Bookplates and the Alexander Turnbull Library

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 May 1991, Page 55

Bookplates and the Alexander Turnbull Library

J. R. TYE

The European use of bookplates (ex libris) can be traced back to the fifteenth century. Whether engraved, etched, or otherwise printed, they were commissioned by booklovers from artists as distinguished as Diirer, and developed through recognisable variations of, and embellishments on, the heraldic insignia of the owner. In England there was a notable increase in the demand for bookplates designed to prescription from the 1860 s onwards. By 1880 their collection had become sufficiently popular for John Byrne Leicester Warren, later the third Baron de Tabley, to publish the first major British treatise on the subject. His Guide to the Study of Bookplates is the forerunner of numerous books on the subject, while his idiosyncratic categorisation of armorial plates has remained standard ever since. By 1891 the Ex Libris Society of London had been founded, with its invaluable Journal , the complete set of which is held by the Turnbull Library.

It was at this point, six years after the founding of his library, that Alexander Turnbull commissioned his first bookplate from Walter Crane, the influential disciple of William Morris, of Arts and Crafts fame. Turnbull’s biographer, E. H. McCormick, meditated on Turnbull’s commitment to his Scottish ancestry, which provides the central motif, and Crane’s ‘rendering of the clan’s eponymous founder, that man of great spirit who seized a charging bull by the horns and turned it aside from Robert Bruce, thus earning rich estates from his grateful monarch.’ 1 Technically, such a bookplate is a kind of visual pun known as a ‘rebus’, derived from the Latin tag non verbis sed rebus (not by words but deeds), and exemplifies the family motto, Fortuna favet audaci (Fortune favours the brave). Turnbull must have been greatly flattered when his bookplate was almost immediately reproduced in Egerton Castle’s English Bookplates 2 of 1892, where it is described as ‘spirited’; in fact Crane designed few such plates. In 1896 Turnbull decided on a second, more orthodox ex libris, and commissioned his bookseller Bernard Quaritch to procure a design which should be ‘accurate armorially . . . and artistic’. 3 And so it was, complete with crest, torse, mantling, helmet (an esquire’s), shield, motto and name. With some variations in size it was his most frequently used armorial plate.

However, in 1909 Turnbull veered towards discreetly erotic art nouveau, for which he commissioned D. H. Souter of Sydney. Two plates resulted, both featuring curiously appendaged mermaids against

a background of yachts, reflecting one form of Turnbull’s relaxations. Unique among his bookplates is one designed by the pseudonymous C. Praetorius. Its central motif is an elaborate Maori whare, complete with maihi, amo and whanau. Turnbull thus documented his own interest in Polynesian history, and reflected the increasing worldwide attraction towards aboriginal motifs. A full account of Turnbull’s bookplates is given in Penelope Griffith’s article ‘Alexander Turnbull’s Bookplates’. 4

By the very nature of his bibliophile ambitions, Turnbull would have been in continuous contact with books which bore the insignia of famous former owners. In 1930, Johannes Carl Andersen, the first Librarian of the Library, revealed that ‘the late Mr Turnbull took to noting the plates in his various volumes fifteen to twenty years ago. I came on so many loose plates that I made a collection of plates in old to-be-discarded volumes, apart from those in volumes on the shelves’. 5 Indeed, Turnbull’s collector’s instinct may well have led to the purchase of books which had belonged to celebrities such as Alfred Austin (Tennyson’s successor as Poet Laureate), Sir Robert Peel (politician and founder of the Metropolitan Police) and Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, each bearing its owner’s bookplate.

It is not surprising that the founding of a group collecting bookplates centred on the Turnbull Library. The New Zealand Ex Libris Society was founded in 1930, and owed a great deal to Pat Lawlor, an irrepressible bookman. By his own account, Lawlor had encountered P. Neville Barnett in Sydney. New Zealand born, Barnett was actively engaged in the study and design of bookplates, as a diversion from his employment as librarian of the Bank of New South Wales. Lawlor found his enthusiasm contagious, and welcomed the suggestion that a New Zealand society should be formed in association with the Australian Ex Libris Society, founded seven years before. Lawlor acknowledged later that ‘his practical mind and generosity moved him to give us a fine collection of plates and a complete collection of brochures for the founding of such a society’. The warm connection with Barnett was to be maintained over many years, during which Barnett built up an international reputation as collector, writer and publisher of many books on bookplates, and as a patron of fine printing.

