
Extras are broadsides. Several are poems. One
is the reprint of a tract on electricity and magne-
tism, which one of the members printed and gave
away. Others, again, relate to the bookplates
of the members of the Sette, or to excursions
made by the Sette, or to exhibitions of books
and pamphlets and manuscripts brought to-
gether by members of the Sette. There are,
perchance, about five-and-thirty of these little,
ephemeral leaflets, which constitute the series
of Extras, and the patient collector must try
to acquire all of them, if he would claim that
his collection of the publications of the Sette
of Odd Volumes is anything like complete.

Finally, there are what may be termed
Oddities, books issued by members in Opuscu-
lum form. There are volumes, " In praise of
Tobacco," concerning Playing Cards, Book
Plates, Samuel Pepys, Sir Thomas Bodley,
Limited Editions and others called, " With the
Odd Volumes," " An Odd Volume for Smokers,"

138 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

" Sevres China," " The Yeoman's Tale," " An
Odd Ditty," " Quatrains," and so on, some
sixteen wholly unauthorised, but very interest-
ing volumes.

If he is a very enthusiastic collector, the reader
will collect the menus of the dinners, and the
notices issued to the members. In this he can
never attain perfection. Even the great albums of
the Sette in its Archives, which are supposed to
include a copy of everything printed in connection
with the Sette, do not contain all that has been
issued, and various members have certain trea-
sures which they guard with all secrecy, for fear
they should be called upon to hand over and
deliver them up to the Archives of the Society,
to make its own set complete. Hence it is that
collecting the publications of Ye Sette of Odd
Volumes is a never-ending task. One may hope
to make the series of Miscellanies, of Opuscula,
of Year-Bokes, of Booklets, practically com-
plete. One may get very close to a complete
set of the Extras, but when it comes to the menus
and the various little documents, perfection is
unattainable.

Once again, books do not constitute all that
the Society has issued. It has issued to some of
its members some charming little illustrations
known as Folia, and these are very rare, and
difficult to obtain, and then again there are
certain works that are called " Opera Minora,"
which are dedicated to the Sette, and one which

YE SETTE OF ODD VOLUMES 139

is known as the " Opus Majus," a large book on
Palaeography, which the collector must obtain.
These he can generally get at with some difficulty,
and the power of the purse, but many of the
tiny things have perished, and of these he can
never hope to make his series perfect.

A prettier little lot of books it would be
difficult to imagine, and the sport of Odd Volume
hunting may be warmly commended to the
collector who wants to start a new hobby. He
will find it fascinating and amusing, and he is
not likely, as he gathers the little books about
him, ever to regret that he started upon the
quest.

CHAPTER XI

HOROLOGICAL LITERATURE

One of the shelves in my library is entirely filled
with books more or less intimately connected
with the craft of horology, ranging in period
from some of the first literature on the subject
down to the very latest catalogues. I suppose
that the earliest reference of any importance
to the invention of watches is that which was
made by Johannes Cocclseus in his commen-
tary on the Cosmographia of Pomponius Mela
(a copy of which is before me), published in
Nuremberg in 151 1. The words may be thus
very freely translated, " Ingenious things are
just now being invented by Peter Hele, as yet a
young man. He hath works which even the
most learned mathematicians admire, for he
fabricates small horologes of iron, fitted with
many wheels, which wheresoever they are borne,
and without any weight, both show and strike
forty hours, whether they be carried in the bosom
or in the pocket." The man to whom allusion
is made in this interesting statement is more
usually known as Peter Henlein, a clever worker
in iron, who was born in Nuremberg in 1480,
and died there in 1542, and to his memory there

140

HOROLOGICAL LITERATURE 141

is in his native town a very stately monument,
while his bust also appears in the National
Valhalla at Regensburg. He certainly was, as
far as we know at present, the first person to
adopt the long ribbon of steel, coiled very tightly
round a central spindle, as the driving force for
a portable clock or watch, and he appears to
have brought this ingenious idea into use, shortly
after 1500. It is not much later than that,
when Martin Luther, in writing to Father Frederick
Pistorius, the last Abbot of Saint Egidius in
Nuremberg, on the 22nd of April, 1527, thanks
the Abbot most warmly for his very acceptable
present of a watch, and goes on to say, " I feel
compelled to become a pupil of our mathema-
ticians, in order to understand this unique time-
keeper. Never before have I seen such an
object."

We, of course, know that the class of watch in-
vented by Henlein, one of which belonged to
Luther, and is referred to in the earlier books on
my horological shelf, was not exactly what we
should term a pocket watch. More strictly
speaking, it was a table clock or watch. It
was in a shallow circular case. It stood on a
table, and had a hinged lid to it. Nothing made
by Henlein himself now remains, at least none
of the collectors have ever been able to fin^ a
watch that bears his signature. It was at first
thought that there was one in existence, and I
remember, when in Vienna, being shown in the

142 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

house of a great collector, a watch with Henlein's
signature, but, as the collector (herself, by the
way, an interesting person, and a poet of
no mean reputation in Austria, the Baroness
Ebner-Eschenbach) was careful to explain to me
the signature had since been discovered to be a
forgery, and the watch I could myself declare
was certainly not of Henlein's period. It was
evident that it belonged to a time fifty to
seventy years after his. It is of interest, how-
ever, to know that there are many very early
circular clock-watches in existence, although in
several instances, the movements have been so
altered and changed that but little of the original
metal-work remains. The cases, however, have
seldom been interfered with, and one of the most
important, I have often examined, because it
belongs to a private collector in London, who
has some interesting watches in his possession.
This is dated 1539, and bears upon it the coat
of arms of an English family, the Stanhopes ;
a long and interesting inscription relating to that
family, and two Latin mottoes. This case is
probably that of one of the earliest table watches
in existence ; one of the very first to be received
in London, and constitutes a land-mark in the
history of English horology.

The majority of my books relating to watch-
making are early French volumes of the eighteenth
century, because in about 1780 there was quite
a considerable literature issued in Paris bearing

I

HOROLOGICAL LITERATURE 143

upon it, and the subject at that time was re-
ceiving considerable attention from mathemati-
cians, and especially from astronomers. Great
searching was then taking place for a chrono-
meter which would be reliable in the marine
service.

France has always been the home of an impor-
tant watch-making industry, and this centred
round particular districts, notably about Blois,
Paris and Lyons ; but one of the earliest places in
France where watches were made was Autun,
and in that town there was a whole series of
watchmakers, members of the Cusin family,
who were specially interested in the manufacture
of portable time-keepers. At the beginning the
trade remained in and around Nuremberg, and
even when a part of it passed to France, there was
still a considerable industry left in Nuremberg,
so much so, that in various countries of Europe
the early oval watches were always known as
" Nuremberg eggs," irrespective of their places
of origin. These oval watches came into use in
about 1560, and then rapidly there was a
demand for other shapes, and watches were
made cross-shaped, octagonal, hexagonal, and,
later on, circular.

The special demand for the less usual shapes of
watches appears to have existed more in France
than in Germany, the good taste of the French
watchmaker leading him to vary his ideas
with regard to shape at his own sweet will, and

144 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

to prepare, for his various clients, watches that
would please them. It was in France also that
the idea of using other materials for watch cases
came first into vogue, and the makers of Lyons
and Blois, Autun, Angouleme, and Rouen,
utilized rock-crystal, agate, and eventually
enamel, in the manufacture of their watches, and
produced some of the most beautiful objects of
which horology can boast. It is probable that
the cross-shaped watches were made for the
heads of religious orders, abbots or abbesses,
whereas those that resembled a scallop shell
or were octagonal or circular were probably for
lay clients who demanded something original
and unusual.

In about 1600 there arose a curious idea of
making memento m^ri watches in the shape of
skulls, very likely that they should be placed
upon a prie-dieu or a domestic altar, or worn
in connection with a rosary, or round the neck,
because it must be remembered when one finds
references to watches in this period there is
nothing as to their being carried in the pocket.
There were no pocket watches, they were made
to stand on the table or the desk, or else to be
worn upon a chain or rosary hanging around the
neck, or suspended from the waist.

It has been interesting, in going through the
Huguenot records, many extracts from which
find a place on the shelf to which I have alluded,
to notice how much in this country we owe

1

HOROLOGTCAL LITERATURE 145

to these people, who fled from France to
England, and brought over with them consider-
able knowledge and skill in their industry.
From the earliest days of watchmaking in
England, we have been indebted to persons who
were natives of other countries than our own,
but in front stand two men who may be un-
doubtedly claimed as Englishmen, William
Anthony, the clockmaker for Henry VIII., and
Bartholomew Nusam, who it is clear was a
Yorkshireman. Nusam, however, was followed
by Nicholas Urseau, evidently a foreigner, and
then we come to a long list of makers working
in England, whose names reveal their foreign
connection. To them again there is one great
exception, because Ramsay, who was the clock-
maker to James I. and to Henry Prince of
Wales, was a Scotsman, and a man of high repute
and considerable importance, so much so, that
when the Clockmakers' Company was incor-
porated in 163 1, Ramsay became its first master,
and from that time we have still in existence a
long range of documents belonging to that
interesting company which give us names and
very often information concerning the early watch-
makers of England, their places of business, their
career, and the names of those who worked
with, and eventually succeeded them. We
have every reason in England to be proud of
the exponents of this great craft, because even
if we did learn the details of it first from Germany,

146 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

and eventually from France, we have produced
men who have been supreme in their own work,
and who have been responsible for many of
the chief inventions that have assisted in making
the modern watch what it is. Thomas Tompion
has been well styled " the father of English
watch-making," and was certainly one of the
greatest watchmakers of the day; George Graham
was responsible for the horizontal cylinder escape-
ment and the deadbeat ; and Daniel Quare
invented the repeater watch. All these hold
high position in the story of the great masters
of horology, and it is of interest to note that
many of the early watchmakers belonged to the
Society of Friends, and that we owe to that
Society such men as Graham, Tompion, Quare,
Wagstaffe, and East, whose names carry great
weight in the catalogues of collectors and in
the records of the Clockmakers' Company. I
refer to some of these in another chapter.

