_Initial Letters and Factotums_
Nothing tends to heighten the artistic beauty of a book so much as the
initial letters. This fact was recognized by the monastic scribes, who
lavished all their skill in the production of beautifully illuminated
letters in the Missals and Books of Hours upon which they spent their
time in the scriptorium.
For some time after the introduction of printing, with certain rare
exceptions, the early printers left the space to be filled by the
initial letter blank for the illuminator to fill in. But before long
they began to cut the initials for their books in wood, and they
went to the manuscript books for their earliest model, hence the
ecclesiastical character of the first woodcut initials; and although
they could never hope to obtain the beauty of the illuminated letter,
which was due as much to the colouring as the design, the printers soon
learnt to produce very striking and effective decorative initials.
For an illustration we need go no further than Paris, where in the
fifteenth century the books of Antoine Verard were decorated with a
grand series of woodcut L’s, copied from the decorative script of that
period, while it is only necessary to glance through Mons. A. Claudin’s
magnificent history of printing in France to see many other examples;
while M. Butsch’s _Bücher-Ornamentik_ and Castellani’s _Early
Venetian Printing_ show that the presses of other countries were
equally prolific in this field of book decoration.
The early English printers in this, as in every other, branch of their
work were content to copy or to borrow from foreign sources rather than
to create, consequently the initials found in their books before 1500
show little originality. They borrowed chiefly from France, or perhaps
it would be more correct to say that they _bought_ chiefly from
France. There was so much material in the market, and it saved so much
time and trouble to buy from others. Or was it that there was no man
in England sufficiently skilled to draw or design initial letters, and
no craftsman skilled enough in woodcutting to produce them? Whatever
the reason, this foreign trade in initials continued throughout the
sixteenth century, as blocks that had come from Paris, Lyons, Basle,
Venice, Florence, the Low Countries, and even Spain are frequently
met with in books of that time. Matters improved as time went on, and
English gravers began to turn out some very creditable work, so that,
regarded as printers’ ornaments, whether their origin be native or
foreign, the initial letters found in English books from the fifteenth
to the twentieth century are of sufficient artistic merit, as well as
sufficiently numerous, to deserve a book or books to themselves. The
publication of such a book is long overdue. Too much good material has
already been wasted in the piecemeal treatment of the subject and in
the needless repetition of the same illustrations. What is needed is a
comprehensive study of the whole subject, tracing as far as possible
the birthplace of various alphabets, and what is no less interesting,
pointing out the variations in certain alphabets due to the copyist.
In the hope that such a work may not be much longer delayed, I think
it as well to say as little as possible on this branch of English
printers’ ornaments, and in this section merely to whet the appetite of
the reader for that full study of the subject that is bound to come.
Fortunately there is no lack of material. The studies of Mr Charles
Sayle, of Cambridge University Library, which have extended over
several years, supplemented by those of Mr A. W. Pollard, Dr Oscar
Jennings, and recently of Mr Percy Smith, make the task a light one
as far as the initials of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are
concerned. With Mr Sayle’s kind permission two or three examples
have been chosen from his paper on the subject read before the
Bibliographical Society in November 1902. To these I have added a few
others of that period that, so far as is known, have not hitherto been
reproduced, and I have further supplemented them with some examples
from my recent paper on the Eliots Court Press and other sources to
illustrate the work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
For the purposes of this section I have divided the letters into
groups, according to their subjects, such as ecclesiastical, biblical,
classical, grotesque, heraldic, and finally miscellaneous, embracing
designs not otherwise groupable.
An early example of the ecclesiastical initial is the letter T found
on the verso of the title-page of the _Legend Aurea_. Those seen
in the Morton Missal of 1500, some of which embody Cardinal Morton’s
rebus, also belong to this class, and have the additional merit of
being, it is believed, English workmanship.
The highly decorative L found in some of the books of R. Faques about
1530 is another good example, while the F used in 1540 by William
Middleton in the Year Books of Henry VI., showing a bishop with a
mitre, is also worth notice.
The Reformation and the printing of Bibles and Common Prayer called for
large numbers of initial letters of all sizes, and it is not surprising
that Biblical scenes should have formed the subject of many of these.
Here again the English printer had no need to create. The large number
of service books, printed by the various printers on the Continent
ever since the first establishment of the art in Europe, had flooded
the market with a quantity of such blocks, of which he was not slow to
avail himself. As Mr Sayle remarks, the Great Bibles of 1540 and 1541
are a mine in themselves. The magnificent letter I, illustrating the
Creation, is sufficiently well known. The H, representing Samuel and
Eli, first used by Herford in 1544, is another familiar example.