After one false start, the New Zealand Ex Libris Society was founded, and produced its first brochure in 1930. The names of its members are familiar as benefactors of the Library, among them Dr Scholefield, Johannes Andersen, Sir Joseph Kinsey, Sir Robert Anderson, Sir James Ilott, Elsdon Best and P. Watts Rule. It is noteworthy for the future of the Society that its constitution and rules were exclusively concerned with the promotion of bookplate use, design, collection and evaluation; in practice, this was to limit its life. Nevertheless, the foundation of the Society had an immediate impact in the substantial interchange

of ex libris among its forty or so members, access to other sources of acquisition, and a freemasonry which extended world-wide. The global extent of the collection of bookplates is manifest by reference to the files relating to the two Turnbull collections; commercial dealerships clearly existed well before, and after, the Second World War.

The New Zealand Ex Libris Society met on a quarterly basis in Turnbull’s own panelled library, by 1930 the Rare Book Room, presided over by Johannes Andersen. Graham Bagnall described him as ‘poet, historian of Maori legend and of South Canterbury’. Alice Woodhouse, who worked with him from 1926 until his retirement in 1937, comments that ‘he was remarkable in any company, with his height and his mass of hair and craggy face’. The Rare Book Room also served as his office, each of his several desks allotted to separate interests; he was successively editor of the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, and of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, as well as an authority on New Zealand bird song. The Room was the obvious place for the Society’s formal lectures and exhibitions; indeed, the first ‘annual’ exhibition was held there in 1931. Its Catalogue lists 695 items: 67 from Andersen, 55 from Hilda Wiseman (the Auckland artist and enthusiast), 203 from Eric Reeves, 137 from the Society’s own collection, 95 ‘Australian’ plates (source unspecified) and 174 ‘Bookplates outside New Zealand’ (source also unspecified). Given the names of owners, artists, style and media, the range is impressive, and indicates the individual taste both of original owner and collector. In the event there were to be only two exhibitions in all, the second, also quite substantial, merely an appendage to the New Zealand Authors’ Exhibition of April 1936.

The five Brochures published by the Society are in limited editions, four of which have book art significance as fine printing. Brochure 3, least well printed, is of literary significance primarily in that it was produced in collaboration with the New Zealand Authors’ Week Committee in April 1936; it contains critical articles on New Zealand writing, and prose and verse by writers such as Alan Mulgan, Eileen Duggan, Arnold Wall, Jessie Mackay, Robin Hyde, J. C. Beaglehole and Eve Langley. The list of New Zealand writers and their work, interspersed with photographs, extends to fifty-three pages. The ex libris material acts as a kind of grace note, consisting of original bookplates, and a list of bookplates on exhibition lent by Johannes Andersen, Eric Reeves and Violet Wakelin, who had succeeded Pat Lawlor as secretary in 1931; throughout its existence (later as Mrs Markham Jones) she remained a tower of strength, and her own fine collection remains in private hands. With the outbreak of the Second World War the Society went into recess, to be revived in 1948. Its first post-war Brochure , number 6, was published in 1951. The list of members is smaller, but contains familiar names: Johannes Andersen, though living in

Auckland, J. M. A. Ilott, Pat Lawlor, Eric Reeves, E. C. Simpson, Hilda Wiseman; and significant new members: James Berry (coin and stamp designer), David Graham, Miss Jessie Jackson, C. R. H. Taylor (Chief Librarian), E. Mervyn Taylor (artist), H. H. Tombs, and others. Almost all pre- and post-war members prove to have been benefactors of the Library.

The Society continued to meet and collectively pursue ex libris interests in the Rare Book Room. Brochure 6 is however their last stricdy devoted to bookplates. Brochure 7 (1958), the terminal number, is subtitled ‘A Roll of Book Collectors in New Zealand’, and as such provides a valuable record of individual preferences, no doubt of use to antiquarian booksellers. It also lists forty-seven current members of the Society. In fact, the change of title indicates a change in direction of interests attributable to C. R. H. Taylor’s pressure towards bibliography per se. From 1953 the Society’s activities in Wellington are recorded in detail in a cyclostyled Bulletin circulated at frequent intervals. In June 1954 the Society amended its constitution to include ‘any matters connected with books and kindred matters’ [sic]. In 1959 a new style of brochure Ex Libris was published, sub-titled Notes on New Zealand Books and Writers , with a substantial contribution from Graham Bagnall, then at the National Library Service. The first issue expressed the hope that the new Notes would stimulate members to offer ‘observations or animadversions upon books and writers of interest to the New Zealand collector’. The appeal must have fallen on deaf ears, for Ex Libris disappears from the Turnbull’s catalogue after its second issue in December 1960. The last Bulletin was issued in May 1962.