In exterior decoration, the English watch-
makers did not attempt to compete with their
French brethren. Most of the early English
watches are plain, and severe in their decoration.

A few of the metal cases certainly are ex-
quisitely engraved and chased, and now and
again, English watches may be found having
enamels inserted in the case, the enamels, as a
rule, being French work, but on the other hand,
French cases are often of extreme beauty,
especially those which belong to the period of

1

HOROLOGICAL LITERATURE 147

Louis XIII., when the miniature and enamel
painters of Blois, Lyons, and Rouen, vied with
each other in producing exquisite examples of
decoration, and in painting both the exterior
and interior of the cases which contain the
watch movements with religious and classical
scenes, represented with wonderful dexterity.

There is a growing interest in France in the
story of the old French clockmakers, and in
many districts there have been students work-
ing at the archives, concerning the watchmakers
of their own especial towns. To study the
subject, one has to search the proceedings of
some of the lesser known French archaeological
societies, and find in various articles, dealing
with the notable families of the towns, informa-
tion concerning the various watchmakers and
what they did. In other instances, there have
been books devoted expressly to the subject,
special essays dealing with the watchmakers
of a particular place, such as Blois, full of
freshly garnered information, obtained from
records and archives, all bearing upon the subject
in question.

Something of the same sort of work has
been done in Scotland from the records of
the Hammermen, and in England from the
Clockmakers' Company, while inquiring students
in Germany and in Poland have been gather-
ing up information concerning the watch-
makers of Augsburg, of Breslau, of Warsaw, and

148 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

of other places, so as to ascertain, with more
or less accuracy, when certain watches were
made, and something of the history of the men
who made them. Augsburg, especially recalls
an interesting investigation, in which I took
some part, in order to discover who was
responsible for a wonderful watch set in a ring,
and eventually, by research in that city, in
Antwerp, in Mantua, and in Sweden it was
found possible to piece together the story of the
manufacture of a watch set in a ring for the Duke
of Mantua, made by two watchmakers, one a
German and the other a Swede, one of whom was
responsible for the beautiful mount, with the
little folding triptych which covered the face of
the watch, and the other for the finely made
movement with all Its delicate workmanship.
As soon as one begins to study carefully the
history of a town with regard to any local craft,
one comes upon a mine of information regarding
these old craftsmen of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth century. They worked so carefully, put
so much of themselves into what they achieved,
and also their story is so often recorded in the
archives of Guilds and Corporations that those
who seek diligently and can piece together little
detached details can often arrive at quite a
long story of the history of some craftsman who
quietly working — perhaps in one of the smaller
German towns — produced a work of art now
the treasure of a great and important collectio

1

HOROLOGICAL LITERATURE 149

It does not always occur to us, when we use
phrases connected with the watch, to enquire
from what they are derived, and we are perhaps
apt to overlook the fact that we owe the habit of
keeping the watch in a pocket to the Puritans in
England, whose dislike of display induced them
first of all to conceal their timekeeper from the
public gaze. Previous to that time, watches had
been worn upon chains, sometimes two of
them, one hanging on either side of the wearer,
but the Puritan put his watch away, and the
old German word, " fubbe," meaning small
pocket, began to be introduced when the place
where the watch was kept was more carefully
defined, and from that we have the word " fob,"
which has now become part of the English
language. There were other places where the
watch was worn, besides suspended on the chain.
I have already referred to one set in a ring,
but watches have been also used as buttons to a
coat, and the Due de Richelieu, in 1781, is
described wearing watches as fastenings for his
coat, and the same idea was adopted by
Count Cagliostro, who journeyed from Lyons to
Grenoble in an open carriage wearing six watches
as buttons to his overcoat. There are also
instances on record in which watches have
been made in such a small size that one could be
worn as a stud. Such a watch is actually to be
seen in the Pierpont Morgan collection.

We must not think that Shakespeare, w^hen,

150 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

in the well-known passage in " As you Like It,"
he speaks of Jacques drawing " a Dial from his
poke," refers to a pocket watch. That must
have been some kind of portable sundial with a
compass attached, for most certainly, in his
time, no watches such as we understand in the
use of the word, were kept in the pocket,
but in other places Shakespeare does refer to
table watches, and to their striking. References
in the mouth of Malvolio in "Twelfth Night,"
and of Sebastian in " The Tempest " certainly
allude to table watches which must have stood
on a desk or a prie-dieu, and which struck the
hour upon a bell.

There have been many collections of watches
in England, and there are interesting examples
to be seen in our national museums, but perhaps
the best and most important collection now
available is that preserved in the Guildhall,
belonging to the Clockmakers' Company (of
which I am a member), and a very interesting
and well-arranged catalogue of that collection
is not the least of the treasures on my horo-
logical shelf. We have, however, nothing in
England to compare in the way of great beauty
with the collection of watches that at one
time existed in Russia. The Empress Catherine
was warmly interested in the work of the
English watchmakers of the eighteenth century,
and purchased many of their finest examples,
commissioning many others, and the watches in

1

HOROLOGICAL LITERATURE 151

the Hermitage collection were the best examples
in existence of the craft of the greatest horologers
both of France and England. I have had them
all in my hands, and examined them closely. I
wonder where they now are ?

CHAPTER XII

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS

It is a somewhat curious circumstance that the
chief eighteenth-century watchmakers in London
should have been members of the Society of
Friends. Comparatively little has hitherto been
known about several of those men whose names
are still household words to the craft, and
whose signatures on their movements are eagerly
accepted by collectors, as guarantees of sound
workmanship and of extraordinary excellence
even now. It fell to my lot some few years ago
to make special searches for information respect-
ing Graham, Tompion, Quare, East and Wagstaffe,
who were the most notable amongst them, and as
the notes I collected are buried in a privately
printed catalogue, it may be worth while here
to reprint some of the stories connected with
the life and work of these men. East was
the earliest, Tompion perhaps the greatest of
his day, Graham produced the most beautiful
work, Quare was the most eminent inventor,
and the person who took the highest position in
the society of the day, while Wagstaffe, whose
portrait is highly characteristic, was the friend
of George Fox, and a very popular man. All of

15a _

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 153

them are worthy of note, and to those interested
in English biography, and fine craftsmanship,
and especially to all collectors, I think a few notes
concerning them may be of some interest.

THOMAS WAGSTAFFE.

Edward East was watchmaker to Charles II.,
a clever and important maker, successor in the
esteem of the King to David Ramsay.

It is recorded that East resided at one time in
Pall Mall, near the Tennis Court, and attended
the King when various games were being played

154 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

in the Mall, His Majesty often providing one of
East's watches as a prize for the competition,
and it was spoken of simply as an " East."
Later on East seems to have removed to Fleet
Street, for Britten records that when Mr.
(afterwards Sir Thomas) Herbert, one of the King's
attendants, failed in his punctual duties in the
morning. His Majesty provided him with a gold
alarum watch which was procured from East,
the King's clockmaker in Fleet Street.

In the Return of Strangers in Farringdon
Without, now preserved in the Record Office,
dated 1635, East is recorded as resident in Fleet
Street in the Parish of St. Dunstan in the West,
employing a Dutchman name Elias Dupree.
Lady Fanshawe, says Britten, stated that when
she came from France in the autumn of 1641,
she lodged in Fleet Street with Mr. East the
watchmaker. In 1690 East is referred to as
residing at the Sun, outside Temple Bar. In the
Morrison collection were two manuscript warrants
authorizing the Receiver-General to pay 3^40 to
Mr. East, watchmaker, for a " watch and an
alarum of gold, made by him for the late King
Charles."

East was one of the ten persons named in the
original Charter for the Clockmakers' Company.
He was Master in 1645, ^^^ again in 1652.
Britten says that he was the only treasurer ever
appointed to the Company, and the office was
created because, in 1647, the renter warden re-

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 155

fused to give the usual security for the goods
of the Company, and a treasurer had therefore to
be appointed, but on the death of Edward East,
the office was allowed to lapse. In 1692, his
old friend Henry Jones, who was Master of the
Company, and who had been East's apprentice,
informed the Court that Mr. East desired during
his lifetime to make a gift of £100 to the Company,
for the benefit of the poor, and Mr. Jones added
that he would contribute a similar sum. In the
following year Mr. East gave the £100, and the
records of the Clockmakers' Company show that
it was ordered, '' That the Masters and wardens
do go to Mr. East and give him hearty thanks
for his charity."

I have been fortunate enough to discover the
date of his death, which has hitherto been un-
known. He died in 1701, in the Parish of All
Hallows at the age of eighty-four, and his burial
is recorded in the Friends' Register at Devon-
shire House. It is therefore evident that the
old tradition which states that he became a
Quaker and died in that fellowship is correct,
and East's name must be added to those of
Quare, Wagstaffe, Tompion, Graham, Peckover,
and others who were more or less intimately
associated with the Society of Friends. The
only perfect '* East," with chain, car and key
complete, that I have ever seen is in the Pierpont
Morgan collection. It came from the Hilton-
Price collection.

