J. M. W. Turner and his World: John Platt (1842-1902), a Late Victorian Extra-illustrator, and his Collection Felicity Myrone 1. Introduction In August 2007 the British Library Press Office was able to announce the ‘discovery’ of a ‘missing Constable sketch’.1 This had come to light by chance during cataloguing a few months earlier in an extra-illustrated copy of George Walter Thornbury’s The Life of J. M. W. Turner: Founded on letters and papers furnished by his friends and fellow academicians (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1862). The Constable is just one of over 1,600 additions to Thornbury’s text, collected and inserted by a businessman and justice of the peace from Warrington, John Platt (1842-1902). This essay will briefly examine the collection, its collector and his library. Extra-illustration was a popular activity from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It involves the embellishing of an existing text with complementary illustrations and documents.2 Thornbury’s biography of Turner is an excellent choice for extra- illustration, as a large number of Turner’s predecessors and contemporaries are mentioned in the text, as well as places Turner visited and painted. Thornbury’s text also relies on quoting long passages from letters by Turner as well as the writings, letters and reminiscences of his friends and acquaintances or their descendants, and Platt collected manuscript material to match. Most accounts of extra-illustration or ‘grangerization’, as it was often known in the past, have concentrated on the extra-illustrator’s use of portraits and topographical images. However, Platt’s extra-illustrated copy of Thornbury reflects the nineteenth-century practice of inserting autograph materials as well as pictorial illustrations; in 1899, when this collection was bound, autographs were displayed alongside portraits in the National Portrait Gallery,3 and autograph collecting was relatively cheap and therefore popular among the middle classes.4 ‘Autograph fever’ had taken hold of the country, and the dispersal of huge collections such as that of the well-known topographer and autograph collector William Upcott (1779-1845) provided rich pickings. Platt’s extra-illustrated volumes are, accordingly, rich in manuscript materials as well as drawings and prints. 1 A pencil sketch of Hyam Church, Suffolk, thought to date from around 1800. www.bl.uk/news/2007/pressrelease20070823.html. 2 Robert R. Wark, ‘The Gentle Pastime of Extra-Illustrating Books’, The Huntington Library Quarterly, lvi: 2 (Spring 1993), pp. 151-65, provides a useful description of the process. 3 Add. MSS. 54224-54226: ‘National Portrait Gallery Autographs: letters and other documents, formerly exhibited in the Gallery with the associated portraits; early 16th cent.-1909. Mostly autograph. Some French, Italian and Spanish. Arranged in alphabetical order. A number of the items are addressed to Antonio Panizzi, K.C.B. 1869, Principal Librarian of the British Museum. Presented by the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, 9 Dec. 1967.’ Also Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Newhaven & London, 1993), p. 67. 4 A.N.L. Munby, The Cult of the Autograph Letter in England (London, 1962), p. 83. 1 eBLJ 2009, Article 8 J. M. W. Turner and his World: John Platt (1842-1902), a Late Victorian Extra-illustrator, and his Collection Fig. 1. A selection of the volumes. No expense has been spared in the presentation of Platt’s collection. He has expanded Thornbury’s two-volume text to thirteen volumes, each bound by Zaehnsdorf in red morocco leather with gilt tooling (fig. 1). The spines are tooled with ‘Life of J. M. W. Turner RA, Turner and his Times/ vol no [ ] / Extra Illustrated / London 1862’, the covers with Platt’s armorial bearings and a decorative border, and the Zaehnsdorf ‘Z’ stamp of a bookbinder at his desk is found inside. The volumes have red silk end leaves, also tooled with John Platt’s armorial bearings, and each volume is given its own slip case with black leather edges. Thornbury’s text has been disbound, with each page inlaid to a folio gilt-edged sheet and rebound with prints, drawings and manuscript material collected to illustrate the people and places mentioned, similarly inlaid and guarded with tissue or cardboard cut to protect sealing wax where appropriate. The original book’s text is outlined in red ink and the insertions in black or red and black (figs 2, 3 & 4).5 Platt gives some of the latter brief explanatory titles in black ink, such as the name, dates and occupation of the person represented and where appropriate their relationship to Turner, and occasionally they are also annotated in pencil with notes such as ‘Watermark of paper is 1822’, ‘Proof ’, or ‘Very Rare Etching’. Insertions are placed as near as possible to the mention of the person or the place represented in Thornbury’s text, the relevant page annotated by underlining the appropriate word in pencil. Platt provides page numbers in pencil on the insertion itself if it is bound a few pages away from the reference, as Thornbury mentions a number of illustratable topics on the same page. He has also written a note in pencil at the close of volume thirteen ‘With very few exceptions the inlaying of both plates, autographs and text has been entirely done by me. John Platt.’ 