By that date however the Library had benefited from the generosity of its first Librarian, who bequeathed his own cherished collection of some 1000 bookplates. Essentially the Andersen Collection belongs more to the category of book arts, and represents only one of the several interests of a professional bibliographer. As Librarian of a notable national research library, Andersen had access to similar institutions in North America, and to flourishing ex libris societies world-wide. By personal preference he had been attracted to pictorial and symbolic motifs, Australasian rather than European. His cordial relationship with Ella Dwyer, the Tasmanian designer, is marked by a virtually complete accumulation of her superb etchings, exemplifying his own criterion that a bookplate should be ‘something that you should be able to turn to again and again’. Hilda Wiseman, New Zealand’s most prolific designer of linocuts, ideal for Maori motifs, is also well represented. Most characteristic of almost all Andersen’s collection is the meticulous mounting of objets d’art, a subject on which he held strong views. The Library received the collection in October 1955.

The Turnbull’s other collection was presented by David Graham and his wife and amanuensis, Jessie S. Jackson. Both had been members of the post-war Society. Graham’s story is a sad one. Born in Lyttelton in 1885, he was educated on the West Coast of the South Island, and on the East Coast of the North. He began as a farm labourer near Dannevirke, and transferred to Opotiki. There, in 1924, he injured his back severely. He received months of treatment at Rotorua, and sought relief from pain and monotony in the study of entomology. As

a result he was appointed to control the plague of mosquitoes in Auckland. His success gained him headlines as ‘Mr Mosquito’, and he was able to combine his activities with the excavation of Maori relics, which he gave to the Auckland Museum. In the early thirties he was appointed marine biologist at the Portobello Hatchery in Dunedin, and was again notable for his success, and for his promotion of fish as food. The Depression caused his redundancy, and a desperate search for employment suited to his qualifications. Among his papers in the Turnbull is a testimonial from Sir Charles Weston, who described him as one of the most remarkable men he had ever met, including Rutherford. On the outbreak of World War 11, aged 54, Graham made a determined effort to join the Army and was appointed briefly to the Medical Corps, and after training, to be Inspector of Munitions in Wellington. His success in discovering faulty fuses in shells for the artillery again caused him to be hailed in headlines. At this point fate struck him down; he began a rapid decline in health, with strokes, osteoarthritis and coronary disease. After much medical attention he was invalided in 1944 with the rank of captain. Undeterred, and in spite of a paralysed right hand, he devoted himself to a pioneering magnum opus, his Treasury of New Zealand Fishes , faithfully transcribed by his future wife. It met with general approval when published in 1953.

It is against this background that one has to see his collection of thousands of bookplates. In 1949 he had met Clyde Taylor, Turnbull’s second Librarian, conversation turning towards the revived Ex Libris Society. Graham recalled an early interest of 1897, joined the Society, attended meetings, and pursued his revived interest with enormous zeal. Over the next fifteen years he must have written hundreds of letters to other collectors, ex libris societies, booksellers and agents. In this he was clearly influenced and assisted by the Australian authority, P. Neville Barnett, who had inspired Pat Lawlor twenty years before.

Graham lost no time, for by 12 March 1951 the Wellington Evening Post hailed him as owner of ‘what must easily be the biggest collection of bookplates in New Zealand’. The collection is described as contained in descriptive folders in boxes, and consisting of about 4000 plates. Apart from its sheer size, it was made up of numerous Australian and New Zealand plates, and examples from ‘practically all’ European countries, the United States, and Japan. Famous owners included Pope Pius IX and Princess Elizabeth. As to books on the subject, his library contained ‘7O books on bookplates, most of them deluxe editions published in various countries’. Even allowing for the purchase of preexisting collections, the mind boggles at such industry in a subject he had taken up ‘fairly recently about two years ago’. His intention, even then, was to write a book, and to bequeath the collection to the Turnbull Library. Some seven years later in the New Zealand Ex Libris Society’s

Brochure 7, he is described as an authority already working on ‘A History of New Zealand Bookplates’; no such book was however published, nor is there a manuscript extant. But on the same occasion he is said to have 5000 plates, and 120 books and journals on ex libris. It does appear that part of Graham’s collection had belonged to P. Neville Barnett, who had died in June 1953. There are two intriguing letters among the Graham papers in the Turnbull Library. Both lack the annual date, and were written to Graham by the widowed Joyce Barnett, obviously in response to enquiries from him. He had apparently asked if she would allow him to acquire Barnett’s total collection. Her reply of 29 June makes clear that she wished to keep ‘Barney’s collection’, but was prepared to ‘sell the other’; she was favourably disposed to the Turnbull Library as its final destination, price un-named, and asked Graham to make arrangements as to despatch and payment. His reply seems to have been satisfactory, for her letter of 1 August assures him that she will ‘sort out the plates’ after recovery from a minor operation. There the record ends. It does however raise the question as to whether Graham would have approached her so soon after her husband’s death, and whether zeal had overcome propriety. There is some reason to believe it had, if the ex libris grapevine had been at work.

