library ladder and among the books on collecting saw _The Library_, by
Andrew Lang, London, 1881. Confident that I would find some charming
and sympathetic essay on the subject, I took it down and turned to the
index, but evidently I had forgotten Lang's prejudice, for to my horror
the startling lines "Women the natural foes of books" met my eye.
They were classed with the other enemies of books: damp, dust, dirt,
book-worms, careless readers, borrowers, book stealers, book-ghouls,
etc., so I hastily turned to the page and read: "Almost all women are
the inveterate foes, not of novels, of course, nor peerages and popular
volumes of history, but of books worthy of the name. It is true that
Isabelle d'Este and Madame de Pompadour and Madame de Maintenon were
collectors; and, doubtless, there are many other brilliant exceptions
to a general rule. But broadly speaking, women detest the books which
the collector desires and admires. First, they don't understand them;
second, they are jealous of their mysterious charms; third, books cost
money, and it really is a hard thing for a lady to see money expended
on what seems a dingy old binding, or yellow paper scored with crabbed
characters. Thus ladies wage a skirmishing war against book-sellers'
catalogues, and history speaks of husbands who have had to practise the
guile of smugglers when they conveyed a new purchase across their own
frontier. Thus many married men are reduced to collecting Elzivers,
which go readily into the pocket, for you cannot smuggle a folio volume
easily."
Poor man, his experience with the fair sex must have been a very
unfortunate one. Perhaps he had been disillusioned by reading of the
sixteenth-century abbess of the convent of Rumsey in Hampshire, whom
Dibdin tells about. She was bibulously rather than bibliographically
inclined and bartered the books of the abbey for strong liquors and
consequently was accused of immoderate drinking, especially in the
nighttime when she invited the nuns to her chamber to participate in
these excesses. But fortunately the women whom Lang describes in his
diatribe are really the rare exception to the rule and only lack of
space prevents my writing a folio volume about the many famous women
collectors who have been friends not foes to books throughout the ages.
It is true though that the female of our species has never been as
susceptible to the malady of book madness as the male, possibly because
she has not had the same opportunity. Unless a woman is economically
independent there are many demands upon her allowance and consequently
she must really want a book very much to buy it instead of a new hat or
something else that is dear to her heart. She is not as apt to buy for
speculation or because a book is one of the conventional collector's
items, but is more independent and adventurous in following her
personal taste, although the spirit of a true collector of books is the
same whether it be possessed by man or woman.
Strange to say, the first bibliophile on record is a woman. She was
a Benedictine abbess named Hroswitha. She lived in the Nunnery of
Gandersheim in Saxony in the tenth century. She not only read all
the parchment rolls and great codices which came into her hands, but
caused books to be written for her Convent, wrote plays in Latin and
translated Terence. Hroswitha probably knew but little Greek, as
certain monks of the period considered the language an invention of the
devil. Her example was followed in the next century by the lovely and
intelligent Countess Judith of Flanders, who, wherever she followed
her warring English husband, caused the most exquisite illuminated
manuscripts to be made. She continued her interests on the continent
when she later married the Duke of Bavaria. Four of her manuscripts,
magnificently bound, are now safely housed in the Pierpont Morgan
Library where "though they are books worthy of the name" their beauty
may be appreciated by women who are not even "the brilliant exception
to the general rule" of collectors.
The Golden Age of women bibliophiles in France from the fifteenth
through the eighteenth centuries must have been a glorious time to have
lived. The Queens, the Princesses, the Mistresses of the Kings and all
the great ladies had their libraries. They were composed of beautifully
illuminated breviaries, missals and manuscripts, and from the presses
of the great printers of the day came romances, histories, plays and
religious books, veritable works of art. These books and manuscripts
were bound in gold and silver and jewels, embroidered velvet, and in
some of the most beautiful leather bindings the world has ever seen.
Briefly: Marguerite of Navarre was one of the famous scholars of her
day and the author of a collection of love stories, _The Heptameron_.
