Gazette of the Grolier Club

Volume 11, No. 6 April, 1946 GAZETTE OF THE GROLIER CLUB

CONTENTS The Emily Dickinson Exhibition. The Jonathan Swift Exhibition. Swift Manuscripts in America. Seven Cen- turies of Music. Architectural Prints; Printmaking in the Service of Architecture. Letter-book of Mary Stead Pinckney. Contributions to the Library Fund.

THE EMILY DICKINSON EXHIBITION

Manuscripts, books and memorabilia relating to Emily Dickinson, assembled from many libraries and collections, were on exhibit at The Grolier Club from October 18 to November 7, 1945. Central in this dis- play were manuscript poems by Emily Dickinson in several styles of her penmanship; letters from Miss Dickinson written at various periods of her life, and also from her family; her father, Edward Dickinson, when he was a memberof Congress; her sister Lavinia; 170

her brother Austin, his wife and daughter; also letters from the first editors, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd; and from the publisher, Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers. Included were prints and photographs of early Amherst, both town and college, of the Dickinson family and their houses; first editions of all published poems by Emily Dickin- son and many about her, with bibliographies; Mabel Loomis Todd’s manuscript note-books, scrap-books of clippings half-a-century old; and other memorabilia. To open the exhibition, an address, New Light on Emily Dickinson, was given by Millicent Todd Bing- ham, editor of Bolts of Melody, therecently published book of new poems of Emily Dickinson. The address revealed a living and real Emily Dickinson; obviously as a person she cannot be separated from her writings. To understand her Mrs. Bingham interpreted her poems: the “new light” shines from the poems. The address was divided into two parts. The in- cidents of Miss Dickinson’s life and its setting, the family and the community were presented, with a summary of events leading to the discovery and publication of the poems, first issued in 1890, four years after her death. Mrs. Bingham made it clear that the reasons for Miss Dickinson’s becoming a recluse are not to be found, as has too often been assumed, in an unhappy love affair. On the contrary, she merely with- drew from an uncomprehending environment in order to occupy herself with things that interested her more. Her life was given to the discovery of truth and 171 to its expression in poetry. The second part of Mrs. Bingham’s paper expounded this idea. It revealed in Miss Dickinson’s own words an account of her life- work, the setting down of her discoveries about truth and beauty and eternal goodness. By reading from the poems Mrs. Bingham showed that although Miss Dick- inson lived as a recluse, she was in fact an intrepid adventurer into the remote fastnesses of the human spirit. Three topics were chosen by way of illustration: the world of nature in its various aspects; the nature of truth, a subject of transcendent importance to Emily Dickinson; and the stark sequence underlying life itself—pain, suffering, death, immortality. Some of her greatest poems dealing with her effort to understand these themes were read, as convincing evidence that she was not a whimsical eccentric, but a woman of genius. In introducing Mrs. Bingham to the members of the Club and their guests, the President said: The Grolier Club welcomes you to an eventful evening. We celebrate the work of a great American poet under the tutelage of a painstaking and brilliant scholar. What Mrs. Bingham has done in rediscovering, ed- iting and publishing over 660 new poems of Emily Dickinson, many of her maturest period, is a signifi- cant contribution in American literary history. It follows zealously and logically the work of Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd, Mrs. Bingham’s mother. Mrs. Todd was Emily Dickinson’s first editor; without her the poet might have remained unknown for many years. 172 As to Mrs. Bingham’s book, many of the poems in her Bolts of Melody are among Emily Dickinson’s best. These include the three groups of philosophical poems and the incomplete and unfinished poems of Part a, among which is that iridescent couplet,

Soft as the massacre of suns By evening sabers slain.

But Mrs. Bingham has done even more than to give these poems to the world. In her Ancestors’ Brocades, Mrs. Bingham by an explicit narrative supported by convincing evidence, explains why the publication of the poems ceased in 1896, after the issuing of the three small volumes which comprise the poems of 1890, the second series of 1891, and the third series of 1896.Mrs. Bingham also explains the colossal difficulties in col- lating and reading the troublesome manuscripts even when they were in the form of the fascicles which you will see in the case to my left. For this poetry is “pure poetry,” in Professor Santayana’s words, and by his norms these poems are pure experiment and spon- taneity. Here we find that the poems were born on the backs of old envelopes, on business circulars, on strips and scraps and morsels of paper. And thus they remained in the famous Chinese box of camphor wood for a generation until Mrs. Bingham turned the key, heard the little tune of the tinkling bells and saw the manuscripts of the poems which she has rediscovered for us. But more than that, Mrs. Bingham has inves- 173 tigated and told the drama of the clash of personalities which postponed the publication of the poems for almost fifty years. She has scrupulously analyzed the lawsuit and the decree which seem so extraordinary. I doubt whether any two books taken together are more unusual or more American in the history of modern poetry. We are greatly privileged to have Mrs. Bingham with us—a distinguished scientist and author, with a background of liberal tradition, training and culture and a meticulous regard for accurate, objective standards of judgment.

THE JONATHAN SWIFT EXHIBITION

To commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Jonathan Swift, which occurred on October 19, 1745, the Club held an exhibition comprising manuscripts and printed books by Swift and several books from his library. The exhibitionwas not intended to be definitive in any sense, but it is be- lieved that it brought together as choice a selection of Swift items as has ever been shown in this country. The exhibition was opened at a regular Club meeting held on the evening of November 15, 1945, at which Dr. Herbert Davis, President of Smith College, presented an address on Swift Manuscripts Owned in America. Dr. Davis is the author of important works on the Dean of St. Patrick’s and an editor of his writings. We are happy to be able to present in the following pages the complete text of Dr. Davis’s address. 174 Besides the manuscripts and annotated volumes mentioned in the address, many important first and other editions of Swift’s writings were exhibited, including:

A Tale of a Tub, 1704. A famous Prediction of Merlin, 1709. Baucis and Philemon, Imitated from Ovid, 1709. A Meditation upon a Broom-stick, 1710. The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod, 1710. The Examiner, 1710-1714. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, 1711. A new Journey to Paris, 1711. Peace and Dunkirk, 1712. A Proposal tor Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, 1712. T 1 nd’s Invitation to Dismal, 1712. The Importance of the Guardian Considered, 1713. A Proposal tor the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture, 1720. The Bubble: a Poem, 1721. The Journal [? 1721]. Broadside. The Drapier’s Letters. 5 pamphlets, [1724]. An excellent new Song upon his grace our good Lord Arch- bishop of Dublin, 1724.