Neville Barnett’s death would have been well known to Ex Libris societies on both sides of the Tasman. The Auckland Ex Libris Society was active, and strongly supported by Hilda Wiseman, who was also a member of the New Zealand Society. There would have been conjecture as to the future of Barnett’s collections, and Graham’s initial letter could be regarded as a pre-emptive strike. In fact Mrs Barnett retained possession of ‘Barney’s collection’ until it was acquired for the Auckland War Memorial Museum through the good offices of Colonel A. R. Hughes and the Auckland Ex Libris Society, for the extraordinarily low cost of £3OO, in 1955. Altogether there were some 7000 bookplates and some 100 books on the subject, several written and published by Barnett himself. The Museum mounted a substantial exhibition in 1956.

There appears to have been a ferment about bookplates in 1955. In Wellington it took the form of David and Jessie Graham’s open intention of giving their collection to the Turnbull Library. The tangible pledge was in the form of a joint bookplate designed by Adele Younghusband, the Auckland artist. Its principal motif was taken, by consent of the British Museum, from the earliest known (Egyptian) library marker, dating from about 1400 B.C. The supporting motifs, a thistle and a sprig of kowhai, were of sentimental significance to husband and wife. The Library did not, however, receive the bequest until early in 1963, two years before Graham’s death. The Evening Post rose to the occasion, with illustrations of a selection of plates. James

Berry, a contemporary of David Graham and Jessie Jackson in the Ex Libris Society, must receive major credit for facilitating the transfer of the thousands of plates and the substantial specialist library, a task which Graham rewarded with a bound inscribed collection of Australian plates, mounted on hand-laid paper, preserved with the main collection.

Given Graham’s severe disabilities and prodigious dedication, his collection is monumental. It contains examples of the world’s most celebrated designers’ work in some forty boxes. Categories vary, from national (Spain, Holland, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Indonesia, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, France, Cuba, Italy, Austria, Romania, Norway, England, Sweden, Finland, and others); to owners and artists. Interestingly enough, New Zealand was the birthplace of two famous turn of the century British designers, G. W. Eve and W. P. Barrett, who are well represented. There are royal bookplates, two of Rewi Alley’s, Charlie Chaplin’s, Robert Menzies’, Mussolini’s, Douglas Mawson’s and substantial numbers by Australian and New Zealand artists. A mere glance through the collection is at once an acknowledgement of artistic skill, human idiosyncracy, and the bibliomaniac syndrome; but is an injustice. The bookplates deserve to be seen, individually and selectively, with annotations, in a sympathetic environment. Work has begun on the processing which will eventually make this possible.

REFERENCES In the preparation of this paper I have been greatly assisted by Clyde Taylor’s recollections, his books on bookplates, and his rare copies of the New Zealand Ex Libris Society’s Brochures. Librarians in the major cities have contributed such knowledge as they have of ex libris societies, and the fate of collections made by former members. In fact, very little is known, and the main activity seems to have been confined to Auckland and Wellington. I am particularly grateful to Peter Hughes, Librarian of the Auckland Institute and Museum, for details of the P. Neville Barnett Collection; and to Donald Kerr, Rare Books Librarian of Auckland City Libraries, for information on the Hilda Wiseman Collection (recently exhibited) and on the Auckland Ex Libris Society. My principal thanks must however go to Moira Long, Special Printed Collections Librarian, who encouraged my survey of the Bookplate Collections, and shared the discovery of rare and lovely examples of this neglected area of the book arts. It is to be hoped that processing will continue, and that selections will be placed on display from time to time.

1 Turnbull Library Record, 3 (1970), 78-91, p. 82. 2 Eeerton Castle, English Book-Plates: an Illustrated Handbook for Students of Ex-Libris (London, 1892). 3 Turnbull to Quaritch, 12 May 1896. A. H. Turnbull. Letterbooks. qMS 1891-1900. 4 Turnbull Library Record, 12 (1979), 105-111. 5 New Zealand Ex Libris Society Brochure, no. 1, 1930, p. 11. In addition use has been made of the following materials in the Library: J. C. Andersen Bookplate Collection. David H. Graham Bookplate Collection.

J. C. Andersen. Letters. MSS Acc. 89-252. David H. Graham. Scrapbooks, etc. MS Papers 1069. Ex Libris: Notes on New Zealand Books and Writers, no. 1-2 (1959-60). New Zealand Ex Libris and Booklovers’ Society Brochure, no. 1-7 (1930-1958). New Zealand Ex Libris and Booklovers’ Society Bulletin, no. 1-55 (1953-1962). Egerton Castle, English Book-Plates; Ancient and Modern (London, 1893). P. J. Gibbons, Johannes C. Andersen and Catherine Andersen; A Biographical Sketch (Hamilton, 1985). W. J. Hardy, Bookplates (London, 1893). Brian N. Lee, British Bookplates: a Pictorial History (London, 1979).