Chapter IX The Glamour of Bindings
There being in very truth no new thing under the sun, it would be egotistical in the highest degree, and absurd, to assert positively that the argument about to be advanced is at all novel, though it may certainly appear strange. It is, however, original so far as I am concerned, for I have not seen it hinted at before by anyone, much less carried to a conclusion. Whether there be any warrant for it or no is a point for others, who have a greater capacity for distinguishing reason in probabilities than I can lay claim to, to determine for themselves.
It is admitted by all writers who have studied the subject of bookbinding from its historical aspect, that, as the monks of the Middle Ages were the sole producers of books, so also they were the only binders, and that the record of their achievements dates from about 520 A.D., when Dagæus, the Irish monk, practised his art, to the invention of printing from movable types by Gutenberg and Fust nearly a thousand years later. Not merely in England, but all over Europe, the monks were practically the sole custodians of knowledge during the earlier part of this period; they alone produced books, they alone bound them, they alone could read them. There were, no doubt, laymen who could read and write, but neither accomplishment was general in the outer world. King Alfred (A.D. 870) was a scholar; William the Conqueror, two centuries later, could neither read nor write.
The Stowe MS. No. 960 contains all that remains of the register of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, from the time of King Canute, one of its earliest benefactors, to the Dissolution. Among the many interesting articles in this Stowe manuscript there is one which exceeds all the rest in interest, for it bears the actual cross, sign or signature made by William in testimony that he had granted 9 hides of land to the monks, in exchange for the site of the cemetery in the city of Winchester. The King has drawn with a quill a rude and most illiterate cross, if such a thing can be imagined. The ink has not flown evenly from a pen evidently held in a perpendicular position with tremulous and infirm grip. Each line begins with a splutter, and at the point of intersection there is what looks suspiciously like a blot. It is obvious at the first glance that King William, though a man of many accomplishments eminently useful in those days, was accustomed to wield the battle-axe rather than the pen. And this was so general for centuries after his day that, but for the monks, there would have been no learning at all, and no books all that time.
It is unnecessary to refer to this phase of the matter further than to say that all the ancient and medieval European manuscripts which still exist were written by ecclesiastics, and doubtless bound by them as well. Manuscripts of the ninth century, beautifully encased in ivory, silver and gold, and sometimes encrusted with precious stones, are still extant. These are undoubtedly monkish, and the question arises, What has become of the vast bulk of which these are but a remnant? What has become of the old English libraries that existed in hundreds at the time of the Reformation? Were they, all but a very few, wantonly destroyed by those who undertook the spoliation of the monasteries, or did many escape them? and if so, where are they now? The suggestion that innumerable volumes, particularly those which were handsomely and expensively bound, would never be seen by the raiders at all is not so improbable as it may at first sight appear, when we come to consider the facts.
In November, 1534, an Act of Parliament declared that ‘the King’s Highness was the supreme head of the Church of England, and had authority to reform and redress all errors, heresies, and abuses in the same.’ This Act was speedily followed up, for in 1535 Cromwell, in his capacity of Vicar-General, proceeded to make a visitation of the monasteries, where he is said to have found such evidences of shameless immorality that another Act was passed, transferring such of these establishments to the Crown as were not of the annual value of £200.
The number of religious houses at this time dissolved, raided and sacked amounted to 376. With diabolical minuteness the revenues of each and all were estimated to the last penny. Bangor was worth £151 3s., and was accordingly seized on the spot. St. David easily escaped for the time being, for the revenue of that monastery proved to be £426 2s. 1d. St. Asaph, being assessed at £202 10s., escaped an early wreck by £2 10s. It was the same all over England and Wales. The revenue was estimated, and if it fell below £200, the monastery was at once filled with armed men, while Cromwell’s experts stripped the walls of their arras, seized the gold and silver vessels, tore up the books, scoured the neighbourhood round about for game, tapped the vintage, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves in their own peculiar way.