Travels into several remote Nations of the World ... by Lemuel Gulliver, 1726. Several copies. Cadenus and Vanessa, 1726. A short View of the State of Ireland, 1727-8. An Answer to a Paper. Called a Memorial of the poor In-

habitants [&c.] ... of Ireland, 1728. The Intelligencer, 1728. The Journal of a modern Lady, 1729. A modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of poor People from being a Burthen to their Parents, 1729. 175

An Examination of certain Abuses, 1732. On Poetry: a Rapsody, 1733. A complete Collection of genteel and ingenious Conversa- tion, 1738. Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift written by himself, 1739. Three Sermons, 1744. Works, 1742-1743. 9 volumes. Lord Orrery’s set, with his annotations.

SWIFT MANUSCRIPTS IN AMERICA

Dr. Herbert Davis addressed the Club as follows: Jonathan Swift died on October 19, 1745. This bi- centenary year is being recognized this fall, here and in England, by some small exhibitions of his works as well as by articles in literary journals and papers at one of the meetings of the MLA this Christmas. I am grateful to The Grolier Club for inviting me to speak on the occasion of this exhibition, and I hope it is fitting I should speak to such an audience about the MSS of Swift which are now in America. They are the most valuable and intimate memorials that we have of him, these pages upon which his hand rested as he wrote letters and verses to his friends, these volumes from his library marked with pencilled comments often expressingvigorously his private criticism of what he was reading. These memorials are not the less interesting though they reveal him only in his more intimate relationships and show his mind at work in his less formal compositions. For you will notice that we do not possess and we are not likely to 176

discover any of the drafts of Gulliver’s Travels, or of A Tale of a Tub, or of his political pamphlets. It was apparently Swift’s practice to have a final copy for the printer made by an amanuensis and then to des- troy the copy in his own handwriting. There are a few exceptions, however. One MS, from the library of Lord Rothschild, was shown at the recent exhibition in Cambridge, written partly in Swift’s hand and partly in the hand of Stella. This was a draft of An Inquiry into the Behavior of the Queen’s last Minis- try. There was also a manuscript with corrections in Swift’s autograph, The History of the Four Last Years of the Queen, from the King’s Library at Windsor. It is quite possible, also, that a bundle of sermons have survived and may eventually turn up somewhere; but the only MS sermon known at present is that of the sermon on Brotherly Love, now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Here in America there is only one autograph MS of a prose work. That is the beautiful fair copy, signed and dated, of the Letter to a Very Young Lady which may very well be the actual letter sent to Mrs. John Rochfort some ten days after her marriage. It is certainly not the copy which was later sent to the printer when the letter was published in the Miscellanies, 1727. The MS is now in the Huntington Library and therefore not available for exhibition here, but as I have a very good photograph of it this has been included in the exhibition. The Huntington Library also possesses a fine series 177 of eleven autograph letters to John Barber, Swift’s old friend, who became Lord Mayor of London in 1732. The series dates from August 10, 1732, to April 19, 1739, including the greater part of their correspondence printed by Elrington Ball. Swift had seen Barber frequently when he was in London from 1710 to 1714 and had had dealings with him as printer in the city; these letters show how freely Swift turned to his old friends when they were in a position to be useful to him. In spite of his mistake in recommend- ing the unsatisfactory Rev. Matthew Pilkington to be his chaplain, he continued to send his proteges and relatives to Barber for his good offices whenever they went to London. The rest of the MSS relating to Swift in the Hunt- ington Library originally belonged to Theophilus Swift and were used by Sir Walter Scott in preparing his second edition of Swift’s Works in 1824.They were sold by Sotheby in July, 1877, to Frederick Locker- Lampson, who in turn disposed of them to W. K. Bixby of St. Louis. From Mr. Bixby they came into possession of the Huntington Library. Some are in the handwriting of Swift. There is a memorandum for Mrs. Whiteway containing direc- tions to be followed in the event of his death, signed, sealed, and witnessed on April 16,1737.A photograph is in this exhibition. There are examples of trifles in verse and prose exchanged with the Rev. Thomas Sheridan, including A Dialogue in the Hibernian Stile. There is a short draft giving some heads for a 178

pamphlet entitled Proposal for Virtue, which presum- ably was never completed; but the character of the piece may be gathered from these final hints:

A contemptuous character of court art, how different from true politicks; for, comparing the talents of two pro- fessions that are thought very different, I cannot but think that in the present sense of the word Politician a common sharper and pickpocket has every quality that can be re- quired in the other, and f have personally known more than half a dozen who in their time [were] esteemed equally to excell in both.