It is said of her "L'amour du livre, chez la fille de Catherine fut
une véritable passion." Her books were bound by the famous Clovis and
Nicolas Eve and were decorated with daisies. Madame de Pompadour was
for many years an inspiring influence in art and letters, although she
owned more plays, novels and other "productions légères" than serious
works. She had a printing press at Versailles and also etched plates
for illustrations and as gifts for her friends. La Countesse de Verrue
was a discriminating collector, a patroness of all the arts and a
fascinating woman. The Du Barry acquired 1,068 volumes. When she began
to form her library she could scarcely read or write. However, with
practise, she soon learned to read well, but like many of us never to
spell. Anne of Austria was fortunate in having her friend Mazarin, a
kindred spirit in bibliomania, to advise her. Marie Antoinette had two
libraries. She kept her particular books in her boudoir in the Trianon
and the titles in the catalogue are very entertaining. Mary Stuart had
a catholic taste in literature and her books were exceptionally well
chosen. In deference to the loss of her first husband some were bound
in black with black edges. It is comforting to know that when she left
France as a young widow to return to her native Scotland where so much
tragedy awaited her "qu'elle avait pour les livres un goût profond, et
ils etaient pour ainsi dire sa seule consolation loin de ce beau Pays
de France." In England, one of the most fortunate of the many ladies
who appreciated literature was Queen Elizabeth, for she lived in an age
when masterpieces were being written, many of them dedicated to her and
many inspired by her. When she was young she embroidered velvets in
gold and silver threads to bind her treasures. Among the manuscripts
in the Bodleian Library are the _Epistles of St. Paul_, etc., which
was Elizabeth's own book. She has written at the beginning "I walke
many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I
plucke up the goodlie-some herbes of sentences by pruning: chaw them
by musing: and laie them up at length in the hie seate of memorie by
gathering them together: that so having tasted their sweetness I may
the less perceave the bitterness of this miserable life."
One of the most touching and beautiful tributes ever written to a
woman is Sir Philip Sidney's dedication of his _Arcadia_ to his "deare
ladie and sister," the Countess of Pembroke, to whom he wrote in part:
"you desired me to do it, and your desire, to my hart is an absolute
commandment. Now it is done onely for you, onely to you." She was his
great inspiration and helped him in the editing of the book.
Where there's a will there's a way and women seem able to smuggle
folios as well as duodecimos into the library. Catherine de Médici, for
instance, had such a passion for books that she got them by fair means
or foul. She longed for the library of her cousin Marshal Strozzi and
as soon as he died appropriated it for her own. Catherine neglected to
pay for it and owed the book-sellers as well, so after her death when
her books were about to be seized by her creditors, De Thou raised
the money to pay for them and they were saved for the state. The
fascinating and glamorous Diane de Poitiers was a practical business
executive as well as a bibliophile, for it was she who supposedly
advised Henry II to pass an ordinance requiring publishers to present
a copy of each book they published to the royal libraries at Blois and
Fontainebleau, thereby increasing these collections by more than seven
hundred volumes. Thus the present-day copyright law was initiated by
a woman. Catherine of Russia was also courageous in her methods of
gratifying her literary tastes. She partitioned Poland in 1772 and
seized enough books to form the foundation of the Imperial Library
at the Hermitage. She used to ask the Ambassadors, particularly the
Ambassador from England, to get foreign books for her and if she did
not have the money to pay for them at the time she conveniently forgot
about it.
In later days there were women in the young colony in America who
enjoyed their books in the midst of their primitive surroundings. In
1643 in Emans, New York, the inventory of the Widow Bronck included
Danish books. Mrs. Willoughby of Virginia left over one hundred volumes
at her death in 1673, and in 1700 Elizabeth Tatham of New Jersey
left five hundred and fifty-two volumes, while their New England
contemporary, Hannah Sutton, acquired a library of about seventeen
hundred volumes.
In the early nineteenth century Miss Richardson Currer of Eshton Hall,
Craven, Yorkshire, amassed a large and scholarly collection of books on
many subjects. It was housed in a great room with a gallery which must
have been the envy of all book-lovers. She was the fond possessor of
the rare _Book of St. Albans_, written and compiled by Juliana Berners,
prioress of the nunnery of Sopwith in Hertfordshire. It is said that
the ardent book collector Richard Heber, being unable to secure the
book in any other way, ardently proposed marriage to Miss Currer. She
was firm in her refusal however, preferring to keep this first book
about sport to be written by a woman to herself.