Reginald Wolfe also had a very interesting set, illustrating scenes in
the life of St Paul, used in an edition of the New Testament, and in
his _Chrysostum_ is a Q, the subject of which is the Judgment of
Solomon.
In Bullinger’s _Sermons_, printed by Ralph Newberrie in 1577, is
a letter D that I think belongs to this division, and represents the
death of the firstborn in Egypt.
Classical subjects begin to appear in English books about the middle of
the sixteenth century, although as early as 1521 Siberch at Cambridge
used a letter C, representing St George and the Dragon, white on a
black ground, which Mr Sayle thinks is local work.
A very fine outline letter S, measuring 64 by 63 mm., shows two figures
appealing to a satyr, with a background of flowers and foliage, was
used by T. Berthelet in the _Bibliotheca Eliotæ_ in 1559. This
printer also used an artistic alphabet which clearly came from Basle.
Another S of the same group, but a different subject, is seen in
Day’s _Cosmographical Glass_, one of the finest examples of that
printer’s work, in which are many artistic initials signed I. B., I.
C., and I. D. The last two are supposed to stand for John Day, but
there is little to support the attribution. But the most famous of
these signed initials were those attributed to Anton Sylvius: examples
of these are found in books printed by Reginald Wolfe, John Day, and
others. As Mr Sayle very rightly says, these initials are worth a
monograph in themselves.
Grotesques were of many kinds. They were popular on the Continent in
the fifteenth century, and an early example of their use in England is
the letter A found in Notary’s hands in 1504, which he had obtained
from Bocard of Paris. Another early set were those in which the human
face formed a part of the design. These are clearly of French ornament,
and sets are found in the hands of Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Faques, and
many others. Wynkyn de Worde also obtained a fine alphabet of this kind
from Gottfried van Os, a printer of Gouda, the only letter that he used
being an H, seen in _Catherine of Siena_. They continued in use
until the middle of the century.
Heraldic and personal initials are a fairly numerous class. One of the
finest is a large decorative letter P, bearing the initials of Edward
Whitchurch, and used in the Bible of 1539. In another Bible is found
an initial showing the arms of the See of Canterbury. These arms are
sometimes found with Archbishop Parker’s initials added to them. In the
_Chaucer_ of 1542 is a letter A, with the initials of John Reynes.
A fine example of an heraldic letter was a letter D showing the arms
of the Earl of Leicester, used by John Day in the _Cosmographical
Glass_, printed in 1559. Christopher Barker, in the Prayer Book of
1580, introduced an A and a T bearing his initials, and in many of his
books are found other initial letters bearing the crest and arms of
his patron, Francis Walsingham.
The group I have called Miscellaneous is so vast that the examples here
noted are barely a fraction of them. They range from all sizes, and are
chiefly ornamental--that is, their design illustrates no particular
subject.
The E used by Siberch in 1521, in the _Libellus de Conscribendis_,
consists of decorative spirals, white on a black ground, and is very
effective. The O and S from the same alphabet are equally fine. These
letters bear some relation to those used by Pynson at this time.
Stipple work and ornament of a different kind are the main features
of the fine H used on sig. A 2 of Pynson’s _Libello huic regio hæc
insunt_, printed in the same year.
Still more striking is the V seen in the Year Books of Edward III.,
printed by Robert Redman in 1540, and which was probably part of
Pynson’s material. This may have come from Italy.
Vautrollier, the Huguenot printer in London, had some beautiful
initials, amongst them the E here shown, and which figures in many of
his books. A contrast to this is the outline letter C from the 1562
edition of Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_. Decoration of an arabesque
kind is seen in a fine set of initials used by Christopher Barker in
the Prayer Book of 1580, mentioned above.
Some of the small initials in the sixteenth century are equally as good
as the large ones. Hundreds of them call for illustration, but there
is only room here to include one of two exquisite little examples that
were amongst Denham’s stock, and which he used in _The Footepath
to Felicitie_ in 1581. These are two T’s, both the same size but
differing in design.