It is recorded that priceless books and manuscripts were wantonly destroyed, tombs sacrilegiously broken to pieces for the sake of the metal, often merely lead or brass, that extolled the virtues or the lineage of those who slept below; silver and gold plate of exquisite workmanship, and of a degree of antiquity rarely, if ever, seen now, were melted down and sold by weight; buildings of an architectural beauty unsurpassed anywhere were wantonly defaced, and in many cases dismantled, for the sake of the materials, and in the midst of this disgraceful scene of plunder and desecration, the destroyers fought with one another as desperately as Roman gladiators of the days of Nero, for the possession of some coveted jewel or ornament that all wanted and only one could have.
Now here comes the crux of the argument. Only the smaller houses were dissolved at this time, and unless human nature were totally different in the days of Henry VIII. from what it is now, unless the Abbots of Furness, Bolton, Fountains, and other large and extremely rich monasteries, looked on unmoved while their humbler brethren were stripped to the skin and flung destitute into the lanes and ditches to die, then it is morally certain that they would take steps to protect themselves, as far as lay in their power, from the fury of the storm which they must have known would shortly burst over their heads. Unless they were wholly infatuated, they would cautiously and gradually remove their choicest possessions, their basins, images, censers, crucifixes and chalices, and above all their precious volumes, with which the very history and fortunes of the abbey were associated, and bury them deep down, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, under the walls.
The ruin brought at this time upon all that was priceless by reason of its antiquity and associations is incalculable, and the only ray of consolation let in upon these dark days’ doings is that the Abbots of the larger monasteries, taking warning from what they saw going on all around, may have buried their choicest possessions, where, perhaps, they will be found some of these days, when the plough shall furrow up the dust of Furness or Denever.
Many of the inventories taken by the King’s agents are extant. One of them, that of Fountains, taken just before the Dissolution, will suffice to show what is meant. The value of all the plate, gold and silver, amounted to £708 5s. 9-3/4d.—a comparatively small sum, seeing that the cattle, sheep and swine belonging to the abbey were of much greater value. Not a single book of any kind is scheduled, and yet the library of Fountains was at one time the most extensive and important in Yorkshire. As the Knights Templars buried their gold under the high altar in the church of the New Temple, yet standing within sound of the roar of Fleet Street, in order to protect it against the rapacity of Edward I., so it is suggested that the Abbots of Fountains and other surviving houses buried their treasures in the most sacred place they could think of, thereby handing them over, as it were, to God and the right, rather than abandon them to the tender mercies of man.
Now, this is merely an argument based upon probability; it cannot, from the very nature of the case, be supported by a scrap of evidence, and yet it carries with it such a ring of truth in my ears that, were I the happy owner of one of those fast-crumbling piles which still rear their rugged fronts to the sky, I would, by all the enamels of Limoges, by the ivory, gold and silver, and rubies which make up this glamour of bindings unseen, put the argument to the test without hesitation and regardless of cost.
Monastic bindings of English workmanship are not, as we may well understand, distinguished as a rule for extreme beauty. The gorgeous covers that protected illuminated manuscripts, themselves extremely valuable, were in vogue at a very early period, long before the invention of printing, and the vast majority were probably either hidden away as suggested, or destroyed. In any case, however, they must have been rare even a thousand years ago—as rare, indeed, as the exceptionally fine missals and breviaries they protected, some of which would take a monk his lifetime to produce. We find that by the fourteenth century monastic bindings were usually serviceable and plain, and that it was only occasionally that rich materials were employed, as, for example, when a King’s library was added to, or some important monastery gave a special order by way of continuing the traditions of the house, and showing that time had not in any way curtailed its glories. The most interesting ancient bindings that yet survive to us consist of a specimen of the work of the monk Dagæus, which dates from about 520 A.D., and a manuscript known as the ‘Textus Sanctus Cuthberti,’ bound in velvet with a broad silver border, and inlaid with gems, by the first English binder, one Bilfred, a monk of Durham, who was living at the beginning of the eighth century. This is the holy volume that was swallowed up by the sea, and, according to the old legend, restored out of respect for the memory of the saint, or perhaps that of the monk or both.