156 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Thomas Tompion was one of the greatest of
the English watchmakers, and has in fact been
called the father of English watchmaking.
According to the accounts given concerning him
by Britten, and in the Dictionary of National
Biography, he was born at Northill, Bedford-
shire, in 1638, and when quite a young man,
became a clockmaker at Water Lane, Blackfriars,
his shop, the Dial and Three Crowns, being at the
Fleet Street corner of the Lane, close to where
now stand the offices of the Daily News. He
was the leading clockmaker at the Court of
Charles the Second, and a man whose mathe-
matical and philosophical pursuits made him
very popular amongst the learned men of his
time, both he and his great successor Graham,
being gladly received on terms of equality by
the members of the Royal Society. He was a
member of the Clockmakers' Company in 1 671,
a Freeman, admitted by redemption in 1674, an
Assistant on the Court in 1691, Warden in 1700,
and Master in 1704. He is believed to have
been unmarried, and he died on 20th November,
171 3. So high was his reputation that he was
buried in Westminster Abbey, and in the same
tomb, later on, his friend Graham was also in-
terred. Tompion's will, dated 21st October,
171 3, was proved seven days after his death by
George Graham, one of the Executors. By it
the clockmaker bequeathed to his nephew his
land and property at Northill and £100. To his

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 157

niece, who had married a clockmaker named
Banger, he gave a Hfe interest in ^£500, and at
her death it was to revert to his niece Elizabeth,
the wife of his apprentice and friend Graham.
George Graham and his wife were the residuary
legatees, and there were another niece and a
cousin mentioned in the will.

Tompion is referred to in the records of the
Clockmakers' Company as a " great clock-
maker," and he was responsible for many in-
ventions in the horological world, his clocks and
watches being so exceedingly well made that they
have always been regarded as objects worthy
of being treasured by the persons who possessed
them, and have steadily increased in value.
There are three fine examples of his work in the
Pierpont Morgan collection. Several of his
clocks are still in excellent working order, as,
for example, the one which now belongs to Lord
Mostyn, one made for William IIL at Kens-
ington Palace, the fine one in the Pump Room at
Bath, and the two chiming clocks at Windsor
Castle and Buckingham Palace. The Weather-
field collection is unusually rich in works by
Tompion. In addition to being a watchmaker
and a clockmaker, he was also responsible for
barometers, and there is a fine one at Hampton
Court Palace by him. Britten quotes many
advertisements relating to watches made by
Tompion showing the extent of his business at
that time.

158 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

The following interesting extract from the
Clockmakers' Company refers to the old diffi-
culty arising from the forgery of English names
upon foreign watches.

" 1703. The Master and Mr. Quare produced
letters from Patrick Cadell of Amsterdam, stat-
ing that Cabriere, Lambe and others, at Amster-
dam had set the names of Tompion, Windmills
and Quare on their work, and sold it for English."
I am indebted to Mr. Richard W. Goulding,
librarian to the Duke of Portland, for the informa-
tion that the Earl of Portland purchased from
Thomas Tompion, in 1691, a watch called a
" spring horologe," and the record of this pur-
chase is contained in Lord Portland's account-
book for that year.

George Graham was one of the most important
English watchmakers. He was born in Cumber-
land, a member of the Society of Friends, in
1673, on 20th July, probably at a place called
Horsegills, in the parish of Kirklinton, but the
register declares his actual birthplace as Riggs,
a little place only two miles from Horsegills,
where his mother may have been staying at the
time. Graham did not continue in the Society
of Friends, and hence their registers, the most
detailed and exact of any religious community,
are not available for his life. He came up to
London in 1688, was apprenticed to some unknown
watchmaker in London, but speedily attracted
the attention of Tompion, and apparently his

J

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 159

indentures were assigned to the greater man.
The records of the Clockmakers' Company do
not prove with absolute certainty to whom the
apprenticeship was first made, because in one
place he is spoken of as apprenticed to Thomas
Aske, and in another to Henry Aske, but it is
probable that the latter was Graham's master
for a time, and then he passed the final part of his
apprenticeship with Tompion, or else entered
Tompion's employ as soon as his apprentice-
ship had expired. With the " great clock-
maker " he speedily became on friendly terms,
and the two men lived together for many
years in amity and brotherly affection. Graham
married one of Tompion's nieces, was executor
to his will, residuary legatee, and successor in his
business. He was an expert mechanician and
mathematician, became a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and contributed to its transactions
many interesting papers, mostly of a mathe-
matical, horological, or astronomical character.
He was a man who prided himself upon the
perfection of his work and was in constant
demand by the learned men of the day,
who required instruments made with perfection
of skill and extreme beauty of mechanism. It
was Graham who made for Halley the great
quadrant at Greenwich, and for Bradley the
transit instrument, and zenith sector which he
steadily used. He also supplied the French
Academy with the apparatus used for the

i6o BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

measurement of the meridian, and was responsible
for the great planetarium made for the Earl of
Orrery, which, receiving its designation from
Lord Orrery, was the first of a series of instru-
ments which still bear the name of that distin-
guished nobleman. Graham was a very skilful
man, frank and open in his conversation, ex-
tremely kind-hearted, full of enthusiasm, and
ready to help any one who was in difficulties.
He enjoyed excellent health, was most particular
about his costume, and had certain marked
idiosyncrasies well known to his friends. Amongst
them was his great objection to interest on
money, and an entire want of confidence in any
banking system. He carried this to such an
extent that he kept all his cash in a strong
box, where notes to a very large amount were
found at his death, some of which had been in
his possession thirty or forty years. He was
a member of the Clockmakers' Company, and a
benefactor to the poor of that Company. His
death took place on i6th November, 1751, at
his house in Fleet Street, and he was buried by
night on the 24th of the same month, and in the
grave in which his master and friend Tompion
had already been interred.

Graham was responsible for the *' dead beat "
escapement, invented as an improvement upon
Clement's anchor escapement, but perhaps his
greatest invention was the mercurial pendulum,
in which he compensated for the expansion of

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS i6i

the steel by the expansion of the mercury in a
jar connected with it, and so preserved constant
the vibrating length of the pendulum. His
portrait is in the possession of the Clockmakers'
Company at the Guildhall, and a long, although
somewhat inaccurate, account of him appears
in the sixth volume of a work entitled, " The
Worthies of Cumberland," by Dr. Lonsdale,
1875, a work now very scarce. There is also a
notice of him in the " Dictionary of National
Biography."

He first became a member of the Clockmakers'
Company on 30th September, 1695, ^^^ Assist-
ant on 26th April, 1716, and was Master in
1722. There are various watches by him in the
Clockmakers' Company Museum in the Guild-
hall ; one in gold, a particularly fine example
of his work, dated 1751, bears the number 37.

His house of business for seventeen years was
with Tompion at the Dial and Three Crowns at
the corner of Water Lane, Fleet Street, where
now stands the Daily News office, but in 1720
he removed to the Dial and One Crown on the
other side of the way, next door to the Globe and
Duke of Marlborough's Head Tavern, and there
he died. This site is now covered by the offices
of " Sporting Life."

Daniel Quare, a distinguished English watch-
maker, was an eminent man of business, and
an inventor of more than ordinary genius,
who, eventually took up a position in London

i62 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Society, and was greatly respected and esteemed
by people who moved in the highest social
circle of the day. The names of his parents
are at present unknown, and it is not quite
certain as to where he was born, but according
to the " Dictionary of National Biography,"
and the various investigations made concerning
him by Mr. Isaac Sharp, the learned secretary of
the Society of Friends, and later on, by the
writer, he is believed to have been born in^i648,
and was probably a native of Somerset. He
was admitted in 1671, on 3rd April, as a brother
of the Clockmakers' Company, became an Assist-
ant in the Court on 29th September, 1698, and
Master on 29th September, 1708. He married
in 1676, Mary Stevens, the daughter of Jeremiah
Stevens, a maltster of High Wycombe, Buck-
inghamshire, and the marriage, which is recorded
at Devonshire House, describes him as a clock-
maker, residing at St. Martin's-le-Grand, in the
liberty of Westminster. Shortly afterwards he
removed to the parish of St. Anne and St. Agnes,
Aldersgate, and there, in 1678, for refusing to
pay a rate for the maintenance of the clergy of
his parish his goods to the value of £5 were seized
to defray the fine of £2 12s. 6d. This was on the
warrant of the Mayor of the day, one James
Edwards. In the following year, Quare refused
to defray the charges of the militia, and two
clocks and two watches were taken from him,
to the value of £1 1 5s. A little later on he left

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 163

Aldersgate, and settled in Lombard Street, and
there he was fined, in 1683, for attending a meet-
ing in White Hart Court, and goods to the value
of £i4-S 17s. 6d. were taken from him and from
five other persons, his companions. These
sums in present currency represent considerable
amounts. Two years after that Quare migrated
again, and finally settled down at the King's
Arms in Exchange Alley, taking up his residence
near to various other watchmakers, who were in
that same narrow street. On 4th June, 1686,
he, with fifty other Friends, was summoned to
appear before the Commissioners appointed by
James IL to sit at Clifford's Inn to hear their
grievances. This interview is reported in a
work entitled, " The Christian Progress of that
Ancient Servant and Minister of Jesus Christ,
George Whitehead, 1725." Whitehead was
one of those who were examined, and he
obtained the privilege, on behalf of his oppressed
brethren, of summoning those who were " Suf-
ferers by the Informers' unjust Persecutions
and false Informations " to appear before the
Commissioners appointed by the King. It is
mentioned in this book that when the day came
for hearing, and the informers saw the goodly
array of Friends present, they were, says White-
head, " in a great rage, and some of them cried
out, ' Here comes all the Devils in Hell,' and
seeing me they said, and ' there come the old
Devil of all.' " Every effort was made to stop

i64 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

this evidence before the Commissioners, White-
head, before the second interview, with three
other persons, one of whom is stated to have
been Daniel Quare, was arrested and brought
before the Lord Mayor, who detained them for
some hours, but eventually released them in
order that they might appear at Clifford's Inn.
Finally Whitehead had a third interview with
the Commissioners, when they showed him their
report to the King, and he protested against
a part of it, and then he tells us that " they were
so honest as they did amend their Report, and
made it more seizable and to Purpose." In
1689, Quare was again fined for tithes and
Priests' maintenance, and plate worth £3 os. iijd.
was taken from him, but after that we have no
further reference to the clockmaker being per-
secuted, and he seems to have been regarded
with great favour by William III. It was at
Quare's petition that two Westmorland Friends
were released from prison, and Quare on 2nd
May, 1695, introduced four Friends, one of
whom was the celebrated George Whitehead,
to a private interview with the King, the result
of which was that the King exerted himself on
behalf of the Friends, when an address was
brought under the notice, of Parliament, in favour
of the Affirmation Bill. Quare's signature
appears, with those of nineteen other Friends,
upon a petition of the House of Commons pre-
sented by Edmund Waller on 7th February

