Chapter V: Part 5

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 Dagaeus, 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 Hotel 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 Chateau 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 Conde, 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 _pointille_, 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 _pointille_ 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 Abbe 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 Riviere 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.

*CHAPTER X.*

*THE HAMMER AND THE END.*

The past ten years have witnessed rather more than 600 high-class sales of books by auction in London alone, and the vast majority of the collections dispersed to the winds during that period of time were not fifty, nor forty, and, at a venture, not thirty years old. Nay! it would be tolerably safe to go still further, and to say that the life of a library is, as a rule, less than half that of a man. Though it may consist of the products of antiquity, it has but a short period of existence before it as a whole; and as book is added to book, and manuscript to manuscript, and the sum total of volumes of either kind continues to increase, so, too, it is all but certain that the closing scene of its dissolution draws nearer and nearer to the end.

Generally speaking, the larger and more important a collection, the shorter its life. There are exceptions, but they only prove the rule, which may fairly be described as universal. Books are a valuable species of personal property, and next-of-kin often prove unsympathetic and unsentimental in the custody of them; besides, books cannot be divided so satisfactorily as coin, and the first and almost necessary step is to turn them into money when an estate has to be distributed among many. This is the reason why there are so few great collections in the hands of private individuals, and why they are in jeopardy every day and hour.

In this respect, then, the life of a book is even less than that of a man--an analogy which in no wise minimizes the value of existence to either. A good deal of enjoyment can be crowded into a compass of thirty years, and much information may be obtained in that period if only it be sought for aright. To ask _cui bono?_ is a beggarly interrogatory which might with equal force be thrust before all life's actions, and I would not have it supposed that in my opinion it is a proper or even a satisfactory question to put where books are concerned. I only deplore the fact that to accumulate is usually to scatter the seeds of a short-lived enjoyment which dies in October. Hence it is that lovers of books have been known to cheat time and the hour, and to gratify their own inclinations as fully as possible, taking steps to secure their treasures from the hammer and the end, and have with these objects established national libraries of the very utmost importance--libraries which may certainly be destroyed in some great conflagration or by the rush of shot and shell, but can never be dispersed for the sake of the money they would produce, and will practically, therefore, remain intact for many centuries.

This, it would seem, is really the only effectual way of preserving the good and permanent things of this life for the benefit of those who come after us, for the hammer, though it never destroys directly, does so indirectly, if it be a fact that the whole is greater in every quality, save number, than the parts which compose it. Here is an instance of the contrary plan of hedging round our possessions with stipulations and directions designed for their preservation. Among the great failures of book-men let this be chronicled.

The mind travels back some five or six years to one of the high-priests of a fast-decaying cult. He lodged at a farm-house which, being in the direct path of advancing streets, has perhaps by this time been pulled down. At the time of which I speak it stood in an ocean of mud, not far from the highroad--a relic in the midst of surroundings so painfully new that few strangers who wandered that way failed to pause at the wicket-gate, and gaze on the thatched roof and warped windows that time had doomed. Once or twice a year, seldom oftener--for book-men of the type of the one who held sway there hate to be disturbed--I used to claim admission to the one moderately large room that the house possessed. Its walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling, and a number of movable cases mapped out the surface into narrow alleys. Some thousands of volumes, all bound alike, and consisting chiefly of historical works in English and Latin, must have been here stored. There were many rare books, and all were good of their kind, and most had been well read. The ways of their owner, the lifelong occupant of this crumbling cottage, were peculiar. He would get up at ten in the morning to the minute, and after breakfast take a walk in the fields, or perhaps to the city, returning at five precisely, winter and summer alike. He was so accurate in his movements that people used to set their watches by him, the new clock being generally out of gear. At half-past five he drank tea out of an enormous basin, and smoked a clay pipe, which it was his pleasure to light with a burning coal or at the chimney of his lamp. Matches he detested, on account of the sulphur, which, he said, fouled the tobacco and made it unbearable. At seven the business of the day commenced, and was continued till two, and sometimes three, in the morning--the business of reading hard without cessation, except to take a pull at the basin or to fill and light the pipe. Very pleasant were the winter evenings, when the wind howled round the gables of the house, as it often did, and the night was as black as pitch. This had gone on for thirty years without much, if any, variation, until one day the bookworm was found dead at his post, surrounded by the only real friends he had in the world, for the safety of which he had provided as follows:

By his will, made some twelve months previously, he directed that the whole of his property of every description, books excepted, should be turned into money and divided between two persons named in equal shares. The books he bequeathed to another worm, who lived a mile or two away, and who used occasionally to drop in to compare notes, subject, however, to the express condition that they should neither be sold nor otherwise parted with, and be kept in the same state in which they then were. For their further preservation he directed that the legatee should have the use of the books for his life only, and that after his death they should become the absolute property of a third person, at that time comparatively young in years, a good scholar, and a man of money. One would certainly have thought that these precautions would have sufficed to preserve this library intact for a very considerable length of time; but, as events turned out, it was carted off within a month and sold piecemeal by auction to the highest bidders.

In the first place, it seems, the owner for life had looked over the books, and not finding them sufficiently representative of the particular branch of study to which he devoted himself, went to the reversioner and proposed a joint sale. The latter demurred, not, indeed, to the general principle, but to the suggested division of the proceeds. He said that a life interest in the hands of a man of fifty was worth less than a prospective inheritance of the whole by one much younger, and in this he was right. An actuary very quickly calculated the shares, and then came the hammer and the end.

There are hundreds and thousands of such cases, but not many bookworms of the type I have mentioned. They are fast dying out, for they belong to a very old school, which has no part or lot in these go-ahead days. It would be pitiable to hear a graybeard say farewell to a class of boys, and to see him totter to the door, which, as Epictetus says, is always open; and still more pitiable would it be if we could enter into his thoughts and regrets. Fortunately, we are as yet spared the pain of such partings as these, for our school is new--brand new--and what few old-time book-men are left feel out of place therein. Rather do they regard us in the light of merry roisterers growing wise by painful stages, whose presence is not as yet mellowed by experience, nor sanctified by the touch of time.

And so there are two schools of book-men, one closed to all but the very few, the other open to all who choose to enter, and in each there is a table laden with delights. But at the head of each alike sits the skeleton of Egyptian orgies, veiled, perhaps, after the manner of later and more effeminate times, but still there. It is the same skeleton that startled the Epicurean in the heyday of his pleasures, and threatened him ere the banquet was half over. So also it menaces us, for it clutches a hammer, and we know that it will very shortly proclaim

THE END.

_Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row, London._