Untold lives blog

If a lowly bookbinder in Georgian London acquired a wealthy patron who needed hundreds of books bound, his business was surely set up for life.  How then did John Matthewman who worked for the prosperous Dissenter and Republican Thomas Hollis find himself bankrupt?

Bookbinders were ill regarded by many in their trade guild, the Stationers’ Company, due to their low earning ability.  They often had to practise related additional trades, for example book or stationery selling, to make ends meet.  One way to ensure a workshop flourished was to gain a steady stream of work. 

Hollis (1720-74) promoted his beliefs by having books favourable to his views suitably bound and dispatched to friends and institutions throughout the world.  Initially, he employed Richard Montagu (c1756-8) and John Shove (from about c1756).  Both binderies were located near Hollis’s workplace in Lincoln’s Inn.  In 1759, the volume of work was such that Hollis turned to Montagu’s former apprentice, Matthewman and his business partner John Bailey, who also traded nearby.

 
Thomas Hollis from Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (1780) 

Hollis was a demanding taskmaster.  He instructed the binders on technical and aesthetic issues and advised which of his specially- cut emblematic decorative tools (designed by Cipriani) should be applied.   After a fire in January 1764 destroyed the library of Harvard College in the USA, Hollis began shipping thousands of specially chosen books to the institution. W. H. Bond speaks of Matthewman and Shove producing bindings “in wholesale quantities”. 

 
John Toland, The Life of John Milton  (London, 1761) with Masterman binding - British Library Database of Bookbindings Davis 163   

The Harvard fire may have benefitted Matthewman indirectly but later in the year fire was to play an equally destructive part in his own professional life.  In June 1764 “ a great fire broke out at the house of messers Matthewman and Bailey booksellers and bookbinders in Great Wild Street which consumed that and many other dwelling houses in the said street…”  An elderly lady, a maidservant and a child perished.  Matthewman’s apprentice narrowly survived via a daring escape over the roof.  The next day, Hollis related “cheering Matthewman” in his diary but lamented the destruction of his own books awaiting binding and the loss of his special bindings tools. Later, Bailey paid Hollis insurance as compensation and Hollis had the engraver Thomas Pingo cut new emblematic tools which Matthewman put into use. 

In March 1766 the workshop was afflicted by another misfortune.  The exact details are a mystery but John Shove reported that the unreliable Bailey had led the partnership into severe financial difficulties.  Bankruptcy was announced in the newspapers.  A solution must have been found because bookbinding continued but it was temporary.  The same year saw another reverse.  Prynne’s book on parliamentary history was bound without a section which happened to reflect an anti-catholic sentiment.  The pages could not be found. Hollis blamed Matthewman and accused him of being a papist.  The binder is described as being somewhat disconcerted by the misadventure, but “not enough”, according to Hollis, who hinted that the earlier fire may have been set to destroy the more liberal of Hollis’s books!  Matthewman’s religious and political beliefs are not recorded but such behaviour would not have been in his own interest.  Hollis’s diary implied that Matthewman would have been reimbursed by sympathisers but in reality his business never recovered.

On 21 June 1769, Matthewman absconded to avoid being imprisoned for debt.  Hollis never referred to Matthewman again in his diary. 

PJM Marks
Printed Historical Sources

Further reading:
W. H. Bond, (William Henry), Thomas Hollis of Lincoln's Inn : a Whig and his books Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1990.

British Newspaper Archive -
Thursday 07 June 1764, Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Somerset, England
Saturday 15 March 1766, Oxford Journal, Oxfordshire, England

Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, Esq. London 1780

Do the names Michael Renshaw, Robert Ferns Waller, Ethel Ford, and Barbara Coombs mean anything to you?  If not, then you might be surprised to learn that the likes of Cecil Beaton, Clarissa and Anthony Eden, Ann Fleming (wife of Ian), T.S. Eliot, Henry James, and Ivon Hitchens were their friends and regular correspondents.  Four recently catalogued collections amongst the Library’s western manuscripts suggest that, at least in the early and mid-20th century, famous people did not mix only with other famous people.  So who were these less than household names, and how did they come to have such celebrated friends? 

 
Michael Renshaw, by the pool al Leeds Castle, late 1960s/early 1970s. Published with the permission of the Trustees of the Leeds Castle Foundation and Anthony Russell.

Renshaw was, for want of a better phrase, a society figure.  He did have a day job, advertising director of The Sunday Times, but he spent most of his time mixing with high society and going to, and hosting, fabulous parties.  His correspondence is a ‘who’s who’ of the arts, fashion, politics, and the aristocracy.  The letters he received from his famous friends are a rich source of information about their writers.  They also give fascinating insights into life during, and just after, World War II in England and north-west Europe, the Cyprus crisis, and British politics and society in the turbulent 1970s.

