BOOK BINDINGS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 211, 30 May 1908, Page 12

BOOK BINDINGS.

Mr. Cyril Davenport in his excellent volume on "The Book" : seems to- have created a mild sensation in certain quarters by ' reminding people that such things exist as . hooks bound in human skin. He mentions two, ■of which one':is' a volume of Camilla ' Flammaribn's. ' ' Concerning the 'otherj-a copy ,of tho. 1 " Constitution" of 1793, lies -in the' : 'Carnavalet Library at Paris, (he'says that "tho skin was tanned 'n't' Meudon." It may as-well have been tanned at Meudon,. as elsewhere. But tho assertion lobks: liko an; echo: of the' old belief that, during the Revolution: a "tannery for human skins : existed; ■ thorc. Tho belief arose during, the!.'Revolution,,itsolf that in the Chateau'ai'Moudqn.thjv skins of victims of tho . guillotinev.-were';;being tanned and niado .'into, wearing-V.-appar<;l fuid other rirticks. It!became so porsistont that, Dr. Holland Roso tells' us, : the Convention sent deputies to -look'.;..into' the charge, whq showed its absurdity v Tho, as3ortion found its way into; -priiit, : .'howover, and Montgaillard has- misled.more writers than one. Carlyio was niislecl "by him. In. the chapter immediately' following that in which' hp had 'tripped up, over, the story of the .sinking of the." Rongeur ;^iie;tnps: - tip over, tho story of the tanneries for human skin at Meudon. "No terrestrial cannibalism," ho Bays—and if his information had been authentic; quite justly—f-is "6f assort on the whole so. detestable." But his information was not, authentic. The question has been threshed out oftener than onco across the Channel, and the. legend is thoroughly discredited. That, however,'-from time to time human skins have, been -tanned and tho leather thus "formed usd for the binding of books 'is' pretty, ■ well known,_ and : vory recently'an ovqning paper intimated that a notebook bound' iu the skin of Burke, the Scottish murderer,,, had been exhibited,-at Edinburgh. . .That, many would caro about books sb'bound'is' : not probable. The ordinary materials-of,, tho binder ono can put up with, and few have even momentary qWms when they reflect that their books, like their bodies, are" elothed ' (as Carlyle somewhere 1 groans) . "with tho dead fleeces of sheep,-'the, bark/ 'of vegetables, tho entrails of wdrms,-'the'hides of oxen and seals, tho felt' of furred beasts." But human skin is another matter. ' Two different attitudes towards relics-of the human body are illustrated -by : ; ari anecdote in that astonishing little book, every page of which is literature, in which Jioswell describes Johnson's tour in the Hebrides. Iu the Isle of Inch-, konneth, Boswoll 'found scattered about 1 a ruined ■ chapel some human bones, and, dig-ging-a hole • in.', the earthen floor, piously reinterred .them,;. Of course, liko a good hoy, he' told his/mentor what he had done, and the paragraph continues: " Dr. Johnson praised- me for what' I had done, though lie owned lie could not have done it. He showod: in the chapel at Rasay his horror at' dead" men's 'b'bnes. 1 . He showed it again at Col's house'.' 1 'In the charter-room there was a remarkably'largo shin-bone, which was said to have been-'-a bone of John Garve, ono- of the lairds. ".I Dr. Johnson would not look at it, 'but'started away, l " Both Boswoll's revcrenco'and Johnsoii's horror are natural enough feelings.' No doubt thoy'can easily bo blunted :by familiarity, but it is liard to .conceivo an initial ropugnance to fragments of human bpdy, whether bono or skin', changing : into positive appreciation. Yet ono who consults such an authority as M. Cym will find that there have been pcoplo'who have even had their fancies and preferences in the matter of human leather. Thus thero is word of Sterne's "Sentimontal Journey" bound in the skin of a negress and of "Tristram Shandy" in ,the skin of a Chineso woman, and of a copy of Dolille's " Georgiques". bound in tho skin of the poet himself.—"Manchester Guardian."