American Book-Plates

Owners of large estates, employers of numbers of slaves, merchants whose vessels carried on a trade with remote and prosperous shores, and who established names that have endured, used book-plates which are still known to us. Among these are the plates from the following families, well-known in New England: Ames, Bowdoin, Cabot, Chandler, Chauncey, Coffin, Lodge, Lowell, Minot, Quincy, Sears, Winthrop, Barrell, Greene, Perkins, Swan, Vassall, and Vaughan.

Of those well-known in and about New York may be mentioned, Clinton, Colden, Constable, Cutting, De Peyster, Duer, Ellery, Goelet, Hoffman, Ogden, Paulding, Phillipse, Pintard, Van Cortlandt, and Van Rensselaer. To these should be added the Livingstons, which family had the largest number of book-plates of any we know.

In Philadelphia were the Logans, Morgans, Powels, Banckers, and Hamiltons; while further South, the Lees, Lightfoots, Tayloes, Wormeleys, Pages, Cabels, Tubervilles, Armisteads, Byrds, Blands, Bollings, Dinwiddies, Fitzhughs, Hubards, Magills, and Randolphs used plates and were families of prominence and distinction.

Among the prominent Loyalists are Chalmers, Cooper, Hallowell, Hamilton, Livius, Lloyd, Oliver, and Robinson. Of titled Americans the following used book-plates: Fairfax, Gardiner, Murray of Dunmore, and the Pepperrell families.

Of the early authors we can mention Alsop, Antill, Bozman, Byrd, Dana, Key, Stith, and Abercrombie; of physicians, Assheton, Bond, Beatty, Holyoke, Middleton, and Jeffries; of the statesmen, Bayard, Carmichael, Dana, Duane, Gallatin, Jay, Lewis, Marshall, Norris, and Randolph.

Among the early clergymen can be named Apthorp, Boucher, Williams, Jarvis, and Provoost.

Allen and Thomas, early printers; Aitkin, who made the first American edition of the Holy Bible; and Bartram, the great botanist, used plates, which are described in the list.

Bloomfield, Brearly, Banister, Chester, Eustace, Hale, Mercer, Schuyler, Sullivan, and Varick are among the soldiers of the Revolutionary army; and of the orators we have Otis and Randolph.

Coming now to the signers of the Declaration, we find that we know thus far the plates of eleven of them: John Adams, Charles Carroll, Samuel Chase, Thomas Hayward, William Hooper, Francis Hopkinson, Benjamin Rush, Richard Stockton, George Taylor, Oliver Wolcott, and George Wythe.

Surely the book-plates of all these men whose mention stirs patriotic feeling, are of exceeding interest, and worthy to rank with any in point of value and appreciation.

No book-plate, however, is of greater interest to the American collector than that of George Washington, not alone by reason of the prominence of that eminent man, but because of the scarcity of the plate, the high price it brings, and the interesting fact that it is the only American plate which has been deemed worthy of counterfeiting.

A genuine contemporary print of this plate is readily recognized by the connoisseur. The plate has no striking features, but is a regular design in the pure Chippendale style. The arms are displayed upon a shield of the usual shell-like form, and the sprays and rose branches of this style are used in the ornamentation of the sides of the escutcheon. The motto, Exitus acta probat, is given upon its ribbon at the base of the shield, and the name is engraved in script on

the bracket at the bottom of the design. In general appearance the plate is like scores of Chippendale plates of the period.

The interesting question of the probable engraver of the plate has arisen, and in a most readable article from the pen of Mr. R. C. Lichtenstein, in the “Curio,” on the Library of Washington, the following opinion is advanced: “It was his [Washington’s] habit as a general rule to write his name on the right-hand corner of the title-page and place inside his book-plate. It has been a matter of uncertainty as to whether that book-plate was engraved in England or in this country. Washington, like other Virginia gentlemen before the Revolution, was in the habit of ordering goods every year from London; but we have searched the various orders to his agents in London, and examined as far as practicable the items of his household expenses, without finding any such item. The strongest argument that can be said in its favor proving it to be American work is the poor heraldry displayed in its coat-of-arms, general make-up, and drawing. It will be noticed that the engraver has placed a wreath under the crown (an absolute heresy), and this, with the faulty drawing of the raven, makes the whole plate a very slovenly piece of work. No engraver with any knowledge of the fundamental laws of heraldry would be guilty of drawing such a coat-of-arms as this. The arms of Washington engraved on his seal and ring, undoubtedly cut in England, are correctly done. It seems more than probable, if the plate had been done in England that the engraver would not have been guilty of making such blunders. We have seen a great many English plates, but have never noticed one bearing these peculiarities. From its general appearance we should say that the plate was made in America somewhere between the years 1777 and 1781.”