We have, therefore, two styles of monastic bindings—one resplendent in gold, ivory, and precious stones, and the other of a more sober character for ordinary and daily use. The latter were of wood covered with embossed leather, or with plain shark skin, or even seal. They were ponderous, massive folios of great weight and durability, protected in vulnerable parts with brass or iron bosses and corner-plates. We find them produced as a matter of course to about the time of the Renaissance, when they gradually gave place to smaller books bound in velvet or silk, and embroidered by abbesses and nuns, and so the custom prevailed until the days of the first printers, when calf and morocco were introduced from the East by the Venetians, and pigskin or thick parchment became fashionable. Prior to this time oaken boards formed the groundwork of every binding, and to this day the word ‘boards’ is in general use, although the reason for its existence obtains no longer.
The Italians were the first to awaken to a sense of the propriety of things, and the modern collector to whom bindings appeal with an irresistible force instinctively turns to the first Italian era to supply him with some of the rarest and choicest examples of the art. The commoner monastic bindings have no beauty in his eyes, and those of a superior order and more costly finish are practically interred within the walls of great public institutions, from which they will, in the nature of things, never emerge. For some reason or other the finest binding loses its glamour, if not its interest, when exhibited in a glass case. We must have these things for our own before we can appreciate them to the full. What more melancholy mortal than a public curator trying to work himself up into a state of enthusiasm as he describes the objects committed to his care? They are mere pots and pans and ‘things,’ but yet how different if he had them all at home!
But to return to our bindings. Let it be observed that with the invention of printing, and the consequent production of books in a more portable form, the modern style of binding was gradually introduced. These were the days of deep-toned leathers, ornamented in gold and variegated colours, and executed for wealthy and powerful Italian families, who employed skilful artists to draw the designs, often consisting of geometrical interfacings or foliage, such as Maioli and Grolier rejoiced in.
This style of ornamenting leather came from the East, as did the Saracenic rope ornament, which was perhaps the first design to take the fancy of Italian workmen. The general appearance of this rope design reminds one of the frontispiece to a certain ‘Biography of Jack Ketch,’ which someone brought out a few years ago. The half-length portrait of the hero is within a graceful border of ropes intertwined, there are ropes tumbling from the clouds, and he holds a rope in his hand, as if ready to begin. Behind, so far as my memory serves me, there is the frowning portal of Newgate, festooned with fetters. A panel of Saracenic rope-design set on end reminds one of this frontispiece, and we listen instinctively for the tolling of the prison bell.
The celebrated printer Aldus Manutius seems to have been the first to rebel against such sinister designs as these, and, moreover, he was the friend of Jean Grolier and Thommaso Maioli, princes among book-lovers, and artists by nature. Aldus often bound the books he printed in smooth, rich morocco, tooled in gold to various patterns of elaborate design, and to him we doubtless owe much of the improvement in binding which became so marked at the beginning of the sixteenth century. His were, indeed, publishers’ bindings produced by rule of thumb, but they are not on that account less worthy of interest, for the name of Aldus is one to conjure with in all things bookish.
The Thommaso Maioli to whom reference has been made exercised a much greater influence than Aldus ever did in the matter of bindings, for his were the models on which were fashioned the designs of later collectors, not merely of Italy, but of France and other European countries. Maioli’s designs are free and open, in a style suggestive of Eastern influence, but reduced to earth and reality by perpendicular and perfectly straight lines. His library was open to his friends, and most of his books were lettered on the covers ‘Tho. Maioli et amicorum,’ qualified sometimes by other words of different import, ‘Ingratis servire nephas.’ Very likely Maioli was on occasion the victim of some too ardent bibliophile, who would think nothing of borrowing, and perhaps also of some Philistine, who left ruin in the trail of his dirty or heavy fingers.