There is also the MS of a list endorsed by Swift “Amis vivants et morts’’ and dated February 19, 1728-29: “Men famous for their Learning, Wit, or great Employments, or Quality of my Acquaintance, who are dead and Men of Distinction and my Friends who are yet alive.” The collection also contains some MSS in the handwriting of Sheridan, a very distinctive, legible and modern handwriting which may easily be distinguished from the handwriting of Charles Ford and other friends who copied out many of Swift’s verses. Another group of MSS, mainly by younger Irish writers, some endorsed by Swift, was evidently preserved as collected by him, notably the one poem supposed to be written by Stella to the Dean on his birthday and dated Noevmber 30, 1721; but the handwriting is certainly not Stella’s. There remains another group of MSS relating to Swift consisting of a few contemporary letters ex- 179 changed between Lord Orrery and Mrs. Whiteway, and a few letters from Sir Walter Scott to Mr. James Smith in connection with the loan of these papers for his use. In the early part of this century some other important collections of MSS were dispersed and found their way to America. A volume of autograph Letters and Poems which had belonged to Sir Andrew Fountaine and remained in possession of the family was sold at Sotheby’s on December 5, 1906, and came into Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s possession in 1907. It contains thirty-two items, including a small scrap of paper with these words:

These letters and manuscript scraps in the handwriting of Dean Swift I mean to give to Andrew Fountaine, Esq. as trifling curiosities, perhaps, in themselves, but curious so far, as they are autographs of that celebrated wit and extraordinary man.

The most important items in thisvolume are of course the “MS scraps,” i.e. the autograph copies of four of Swift’s early poems:

The Story of Baucis and Philemon The Discovery Vanbrug’s House An. 1703 5 pages The History of Vanbrug’s House 1706 3 pages

These have been used by Mr. Harold Williams in his edition of the Poems; and some of the real scraps, such as A Dialogue in the Castilian Language, were published by Mr. Shane Leslie in his study on The Script 180 of Jonathan Swift given as a Rosenbach Fellowship lecture in Philadelphia in 1934. The autograph letters of Swift to the Earl of Pem- broke, dated June 13, 1709, and to Sir Andrew Foun- taine, dated March 6, 1713, and July 30, 1733, have been included in the Correspondence by Elrington Ball; but he printed them from copies in the Forster collection, and there are some slight variants and some misreadings of the original MSS. The collection also includes documents with seals and Swift’s signature, and some oddments of verse not inhis autograph. There can be no doubt, however, that the unpublished MS of three closely written folio pages, entitled A Modest Defense of Punning, is in Swift’s own hand. It provides an editor of Swift’s works with a curious problem of conscience. For after reading it, he cannot but remember the protests which greeted some of the later volumes added to the collected editions of Swift by his eighteenth-century editors, and the question then raised whether it is fair to add to the canon of a man’s work mere trivialities, leisure amusements, or jokesamong friends, which have no literary value. Do they complete the picture of the mind of genius, or do they add confusion and distraction unnecessarily? I will only say now that such scraps are, I am sure, rightly produced for your inspection in such an exhibition as this which is open to men of judgmentand to connoisseurs; but I know better than to quote to you these curious stale performances in ponderous punning. 181

1 cannot resist the temptation, however, apropos of this MS, of leading you into a very short bypath of literary history and at the same time, I must respect- fully correct a mistake of the Master of Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, who said the other day at the exhibition held in the Old Schools to mark the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of Swift’s death, that he could find no evidence of Swift’s connection with Cambridge other than that Gulliver had spent three years at Emmanuel College. Mr. Tre- velyan had not seen this MS which is dated Cam- bridge, November 8, 1716, in which Swift replied to the reflections made in a pamphlet called God’s Re- venge against Punning upon “Divers eminent Clergy- men of the University of Cambridge who for having propagated the vice of Punning became great Drunk- ards and Tories.” I wish to establish the fact that this Tory dean, a member of Trinity College, Dublin, and of the University of Oxford, came to the defense of the University of Cambridge when it was slanderedon November 7, 1716, not by an unknown knight, Sir John Baker, but by the poet, Alexander Pope, because of its fervent loyalty to the Whig cause, for which it had been rewarded by His Majesty with a present of books for its library. Swift ironically defends the Uni- versity clergymen with this monstrous passage of punning:

For his other Reflection, in calling us Toryes.That much we declare, that His Majesty’s Liberality in that noble Pres- ent of Books, as it will make us Lettered, so it Leaves us 182 bound to Him for ever and we should be covered with Gilt, and deserve to be bound as slaves in Turkey, if we tailed in our Loyalty: and we hope the No-Tory-ety of our Behavior will appear by this further Declaration against all inde- fesable Titles and Lines except in His Majesty’s Family and the Books he hath been pleased to give us.

Pope afterwards reprinted God’s Revenge against Punning, keeping the pseudonym, Sir John Baker, in the last volume of the Miscellanies, 1732, and we must assume that Swift had never sent him a copy of his reply as he did not include it in the volume. If he had seen it, he might not indeed have liked the flavor of the opening paragraph, for even in thiskind of absurd fooling he might think it ill-taste that Swift should attack him as an author ignorant in antiquity, like “a certain gentleman who reading of a Roman Scholar thought Roman was a Waterman and Scholar was a Sculler.” I must apologize for keeping you so long after all in talking about this trifle, but it is hard for an editor to deny himself the pleasure of talking about anything which is unpublished. Let me get it over with all at once by mentioning also another rare item exhibited here from the volume in the Morgan Library described as Autograph Letters of Jonathan Swift to Ford and Others. The volume bears the arms of the Earl of Bathurst and came originally from his library, and contains this unique, unfinished engraver’s proof of a portrait of Swift which he has signed himself as if approving it. It is almost certainly engraved after one 183 of the Jervas portraits, probably dating from the time of his visit to Ireland in 1716-17. This volume contains also the draft of a very interesting letter written to Dr. Arbuthnot on July 13, 1714, and only printed in 1937 by Mr. Maxwell Gold in Swift’s Marriage to Stella. Swift had addressed a memorial to the Queen dated April 15, 1714, offering to undertake the office of his- toriographer “not from any view of the profit (which is so inconsiderable, that it will hardly serve to pay the expense of searching offices), but from an earnest desire to serve his queen and country; for which that employment will qualify him, by an opportunity of access to those places where papers and records are kept, which will be necessary to any who undertake such a history.” Swift left London on June 1, 1714, travelling to Oxford, and then three days later to Let- combe. He refers to this in a letter of July 3 to the Earl of Oxford:

If I live, posterity shall know that and more, which, though you, and some lady that shall be nameless, seem to value less than I could wish, is all the return I can make you.