Collectors are divided in their opinions upon this question, and although not ready to hazard a guess at the engraver, the present writer believes the plate was engraved in England, and would place the date nearly a decade earlier. As the friend of the Fairfax family, Washington might have had the plate made upon the occasion of their ordering work of the same kind from England, or, indeed, it might have been a gift to him from them, or from some admiring friend. As he was a methodical man, the fact that no entry of an expense for such an article is found in his records may lend color to the presentation theory. As to the errors in heraldry, there is a plate of one Richard Washington, which has all the peculiarities of this plate, and this is signed by Bickham, who was an English engraver of some note. He was a trifle early perhaps to have been the engraver of the George Washington plate, but he may have made the plate which served as a copy for it. But whether the plate was of domestic or foreign make, we know that the copper was in this country, and that impressions were made from it not so very many years ago. The late Mr. Mauran of Newport knew the man who owned this, and it seems that having printed what he deemed a sufficient number of re-strikes from it, this man, fearing lest others would in time get it and make more prints, cut the copper into pieces and going out on a bridge over the Schuylkill River, threw them in! There they may be looked for by any who choose.

The counterfeit of this plate appeared in an auction sale of books, in the city of Washington, about the year 1863. The late Dr. W. F. Poole with Dr. J. M. Toner was present at the sale. The plate was placed in these books for the purpose of getting a higher price for them than could

otherwise have been obtained. These gentlemen detected the fraudulent plate, and denounced it as such in the auction-room, and the books brought only their actual value as books. Copies of this plate turn up now and then, and the unsuspecting are still deceived by it. It is readily detected if one is forewarned. The work is manifestly inferior to the good plate, the alignment of the name is poor, the quality and appearance of the paper belie its professed age, and the printing is of decidedly different appearance, being bold and strong in the genuine, and weak and thin in the forgery. A further difference is noted in the crest, which is tinctured gules in the forgery and sable in the genuine. These plates are sometimes claimed to be genuine and to be an early and unsatisfactory piece of work, which Washington rejected, and which was replaced with the other and accepted plate. This idea is plausible perhaps to some, but to any who had information from Dr. Poole it is an impossible theory. Another source of confusion is in the reproductions of the plate which have been made from time to time to illustrate works on the life of Washington, some of these being quite faithful duplicates of the genuine plate with its trifling flaws; but the paper and the printing are usually conclusive proof of the age of the print. It is safe to say that there is but one genuine Washington plate. It is true that the re-strikes of the original copper are about, but these, too, are readily distinguishable by the printing and paper.

The plate of Bushrod Washington, nephew of George, is also of much interest, and the manifest similarity of its design to some of the plates by Dawkins has led to the suggestion that he made this plate. But to the mind of the writer, Dawkins was not a man of originality, and was a regular copyist when it came to book-plates; the similarity of the plate of James Samuels to this plate is rather to his mind a further evidence of the clever adoption of a reasonably good design by Dawkins, than of his having been chosen by Judge Washington to engrave his book-plate. The design of this plate is more spirited than any of the authenticated work of Dawkins; indeed, it surpasses the plate of the General in that respect.

The arms are the same in these two Washington plates. In his “Barons of the Potomac and the Rappahannock” (published by the Grolier Club, 1892), Mr. Moncure Daniel Conway has referred to the older form of the arms as used by earlier members of the family. The earliest shields held “Gules on a barre argent 3 Cinquefoiles of ye first.” The second step was made by changing to the following, “Gules on a fesse sable 3 mullets.” The last and present form is, “Argent, two bars gules: in chief three mullets of the second.” These last, it is claimed, suggested our national flag.

The plate of Elizabeth Graeme of Philadelphia should be noted here, as it is the only example of an heraldic plate used by a lady of colonial times. It is fully described in the list.

Leaving now these older plates of special interest to be discovered in the Lists, we turn to a few modern plates which are worthy of particular attention.