So, too, Jean Grolier, whom Dibdin ludicrously turns into a bookbinder, but who was, in fact, the French contemporary and twin soul of Maioli, chose to follow the traditions of all true book-lovers, and his covers also bear the courteous invitation to friends, ‘Io Grolierii et amicorum,’ though he too found occasion to alter it from time to time.
The bindings of Maioli and Grolier, worked out and finished most probably at Venice for the most part, are highly valued by collectors all over the world, and they are indeed worthy of all the attention they receive.
The bindings of Maioli are more difficult to meet with than those of Grolier, because the library of the latter numbered some 8,000 volumes, and was eventually sold by auction and dispersed broadcast. Grolier’s descendants had no false sentiment in their composition; the ‘amici’ were themselves, and they acted in their own interests, in strict accordance with their interpretation of the family motto. Besides, in those days, though the love of books raged furiously in isolated breasts, in general it was cold, and no one could probably have been found to take over the entire library, or even that considerable portion of it which at the last lay among the dust and cobwebs of the Hôtel de Vic.
Rarer than any of this period, however, are the medallion bindings of Demetrio Canevari, physician to Pope Urban VII., who was living in the year 1600. In all probability Canevari merely inherited his books, for their covers belong to an earlier period. Still, whatever the fact in this respect, they are called after his name, and are very scarce, notwithstanding that the whole library was intact at Genoa until 1823. Libri thought that these delicate and elaborate bindings had never been surpassed, and certainly they are very beautiful, with their cameos in gold, silver, and colours enriched with classical portraits and mythological scenes.
But to the lover of bindings it is Grolier, Grolier, Grolier; from the haunting music of that name there is no escape, and, moreover, Grolier even in death was great. The Emperor Charles V. did not disdain to follow his taste, while Francis I. was completely carried away by it, his bindings, as soon as he could shake off the early influence of Etienne Roffet, being magnificently Grolieresque, blazing with gold and the brightest colours. Then came Henri II. and the accomplished Diane de Poictiers, whose emblems, the crescent moon, the bow, quiver and arrows of the chase, are invariably found associated with the initial of the King. Diane was the royal mistress, and seems to have had a passion for blending the two linked D’s with the regal H. This joint monogram was on the walls and furniture of her Château of Anet, and still stares us out of countenance occasionally from behind glass doors. Diane, however, so long as she had it in her power—that is to say, until 1559, when the King died—did everything she could to introduce a taste for magnificent and sumptuous bindings into France; to eclipse once and for all time the efforts of every book-lover who had preceded her. In a measure she succeeded, and certainly no good books come to us, when they come at all, which is but seldom, breathing more of romance than these volumes which Diane treasured till her dying day, in spite of Court frowns and persecution. Her library, which was a very extensive one, remained intact at Anet until 1723, when it was sold.
It would be almost an endless task to name all the patrons of artistic bindings who lived in France up to about the time of the Revolution. There was the legitimate Queen of Henri II., Catherine de Medicis, a descendant of the great Lorenzo, called the Magnificent, whose books are often covered in white calf, powdered with golden flowers. This lady was an enthusiastic book-lover, who, when she died, left a library of some 4,000 volumes, most of which are still to be seen in the Bibliotheque Nationale.
Then we must not forget her son, Francis II., who married the unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. His bindings, whether stamped with the golden dolphin or with a monogram in which his own and the Queen’s initials are interlaced, are extremely scarce, and worth much gold. Francis was only seventeen when he died, and had, consequently, no time to become thoroughly saturated with the intense longing for beautiful decorations which probably did much to set Catherine de Medicis and the fair Diane by the ears. His younger brother, afterwards Henri III., had greater opportunities for indulging his tastes in this respect, and the history of his bibliopegic life, so to speak, is full of strange surprises.
Like all other bindings with a history, specimens from the library of this gloomy and taciturn monarch are very rarely met with. They are distinctly worth looking at, however, especially by those of a morbid turn of mind. They are more suggestive than the Saracenic rope style, and infinitely more eloquent of woe. Henri ought to have married the Princess Condé, but she died, and the young King, then about twenty-four years old, and apparently influenced by the example of his father and mother, turned for consolation to his library, and the designing of emblems congenial to his mood.