On July 10 Arbuthnot wrote to Swift:

I have talked of your affairs to nobody but ray Lady Masham. She tells me, that she has it very much at heart, and would gladly do it for her own sake, and that of her friends; but thinks it not a fit season to speak about it. 184

To this Swift replied on July 13 and this autograph seems to be a draft of his letter:

I wonder how you came to mention that Business to M I that Lady , if guess right, the Business is the Histor ’s Place; It is in the D. of Shr s Gift, and he sent Ld Bo! word that tho he was under some Engage-

m , he would give it me. So, since which time I never mentioned it, tho I had a memorial some months in my Pocket, which I believe you saw, but I would never give it to Lady M- because things were embroyld with her I would not give two Pence to have it for theValue of it; but I had been told by Ld B. Lady M and you, that the Qu had a Concern for her History &c: & I was ready to undertake it. I thought L d 80l would have done such a Trifle, but I shall not concern myself, and I should be sorry the Qu should be asked for it otherwise than as what would be for her Honor and Reputation with Poster- ity &c. Pray how long do you think I should be suffered to hold that Post in the next Reign. I have inclosed you the originall Memorial as I intended it; and if Ld 80l thinks It of any moment, let him do it: but do not give him the Memorial, unless he be perfectly willing: For I insist again upon it, that I am not asking a Favor: and there is an End of that Matter, only one word more, that I would not accept it if offered, only that it would give me an Opportu- nity of seeing those I esteem and love, the little time that they will be in Power. You desire me to come to Town, indeed I will not: I am overcoming you by Absence as fast as I can, and you would have me come and break my Heart. Shall I not be miserable to stand by and see things going every day nearer to ruin; can I (as I have repeated to you often) do the least good to my self, my Friends, or the Pub- lick: and do you think I have not too much Spirit to con- tinue where I have no Call, and be wholly insignificant. You and Friend I entirely approved of my Retiring 185 for these very Reasons, and you two only know how often our finest Scheams & Hopes have come to nothing—Do you really think the Dragon was at the Bottom pleased r with my Lett ; I should be apt to doubt it. He will be hanged before he will answer me. I should be glad to see that manuscript about the Invasion: and I think I ought to have a Copy of it I must repeat it again, that if Ld 80l be not full as ready to give this Memoriall inclosed, as you are to desire him, let it drop: for in the present View of Things I am perfectly indifferent: for I think every Reason for my leaving you is manifestly doubled within these 6 weeks, by your own Account as well as that of others Besides I take it perfectly ill that the Dragon who promised me so solemnly last year to make me easy in my Debts has never done the least thing to it; so that I can safely say I never received a Penny from a Min- ister in my Life; and tho I scorn to complain, yet to you I will speak it, that I am very uneasy in my Fortune, having received such Account of my Agents managemt that I am likely to lose near 300 “ beside the heavy Debts I ly under at a Season of my Life when I hoped to have no Cares of that Sort and this puts me in mind of something Mr. I writt to me, that I should get the Sectry to contribute 50 “ (they promised a great deal more) to sett a certain troublesome matter right, that you know of. I protest I cannot get so many shillings, neither do I think they ex- pect I should do it. I conceive L d 80l would be ready to do it for asking, if you would give yourself the trouble for I cannot do it: & X hope Mr. L——- would get one Moiety from Sec ty Br will you concert it with Mr. L The Dragon did his Part in it very handsomely. Pardon me for speaking to you of this; but Mr. I will satisfy you how it stands.

My humble Service to Ld and Ldr M & Mrs. Hill (no signature) 186

But as a matter of general interest there is nothing that can compare with the five autograph letters to Charles Ford and other documents composed by Swift but not in his hand—all connected with arrangements for the publication of Gulliver’s Travels— both when they first appeared in 1726 and again when Swift was concerned with theirrevision for the corrected edition in 1727,and for the Dublin edition which appeared in 1735. Here, for instance, is the original offer to Mr. Benjamin Motte, the printer, in a letter dated August 8, 1726, from Richard Sympson, Gulliver’s cousin, making the strange proposal to him toread themanu- script and “within three days deliver a Bank Bill of two hundred pounds, wrapt up so as to make a parcel to the Hand from whence you receive this, who will come in the same manner exactly at 9 o clock at night on Thursday which will be the 11th Instant,” and the autograph of Motte’s reply. There is a small half-sheet with three lines signed in the same way, giving further instructions on August 13th: “I would have both volumes come out together and published by Christmas at furthest.” The next spring, April 27, 1727, Richard Sympson, in an entirely different handwriting, sends another note to Mr. Motte, giving full power to Erasmus Lewis, Esq. to treat with him concerning his Cousin Gulliver’s book, together with Lewis’s receipt to Motte “I am fully satisfyd,” datedMay 4, 1727. Also among the five letters to Charles Ford which were first printed by Mr. Nichol Smith in 1935 is the important letter, dated November 20, 1733, about the Irish edi- 187 tion of Gulliver. Swift’s statement is a very emphatic endorsement of his concern with the Dublin edition printed by Faulkner. I gave you an account in my last how against my will a Man here is printing the Works of &c by Subscription. Gulliver vexeth me more than any. I thought you had entred in leaves interlined all the differences from the originall Manuscript. Had there been onely omissions, X should not care one farthing; but change of Style, new things foysted in, that are false facts, and I know not what, is very provoking. Motte tells me He designs to print a new Edition of Gulliver in quarto, with Cutts and all as it was in the genuin copy. He is very uneasy about the Irish Edi- tion. All I can do is to strike out the Trash in the Edition to be printed here, since you can not help me. I will order your name, as you desire, among the Subscribers. It was to avoyd offence, that Motte got those alterations and inser- tions to be made I suppose by M r Took the Clergyman de- ceased. So that I fear the second Edition will not mend the matter, further than as to litteral faults. For instance. The Title of one Chapter is of the Queens administration without a prime Minister Scc, and according in the Chapter it is said that she had no chief Minister &c: Besides, the whole Sting is taken out in severall passages, in order to soften them. Thus the Style is debased, the humor quite lost, and the matter insipid.