One of the most learned lady bibliophiles of this century in America
was Miss Amy Lowell of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her books and
manuscripts, including her collection of Keats, are being preserved for
posterity in the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial at Harvard. She always
enjoyed smoking a good cigar while writing or carrying on her sparkling
conversations, as she thought it made her thoughts flow more easily.
One could not write of women in connection with books without speaking
of two distinguished custodians of famous libraries, scholars, who are
as well known abroad as in America: [the late] Miss Belle Da Costa
Greene, the brilliant Director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and
Miss Ruth Sheppard Granniss, former Librarian of the Grolier Club
and sympathetic friend of all bibliophiles, male or female. They, of
course, come under Lang's category of exceptional examples.
But what of the many other exceptions? Would Lang have thought that
Miss Lowell could not understand books? Or that Diane de Poitiers could
be jealous of their mysterious charms? Or that Catherine of Russia
would hesitate to spend what money she could procure to satisfy her
passion for them? What could his lady friends have been like to be
classed with the enemies of books--and such enemies at that?
It would appear that book collecting is a truly feminine pastime,
containing many elements which appeal to their sex; romance,
intellectual curiosity, love of the beautiful and the quest of
something difficult to obtain. But feminine collectors should beware
of pitfalls, for sometimes this mania arouses the baser instincts such
as envy, extravagance and self-indulgence. Wives have even been known
to spend their marketing money on books instead of daily bread, and
to waste hours reading book catalogues instead of attending to their
housewifely duties. Book collecting, however, is a common denominator
of all ages and a medium through which the minds of both sexes may meet
with pleasure, and therefore greatly to be recommended as a delightful
occupation.
[Illustration]BEATRICE WARDE[Illustration]
PRINTING SHOULD BE INVISIBLE
Copyright 1932 by The Marchbanks Press. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your
own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a
deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One
is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is
of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and
drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or
not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about
wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking
the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost ten thousand dollars;
but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine
vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is
calculated to _reveal_ rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it
was meant to _contain_.
Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will
find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wineglass are parallel
in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates finger-prints
on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and
the fiery heart of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages
similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-page?
Again: the glass is colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the
bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its color and is
impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms
in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in
tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too
small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted;
you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting
lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader
subconsciously worried by the fear of "doubling" lines, reading three
words as one, and so forth.
Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his
wine was a "modernist" in the sense in which I am going to use that
term. That is, the first thing he asked of this particular object was
not "_How should it look?_" but "_What must it do?_" and to that extent
all good typography is modernist.
Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the
central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a
virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one other thing in the
world that is capable of stirring and altering men's minds to the same
extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man's
chief miracle, unique to man. There is no "explanation" whatever of the
fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger
to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to
hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with
an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking, broadcasting,
writing and printing are all quite literally forms of _thought
transference_, and it is this ability and eagerness to transfer and
receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for
human civilization.
If you agree with this, you will agree with my one main idea, _i.e._,
that the most important thing about printing is that it conveys
thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. This statement is
what you might call the front door of the science of typography. Within
lie hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by assuming that _printing
is meant to convey specific and coherent ideas_, it is very easy to
find yourself in the wrong house altogether.
Before asking what this statement leads to, let us see what it does
not necessarily lead to. If books are printed in order to be read,
we must distinguish readability from what the optician would call
legibility. A page set in 14-point Bold Sans is, according to the
laboratory tests, more "legible" than one set in 11-point Baskerville.
A public speaker is more "audible" in that sense when he bellows.
But a good speaking voice is one which is inaudible _as_ a voice.
It is the transparent goblet again! I need not warn you that if you
begin listening to the inflections and speaking rhythms of a voice
from a platform, you are falling asleep. When you listen to a song
in a language you do not understand, part of your mind actually does
fall asleep, leaving your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to
enjoy themselves unimpeded by your reasoning faculties. The fine arts
do that; but that is not the purpose of printing. Type well used is
invisible _as_ type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed
vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.