These consist, at least at this period, when his grief was young and fresh, of skulls garnished with cross-bones, tears, and other emblems of the grave. They are, in their way, absolutely unique, and much more remarkable than the curled snake of Colbert or the three towers of Madame de Pompadour. The bindings of Henri III., though uncongenial to most tastes, are of excellent design and workmanship, for Nicholas and Clovis Eve were living in his day, and better artists than they proved themselves to be it would be hopeless to look for. It was one or other of the brothers who introduced the fanfare style, which resolved itself finally into a profusion of small flourished ornaments, so closely worked together that a volume bound in this way looked as though picked out ethereally with sprays, scrolls, and showers of golden rain. The fanfare style was, so it is said, introduced to put an end to the suicidal gloom that had overtaken the Court of Henri III.
That monarch, though a bad man, was probably the most original thinker in the matter of bindings who ever lived, for De Thou’s plan of inventing a fresh design every time he got married resolved itself into nothing more than a series of heraldic changes, and De Thou is generally credited with a considerable amount of ingenuity, and regarded as a person distinctly worth collecting on account of the variations in which he is found, and for other reasons. Every book which touches, however remotely, on the subject of bindings never fails to give the armorial bearings of De Thou at different periods of his life; and we must pass on to Marguerite de Valois; not the celebrated Queen of Navarre who wrote the ‘Heptameron’ in her youth, but the daughter of Henri II., already mentioned as a great lover of bindings. Marguerite very appropriately, having regard to the origin of her name, chose designs of daisies, which she placed in oval compartments bearing the quarterings of Valois, the whole being surrounded with leafy and branching scroll-work. Clovis Eve was her binder, and the work he turned out at this period is in his best style.
The history of bookbinding takes a curious turn at this epoch. Hitherto we have heard more of the patron than of the artist, a state of things which from this time forth exists no longer. I would not commit myself to the assertion that Marguerite de Valois, who, by the way, died in 1615, was the last of the great collectors who eclipsed the reputation of the binders they employed; but I know that about this period we begin to hear more of the workman and less of the patron. When everybody of the least importance begins to collect books, and to have them bound in specially designed covers, the artist rises on the ashes of the amateur, whose day is from that time forth over and gone, except in the limited circle in which he moves. So it was at the epoch which immediately followed the death of Marguerite de Valois. The Eves had forced their way into notice in spite of the overwhelming presence of Henri II., Diane de Poictiers and Charles IX., Henri III. and IV., and other less-exalted persons; and now Le Gascon made his presence felt still more forcibly than they.
Le Gascon, who is identified with one Florimond Badier, introduced a style of ornamentation known as pointillé, consisting of graceful geometrical designs worked out with innumerable minute gold dots, usually on a ground of bright scarlet. The effect of a perfectly fresh and bright binding by Le Gascon must have been brilliant in the extreme; but, alas! the cost was something phenomenal, and the style, after being parodied and imitated by mechanical process, finally died out in France some thirty-five years after its introduction. Mazarin was the great patron of Le Gascon, and many books which once belonged to the great Cardinal are found with ornamentation, arms and motto—‘His Fulta Manebunt’—laboriously picked out in the beautiful pointillé style.
During the latter part of the sixteenth century, and during the whole of the seventeenth, the French bookbinders had no equal, and if they afterwards deteriorated, they had still many great names among their ranks. Padeloup’s binding of a ‘Daphne et Chloe’ of 1718, with the arms of the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, is a masterpiece; and then there are his bindings in mosaic, looking like lace-work, and the masterly designs worked out for Madame de Pompadour, Queen Maria Leczinska, and many other celebrities. Derome, the Abbé Du Sueil, and Monnier were all fine binders, whose work is eagerly sought for. And then comes the French Revolution, which for the time being seems to have utterly demoralized art in all its branches. Most modern collectors who affect notable bindings have to look to later days, when the surge and storm of the turmoil had passed away, and when Thouvenin, Bauzonnet, Duru, Trantz, Lortic, Marius-Michel, and many more, were in their prime.