Robert Waller, mid-1950s. Published with the permission of Anne Baillie.

Waller was a BBC radio producer, poet, and an early leader of the environmental movement.  He was the private secretary to the literary reviewer and critic Desmond MacCarthy, a role which introduced Waller to a wide literary circle.  Within this circle was T.S. Eliot, who, over 20 years, wrote to Waller with advice on literary and personal matters.

Barbara Coombs, photographed by Ivon Hitchens, circa 1950. Published with the permission of Jonathan Clark Fine Art.

Coombs’s entré into artistic circles came about by the accident of birth.  Her eldest brother was Frank Coombs, painter, and manager of the Storran Gallery with Eardley Knollys.  Although Frank died in World War II it can be assumed that his connection with the art world was the source of Barbara's long friendship with Hitchens, with whom she corresponded for 30 years.  Coombs sat for Hitchens; photographs of his portraits are in her papers, along with photographs, by Hitchens, of Coombs and Mollie, Hitchens’s wife.

Ford met Henry James by way of a different type of coincidence.  In 1907, she and her husband, Francis, who had played cricket for England, bought a Georgian farmhouse in Wittersham, six miles from Rye, where James was living.  The Fords and James became acquainted through a mutual friend, an architect who advised both parties on renovations and alterations to their homes.  This chance encounter led to an eight year correspondence in which James writes of family and friends (particularly the du Mauriers), health matters, and daily life. 

The letters in these four collections are invaluable sources for those researching their writers, but given their unlikely recipients they go to show that sometimes the best, and most useful, information is not to be found in the most obvious places.

Michael St John-McAlister
Western Manuscripts Cataloguing Manager

Further reading:
Rosalind Bleach, ed., Henry James's Waistcoat: Letters to Mrs Ford 1907-1915 (Settrington: Stone Trough Books, 2007).
British Library Add MS 71231, 89045, 89051, 89056, and 89068.
Philip Conford, ed., The Poet of Ecology: A Selection of Writings in Memory of Robert Waller (1913-2005) (Chichester: Norroy Press, 2008).
Michael St John-McAlister, 'Michael Renshaw: A Society Figure in War and Peace', Electronic British Library Journal

Lady Anne Blunt née King (1837-1917) was a keen artist, horsewoman and traveller. She recorded her experiences in a series of diaries and in her beautifully illustrated sketchbooks, which are held at the British Library (Add MS 53817-54061).

Watercolour by Anne Blunt Add MS 54048 

Anne was born on 22 September 1837 to William King, first Earl Lovelace and his wife Ada, the only daughter of Lord Byron and his wife Anne Millbanke. After the death of her mother when Anne was only 15 her father took her on many continental travels where she learnt four languages and began sketching the scenery she encountered. It was whilst travelling that she met her future husband Wilfred Blunt. They married in 1869 when Anne was 32 and had four children, only one of whom, Judith survived into adulthood. In 1872 Wilfred inherited a family estate in Sussex and the couple built their home Crabbet Park.

 
  Wilfred and Anne Blunt Add MS 54085

The couple travelled widely including across Europe and to parts of India. It was however, the Middle East that sparked their interest with Wilfred the politics and Anne the horses. The couple began a stud in 1878 breeding only with horses with excellent confirmation and lineage. Anne’s diaries reveal their travels across the desert visiting sheikhs and providing critiques of the horses they saw. Anne had a good eye for confirmation and the extract below shows one of many assessments she made:

Diary of Anne Blunt from 1881, Add MS 53911 f.11 

   
Watercolour by Anne Blunt Add MS 54048 

In 1882 they opened a second stud outside Cairo called Shaykh ‘Ubayd. Anne was by now fluent in Arabic and had a good insight into the people and their customs.  She was also compiling a book on the Arabian horse, and her notes were later used in her daughter Judith’s volume, The Authentic Arabian Horse (1945).

Photograph of Anne (AB) and Wilfred Blunt (WSB) on horseback Add MS 54085

Anne’s marriage however was not happy and in 1906 the couple were legally separated after Wilfred’s mistress Dorothy Carleton (later adopted as his niece) moved in to the family home. She went to live with her daughter Judith and son-in-law near Crabbet Park and spent the winters at Shaykh ‘Ubayd. In 1913 she moved out to live in Shaykh ‘Ubayd permanently and died in Cairo in 1917.