41

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 165

1695-6. He was a trusted member of the Parlia-
mentary Committee of the Meeting for Suffer-
ings, and in less than two years between 1700
and 1702, the Meeting paid him £356 on account
of Parliamentary expenses disbursed by him.
Quare is also frequently mentioned in the books
of the Barking Meeting, and two letters addressed
by him to that Meeting are still in existence.
Evidence of the high esteem to which he had
attained in the world of London is given by
the attendance at the marriage of his three
daughters, and of his son Jeremiah. His
daughter Anna married John Falconer, mer-
chant, on 7th June, 1705, at Devonshire House,
and the marriage certificate was not only
signed by William Penn, George Whitehead,
and various important Friends, but by the
Venetian Ambassador, the Envoy from Florence,
the Son of the Envoy from Hanover, the Por-
tuguese Envoy, the Emperor's Resident, the
Swedish Envoy, the Resident of Prussia, the
Envoy of Denmark, Henrietta Countess of
Strafford, and by many other people. His
daughter Sarah was married to Jacob Wyan,
mercer at the Bull and Mouth, on 15th March,
1712, and this ceremony was attended not only
by Penn, Whitehead, and others but by several
" Ambassadors and Envoys." Then a little
later in the same year, Quare's son Jeremiah
was married. By marriage he is declared as a
merchant, and he married one Anna Brain on

i66 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

6th September. The marriage took place at
Devonshire House, and amongst the persons who
were present, in addition to Penn and White-
head, were the Earl of Orrery, the Duke of
Argyll, the Duke of Bolton, the Venetian Am-
bassador, the Comte de Briangon, and other
distinguished foreigners. It was, however, at
the marriage of his third daughter, Elizabeth,
in November, 1715, that the greatest evidence
of the high position held by Daniel Quare
was most clearly set forth, and the original
marriage certificate still in existence shows the
names of the persons who were present on that
occasion. Elizabeth was married on loth
November at the Gracechurch Street Meeting to
Silvanus Bevan of Cheapside, citizen and apothe-
cary, son of Silvanus Bevan of Swansey {sic),
Glamorgan, South Wales, merchant, a member of
the family of Bevan, " so long prominently
associated," says Mr. Sharp, " with the work
and history of Friends, and whose name for
upwards of a century has been associated in
Lombard Street with that of Barclay." He it
was, Mr. Sharp tells us, " who carved the well-
known medallion of William Penn, and effigies
of many other celebrities of his time." To the
wedding several members of the Royal Family
were invited, but a letter, happily extant, from
the pen of an invited guest, Rebecca Osgood,
mentions that the Prince and Princess and most
of the quality, who had promised to attend the

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 167

ceremony had the night before to inform the
bridal party that by reason of an Act of Parlia-
ment, which forbade them to go to a Quaker's
meeting, they were unable to be present. The
Duchess of Marlborough was, however, at the
wedding, and various persons of high position
connected with the different Embassies. Im-
mediately after the wedding the party went to
Skinners' Hall, where, the letter tells us, a very
splendid dinner was given, and it was this
dinner that the Princess of Wales, with 300
guests of high distinction, again including the
Duchess of Marlborough, graced with their
presence.

As regard Quare's clockmaking industries,
it is interesting to record that he was the
inventor of the repeater action, and that it is
also claimed that he was the first to adopt
and to adapt the concentric minute hand.
His invention of the repeater anticipated that of
the Rev. Edward Barlow by about ten years,
and Barlow's application for a patent was
therefore strongly opposed by the Clockmakers'
Company.

The following extract from the minute books
of the Clockmakers' Company refers to this
opposition.

" 1688, September 29. — Be it remetabered
that in Pursuance of the Order of the Court of
the 8th day of February, i68f, and according to

i68 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

the order of the Court of the 5th March, i68|,
the patent endeavoured to be obtained, by one,
Mr. Edward Barlow, a priest, and to be granted
to him by the King's majesty, for his sole mak-
ing and managing for all pulling repeating
pocket clocks and watches, he pretending to be
the true and first inventor of that art and in-
vention, was by diligence and endeavour of
the Master, Wardens, and assistants of this
Company, with great charge and expense,
which was borne bv and out of the stock of the
Company, very successfully prevented, and upon
the 2nd of March, i68|-, ordered by the King in
Council not to be granted."

Another extract relates to the old difficulty
arising from the forgery of English names upon
foreign watches.

" 1703. — the Master and Mr. Quare produced
letters from Patrick Cadell of Amsterdam,
stating that Cabrier Lambe, and others, at
Amsterdam, had set the names of Tompion,
Windmills and Quare on their work, and sold it
for English."

Quare made a repeating watch, and also a
very fine clock for William III. The clock goes
for a year without rewinding and being made for
a bedroom does not strike. It still stands
in its original position by the side of the

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 169

King's bed in Hampton Court Palace, and shows
sun dial time, the phases of the moon, and the
course of the sun. It was altered in 1826 by
Vulliamy, and is still going. Another Quare's
clock, with a double pendulum, is to be seen in
the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, and one of
his very finest tall case clocks is in the possession
of Mr. C. F. Bell, of Oxford. Furthermore,
Quare was the inventor of a portable barometer,
which, according to the words of his patent,
" might be removed and carried to any place,
though turned upside down." One of these
barometers is in the United Service Institu-
tion and another belongs to Mr. C. F. Bell.
An ordinary barometer by Quare is to be seen
at Hampton Court. Of his clocks, three are in
the Wetherfield collection, others belong to Mr.
Abbott, Mr. Cook and other collectors. Clock-
watches by him belonged to Mr. Britten and
Mr. Robert Meldrum, and there is a lantern
clock made by him in the British Museum.
Other clocks for which he was responsible
are at Windsor Castle and in the possession of
Mr. Arkwright of Hampton Court, near Leo-
minster.

Two of Quare's apprentices, Daniel and
Thomas Grignion, started in business for them-
selves after the death of Quare, and there are
both clocks and watches signed by them belong-
ing to a period of about 1730. One of these
clocks is in the possession of the writer. In some

170 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

instances the clocks and watches are signed
" Daniel and Thomas Grignion from the late
Mr. Quare." In others the word " finishers "
appears attached to the names of the Grignion
brothers. Their house of business was at the
King's Arms and the Dial at Russell Street,
Convent [sic] Garden, and the firm became
Grignion and Son of the same address in 1775,
Thomas Grignion in 1780, and, again, another
Thomas Grignion, perhaps a son of the last,
who was working between 1800 and 1825,

Towards the end of his life, Quare was ap-
pointed clockmaker to George I., but at first
he had to decline this position, because he ob-
jected to taking the oath of allegiance, and there-
fore could not qualify for the position, which
carried with it a stipend of £300 per year. His
long statement concerning his refusal to accept
the post is still in existence. In it he explained
that the religious difficulty was eventually over-
come ; he was not obliged to take the oath, his
scruples were respected, and he was permitted
to pass into the palace by the back stairs, the
Yeoman of the Guard being ordered to pass
him in without calling upon any person for
leave. Quare cordially acknowledged the cour-
tesy of Lord Carteret, who had had the matter
in hand, and the consideration with which the
King had treated him, and in the document
from which the quotation is made refers to the
help that he received from the Divine Provi-

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 171

dence, in making his petition, and the way in
which God had assisted him, throughout the
whole of his career.

His successor in the business, Steven Horse-
man, had been apprenticed to him, to 1702, and
was admitted to the Clockmakers' Company
in 1709.

Of Quare's family, the first seven children
died in infancy.

Daniel Quare died on the 21st March, 172I, at
his country house at Croydon, and was buried
in Bunhill Fields on the 27th of the same month.
His age was seventy-five. The Daily Post of
Thursday the 26th March, thus refers to his
decease : " Last week dy'd Mr. Daniel Quare,
watchmaker in Exchange Alley, who was famous
both here and at foreign Courts for the great
improvements he made in that art, and we hear
he is succeeded in his shop and trade by his
partner Mr. Horseman."

His son Jeremiah was his executor. His will
was made on 3rd May, 1723, and proved on 26th
March, 1724. From his personal estate he left
his wife Mary Quare, £2,800, all his household
goods, both in London and in the country, and
the " two gold watches she usually wears, one of
them being a repeater, and the other a plain
watch." He also left to the four children of
his late daughter Anna Falconer ^^1,600, and to
the two children of his son Jeremiah £800, and
declared in his will that " he did already fully

172 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

advance " his late daughter Anna Falconer and
his son Jeremiah on the occasion of their re-
spective marriages. His widow lived with her
son Jeremiah until her death on 4th November,
1728, at the age of seventy-seven. She died in
the parish of St. Dionis Backchurch, Lime Street,
and was buried in Bunhill Fields. Her son
Jeremiah died in less than a year after his
mother on 25th August, 1729, of fever, at the
age of forty-five, and he was buried in School
House Lane.

I am indebted to Mr. C. F. Bell, of the Ashmo-
lean Museum, already mentioned, for the follow-
ing interesting references to Quare : —

Gay, in one of his eclogues called " The
Espousal," a dialogue between two Quakers, has
the following lines :

I own Josiah gave the golden toy.

Which did the virtuous hand of Quare employ.

Swift possessed a watch by Quare, which
he mentions in his will, 3rd March, 1740, as
" my plain gold watch, made by Quare," and
bequeaths it to a Mrs. Mary Swift, alias
Harrison.