English bindings, so far as past times are concerned, were never remarkable for refinement or taste. Velvet or silk, frequently embroidered and tasselled, was often used for royal books, and we also meet with pasteboard covered with leather and studded with gilt ornaments on the back. There is, however, not a trace of the genius of Le Gascon or Derome in any of these productions, and the designs show very little originality. Occasionally, however, an English binding is produced which, bound in morocco—the introduction of which is placed to the credit of James I.—has an extremely good effect, as in the case of the ‘Pontificale Romanum,’ 1595, now in the British Museum. This specimen is elaborately gold-tooled with the arms and badges of the King. A facsimile of it will be found facing page 228 of Mr. W. Salt Brassington’s ‘History of the Art of Bookbinding.’ It is a clever and characteristic piece of work in brown morocco, and gives a very good idea of the highest form of English art of the period which it was possible to produce.
The English, however, have never been at any period particularly conspicuous for their talent in the art of designing book-covers, and it is probable that the majority of well-informed persons who have not made a study of this branch of art would, in case they were asked to enumerate half a dozen good binders of English nationality, find themselves unable to mention more than one. They would begin and end with the talented but eccentric and thirsty Roger Payne, whose bindings are often original and elegant, and who might, had he been able to keep himself respectable, have attained an excellence worthy of the palmy days of France. But Payne chose to live in a tumbledown garret, denuded of plaster, and spent his money in the proportion of
For bacon.... 1 half-penny
For liquor... 1 shilling
He was, moreover, dirty and ill-conditioned, and the only thing that saved him from utter ruin even in his youth was the painful necessity of having to work for a very long time in order to earn what any binder of the present day would look upon as a trifle. Nevertheless, Payne was, when he applied himself, a most conscientious artist, and, although the owner of some costly manuscript or volume would certainly have been horrified to find it lying in a corner of his garret, waiting its turn in company with an old shoe or two, and the remains of the food which Payne had been consuming a week or two before, yet he might be sure that he would get his treasure back in the end, not the worse for its company, but bound in a style that could not be equalled anywhere but in Paris, and not even there at the same small cost.
Some of Payne’s bindings—for he had his moods—are beautiful, classical, and surprisingly artistic, and, notwithstanding his failing, it is clear that he worked hard on occasion. In fact, it is the opinion of many authorities that no English-born binder has ever succeeded, from that day to this, in approaching the genius of Payne. Walther, Staggemeier, and Kalthoeber, though they worked in London, were all Germans. Lewis may or may not have equalled his predecessor, and the same remark applies to Rivière and Bedford, whose names, however, are too contemporary to invite comparison. Besides, the question is one of individual preference, after all, and any binder, however excellent, may have to yield the palm to another in some specific matters of detail.
The glamour of a binding, indeed, vanishes when criticism steps forward. The indescribable something, which is at the same time everything, falls to pieces the instant dissecting implements are produced, and the effect is gone on the instant. The whole work of art must be regarded, and no single part of it, and we may then dream, if we like, of all the strange things that happened when it was ushered into the world. It is a pity that antique and historic bindings are so extremely difficult to procure. No one but a millionaire could hope to stock his shelves with a representative assortment of bindings of different epochs and schools, and even he might spend his whole life in searching for them.
There is something in a binding which fascinates, and yet hurls back the inspired sneer of Robbie Burns with interest:
‘Through and through the inspired leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings;
But, oh! respect his lordship’s taste,
And spare his golden bindings.’
Yes! some bindings are of greater interest, from every possible point of view, than the leaves they protect, and but for their kindly care other leaves which exist among our choicest possessions might have been utterly destroyed. Many a book has been saved from death by the glamour of its cover, and will yet be saved.