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Books Do Tell A Story
by
Kirsten Berg
On Christmas Eve, 1925, a fire consumed Hagley Hall, the exquisite 18th century home of the first Lord Lyttelton in Worcestershire. All the inhabitants fled as molten lead dripped from the roof; while every person in the house escaped the blaze, the library burned.
Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations survived. The top edges have retained a bit of original gilt, while the uppermost corners have been shaved to a rounded edge. The fore edges now bear a brown tint that is in no way related to the age of the paper. We don't know if this set of Hakluyt lay in the ashes of Hagley Hall, singed but intact, or if some intrepid member of the household had the presence of mind to rescue it from the flames.
Now beautifully bound in full morocco, the books present a mixed image of magnificence and misfortune. The Hagley Hall bookplates on the front paste downs and the stamps to the title pages tell the story of the physical condition of this set and its recent past. The luxurious modern binding and careful attention this set has received since that Christmas Eve testify to how much this important edition of Hakluyt was loved.
Aristotle's Ethics and Politics also has a story to tell. The mottled boards, retained though the set has been rebacked, are unusual and striking in their pattern. The beautiful wide margins speak of a gentleman's library; the subject matter of afternoons spent in philosophic contemplation.
The bookplates in this set are almost small enough to pass over without another look. No full name is printed, only the initials E D C, with an extra bit of space between the D and C, as if the printer made a slight mistake in setting the type.
This set of Aristotle once belonged to Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, the fifth son of England's King George III. The Royal Order of the Garter bookplate contains the initials he used when he was known as the Duke of Cumberland. As a member of a royal family he was, no doubt, used to possessing only the finest of houses, horses and books. Though he took the trouble to have his bookplates laid in, the pristine pages imply that the Duke — a cavalry captain with the Light Dragoons — preferred horses to philosophy.
The desire to mark a book as one's own has always existed. For the sake of future generations, write legibly and choose your bookmarks with care. Take for an example the bookplate of George Baillee, Esquire, which he placed in his copy of Lives and Characters of the English Dramatik Poets. He was thoughtful enough to not only date his bookplate (1724) but to also inscribe upon it "One of the Lords of the Treasury," identifying himself clearly, and setting him apart from any other George Baillee who followed.
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