Hogarth, in his autobiography, says, " A
watchmaker may say, ' The watch which I have
made for you is as good as Quare or Tompion,
or any other man could have made," etc. Carlo
Goldini, in a comedy entitled " La Bottega del

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 173

Caffe," 1750, makes one of his characters, Don
Marzio, when playfully accused of having been
imposed upon in the purchase of a watch,
protest that he had it sent from London, and
that it is " Uno dei piu perfetti che abbia fatto
il Quare."

From the same source I learn of the exist-
ence of many of Quare's watches, clocks, and
barometers, though scattered in places as widely
separated as Petrograd and Budapest.

I am indebted to Mr. Richard W. Goulding, the
learned librarian to the Duke of Portland, for the
following interesting extracts concerning Quare,
which he found in the Earl of Portland's account
books for 1691 and 1692, and which he has
kindly permitted me to publish.

Account Book of William Bentinck, Earl of
Portland, under heading " Uijtgave Kleedije
Linden en Anders in Engels Gelt. (Expenses cloth-
ing linen, etc., in English money.)

1691, den 2 Jan. :

Ain Daniel Quare, Horologe-Macker, over
Leverantie van een Gouden Horologe dat de
Uijren Repeteert, volgens Recipisse, betallt.
(To Daniel Quare, watchmaker, for the supply
of a gold repeater watch according to the receipt
paid.) £64 IDS.

Under heading :

" Uijtgave Acu Alderhande Reckeningen uijt
de privy purse van syne Maj* in den Jaere, 1692,
betallt in Engels gelt." (Expenses on various

174 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

accounts, from the privy purse of his Majesty
in the year 1692, paid in EngHsh money.)

23rd May :

Aen Daniel Quare, Horologe-Macker, voor
een Goude, Repeating Wat(c)h voor Syne
Maj^, op Ordre ende by recepisse. (To Daniel
Quare, watchmaker, for a gold repeater watch
for his Majesty to order and according to receipt.)
£69 17s. 6d.

There is a curious letter amongst the papers
at Devonshire House, written from Kendal
by Mary Wass, who appears, from the way in
which she writes, to have been a niece, or a
great-niece of Daniel Quare, but whose relation-
ship it is not easy to determine. The letter
contains an interesting reference to clocks made
by her uncle, and is therefore worthy of being
quoted. It reads as follows : —

" Dr. Uncle thy most ingaging lines came to
hand in due time, but my last hinted something
off father's receiveing a hurt of his eye, defer'd
writeing ye longer in hopes to give yye more
perfect Acct of ye recovery, for since I writ to
thee, it was as if ye sight would be lost and father
was much deject'd and brought to a very low
estate of health what with ye pain of ye eye and
trouble of mind, but now am thankfuU I can say
its much better and ye pain is abated, but there
is yet a humbur with something of a spec yt
grows near ye sight wch occations dimness, but

i

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 175

it is now so well to wt it has been yt father
is in full hope it may not hinder his journey to
London at Yearly Meeting and I am also very
desirous to come along with him ... as thy
cordial lines, dr Uncle had some good efect on
me, being attend'd with ye sweetness, and good
advice yt like epistles where writ upon my heart,
well I esteem as a perticular favour, neither am
I unmindfuU I owe gratefull acknowledgments
that thou art pleased to rembr me with so
good a present, which I must acknowledge
would have been very acceptable unto me, if
my lot had been cast att or near Lond ; for I
know thy Clocks are of great value, and perhaps
wld. looke too great amongst ye Common
People of this place, beside ye difficulty of Car-
riage so many miles without harm, moreover wee
have a Clock pretty siuteing to our Country and
station, so yt under all those conciderations am
reddy to conclude something of less charge to
thee might answer as well for my servis and be
let alone till I see theee."

This is unsigned and undated, and copied
on the back of a letter, in the same hand-
writing, signed Mary Wass, Kendall, 4-8th ins,
1718."

Several clocks and watches by Quare are
illustrated in Britten's " Old Clocks and Watches,"
third edition, London, 191 1, and the volume con-
tains a long account of the clockmaker. It

176 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

also quotes four advertisements of the loss
of Quare's watches, which are interesting as
evidence of the value which was attached to
them in his time.

Thomas Wagstaffe was born at Banbury in
Oxfordshire in 1724, his mother being Sarah
French, while her mother was the eldest daughter
of Giles and Maud Tydmarsh. Of these people
we have the following information. Giles Tyd-
marsh was a prisoner in Oxford Castle, on an
excommunication for not attending the parish
church, and he was kept in prison for seven years
and then released in 1672, with about four
hundred more prisoners, by letters patent of
King Charles II., issued in that year. After
his release, Giles and his wife, with their son and
daughter (the daughter afterwards becoming
Mrs. French) settled at Chipping Norton, and he
took up the occupation of a shoemaker. Both he
and his wife lived to be ninety years of age, the
wife surviving the husband by only one day,
and they were buried in one grave at Milton.
They had four children, one, Giles, married Hirom
Maud, of Barton in Oxfordshire, who brought
him £70 as her dowry. He lived in a cottage
in the Nether Row in Chipping Norton. One
of the daughters, Sarah, as already mentioned,
married Joseph French. Her daughter was the
wife of Thomas Wagstaffe, of Banbury, and they
had at least four children. The eldest son re-
moved with his family to Philadelphia, and

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 177

there are descendants of that branch of the
family still residing in the United States.
Another daughter, said also to have been called
Sarah, married Joseph Lownds. A son, John,
resided in Norfolk, and another son, Thomas,
was the watchmaker to whom I refer.

According to an account of him, which appears
in the tenth section of a book called " Piety
Promoted," a collection of brief memorials of
members of the Society of Friends compiled
at different dates, Thomas Wagstaff e passed the
chief part of his life in London, where he carried
on his trade. In the decline of his days he re-
tired to Stockwell, in Surrey, where he gave
some attention to literary work, and was the
author of at least three books. One was
issued in 1774, and contained about fifteen sheets,
giving accounts of sixty-six deceased Friends.
He prefixed to these accounts a brief preface,
and added a short concluding address to the
reader. In 1796 he was the author of another
book, slightly larger, containing about seventeen
small octavo sheets, and sixty-six narratives,
with a preface. He had always been particularly
addicted to making inquiries into the doings of
ancient times, so far as they related to Friends,
and he had a memory well stored with anecdotes.
Another of the books which he prepared for the
members of the Society was issued in 1776, and
was the account of the Life and Gospel Labours
of William Beckett, of Wainfleet, Lancashire.

178

BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

When quite an old man, Wagstaffe left Stock-
well for Chipping Norton, where he had various
relatives, and there he died in 1802, His
place of business in London was 33, Grace-
church Street, and he is known to have resided
there between 1769 and 1794. Britten states
that members of the Society of Friends when
visiting London were accustomed to lodge at
Wagstaffe's house, and on their return to America
frequently took one of his clocks with them.

A/

*^v*T^ tS^f'^u^

^^ ^' O

OLD QUAKER WATCHMAKERS 179

He adds that there are many long case clocks by
Wagstaffe in America, generally in the possession
of Quakers or their descendants. He also re-
fers to an interesting mahogany case clock by
him in the Cathedral of Kazan in Petrograd.

The birth registers of the Society of Friends do
not give any entry of the birth of Thomas
Wagstaffe himself, but many dates are there
recorded concerning various members of the
family.

I am able to publish, by the kindness of Mr.
Norman Penny of the Friends' Reference Library,
a hitherto unknown silhouette portrait of this
old watchmaker, and also one of his bills con-
cerning a gold watch supplied to George Fox and
to the credit of the account of one of his own
watches taken back in exchange.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BURLINGTON FINE ARTS CLUB AND
THE GROLIER CLUB

The Burlington Fine Arts Club in London and
the Grolier Club in New York are associations
with somewhat similar aims, and each has been
instrumental in the production of fine and im-
portant books.

I am proud of my membership of each Club,
and of the fact that it has extended over a long
period of years, and look with some special in-
terest upon the two shelves in my Library devoted
to the Club literature.

The Grolier is more especially the Bookman's
Club. Its members are interested in books,
however, not so much as literature but as works
of art. The constitution of the Club declares
that " its object shall be the literary study and
promotion of the arts pertaining to the produc-
tion of books."

Its members are true bibliophiles, loving books
for their intrinsic beauty, whether of illustration,
type, binding or print. Fittingly is the Club
named from the great French book-lover, Jean
Grolier de Servier, Treasurer General of France
in the sixteenth century.

x8o

:e

I

BURLINGTON AND GROLIER i8i

The Club has only been in existence since 1884,
but year by year since then it has held Exhibi-
tions of books and book illustrations, and has
issued privately printed works of sumptuous
character. Its custom is to print in special
form, on the finest of paper, and with all the
adjuncts that go to make up a volume perfect
from the book lover's point of view, some rare
treatise or some fine modern bibliography or
work on art, to issue it at a special price to its
members only ; and to print two extra special
copies usually on vellum, one of which is kept
by the Club, and the other sold by auction to
the members.

Its first work was a reprint of the very rare
first edition of Barker's Decree of the Star
Chamber, concerning Printing (1637), only 148
copies of the work being issued to members.
So scarce has this now become that a copy
cannot be obtained under about £30, although it
only cost the members, when first issued, the
sum of two dollars.

One of its most sumptuous productions was
the standard work on Grolier himself, a trans-
lation of Le Roux De Lincy's essay, with an
added catalogue of all the books then known
to have belonged to Grolier's Library, and
a great deal of important supplementary in-
formation. This was issued in 1907, it has
fourteen fine facsimile plates in colour and
cost the members forty dollars a copy, but

i82 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

it has gone up enormously in value since the
original issue.