The interleaved copy of Gulliver’s Travels showing all the differences from the original manuscript, now in the Morgan Library, is also on exhibition here, and a careful examination of the printed text and of these interleaved pages show thereason for Swift’s concern. They prove also that Swift was not content with the corrected London edition, and that Faulkner’s text, 188 printed in 1735, may be regarded as having his final approval. Another MS in the handwriting of Charles Ford is a fair copy made on three small sheets of the delightful verses called Stella at Wood Park. This MS is bound up with another copy of the same poem with variant readings, written on two sides of a foolscap sheet badly discolored and in places hardly legible. It is described by Mr. Shane Leslie as Swift’s original manuscript. This can hardly be true, as it is evidently a later copy, with curious varieties of spelling, of the version copied by Ford. It is unlike Ford’s handwriting, but in my opinion it is also unlike any writing of Swift that I have seen early or late. There can be no doubt whatever about the handsome MS recently acquired by the Morgan Library of Swift’s poem entitled Apollo to the Dean. It is a fair copy on three large sheets in the Dean’s hand with four lines deleted on the second page which were afterwards elaborated and replaced by a passage of twenty-four lines. It must therefore be an early version of the poem. There is one other volume of MSS in the Morgan Library described as “the Earl of Orrery’s collection, comprising a very fine and extensive series of autograph letters of Dean Swift to the Earl.” The volume was sold at Sotheby’s in 1906 and acquired by the Morgan Library in 1907. There is certainly no doubt that the letters come from Lord Orrery’s collection; they are so carefully arranged, numbered and en- 189 dorsed by His Lordship; the first dated March 22, 1732, “in answer to a letter received from me,” the second, “concerning the verses. I sent to him on his birthday,” and the last, number twenty, dated Novem- ber 2t, 1738,with the note added “his illness hindered him writing to me afterwards.” The volume also contains some small engravings and affidavits connected with Dr. Wilson’s attack on Swift, and a copy of those Memoirs written by Swift as notes for an account of his own life. The rest of the Orrery Papers are a very large collection of many items, MSS in the hands of Orrery and Lady Orrery, together with annotated and interleaved copies of his own prihted works now in the library of Harvard University. Several of the more important items from that collection have been included in this exhibition, such as some of the volumes of correspondence, transcripts of poems, etc. from which selections were printed by the Countess of Cork and Orrery with the title The Orrery Papers, London, 1903. Some of these volumes seem to have been prepared in Orrery’s careful and methodical way, certainly as a complete record of his correspondence, if not for publication, with title, marginal notes, and index in his own handwriting. Others are copies made by his secretary in Ireland and covering only the periods when he was in residence there. The third volume is of particular importance in connection with Swift as it contains a number of copies of his poems, together with passages omitted from the printed ver- 190 sions both in prose and in verse; the seventh as providing a record of his letters to Swift in the years i735-37,—the other side of the correspondence, we have already referred to. There is also exhibited Lord Orrery’s own copy of his Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift, interleaved with copious notes in his handwriting on every page. He has carefully collected all the comments and reviews of his book and is concerned to meet some of these criticisms and to make additions as if in prepara- tion for an enlarged edition. To complete the Orrery material we have included also his copy of the nine volumes of Faulkner’s edition of Swift’s Works, Dub- lin, 174a, which is now in the possession of Smith Col- lege. Each volume is inscribed by Lord Orrery and dated, and in the first volume he carefully explains that he had used them in preparing his Remarks. It would seem that he always read with a pen in his hand which he used freely, not so much to make marginal comments, or interesting observations, but to mark in rather a barbarous fashion passages which he intended to quote or wished particularly to keep in mind, or separate pieces which he carefully arranged and numbered both in the contents and throughout the books. In the Harvard collection there are autograph MSS of two letters, one a letter to Mrs. Pratt, thanking her for the gift of a screen which she had sent from Eng- land in the spring of 1725. It was a firescreen adorned with painted maps and may be taken as an indication 191 that Swift’s Dublin friends were fully aware of his preoccupation with travel at this time. The other is the autograph of a letter to Charles Ford, dated Octo- ber 9, 1733, and included in Mr. Nichol Smith’s edition of Letters to Ford. From Harvard come also three volumes which were in Swift’s possession. The first is Thomas Herbert’s A Relation of Some Yeares Tra- vaile, Begunne Anno. 1626 into Afrique and greater Asia ire., London 1634. On the flyleaf is the date 1720, Swift’s signature, and this comment: “If this booke were stript of its Impertinence, Conceitedness and tedious Digressions, it would be almost worthreading and would then be two thirds smaller than it is.” The second is a copy of The Club, etc. by James Puckle, 1713, which also contains the signature of Pope on the title-page. Special passages are noted in the margin with a pencilled mark, representing the fingers of a hand which I have found in some of Swift’s own books. And it would be like him to notice proverbs, even such a moral one as the Turkish proverb quoted in the character of the drunkard: “There’s a devil in every grape.” He may well have added also the mark in the margin drawing attention to one of the rare projects of the projector, namely, “To save Waterman the labour of rowing against Tide, he had contriv’d to make the Thames continually to ebb on one side, and flow on t’other.” The third is the Dublin edition [1736] of a Latin play by Mr. Ruggle of Clare Hall, which had been acted before the Earl of Oxford in 1713. It carries also the signature of Edw. Synge, and 192 therefore may have been given to him by Swift. He was the son of the Archbishop, and as Chancellor of St. Patrick’s, had been Swift’s adviser on musical matters. He was recommended by him to Lord Car- teret for promotion to the bishopric of Ferns.