Photograph of Anne Blunt on horseback taken by Gertrude Bell Add MS 54085 

Anne’s passion for breeding the Arabian horses she loved has had a huge impact on the breed itself and the majority of Arabian horses today would have at least one Crabbet ancestor. For this passion she became known and respected as the ‘noble lady of the horses’ by many of her friends.

Watercolour by Anne Blunt Add MS 54055

Laura Walker
Lead Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1850-1950

Further reading:
Lady Anne Blunt. Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917, edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming (Alexander Heriot 1986)
Oxford Dicionary of National Biography - Rosemary Archer, Blunt [née King], Anne Isabella Noel, suo jure Baroness Wentworth (1837–1917), traveller and breeder of Arab horses
A.V.F. Winstone, Lady Anne Blunt. A Biography (Barzan 2003)

Inspired by the TV drama Indian Summers, I decided to investigate the social life in Simla under British rule. Was it dominated by eating, drinking, playing cards, gossiping and arguing, interspersed with some amateur dramatics?

 
From The Delhi Sketch Book 1 January 1855

Simla was a hill station in the Himalayan foothills popular with convalescents. It then developed into the summer capital of the British administration in India. There was a variety of clubs in Simla to help the Europeans pass their time pleasantly. The oldest was the United Services Club founded in 1844, with membership restricted to commissioned military officers, army or navy chaplains, members of the Indian Civil Service and judges.  Indians and women were not permitted to join, although guests were admitted.  The Club boasted a racquet court and rooms for playing billiards and cards, as well as a reading room and a library packed with books for members to enjoy.

In the late 1880s the New Club opened as a rival attraction.  It had well-built premises with spacious rooms and a fine dining room with an excellent dance floor. Popular smoking concerts were held, where members of the Viceregal Council enthusiastically joined in the choruses.  However the United Services Club was stung into action by the competition. Extensive improvements were made, and private pressure was brought to bear on government officials to support the older club. The New Club was forced into liquidation and the buildings became a hotel.

From The Delhi Sketch Book 1 January 1855 

Men could also belong to one of several Masonic lodges which held meetings in Simla. The oldest of these was the Himalayan Brotherhood founded in 1838.

An area of flat land known as Annandale became the ‘public play-ground at Simla’.  Picnics, fairs and dances were held there, as well as horse races, gymkhanas, and dog shows.  Sports included polo, cricket, football, archery, rifle-shooting, golf, and croquet.  In 1911 there was a Simla Winter Amusement Club offering badminton, a skating rink, and toboganning.

Amateur dramatics were very popular.  In the late 1830s Emily Eden watched performances in a ‘small and hot, and somewhat dirty’ theatre in Simla.  She wrote of a falling-out amongst the gentlemen actors: ‘One man took a fit of low sprits, and another who acted women’s parts well, would not cut off his moustachios, and another went off to shoot bears near the snowy range’.

A major event of the Simla season was the annual Fine Arts Exhibition.  In the 1860s there was said to be ‘a galaxy of amateur talent in water-colour painting then at Simla’. Money prizes were offered and pictures were sent in from all over India.

The Simla United Services Club closed in 1947 and its collection of books was dispersed. A large number went to the House of Commons and the Empire Society, and the fiction was taken by the Punjab Club. There were thousands of non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics, some perhaps predictable, others less so.  Alongside works on history, government, politics, war, military and naval strategy were books about hypnotism, crime, psychology, psychotherapy, feminism, witchcraft, and spiritualism. The homesick reader of A lonely summer in Kashmir could seek solace in one of a number of works on life back in Britain, such as The Glory of Scotland, Irish bogs, The England I love best, or A dull day in London.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:
Edward J. Buck, Simla Past and Present (Calcutta, 1904)
India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur D 957 List of books in the reading room and library of the United Services Club Simla, 1947
India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur D 1236/4 Simla Winter Amusement Club  1911-1912

Bear’s grease, bonnets, bellows, biscuits and Bibles - a merchant in Simla in the 1850s

Edward Lloyd was born on 16 February 1815. He was a publisher and newspaper proprietor, and the founder of two large paper mills.  Here we give you a glimpse into his remarkable career.

Lloyd was a pioneer of cheap popular literature.  His ‘Penny Bloods’ were a great success with working class readers.  From 1835 he published titles such as Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads etc, and History of the Pirates of All Nations.  He and writer Thomas Peckett Prest then produced imitations of the works of Charles Dickens, for example The Life and Adventures of Oliver Twiss the Workhouse Boy, and Memoirs of Nickelas Nicklebery.  These stories sold many thousands of copies each week.