The plate of Daniel Webster is a plain armorial with the motto, Vera pro gratis, on the ribbon below the shield.

The etched plate of the late James Eddy Mauran, the early collector of American and other book-plates, was an armorial of very handsome appearance. The shield is surrounded with the style of decoration used on the Chippendale examples, oak leaves being used in lieu of mantling.

An earlier plate in two sizes shows some differences in the design.

The plate of the late George W. Childs seems wholly in keeping with the career of its distinguished owner. The sword, broken into pieces by the quill, is depicted within an oval garter which bears the motto, Nihil sine labore. The words from Lytton’s Richelieu, The pen is mightier than the sword, are also given just within the frame.

Coming now to mention a few plates of our well-known men of letters, we naturally accept the plate of Oliver Wendell Holmes as worthy of the chiefest place. In this the motto, Per ampliora ad altiora, is given on a ribbon beneath a beautiful representation of the “Chambered Nautilus,” the

Ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main, —
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purple wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

“If you will look into Roget’s ‘Bridgewater Treatise,’ ” said the Autocrat one morning, “you

will find a figure of one of these shells and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?

“ ‘Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.’ ”

A plain armorial plate with the motto, Vitam impendere vero, and the name in fac-simile of his autograph, was used by J. G. Holland.

The plate of Brander Matthews, designed by Edwin A. Abbey, represents the discovery of a mask of the old Greek comedy by an American Indian. With feathers stuck in his scanty hair, and his tomahawk laid on the ground beside him, he appears to deliberate upon the possible use of the enormous face which grins at him from his knee. On a circular frame surrounding this picture the following words from Molière are given, Que pensez vous de cette comedie. The appropriateness of the design is apparent for one who is a collector of the literature of the French drama, and the author of several books relating to the stage both in America and France.

In the plate of Edmund Clarence Stedman, the author of “The Poets of America,” we see Pan piping in the sylvan glades; the shepherd and the nymph are charmed by the music, and the god is apparently at the height of his effort. The frame surrounding the design bears the words, Le Cœur au Metier, which were suggested by the address of Matthew Arnold to the Authors’ Club in 1883. This plate is made in three sizes.

The plate of Thomas Bailey Aldrich presents within a square frame a picture of a black bird resting upon a comic mask; the heavy panelled frame bears the owner’s name and the words, His Mark. In his essay on American Book-plates, Mr. Laurence Hutton questions whether this black bird is representative of the Daw, and symbolic of Margery of that name.

In the plate of Eugene Field we have a beautiful example of the plain armorial, unaccompanied by motto or ornamentation of any kind.

Of similar character is the plate of Richard Grant White. This is armorial, but the motto, The right and sleep, is given, and the shield is decorated in a conventional manner, with mantling and scrolls.

A pleasing library interior is used by Arlo Bates. This represents an Oriental interior; a youth in scull-cap and flowing hair is reading a large book; a lily stem rises from a vase of striped Tyrian glass at his side; rows of books are seen at his back; and out of the arched window the distant fields are seen, with the palm and cypress trees on the hillside. This plate is produced in a new manner, being a gelatine print or half-tone direct from the pencil sketch. It preserves a very soft and pleasant effect; indeed, one feels sure it will smirch if rubbed.

Laurence Hutton in his plate places a full-length statue of Thackeray within a canopy, which seems to be a niche within a book-case. Volumes flank both sides, and the amiable face of the drastic writer looks directly at the beholder. The name of the owner is given on a ribbon at the bottom of the design.

The books of the lamented actors, Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett, were marked with book-plates, the former using a plain armorial with no name engraved upon it, and the latter showing the mask of Tragedy upon an open volume, with the motto, Esto quod esse videris.

The reading monk, with the nimbus and star over his head, is seen in the plate of Edward Eggleston. The sentiment, Flie fro’ the presse and dwell with sothfastnesse, is given in old English letters.

Mr. Rossiter Johnson uses a very plain but effective label bearing the initials R. J. printed within a plain ruled border: all in red ink.

The patriotic motto of General Winfield Scott is the family motto of the Scots of Whitislaid, Scotland, and well did the character of the man who used the book-plate depicted below coincide with its meaning.

It would be interesting to extend this list of plates used by men well known throughout the length and breadth of our land, but, unfortunately, many whose names will occur to the reader do not use a book-plate.

EARLY AMERICAN BOOK-PLATE ENGRAVERS