The finest of all the books issued by this
club, a somewhat different character, as
instead of printing one volume, it came out in
three great portfolios. It comprised over i,ooo
photographic reproductions of all the known
Etchings and Dry Points of Whistler, in exact
facsimile and in the size of the originals, and it
was issued to the Club members at a hundred
dollars for the set. It is now impossible to
obtain.

In addition to such sumptuous works as these,
the Grolier Club has issued works of lesser in-
trinsic value, but in every case finely printed and
illustrated. Such, for example, are the Histories
of the Plantin Press (1888), and of the Chiswick
Press (1896), the Note Books of Carlyle (1898),
Boccaccio's Life of Dante (1900), Milton's
Areopagitica (1890), Donne's Poems (1895),
a work on Title Pages by De Vinne (1901),
and a Booke of Kings (on Jap vellum) by H. C.
Levis (191 3).

Furthermore there is a delightful series of
specially printed Catalogues of exhibitions held
at the Club House, such as those Illuminated
Manuscripts (1892), Books by Early English
Writers (1893), Books from the libraries of
noted Bibhophiles (1895), Lithographs (1876),
Engravings of Durer (1897), Italian Books (1904),
and so on.

BURLINGTON AND GROLIER 183

These and many others which succeeded
them, and all of which are detailed in the Club
Bibliography are books which the members
purchase from time to time, but in addition
there is a charming series of books which come
gratuitously and are no less important as regards
typography and style.

There are the catalogues of all the Exhibi-
tions, each differing from the other, but all in
i6mo size and with biographical and biblio-
graphical information of much importance, and
there are also the Annual Transactions, graceful
little volumes, charmingly printed on hand-made
paper, ranging with them. Some of these Trans-
actions volumes and many of the Catalogues are
again issued to members for purchase in Demy
4to (7 X 9I), on better paper and with illus-
trations, so that those who prefer can, in addition
to the volume sent gratuitously, have it also in
sumptuous and augmented form.

Finally there are the Notices of Meetings,
the Cards of Invitation and Admission, and the
Circulars Respecting the Books, Menus and
Bibliographical scraps of which no member can
have a complete set, but all are delightful and
everyone worthy of being retained in a port-
folio or scrap book. Tliey are all models of
good taste in the arts of printing and illustration,
and the world has never seen anything better.
They are cherished by all good Grolierites ; and
though I have most of the catalogues, almost

i84 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

all the Year Books and many of the books — I
wish that I had them all — for they are a constant
source of delight to every man who is a real
lover of fine printing.

Perhaps I ought to have laid some stress, as a
bibliophile, upon the edition brought out by the
Club in 1889 in three splendid volumes of the
Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, Bishop of
Durham. It is indeed a reverent reproduction
and could scarcely be surpassed, an absolute
delight to eye, hand and mind. If the Clul
had done nothing more than the production
this masterpiece it would have justified it^
existence.

The Burlington Fine Arts Club is an old<
and more solemn association.

Its aim is the study of Arts in all its varied
forms, not confined by any means to books or
book illustrations.

It was founded in 1857, ^ little group of
ninety-seven members, shortly afterwards raised
to 200, and it has always embraced the chief
collectors of the day and the experts on every
branch of art and art craftsmanship. Jl

Its exhibitions have become famous, and have
included many of the greatest treasures of the
world in their purview. Its little gallery, open
only to the public by members' orders, has
received visits from almost every person of
importance in Europe, and the most noted
collectors all over the world have vied with

■

BURLINGTON AND GROLIER 185

one another in lending to the Club from
time to time their most cherished and rarest
possessions.

Its exhibitions began first in Pall Mall, and
then more formally in Piccadilly, where they con-
tinued down to 1870, when the present Club
House was obtained in Savile Row, and the
Gallery that has been the scene of so many de-
lightful gatherings was built.

The catalogues have always been in 4to
size, and I possess the entire series from 1868
downwards.

They vary in substance and in contents, and
they deal with objects so different as Old Master
Drawings, Bronzes, Ivories, Porcelains, Book-
bindings, Miniatures, Enamels, Pictures, Iron
Work, Water Colours, Etching, Sculpture, Silver,
Illuminated Manuscripts, Seals, Mezzotints,
Embroidery, and so forth.

In intention each is the same, to bring together
the choicest possible collection of objects relative
to the special period or branch of craftsmanship
under consideration, to catalogue them with abso-
lute fidelity and with all possible wealth of his-
toric allusion, and to present, in the form of a
preface, a treatise upon the period of groups of
objects written by the chief expert, or group of
experts, of the day.

On the whole, the intention of the Club has
been carried out in superb manner, for each
catalogue represents the last word and the best

i86 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

opinion obtainable on the special matter with
which it is concerned.

The catalogues are issued gratis to the mem-
bers, but in addition to these blue-paper-covered
compilations, splendidly printed on hand-made
paper, there are issued to members, at prices of
from five guineas downwards, sumptuous editions
in folio size of the same catalogues, richly illus-
trated with plates in colour facsimile, in half-tone,
and in photogravure.

These form valuable works of reference, and
in fact such catalogues as those on Greek Art
(1888 and 1893), Portrait Miniatures (1889),
Bookbindings (1891), Enamels (1897), Silver-
work (1901), Early German Art (1906),
Early English Portraiture (1909), English Em-
broideries (1905), have at once been accepted
as the Standard works in their respective
subjects.

Here again there are Circulars, Invitations,
Subscription Forms, and the like, to be collected
and preserved, not specially objects of artisti
excellence as are those of the Grolier Club ; but
all examples of the choicest printing that can be
done in this country, and possessing a grave
serious aspect peculiarly their own.

I have spoken of neither Club House, my pur-
pose being more concerning the books issued by
each Club ; but the Club Houses, as those who
know them can tell, are cosy and comfortable
homes, the libraries in each club of more than

4

I

BURLINGTON AND GROLIER 187

usual importance and the adjuncts to Club life
convenient in every way.

The Burlington Fine Arts Club has perhaps
the best Library of Art books, English and
foreign, in London, the Giolier Club a very choice
collection of books notable for typography or
binding, as well as those collected for literary
value, and, moreover, a cabinet containing a
unique group of miniature books, many score in
number.

Each Library has printed in graceful form
the Catalogue of what it possesses — the Grolier
Club, as might be expected, in sumptuous
fashion; the Burlington, in style more restrained.

Each has infinite attractions to the Lover of
Books, and to the Collector of Objects connected
with the Fine Arts.

CHAPTER XIV

SOME AMERICAN BOOK CLUBS

Of the many Book Clubs in America specially
concerned with the printing and production of
privately issued volumes, the most notable in h
many ways is undoubtedly the Bibliophile
Society of Boston. It has a unique record in
the fact that for at least eleven years it was
successfully conducted v.ithout any dues — its
books, having been subscribed for (allowing
only one copy for each member) by 96 per cent,
of its full membership. It has a working
fund of twenty thousand dollars, the voluntary
contribution of its members, and belonging to
them individually. Further, it has no salaried
officials, and its small incidental expenses are
charged, each year, into publication account.
Its books are beautiful, and have a special
feature of their own, inasmuch as their title
pages are, as a rule, printed from specially
designed copper plates engraved in the finest
manner, and as also in many instances the
books are issued full bound in brown polished
morocco. More delightful volumes than their"
reproductions of the Deserted Village and Gray's
Elegy, printed on vellum and exquisitely illus-i

188

I

SOME AMERICAN BOOK CLUBS 189

trated, can hardly be conceived, while Swinburne's
Ode to Mazzini and Border Ballads were produced
in equally sumptuous style, and sent out in
double slip cases for their better preservation.
One of the rarer productions of this Private Press
is the transcript of the speech Charles Dickens
made at Gore House in 1851. Ten copies
only were printed on vellum, and another still
more interesting production is a facsimile in
sheets, on blue paper, of the essay Swinburne
wrote on Whistler, which caused the estrange-
ment between the two men lasting down to
Whistler's death. This is reproduced so per-
fectly that it is not easy at first to believe that
the sheets are not those bearing Swinburne's
own handwriting, and, in a suitable portfolio,
it forms a wonderful treasure for all admirers
of the painter and the poet. It stands on my
shelves side by side with a book of considerable
rarity containing Whistler's own corrections, and
with many of his rarer catalogues and some of
his autograph letters.

The Year Books of this same Society are
equally good examples of fine book making.
I possess Vols. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. They
are all in cases, and have the finest modern
copper-plate engraved titles that I have ever seen
or handled, admirable scroll work set within a
suitable frame, and containing little vignettes
inserted, many of which are of exquisite
beauty. The Shelley and Dickens and Wash-

190 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

ington Irving and Andr6 books are interesting
especially for the sake of their fine title pages,
which are admirably printed on vellum.

Another club which deserves special mention
is the Caxton Club of Chicago. Its Year
Books and four of its finest volumes are before
me as I write. Three are on Bookbinding,
those on Thomas Berthelet, Henry VIII. 's Book-
binder, issued in 1901 ; on Samuel Mearne,
Binder to Charles II., issued in 1906 ; both
written by Mr. Cyril Davenport, and that on
French Bookbinders of the eighteenth century by
Octave Uzanne, translated by Mabel Mc.Ilvaine,
and sent out in 1904. These are quarto books,
admirably illustrated by full page plates in
photogravure and in colour facsimile. Even
more notable, however, is the volume for which
the members subscribed in 1905, that on William
Caxton, written by the best authority on the great
printer, Gordon Duff. This volume was issued
to the members at 25 dollars a copy, 148 only, and
each copy contains in an envelope in the bind-
ing an actual leaf printed by Caxton himself !
The Club bought, at the sale of Lord Ashburn-
ham's books, an imperfect copy of Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales printed in about 1478; and
this book, which Lord Ashburnham had pur-
chased at the Heber sale, was cut up by the
Club, and one leaf of it inserted in each of
these 148 copies. In consequence the volume
has a special attraction to all book lovers,

SOME AMERICAN BOOK CLUBS 191

and has become a rare and valuable work.
Other volumes and the Catalogues of its
Exhibitions and its Annual Year Books are
worthy of note, and everything produced by the
Caxton Club shows excellent craftsmanship.