From the collection at Yale Library, which contains an unusually fine group of early editions of the Dra- pier Letters exhibited among the printed books, comes also a handsome folio from Swift’s library, Bodin’s Les six Limes de la Republique, Paris, 1576, with the signature Jon. Swift 1709, and on the inner side of the cover an autograph note, signed Jonath Swift, April 2, 1725;

This Author was a Man of very great Reading, he ex- cells in setting the Arguments on both sides of a Question in the strongest Light: but often (in my Judgment) decides wrong. He handles Government too much like a Lawyer, and grossly mistakes that of England. He shews some In- conveniences in Aristocracyes and Democracyes as necessary, which are easily avoydable. He seems not to have con- the Nature sidered of representing many i;by few. His Royall Monarchy, which he proposeth as theJm Perfect Government is visionary, unless every country were fe to have always a good King, tor he leaves the absolute Power of making and annulling Laws in the Will of the Soverain, although a single Person, contrary to the Judgment of the wisest Writers upon Government. His whimsical! Dis- courses upon Astrology and the Influence of the Starrs upon human Nature, together with his Digressions upon the Power of Numbers and Harmony are not I think to be otherwise accounted for than by some odd Turn in the 193

Author’s Brain, or a Vanity to shew his Acquaintance with Sciences out o£ his Way. There are also a number of pencilled comments in the margins which show how carefully Swift read the book and with what contempt he rejected some of its arguments. These jottings vary from slight corrections to remarks such as mal raisonne par tout, I’ignorant, or when he becomes too extravagant in his adoration of the grand Monarch as the image of the living God, simply le coquin, le sot. It has been several times suggested to me that Swift’s political arguments concerning the relationship of Ireland to England were useful for American writers at the time of the struggle for independence: but these arguments were available in other and earlier sources. I was therefore much interested to find among the Johnson Family Papers at Yale a letter from Wil- liam Livingston, who later became Governor of New Jersey to Noah Wells at Yale, dated May 27, 1742, commenting with much enthusiasm on Swift’s satire of the King and the Prince of Wales, and enclosing a MS copy of his Rhapsody on Poetry. “It is so rare a book ’ he says, "that but two of them ever came to this pi >'ince, being in great measure prevented by Walpole against whom the plan of the poem is lev- elled, mine also being in manuscript.” I confess that it has been my hope, in venturing to speak to The Grolier Club on the subject of Swift MSS in this Country, that some of you would be able to help me to find other items of similar interest. 194 Though I have made many inquiries and searched in likely and unlikely places, I am sure that there must be MSS or annotated volumes which I have not yet seen. It was only by chance that I happened upon two MSS of letters belonging to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. One of these, a long letter to Mr. Pulteney, dated Dublin, March 8, 1736, is a MS copy of Swift’s letter which was printed by Elrington Ball from an autograph draft in the British Museum, dated March 7, 1736-7. It is worth comparing the two versions, for it seems probable that Swift’s secretary has tried to improve on the original draft, smoothing out some of its rough transitions and toning down its violence by changes and omissions. For instance, the formal copy reads: I desire that ray Prescriptions for Health, which you in- tend to follow, may be made publick for the benefit of Mankind, although I very much dislike the Animal as it hath acted for severall Years past, nor ever valued myself as a Philanthropus.

Swift’s draft of this passage was rather stronger: I desire that my prescription of living may be published, which you design to follow, tor the benefit of mankind; which, however, I do not value a rush, nor the animal itself, as it now acts, neither will I ever value myself as a Philanthropus, because it is now a creature, taking a vast majority, that I hate more than a toad, a viper, a wasp, a stork, a fox, or any other that you will please to add.

The other letter is in Swift’s autograph. It was written to Dean Mossom and dated Dublin, February 195

14, 1720-21; a note written on the last page gives its provenance:

Given to me by Mr. E. Mossom, at Dublin July g,ißii Harcourt Street Leo MacNally

If any of the members of The Grolier Club have been recipients of similar Irish generosity, I should be grateful for a chance to see their MSS. I will even promise to be so rash as to give them my honest opinion whether they are genuine Swift autographs or not. Even if they are not, they may be equally interesting to the student, such as the volume included in this exhibition which is neither a MS of Swift’s nor a volume from his library. It is a copy of Boyle’s Examina- tion of Bentley’s Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris, a contribution to the controversy which led Swift to write The Battle ofthe Books. This particular copy which was given to me a few years ago belonged to Lord Macaulay, who notes that he read it twice in 1835 and in 1836 and wrote on the end leaves in pencil a most characteristic and brilliant comment from which I quote the following:

This is, I think, a masterpiece in its way—indeed quite as great an one as Bentley’s Answer. As the Miser says in Moliere, it is easy to make a fine entertainment with plenty of money; but the proof of a great artist is to make one without money. I do not suppose that there is in the whole history of letters a single instance of so good a fight made with such small means—so fair a face put on so bad a cause. The whole learning of the Oxford Confederacy was a scanty store yet they have contrived to make it look im- 196 mense. Here and there to be sure there is an unlucky error into which no really good scholar could probably have fallen. But these gross instances are rare. The little litera- ture which the party had is beat out to the leaf, and spread over so vast a surface, that the mass shines as brightly as Bentley’s solid gold. But I crave your forgiveness for this unpardonable digression. I can only plead that the delightful at- mosphere of The GrolierClub has led me away from the dull severity of an editor’s interests into the pleas- ant trivialities and innocent pleasures which come to those who collect books for their association value. I can only confess again that it has been my intention to use the opportunity which you have so kindly af- forded me to draw the attention of members of this club to the rich collection of Swift MSS already available in America, and to ask your aid in uncovering any Swiftiana that may still be hidden whether un- catalogued in public collections, or unnoticed and neglected in private hands.