 
From The Gambler’s Wife; or, Murder will Out

Lloyd issued works of history, horror, and romance.  Stories were published in instalments, and all featured plenty of drama and bloodthirsty action.  It was Lloyd who introduced vampires to a mass readership with Varney the Vampyre; or, the Feast of blood.

From Varney the Vampyre 

Lloyd’s Weekly Newpaper was founded in 1843. Lloyd put a good deal of effort into promotion and it was claimed in the 1890s: ‘The pictorial advertisements of Messrs. Lloyd’s journals  - themselves works of art – are prominent at all stations and throughout the country, and there is no village in England so obscure as to be unaware of the existence of Lloyd’s News’.  Circulation grew to a huge 930,000 copies weekly. Stories deemed to be of particular importance were illustrated by artists kept on the staff.  There was a successful ‘Lost Relative’ column: people wrote in from every part of the world and a shortened version of the letters was published for free.

By 1861 Lloyd was using so much paper that he started his own paper mill on the River Lea at Bow in East London. As it was becoming difficult to obtain sufficient supplies of rags, esparto grass was brought in as a raw material from Algeria and Spain.  Soon Lloyd’s mill was expanding to make paper for rival newspapers.

In 1877 Lloyd’s firm purchased the Daily Chronicle. Much of this newspaper was devoted to events in London, but it also gathered news from the rest of the UK, and from abroad via daily cables. Circulation was increased from 8,000 to 140,000 in the space of eight years, and to meet demand a second mill was opened at Sittingbourne in Kent which produced a wide variety of paper types.  By 1895, Lloyd’s were employing over 700 people at the mills and 500 at the newspaper offices and home and export departments.

 
From Miranda, or the Heiress of the Grange 

It has been claimed that having established himself in ‘higher’ publishing circles Lloyd then tried to supress the ‘Penny Bloods’, sending out agents to buy up and destroy the stocks at coffee shops and circulating libraries.  Whether or not this is true, many 'Bloods' have survived and a good number can be found at the British Library, some in digitised format.

Edward Lloyd died on 8 April 1890 having amassed a fortune from his various business ventures. The value of his estate at death was £563,000.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:
Edward Lloyd Ltd, A glimpse into paper making and journalism (1895)
John Medcraft, A bibliography of the penny bloods of Edward Lloyd (1945)

Further reading:
Edward Lloyd Ltd, A glimpse into paper making and journalism (1895)
John Medcraft, A bibliography of the penny bloods of Edward Lloyd (1945)
Varney – an early vampire story
Edward Lloyd

Did a Christmas card from the intelligence services drop through your letter box this year? No? Disappointed? Well, here is one sent by MI5 to Sir Malcolm Seton in 1923. 

Mss Eur E267/224 Papers of Sir Malcolm Seton, India Office official 1898-1933

Happy Christmas from Untold Lives!

In the last of this series on William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), I look at his development of photoglyphic engraving the forerunner of what we today know as photogravure. The photogravure process involves the printing of a photographic image onto paper with ink using a plate onto which the image has been etched.

Talbot started his photoglyphic experiments primarily because he wanted to produce a photographic image which was not subject to fading as sometimes happened with his Calotype photographs. There had already been limited experiments with printing photographic images. As early as 1826, the Frenchman, Nicéphore (Joseph) Niépce (1765-1833) developed a process called héliogravure and there were some attempts to use Daguerreotype plates, the work of Hippolyte Fizeau (1819-1896) in particular being noteworthy. In both cases the results were extremely variable. The primary problem with reproducing a photograph as a printed image was the reliable reproduction of the intermediate tonal areas on the plate (known as halftones). In order to overcome the technical issues Talbot initially sought advice from master-engraver George Barclay (b. 1802) and in later years received advice from Thomas Brooker (1813-1885) and William Banks (b. 1809).

 
 ‘Proposed method of transferring Photography to Steel Engraving’. (28 November, 1847). Early notes regarding photo-engraving. (Add MS 88942/1/350). 

Talbot developed his process gradually taking out two patents, for photographic engraving (1852), and photoglyphic engraving (1858). It was this second patent that established the basis for photogravure. Talbot’s innovations included the use of potassium bichromate sensitized gelatin for fixing the photographic image to the plate and perhaps more importantly the use of a screen to enable the accurate reproduction of the halftone areas within an image. Both of these innovations are still used in non-digital reprographics today.