We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many
reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of
doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed
piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply
that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its
own sake and for the delectation of the senses. Calligraphy can almost
be considered a fine art nowadays, because its primary economic and
educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English will
not qualify as an art until the present English language no longer
conveys ideas to future generations, and until printing itself hands
its usefulness to some yet unimagined successor.
There is no end to the maze of practices in typography, and this
idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the
great typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking,
the one clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this
essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more
hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive
enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible. And with this clue,
this purposiveness in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the
most unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly.
It is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason
from them. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you will
not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of ideas
involving abstract principles.
I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising
type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something
about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied
with a beautiful gesture: "Ah, madame, we artists do not think--we
_feel_!" That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my
acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: "I'm
not _feeling_ very well today, I _think_!" He was right, he did think;
he was the thinking sort; and that is why he is not so good a painter,
and to my mind ten times better as a typographer and type designer than
the man who instinctively avoided anything as coherent as a reason.
I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who takes a printed page
from a book and frames it to hang on the wall, for I believe that
in order to gratify a sensory delight, he has mutilated something
infinitely more important. I remember that T. M. Cleland, the famous
American typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for a
Cadillac booklet involving decorations in color. He did not have the
actual text to work with in drawing up his specimen pages, so he had
set the lines in Latin. This was not only for the reason that you will
all think of, if you have seen the old typefoundries' famous _Quousque
Tandem_ copy [_i. e._, that Latin has few descenders and thus gives a
remarkably even line]. No, he told me that originally he had set up
the dullest "wording" that he could find [I dare say it was from the
_Congressional Record_], and yet he discovered that the man to whom
he submitted it would start reading and making comments on the text.
I made some remark on the mentality of Boards of Directors, but Mr.
Cleland said "No: you're wrong; if the reader had not been practically
forced to read--if he had not seen those words suddenly imbued with
glamor and significance--then the layout would have been a failure.
Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way of saying 'This is
not the text as it will appear.'"
Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because that
contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few points about
advertising.
The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the
reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author's words.
He may put up a stained glass window of marvellous beauty, but a
failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like
text gothic that is something to be looked at, not _through_. Or he
may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have a
book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far
as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three
Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of
Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken
into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is
called "fine printing" today, in that you are at least conscious that
there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That
is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do
with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is the fact that the
mental eye focusses _through_ type and not _upon_ it. The type which,
through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of "color," gets
in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type. Our
subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders [which illogical setting,
tight spacing and too-wide unleaded lines can trick us into], of
boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps shouting
at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals jammed
together without hairspaces--these mean subconscious squinting and loss
of mental focus.
And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the
most exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in
advertising, where the one and only justification for the purchase of
space is that you are conveying a message--that you are implanting a
desire, straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to
throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the
simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien
to the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you
will by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if
you are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but
if you are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg
you to remember that thousands of people pay down hard-earned money for
the privilege of reading quietly-set book-pages, and that only your
wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting
text.
Of course every one of you realizes that whatever interesting effects
you can produce with displayed advertising, Direct Mail is your
paradise. It is here that you approach the august precincts of the
designer of books; here you can deal in the fascinating questions
of paper, ink, presswork, and all those minute and thrilling
technicalities by which the craftsman proves his worth. You also have
the satisfaction of knowing that the better and more mannerly Direct
Mail advertising looks, the more solid returns it will bring in.
To sum up: printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which
many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and
maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the
transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline.
When you realize that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be
able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at
something else. The "stunt typographer" learns the fickleness of rich
men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and
kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair spaces. Nobody
[save the other craftsmen] will appreciate half your skill. But you may
spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline
goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
COMPOSED IN BEMBO TYPES
[Illustration]PORTER GARNETT[Illustration]
_The Ideal Book_
Copyright 1931 by The Limited Editions Club. Reprinted by permission
of the publisher.