Passing on into the seventeenth century we come at once upon the work
of the Eliots Court Press. Many of their large stock of decorative
initials came to them through Henry Bynneman, and can be traced back
to the presses of Henry Denham, Reginald Wolf, and Richard Jugge. But
there was one alphabet that I have called the Apostle series, as each
letter showed a figure round whose head was a nimbus, some of which
have the emblems of the apostles, but other personages, such as King
David, are now and again substituted. These initials were enclosed in
a frame each side of which shows a certain number of circles, or they
may be intended for studs. This alphabet made its first appearance
in books printed at the Eliots Court Press in 1603, when it was used
in the folio _Plutarch_, which bears Arnold Hatfield’s imprint;
but both George Robinson and Henry Middleton had previously used a
similar alphabet. In fact, there is no doubt that here we see the
copyist at work, and it seems probable that the Eliots Court ‘Apostle’
alphabet was a direct copy from that used by Henry Middleton; but
there was one feature of the Middleton letters that, fortunately for
the bibliographer of modern times, the copyist did not consider it
necessary to follow strictly, and that was the number of circles that
were to appear in each section of the frame. So when copying the letter
F, instead of putting twelve circles at the top and thirteen at the
bottom, as shown in the Middleton letter, he only put nine at the top
and ten at the bottom, and it is only by noting this difference in the
number of circles in the frame that one can tell the difference between
the Eliots Court letters and those of Robinson, Middleton, and various
other printers of the seventeenth century who used similar alphabets.
By the kindness of Professor A. W. Pollard I am enabled to show two
of these Apostle letters which appeared in my article; also two other
decorative letters that are found in books issuing from that press.
Probably the I was designed to commemorate the accession of King James,
in honour of the king of that name, as it embodies the rose and thistle
crowned.
Mr Sayle, in a footnote to his paper mentioned above, calls attention
to the heraldic initials found in Thos. Fuller’s _Church History_,
1655, each section of which was dedicated to a nobleman, whose arms are
shown in the initial of the opening paragraph.
The work of the University presses at this time also provide some good
initial letters. M. Burghers of Oxford designed some very fine ones for
the Clarendon’s _History of the Rebellion_, and Buck and Daniel at
Cambridge used a somewhat ornate but very decorative alphabet, examples
of which are reproduced in Bowes’ _Catalogue of Cambridge Books_.
In the _Lucretius_ of 1713, already referred to in the section on
head and tail pieces, the initials carry on the unity of design and are
in every way suitable. Though small in size they fit in with the type
admirably and add to the charm of what was undoubtedly one of the best
productions of the eighteenth century press, as may be seen from the
two examples here reproduced.
Of another character altogether is the initial A taken from a tract
written by the Rev. Elisha Smith in 1719, and the T found in a sermon
printed at Edinburgh in 1740.
_Factotums_
Where a printer had but a small stock of decorative initial letters he
frequently made use of an ornamental frame, in the centre of which he
placed an ordinary capital. This practice seems to have arisen about
the middle of the sixteenth century, and it probably had its origin on
the Continent.
These borders for initials have come to be known as ‘factotums,’
because they were called to do duty on all occasions, and they have
been heartily condemned as destructive of all artistic feeling. When,
as they often do, they occur throughout a book, they become monotonous.
On the other hand, these factotums, to give them their modern name,
are not without merit, and in the case of large ones they could be
made artistic or decorative. They were made both in metal and wood,
and certain patterns were apparently turned out by the foundries in
large numbers and supplied to all printers alike. Two of the commonest
and perhaps the earliest forms were small frames measuring 22 × 21 mm.
and were of classic design, in one case the filials rising from two
cornucopiæ apparently fastened together with bows and ends of rope (?).
In the other instance the cornucopiæ are more floral in treatment. In
one the filials consist of a female head at the end of an elongated and
curved neck and are both alike, but in the other the upper portions of
a male and female are seen. Another feature of these two factotums is
some kind of drapery and they were enclosed within single rules. Both
of them are found in the hands of many printers in London and of those
at Oxford and Cambridge at the same time.
Equally familiar in books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
are two larger forms, one of which shows a man and woman plucking
thistles and tufts of thistles in the foreground. Needless to say this
was of Scottish origin, and is first found in the books of Waldegrave
when he was printing in Scotland. It afterwards was used by the Eliots
Court Press and other printers in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The smaller of the two represents the story of Salome.
A series of factotums found in Grover’s printing office in 1679 and
used by him in the folio _Herodotus_ are evidently woodcuts and
are not without merit. A very similar factotum which may possibly have
migrated from Grover’s foundry was in use by the Clarendon Press in
1759.[10] They are evidently by the same hand that cut the tail-piece
seen in the same volume.
The use of these borders continued throughout the eighteenth century,
and a good example is seen in a sermon printed in 1738, which is partly
geometrical and partly floral.
They were frequently made up of fleurons and very cleverly arranged. We
reproduce one taken from _The Lovers’ Manual_, 1753.
MODERN WORK