After encouragement from the editor William Crookes (1832-1921), Talbot allowed a series of his photoglyphic engravings to be published in Photographic News (22 October, 1858) although he used images by the French photographers Soulier and Clouzard, rather than his own. This increased public awareness of the process and drew praise from many people including Prince Albert (1819-1861). Talbot was asked to exhibit his work and won medals at the 1862 International Exhibition of London and at the 1865 Berlin International Photographic Exhibition.

One of two of Talbot’s photoglyphic engravings published posthumously in the second edition of Gaston Tissandier’s A History and Handbook of Photography (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1878). (Add MS 88942/3/1/21).

Unfortunately like many of his other ideas Talbot failed to develop photoglyphic engraving into a business and from 1865 he increasingly turned his attentions to Assyriology and mathematics instead. However Talbot’s work was instrumental in the development of the modern photogravure process, perfected by Karl Klíč in 1879 and still known to this day as the Talbot-Klič process.

  Part of a letter, with examples of photoglyphic engraving, sent by Paul Dujardin to Charles Henry Talbot (William Henry Fox Talbot’s son) in 1880. In his letter Dujardin praises Talbot’s process as superior to others and laments the fact that his name is not more widely known. (Add MS 88942/2/173).

Jonathan Pledge
Cataloguer, Historical Papers 

Further reading on William Henry Fox Talbot:
William Henry Fox Talbot; Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (Hutchinson Benham, 1977) by H. J. P. Arnold.
William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography (Yale University Press, 2013), ed. by Mirjam Brusius, Katrina Dean, and Chitra Ramalingam.

 
Last Movember we brought you the cautionary Lay of the Red Moustache. This year we have found more tragic verse in the British Library collections to alert our readers to the dangers of becoming too fond of the splendid moustaches now sprouting forth.  A warning - parts of Mr Newton’s poem are not for the squeamish.

 The Moustache Murder
Or, the Cruelly Commercial and Lugubriously Lyrical Legend of Noddlekins and Jemima

 Now all ye good people, pray listen to me well,
‘Tis of a young bank-clerk I’m going for to tell;
His name it was Noddlekins, rather reckless and rash,
Who wore upon his upper lip a very fine moustache.

Now as Noddlekins was a-standing in the counting-house one day,
The Manager came up to him, and thus he did say,
“Go, get a sharp razor, and remove all that hair,
For mustachers the Directors are determined you shan’t wear.”

“My dear sir, my dear sir,” young Noddlekins replied,
“I’ll oblige you in any other mortal thing beside;
But before I will lose one hair out of my moustache,
I will see the whole place go to everlasting smash.”

“Now go, boldest Noddlekins,” the Manager he gasped,
“If you will not consent that your face shall be rasped,
You must leave – for I’ve promised, and my promise I will keep,
To make a separation of the goats from the sheep.”

Now Noddlekins had a sweetheart, Jemima by name,
She suggested the moustache, and she doted on the same;
And her feelings experienced a terrible crash,
When she heard that her Noddlekins thought of shaving his moustache.

She most viciously jibbed like a foal at a fence,
And she wouldn’t hear a word of poor Noddlekins’ defence;
But she said, “if you mean to act like a little boy at school,
Recollect, Mr Noddlekins, I won’t wed a fool.”

As Jemima was walking near her father’s abode,
She spied her dear Noddlekins a-lying on the road,
Half-shaved, with his throat cut, and a billet-doux to prove,
That his suicide was occasioned by moustachios and love.

On his dear half-denuded mouth she deposited one kiss,
And she said, “It’s my tantrums have brought you to this.”
The she slit her carotid with more spirit than sense,
And their lives are both in the pluperfect sense.

Now all ye young bank-clerks who wish to cut a dash,
Never quarrel with the governor on account of a moustache;
And ye maidens be careful lest you come to act in time a
Sad tragedy like the razor-slaughtered Noddlekins and Jemima.

At twelve the next night, by the Manager’s bed-side,
The ghost of Jemima with weasand slit wide,
Arm-in-arm with her Noddlekins, whose throat was cut too,
Said, “Serene might our gullets be if it hadn’t been for you!”

Now the Manager no longer in the bank dare remain,
So he slipped on his cloak and popped off to the train;
But standing on the platform he felt rather queer,
And he died with a gurgle like a bottle of beer.

Now this is the moral or epilogue to the play,
(The other was an interlude put in by the way,)
You may learn from this song, which is true, I declare,
That this here only happened on account of that hair.

If you would like to read more of John Newton's verse, here is the source -

Title page of John Newton The Shavers Shaved or The Fatal Moustache (1858) 11649 e.36 

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

The picture of the man with a moustache is taken from Cook's Handbook for London (1894) 10347.h.23  - available on the British Library flickr photostream.