In glancing at these American Book Clubs, The
Club of Odd Volumes at Boston deserves particu-
lar mention. Its prototype was Ye Sette of
Odd Volumes, to which allusion has already
been made ; and at first, when it was founded,
it assumed the same title, but there was a pro-
test on behalf of the mother society, made by
Mr. Clulow, who was then the President of
Ye Sette, and in 1887, the name of The Club
of Odd Volumes was finally adopted. The
Society was incorporated in 1890, and at first
held its meetings in various hotels, or in the
library of the Boston Art Club, but eventually
it was enabled to build its own club house in
Mount Vernon Street, and there it possesses a
delightful home. This Club House was en-
larged in 191 6, so as to provide a large meeting-
room, and ample space for exhibitions, and the
building takes the form of the reproduction of
an old Colonial Inn.

In the exhibition room there have been some
very important shows. That in 1897 referred
to Early New England History ; in 1898 to
Bookplates ; and later exhibitions have been of
objects relative to the history of Boston ; of
matters relating to Izaak Walton and The

192 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

Cofnpleat Angler ; to mezzotints ; to the history
of the Boston Stage ; to Angling Bookplates, and
to exhibits relating to Thackeray.

The Club has always been fortunate in posses-
sing amongst its members several of the great
printers of the day, not only those resident in
America, but as honorary members, such men
as Ashbee, Cobden, Sanderson and others, who
represent the craft at its best in England. In
consequence, its publications have a special
value and importance. The first issued by the
club was the catalogue of the J. B. Gough
Collection, the works of George Cruikshank.
This came out in 1890. It was followed in 1892
by a work on mezzotints, and by a catalogue
of an exhibition of portraits of the Women of
the Court of Louis XV. A somewhat similar
volume came out in 1893, and this was followed
by five volumes of Early American Poetry.
Then came a book on Early Boston Book-
sellers, which was published in 1900, and in
the same year, a delightful paper on Chaucer.
In 1901, the publication was " A Talk on Book-
plates " ; in 1902, a work on " The Triumphs
of Early Printing " ; in 1903, a reprint of a
scarce book on New England ; in 1904, a volume
entitled '' Early Schools and School-books of
New England," and in 1905 a volume on Remick,
an early Boston Engraver.

Then there came a change with regard to the
volumes issued by the Club. Hitherto, they had

I

SOME AMERICAN BOOK CLUBS 193

been printed by the University Press, Cambridge,
but the volume issued in 1906 was the work of
the Merrymount Press, Boston ; and was differ-
ently bound to the preceding volumes. It was
called " The Historie Of and the Life and Death
of Sir William Kirkcaldy." In the following
year, the Club went back to its old printers, and
issued a work in two volumes on The Early
Massachusetts Press. Then it went to the
Riverside Press, with a delightful work on
Horace Walpole as a printer, written by its
excellent secretary, Mr. Percival Merritt. The
books issued in 1908 were called " Collectors "
(an address by Mr. Hunnewell and the Library
of Rameses the Great, by Mr. Nicholls) ; but
those in 1909 made a still more startling change
with regard to printing, as both the books were
produced in England, one called " William
Caxton," was printed at the Doves Press, the
other called " The Private Press," was printed
at the Essex House Press by Mr. Ashbee. This
list does not include all the books that the Club
has issued, although it names the chief ones ;
but I must not forget to mention " Notes from
a Country Library " ; "A Reprint of Tristram
Shandy's Political Romance, 1759 " ; a mono-
graph on Isaiah Thomas, the printer, and
two volumes, entitled " The Boston Book
Market," and "The Isle of Pines." The notices
for the meetings, the cards of invitation, and
the menus of the various dinners, are also all

194 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

of them interesting examples of fine and skilful
printing, worthy of notice.

The Club is a very hospitable one. It has its
regular Club dinners, and its Thursday after-
noon tea-parties. It welcomes most heartily
visitors from the Old Country, especially those
who are connected with similar societies in
England, and to the members of Ye Sette of
Odd Volumes it offers a particularly cordial
reception. I have the pleasantest possible
remembrance of the way in which I was received
at the Club some years ago, and I was glad to
become a member of it. Other members of
Ye Sette have also been similarly received ; but
it has seldom fallen to the good fortune of the
English Society to be able to entertain the
members of the Boston Club. Very few of
them appear to have come over to England,
but they will be assured, whenever they do
come, of an exceedingly hospitable reception.

In conclusion, I must not more than briefly
refer to the Book Club of California and its
charming volume on Bret Harte, and to the
Brothers of the Book at Chicago, and all their
dainty productions. Suffice it that the Book
Clubs of America are numerous, manifold in
their endeavour, and varied in their member-
ship; but to the collector of fine books their
privately printed volumes are a great joy, and
eagerly to be desired in every way.

CHAPTER XV

THE LAST OF THE OLD FRENCH COURT
CALENDARS

One of the tiniest little books that I possess is a
copy of the calendar of the French Court, issued
in 1789, probably the last issue of the Royal
calendars ; for in the July of that very year,
the French Revolution commenced, with the
taking of the Bastille. The volume is in
size 24mo, in its contemporary binding of full
French morocco, with the blank leaves for every
day of the year, and with its bright blue silken
marker. It is in perfect order, and is an interest
ing little relic of those days. It may be amusing
to glance through some of its pages. There is
of course in the forefront of it the almanac,
which gives the phases of the moon, and all the
saints' days, the movable and fixed feasts,
and some remarks respecting historical events,
eclipses, and the signs of the Zodiac, and then
opposite to each page are the blank leaves on
which accounts can be kept, respectively headed
" Perte " and " Gain." Following this come
printed pages full of information, dealing with
the Kingdom of France, and with all the various
officials of the Royal House.

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196 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

There is a description of the country, with its
boundaries, a reference to its ParHament, its
Chambers of Commerce, and its various courts,
chronologies of the kings of France, divided out
into the three great groups, Merovingians, to
754, Carlovingians, to 987, and the third race,
the House of Capet, which is taken in this list
from 996, down to the then King Louis XVI.,
reigning in 1789. Then we come to the various
officials of the different sections of the Royal
State. First of all, the House of the King,
with the lists of names of the almoners and the
chaplains, the persons who were responsible for
the music, the Master of the Household (then
the Prince de Conde), and of the officials
who were under him, the Finance Department,
under a Minister of State (then M. Necker), the
Gentlemen-in-waiting, the Royal Chamberlain
(the Due de Bouillon), the various officials
under him, the Robes Department under the
Due de Liancourt, the Master of Ceremonies
with his officials, the department for looking
after the lodgings of the Court, and their suites,
under the Grand Marshal of the Chambers, the
Library Department — a very small one — the
Medical and Surgical Department — a far larger
one ; and then a very long list of officials con-
nected with the stables, and one longer still
connected with the military establishment.

Following that, we come to the Household of
Queen Marie Antoinette, with her Grand

OLD FRENCH COURT CALENDARS 197

Almoners, and chaplains, her chief Lady-in-
waiting, the Princess de Chimay, and many
ladies under her, the greatest names in France,
her stable department, her robe department,
her physicians, and apothecaries, her librarian,
M. Moreau, the Controller-General for the Gar-
dens, her three readers, the Abbe de Vermond
and his two lady assistants, her legal depart-
ment, and then the officials who were responsible
for the education of the Dauphin and the
Children of France, the first being under the
care of the Due d'Harcourt, the second under
that of the Duchesse de Polignac. Similar long
lists of officials belonging to the Maison de
Monsieur, the Maison de Madame, and the
Maison de Monsieur le Comte d'Artois and the
Comtesse, follow the King and Queen and then
we come to the separate establishments of the
Princesses, Madame Elizabeth, Madame Ade-
laide, and Madame Victoire, each of whom have
their almoner, their confessor. Mistress of the
Robes, a long list of ladies-in-waiting, gentlemen-
in-waiting, secretaries, and officials connected
with the stable, medicine and surgery.

Beyond those we come to the group who were
connected with the education of their Royal
Highnesses, the Due d'Angouleme and the Due
de Berry, and then we have the various officials
of the Royal Courts, and of the different branches
of the Ministry, dealing with finance, law,
societies, etc. Another list gives us the dates of

igS BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

the births of all the Royal Family, and then con-
tinues on through Europe with the same kind of
information, telling us that Charles II. was
reigning over Spain ; that Francis IV. was the
King of the Two Sicilies ; that Marie Frangoise
Elizabeth was Queen of Portugal ; Pius VI.,
Pope ; Pierre, Grand Duke of Tuscany ; Ferdi-
nand, Duke of Parma ; Hercules, Duke of Modena ;
narrating some information respecting the Grand
Master of the Order of Malta, and then pro-
ceeding to speak of Victor Amadeus III., who
was Duke of Savoy, Joseph II., who ruled
over Austria-Hungary and Bohemia, and giving
a list of the Great Electors of Mayence, Treves,
Cologne, Bavaria, Saxony, Brandenburg and
Hanover. A separate group is made of the sovereign
Princes of the Empire, headed by the Count
Palatine, and followed by the Dukes of Saxe-
Weimar, Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-
Hildeburghausen, Saxe-Coburg, Brandenburg,
Brunswick, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklen-
burg-Strelitz, Wurtemburg, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-
Rhinefels, Liechtenstein, Hesse-Darmstadt,
Hesse-Homburg, Baden, Holstein-Sonderburg,
Holstein-Beck, Holstein-Oldenburg, the Saxe-
Anhalts, and the various houses of Nassau.
Then we come to the Elector of Prussia, Frede-
rick William II., the King of England, George
III., Christian VII., reigning over Denmark,
Gustav III. over Sweden, Stanislaus over Poland,
Catherine II., Empress of Russia, Abdul Hamet,

OLD FRENCH COURT CALENDARS 199

Sultan of Turkey, and finally, the heads of the
Republics of Venice, of the United Provinces and
of Genoa.