SEVEN CENTURIES OF MUSIC

At the Christmas meeting on December 20 a concert of early music for keyboard and cello was played by Robert C. Hufstader and Janos Scholz and an address was delivered by Professor A. Tillman Merritt, Chairman of the Music Department of Harvard Uni- versity. The accompanying exhibition of Seven Cen- turies of Music was selected by Janos Scholz and installed by A. Hyatt Mayor. 197

The exhibition showed how mediaeval music nota- tions developed into modern notation and then dis- played autograph scores and first editions of some of the great music that became possible once musicians had devised accurate symbols for pitch, and duration. Music notation started, at least in part, from the accents that were elaborated by Hellenistic gram- marians who taught Greek, as the first lingua franca of culture, to the barbarians around the Mediter- ranean. In the middle ages the descendents of these accents, called neumes from the Greek word for breath, were written at varying heights above words to indicate simple melody. But since a singer could only guess what pitch might be intended by the height of a little mark above a word, a red line began to be ruled, about the tenth century, to indicate the middle tone. When two, and then four lines were used, the pale little neumes became so hard to see that they were developed into rectangles and lozenges. All of these mediaeval stages of notation were represented in the exhibition by a remarkable series of ten manuscripts on vellum, of which the earliest was a Sacra- mentary written in Spoleto about itoo, and one of the latest a precious example of courtly music in a large volume of poetry by Guillaume de Machaut, written and illustrated in fresh, delicate colors in Burgundy about 1425-50. The richest of these mediaeval manuscripts was a large Missal illuminated in England shortly before 1332 for the Tiptoft family with a smouldering of gold and red and blue. 198

The oldest music printing was shown in Gerson’s Collectorium super Magnificat, Esslingen, 1473; the first music printed in England in Higden’s Policroni- con, Westminster, Wynkyn de Worde, 1495: the first music printed in the Americas in F. J. Navarro’s Liber

. . in quo quatuor passiones Christi ~ Mexico City, 1604. Ottaviano Petrucci’s invention of cast music type, which helped the Italian madrigal to dominate Renaissance Europe through the first cheap and copious music publishing, was shown by a rare edition of a cappella music by Josquin des Pres printed in Ven- ice by Petrucci in 1502. Caroso’s II Ballarino, Venice, 1581, and Simpson’s The Division Violist, London, 1659, contained examples of the curious notation by letters and numbers (called tablature) that was spe- cially used to indicate finger positions for lute playing in the period when the lute occupied the dominant position later taken by keyboard instruments. The series of first editions of the great composers started with magnificent folios of masses by Palestrina printed in Rome in 1570 and Lassus’s Magnum Opus Musicum, Munich, 1604, and continued with some of the most celebrated works of Handel, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. This series showed how the baroque reshaping of notation to express regularity of beat and other new ideas enabled the eighteenth century to perfect that universal and modern signal code through which a composer can convey the last subtlety of his thought to any musician anywhere. This idiom that transcends language, that is as clearly 199 read in Moscow as in New York or Tokyo, may be one factor in explaining why the musician, finding the same materials for his art everywhere, is the one artist who does not dry up in exile, why music is the last art that does not condemn “variations on a theme by—” as plagiarism, and why modern music is as interna- tional as mathematical physics. The exhibitionincluded a number of portraits, and especially a group of some half dozen that showed the cadaverous fascination that Paganini exercised on the women of the age of Byron. There were also a number of autograph scores which included additions by Handel to his concertino Nisi Dominus, Haydn’s Sonata opus 83, and Bach’s Wedding Cantata of 1734 where the melody becomes visible in the surge and swagger of the handwriting. The cleanness of Mozart’s little score for his Symphony in G, Koechel 318, showed how he had penned it at leisure from his perfect remembrance of what the muse has previously hummed into his ear. In violent contrast, Beethoven’s manuscript of his sonata opus 96 was splashed with ink and slashed right and left with criss-crosses of exasperation. These canceled, battered pages were exhibited above a black bordered invitation to Bee- thoven’s funeral and a lithograph of his head as it lay in final stillness on the sheets of his deathbed, all passion spent. 200