5 The catalogue of Platt’s library (detailed below) includes lot 230 ‘Thornbury (W) Life of J. M. W. Turner, illusts, 2 vols., 8vo, inlaid to folio size and ruled with red, unbound 1862.’ 2 eBLJ 2009, Article 8 J. M. W. Turner and his World: John Platt (1842-1902), a Late Victorian Extra-illustrator, and his Collection Fig. 2. The title page to Thornbury’s text, Tab.438.a.1, vol. 1, f. 47. 3 eBLJ 2009, Article 8 J. M. W. Turner and his World: John Platt (1842-1902), a Late Victorian Extra-illustrator, and his Collection Fig. 3. A receipt dated Oct. 15 1824 for £500 to Sir Walter Scott, Tab.438.a.1, vol. 2, f. 118. Fig. 4. Tab.438.a.1, vol. 2, f. 118 verso. 4 eBLJ 2009, Article 8 J. M. W. Turner and his World: John Platt (1842-1902), a Late Victorian Extra-illustrator, and his Collection Volume one opens with a manuscript table of ‘Illustrations in the Thirteen Volumes’, written in red and black ink by Platt, who classifies the insertions as Portraits, Views, Autographs, Engravings of Pictures or Original drawings. He calculates the number of each type of insertion in each volume, reaching a total of 1,607 and noting that ‘Of the aforementioned Engravings, 285 are Proofs (207 being India Proofs, and 88 of these Fine India Proofs before letters. There are also 79 Mezzotints, 35 Etchings, and 72 Aquatints, 51 of the latter being Coloured by hand.’ The next page repeats the total number of each type of insertion: 487 Portraits, 424 Views, 407 Autographs, 227 Engravings of Pictures and 62 Original Drawings, and notes ‘the figures in RED in the Index refer to the VOLUME. The figures in BLACK refer to the Number on the right-hand bottom corner of each LEAF.’ (fig. 5).6 Alphabetical indices follow for all the portraits (by person represented) (fig. 6), views (by place represented), autographs (by the author), engravings of pictures (by the artist of the original painting) and original drawings (by artist). The names of artists and engravers of portraits and views, recipients of letters, and engravers of prints are not, however, given indices by Platt. A more detailed index follows for the insertions in volume one only, in a format to be repeated for each volume. After offering the number of insertions of each type for the volume, in this case 48 Portraits, 19 Views, 19 Autographs, 14 Engravings of Pictures and 3 Original Drawings, a total of 103, Platt provides an index to each type with Name, Artist, Description, and Page for portraits, views and engravings, and Name, Date, Description and Page for autographs. Descriptions are simple statements of format – ‘line engraving’, ‘holograph letter’, or ‘autograph letter, signed’ etc. Title pages have also been specially printed for this edition, reading ‘The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A. / by Walter Thornbury / With Illustrations relating to TURNER AND HIS TIMES / VOL. I. / LONDON :/ 1862. / Extra Illustrated by John Platt, Llandudno. / 1899.’ Each volume bears an armorial bookplate for the compiler, John Platt of Clifton Lodge, Llandudno7 (fig. 7). This is a woodcut, printed in sepia, showing a lamb outside a gated field of other sheep, holding flowers in its mouth. The same lamb with flowers on top of a helmet is used as the top of a crest to the left, the crest bearing a triangular design with two flowers, three fleurs de lis and a sheep standing in profile to left, with nothing in its mouth. The motto is ‘Neminem metue innocens’ or ‘being innocent fear no one’ on one scroll and ‘ex grege Johannis Platt’ on another, meaning ‘out of the flock of John Platt.’ The whole device is surrounded by ‘mitte domum errantem si qua conspexeris agnum’ or ‘if you see the wandering lamb send it homeward,’ i.e. ‘if you find this book, return it’, and ‘Clifton Lodge, Llandudno’ written on a separate scroll below. It is initialled J. D. B. for the artist John Dickson Batten (1860-1932), a leading contemporary printmaker, and dated ‘Xmas 1892’.8 6 The pages have also been foliated at top right, but Platt’s scheme is used here and on the catalogue record. 7 W. H. Rylands, Grantees of Arms named in docquets and patents between the years 1687 and 1898, preserved in various manuscripts, collected and alphabetically arranged by the late Joseph Foster and contained in the Additional MS no 37,149 in the British Museum, Harleian Society 67, 68 (London, 1916, 1917), lists ‘Platt, John, of Clifton Lodge, Llandudno, N Wales, 1890, vol LXV fol.