Following these, comes some further information
respecting previous monarchs of several of
these countries, and then a long list of the
Knights of the various Orders in France, the
Ordres du Roi, the Order of the Saint Esprit,
the Order of the Toison d'Or, and the Order of
Saint Louis, and details concerning the Church,
the Pope, the various Cardinals, the Archbis-
hops and Bishops of the Dioceses of France.

Finally, we come to the less important officials
of the Royal House, the ushers, the valets,
barbers, clock winders and mechanics, and also
those who were responsible for the tapestry,
and the personal servants of the King, who
had to wait upon him at different times.

Amongst the Royal palaces over which they
had control, we find one name of ill omen, the
Bastille, mentioned as one of the residences
of the King, with its Governor, and various
officials.

The little book throws an interesting light on
the life in the Royal Court of France at that
time, and the crowds of persons who held offices of
more or less importance about the Royal Family,
and were provided with posts from which they
drew considerable revenues, regardless of the
fact that they stood upon the very brink of
a volcano, which, within a few mopths of the

200 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

issue of this tiny little book, was to burst
out and overwhelm in its destructive fury
almost all the persons whose names appear in
it. The volume is crowded with the great
and historic families of France which were
famous before the days of the Revolution, and
many of which disappeared altogether from the
history of that country at the time of this start-
ling change in the whole affair of the French
people.

1

CHAPTER XVI

SWINBURNE

It Is rather strange that, although I knew
Swinburne's mother and sisters so very well, I
saw comparatively little of the poet himself, and
yet after all, it is not so very curious, as he
was but seldom at home, and had his own
establishment when I knew them.

I have, however, on my shelves all of his
books, and in one of them is fastened a letter
from him that has a rather interesting history.

The book is " The Heptalogia, or the Seven
against Sense, a Cap with Seven Bells," which
was published anonymously in 1880. It is, as
is well known, a book of Parodies, in which
poems by Tennyson, Coventry Patmore,
Browning, Mrs. Browning, Lord Lytton and
Swinburne are most cleverly parodied. It created
some sensation, but was speedily recognised
as from Swinburne's hand, and the parody of
his own peculiarities of style in the final poem
Nephelidia is exceedingly fine. For a long time,
however, the poet refused to acknowledge the
authorship, and in fact it is doubtful whether
he ever did so in definite and unmistakable
terms. I was visiting Lady Jane one day, and

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203 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

showed to her and her daughters a book of
Lyrics from Swinburne's Works, that had
been pubhshed by Mosher, of Portland, U.S.A.
It was of course a pirated book, but withal
so charmingly printed and bound that it
was a pleasure to look at it, and in that light
Lady Jane appreciated what she termed a
compliment to her gifted son. She asked my
permission to show it to him, to which I gladly
assented. Our talk then ranging over his
poetry, I referred to the Heptalogia, and put the ^1
natural question as to its authorship. This ^!
Miss Alice Swinburne at once acknowledged,
and praised the skill with which the book was JBl
compiled, in no measured terms. She had
always promised me the poet's autograph, and
together we decided that the best possible way
would be to get him to sign my copy of the
Heptalogia. SI

A little later on I sent both of the books, mine '
and Mosher's to her, and in her letter of April
15th, 1896, now before me, she says : " I shall
be very glad to do as you wish, but I cannot give
you much hope, for he really gets such endless
applications for his opinion upon various writings
that we scruple to trouble him, and I always
take what I think a favourable opportunity
(when he is with us in the country, generally,)
to ask him for anything of this sort." Time
went on, I often saw the three sisters, and they
frequently alluded to this circumstance. " Al-

«

SWINBURNE 203

gernon," said they, " has got both your books,
and some day you will get them back. We
frequently remind him of them." The Mosher
book he admired, and the selection from his
poems was, he considered, a judicious one, but
neither of the volumes came back into my hands
for six long years. Meantime Lady Jane and
Charlotte Swinburne had died, and only the
elder and younger sisters, Alice and Isabel, re-
mained.

On August 9th, 1902, there suddenly arrived a
parcel from Putney containing three books,
my own two returned, a copy of Swinburne's
poems " from the author " and a quaint letter in
guarded terms, which I promptly fastened into
the Heptalogia.

" Dear Dr. Williamson," it ran, " I have much
pleasure in complying with your request, and
only wish what I send was better worth having.
" Yours very truly,

" A. C. Swinburne.
"The Pines,
"Aug. 8, 1902."

I hastened off to see my special friend, Isabel
Swinburne (Alice, alas, was then ill, and she
died in the following year), to tell her the good
news, when she supplemented the information
contained in the letter. It appeared that the
two books had been discovered in Swinburne's

204 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

room at The Pines, and with them a memoran-
dum from his elder sister Alice, asking him to
write to me acknowledging the authorship. He
was horrified at the discovery, as the books were
in the packing paper in which they had remained
all these years, and in penance for his omission
he sent me the gift of his book.

Mr. Watts-Dunton, on whose judgment he
placed such reliance, was not at home at the time,
and Swinburne did not like, he said, " to dis-
figure my book," and not having his friend at
hand to advise him, had written the letter I had
received, and had at the same time told his sister
what he had done, and asked her to explain to
me when next we met that he did not know
where to put his signature in the book, and also
thought that, as it was issued anonymously,
it would be incorrect to write inside it that he was
the author.

Miss Swinburne offered to ask him again if I
wished, but she advised me to fasten the letter
in the book, and refer to the story in some other
place, and I accepted very gladly her suggestion.

It was eleven years afterwards before I really
knew Watts-Dunton. In the interval, we had
corresponded briefly, and I had met Swinburne
three or four times at his sister's house. He
used to come fluttering in, quivering like a
great butterfly, and moving with that extra-
ordinary dancing movement that was so
charcteristic of him. Suddenly, and with much

SWINBURNE 205

elaborate ceremony, he would bow, and then,
as a rule, relapse into silence. In was difficult,
on account of his deafness, and his shyness, to
obtain much information out of him, unless by
chance one happened to refer to Elizabethan
dramatists. Only once did I ever hear him
talk with anything like emotion and emphasis,
and it was then, to my great surprise, in praise
of some ten lines by Tennyson, the final ones
in the poem called " Audley Court." These
Swinburne greatly admired. His phrase, so
far as I can remember, was that they were
" unapproachable in truth and beauty." He
quoted other lines by Tennyson relating to the
sea, with almost equal fervour, and then, all
at once, he stopped speaking altogether, and
not another syllable could I get him to utter.
He was always, to me, a mysterious and un-
approachable being, and even from his sisters,
in later years, by reason of his deafness, he was
very much apart. They were, however, per-
fectly satisfied at knowing that he was so well
safeguarded, and down to within the last few
weeks of her death. Miss Isabel Swinburne spoke
to me with intense gratitude concerning his life
in Putney.

His relatives were, on the contrary, my intimate
friends, full of charm and fascination. Alice
was the most artistic of the three, Charlotte
deeply interested in books, and especially in
early printing, Isabel full of genealogical and

2o6 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

pedigree lore, great at heraldry, and having
at her fingers' ends all the history of some of
our more curious peerage successions, especially
that of the Barony of Willoughby de Eresby,
with which her cousins the Burrells were con-
cerned.

All of them were very devout members of the
extreme High Church section of the Church of
England, and deeply concerned at some of their
brother's earlier productions, while fully re-
cognizing his incomparable genius. B

They possessed delightful pictures, fine family
miniatures and drawings, choice old cabinets,
and at least three superb water colours by Tur-
ner, so that their house was a treasure house of
art and always a joy to visit.

" Isabel was a person of very definite opinions,
and spoke out her mind in no measured terms,
especially when she considered that the reputa-
tion of her poet brother was concerned.

The younger brother, Edward, I only met on
one occasion. He died in 1891.

In the autumn of 191 3, I wrote to Watts-
Dunton, reminding him of our earlier acquaint-
ance, and using the name of Isabel Swinburne,
asked him to write a Foreword to the volume I
was then compiling on the Keats' poems and
manuscripts at Hampstead. He gladly consented,
and several letters passed between us, one of
which is set forth in the recently published
biography by Messrs. Ricketts and Hake. From

I

SWINBURNE 207

him I received another copy of Swinburne's
poems, graced with his autograph and copies of
his Aylwin and Coming of Love, and of Swin-
burne's books on Blake, Dickens, and Charlotte
Bronte, similarly inscribed, as well as the won-
derful Foreword to the Keats book, which was,
alas ! the very last piece of literary work that he
accomplished.

The MS. of this, and his delightful letters
praising the Keats book in far too generous terms,
are fastened into my own copy of the volume,
together with others on the same topic from
Mr. Buxton Forman, Sir Sidney Colvin, Viscount
Morley, and other lovers of Keats, and all the
corrected proofs are with them. Nothing that
Mr. Watts-Dunton ever wrote was more graceful
and charming than was this Foreword, and it
was a peculiar joy to me to obtain this tribute
from his pen.

Our talk when we met ranged over many
subjects, but memories of Swinburne and his
mother and sisters occupied the greater space,
and he delighted in recalling to me many
happy days he had spent with the family,
and many delightful conversations in which
he had taken part. The Swinburnes all loved
him, and felt a debt of gratitude for all his
goodness to their brother and all the con-
siderate care he bestowed upon him for over
twenty long years.

Few records of devoted friendship can equal

2o8 BEHIND MY LIBRARY DOOR

his. He had, as has been well said, " a genius
for friendship," and to all who knew and loved
him Watts-Dunton's memory is one of never
fading fragrance.

I

THE END

Miller, Son & Coinpy., Printtrs, Fakcnham and London,

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Behind my library door