ARCHITECTURAL PRINTS

PRINTMAKING IN THE SERVICE OF ARCHITECTURE

At the February 28th meeting of the Club, the etchings, drawings and etched plates of our fellow member, John Taylor Arms, remained on exhibition, and Mr. Carl Zigrosser, Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, spokeon the subject of Architectural Prints. His address was illustrated by lantern slides from the collection of his institution. Mr. Zigrosser gave a general survey of the background and development of architectural prints. He referred to the important graphic artists who prepared the way for the general interest in etchings of notable buildings and architectural subjects in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The address was an historical in- troduction to an appreciation of Mr. Arms’s contribution to the graphic arts during the last thirty years. The following is an abstract prepared by Mr. Zig- rosser of his address at the Club; Architecture, dating back to man’s first attempt at shelter, is much older than the graphic arts. But printmaking has been a valuable tool and aid to the builder ever since its invention in the fifteenth century. It is chiefly through prints that the architect learns about edifices of the past. This voluminous body of codified examples has not been an unmixed blessing, for it has tended at times to stifle original 201 creation and design by stressing the authority of traditional modes and orders. The prints most directly of interest to the architect as “working tools” are probably the measured drawings of old monuments, architectural details, and such formulations of the secret of classical beauty as the canon of the five orders. Some of these were single prints but most of them came from books, either general treatises on architecture or editions of Vitruvius, the chief literary source on building among the Ro- mans. Prints by Serlio, Cesariano, Vignola, and Pal- ladio were illustrated. When Palladio included in his treatise of 1570 some engravings of buildings he himself had designed, he started the practice of recording contemporary architecture. This genre, particularly when expanded into whole volumes of “Works,” has been useful to the profession. The practice has continued to this day, though of course the illustrations are now produced by photo-mechanical means and not by hand. Prints of ornament and interior decoration have been of great service as expositions of historical styles and as models for the actual execution of interior details. Slides by or after Aldegrever, Watteau, Meis- sonier, and Adam were shown. The value to the architect of such tools as conventional perspective and isometric drawing was exemplified by characteristic prints. Fontana’s delightful engraving of the erection of the obelisk before St. Peter’s suggested 202 that the architect also functions as an engineer. Other bypaths such as stage settings, triumphal or festival structures, and particularly garden and landscape design were also briefly explored. Topography and city views, typified by prints of Reuwich, Callot, Merian, Hollar, Girtin, and Birch, were shown to be a rich source of knowledge about past edifices. A group of famous architectural prints from Master I.A.M. of Zwolle and Bramante to Canaletto and Pi- ranesi were projected on the screen. The picturesque views of the early nineteenth century by such artists as Bonnington and Thomas Shotter Boys, suggested the idea of a new orientation in architectural prints. Hitherto—speaking in the broadest terms—they had been made chiefly for professional use. Henceforth there was to be a broadening of appeal, for a general public, to include historical documentation and picturesque setting (how people lived in other countries). The many illustrated travel books and lithograph series published in England and that great landmark, Baron Taylor’s Voyages Pittoresques et Romantiques dans I’Ancienne France were the ancestors of the contemporary school of architectural etchers. And if one might call the “picturesque scene” the grandfather of the contemporary etching, then the fathers were two mid-nineteenth century etchers: Meryon, by his meticulous use of detail and masterly evocation of architectural mood, and Whistler by the charm of his etched line, tasteful selection of detail, the composi- tional device of the vignette, and his choice of uncon- 203 ventional subject-matter, foreshadowing the modern interest in industrial scenes and structures. Such was the background of the contemporary school. More than ever these etchers addressed their work not to the architect but to the lay public, more or less as “souvenirs” of monuments and places once visited and enjoyed. A tremendous amount of this type of print has been produced in our time. Some of it is excellent indeed, but much of it is mediocre and com- mercial. Outstanding examples by three English and three American etchers were shown. One of Whistler’s lithographs in his impressionistic phase and an etching by Pissarro were thrown on the screen to show how much the Impressionist artists diverged from a purely architectural conception in the search for tonality and atmospheric effects. They tended to suppress detail and treat buildings almost as abstract masses and shapes in working out their compositions. A facade to them was merely a plane that reflected light. Their approach was contrasted, on the screen, with the architectural elaboration of detail and texture of a Griggs. Following the cue of the Impressionists, some modern artists have taken even greater liberties with their material. After a century of printmaking in the romantic picturesque tradition they felt the need of a new direction. They were not interested in architecture as such, though some of them, notably Marin, had had architectural training. They used buildings as material to devise their own exciting compositions or to dramatize their 204 own psychological reactions. They wished to produce prints "of their own time” and not just look nostalgi- cally at the past. The tempo of today demanded new treatment. Steel construction had revolutionized architecture, emphasizing qualities of height and mass, and replacing details of the traditional orders. Pho- tography had revolutionized the recording of monuments by providing a medium more factual thanany at the artist’s command. Thus it became the artist’s task, not to record, but to interpret. Prints by Cook, Marin, Feininger illustrated this last trend. In conclusion there was a brief discussion of John Taylor Arms’s place within the frame of architectural prints. It was suggested that he stood apart from the rest of the contemporary school on two counts. First, because of his amazing technical proficiency. He has carried representation about as far as it can go. Sec- ond, because of his attitude to his material. For him an etching is almost an act of worship, an expression of religious zeal. It is this quality that makes him most akin, among his fellow etchers, to Griggs and Meryon.

LETTER-BOOK OF

MARY STEAD PINCKNEY

The Club will publish this spring in distinguished format the Letter-book of Mary Stead Pinckney, comprising letters written by her between November 14, 1796, and August 25, 1797, when she accompanied her 205 husband. General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, on his memorable mission to France as United States Minister. General Pinckney’s reception by the French Directory in Paris was so cool that he and his wife were obliged to leave France and go to the Nether- lands. The adventures, however, were the occasion for Mrs. Pinckney’s revealing letters, written principally in Bordeaux, Paris and The Hague. They present a graphic account of her journeys, the scenes through which she passed, the life of the cities and the devel- opments of her husband’s mission. The letters are published now for the first time. When publication was first undertaken, it was hoped to issue this book in 1944 on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Club. The two years’ delay, however, makes it possible to publish the Letter-book on another relevant anniversary, viz. the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of General Pinckney—born on February 25, 1746. The book has been printed at The Overbrook Press in Stamford, Connecticut, one of the outstanding private presses in America, from which since 1934 have come many beautiful and distinguished books. The Press is the property and one of the hobbies of our member, Mr. Frank Altschul. The text of the Letter- hook is hand set in 14-point Caslon Old Face and printed on Rives Liampre, dampened before printing. The volume consists of 120 pages, and the leaf measures 514 x 814 inches. The book is bound in natu- ral finish cloth and stamped in gold. The edition consists of three hundred copies. 206

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LIBRARY FUND

The Gazette wishes again to mention the needs o£ our Library. Its efficient operation and maintenance call for the additional aid which our members have been willing to give. Contributions to the Library Fund may be deducted by donors from net income within the 15 per cent limitation.