SPRING/SUMMER 2006 SAFE HAVEN FOR ENDANGERED PLANTS Unraveling a Knotty Mystery ANTI-COMMUNISM IN LOS ANGELES The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens The Huntington Library,Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens FROM THE EDITOR SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON STEVEN S. KOBLIK THE AURA OF THE ORIGINAL President GEORGE ABDO Vice President for Advancement JAMES P. FOLSOM HE HUNTINGTON’S ELLESMERE MANUSCRIPT of Chaucer’s Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens Canterbury Tales is a true original. More than 600 years old, it has KATHY HACKER Executive Assistant to the President captivated scholars and library visitors alike. Linne R. Mooney has made news by identifying the scribe who produced the rare SUSAN LAFFERTY Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education Ttreasure (see page 2). SUZY MOSER Another important version of the Canterbury Tales is housed at the National Assistant Vice President for Advancement Library of Wales, copied out by the same hand, although the stories of the JOHN MURDOCH pilgrims have been presented in a slightly different sequence. One is hardly a Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections “copy” of the other in any traditional sense of the word, but rather both are ROBERT C. RITCHIE valuable and rare versions of the same celebrated poem. W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research Ten years ago,The Huntington published its own copy of the Tales.The LAURIE SOWD facsimile edition is a photographic reproduction of the Ellesmere manuscript Director of Operations and extends its circulation to scholars who are unable to travel to the Library. ALISON D. SOWDEN Vice President for Financial Affairs Such a “copy” does not diminish the value of the original work. Rare books SUSAN TURNER-LOWE and masterpieces hanging in art galleries have a special aura made evident by Vice President for Communications the throngs of visitors who find their way to the world’s museums to get a DAVID S. ZEIDBERG glimpse of them.They are irreplaceable cultural and historical touchstones. But Avery Director of the Library what about the plants in the Huntington’s gardens? In plant propagation, a horticulturalist can make new “originals.” For MAGAZINE STAFF example, writer Catherine Phillips explains how a plant growing in the Desert Editor Collection nursery is a direct vegetative link to a specimen first documented MATT STEVENS by a collector in Mexico in 1951 (see page 9). Cuttings of a particular cactus Contributing Writers LISA BLACKBURN passed along to former botanical director Myron Kimnach in the 1950s led TRAUDE GOMEZ-RHINE directly to the plant we see today in the nursery. It is not a facsimile but rather Designer a clone. LORI ANN VANDER PLUYM In her article on the Huntington’s International Succulent Introductions program,Traude Gomez-Rhine Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by explains how John Trager has been germinating seeds and the Office of Communications. It strives to connect readers more firmly with the rich intellectual life of cross-pollinating plants for more than 20 years, creating The Huntington, capturing in news and features the clones of countless rare succulents (see page 5). In the work of researchers, educators, curators, and others across a range of disciplines. plant world, the rarer an item, the more you want to This magazine is supported in part by the reproduce it and circulate “copies” that will ensure the Annenberg Foundation. survival of the species.Through plant propagation, a INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS: place like The Huntington is helping to spread the aura Matt Stevens, Editor Huntington Frontiers of the original. 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108 [email protected] MATT STEVENS Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography provided by the Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services. Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc. Opposite page, upper left: A sample from the Papers of Marie Koenig, City of Industry, Calif. Huntington Library. Right: Detail from Astrology, a 17th-century carpet pro- © 2006 The Huntington Library,Art Collections, and duced by the Savonnerie Manufactory, Huntington Art Collections. Lower left: Botanical Gardens.All rights reserved. Reproduction John Trager, Curator of Desert Collections and director of the Huntington’s or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without International Succulent Introductions program. Photo by Don Milici. permission of the publisher is prohibited. [ VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 ] Contents S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 0 6 QUIETLY TO THE RESCUE 5 Propagating endangered succulents by Traude Gomez-Rhine A SHARED CURIOSITY 9 The story of two men and a cactus by Catherine Phillips IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE SUN KING 14 The timely arrival of a 17th-century carpet fragment by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE COLD WAR, MOMMY? 18 The acquisition of two anti-Communist collections by Matt Stevens 1 8 1 4 DEPARTMENTS DISCOVERY: Solving a 600-year-old mystery by Mary Robertson 2 ACCESSIONS: The fine art of paper conservation by Steven Tice 23 5 BOOKS IN PRINT: Recommended reading 24 HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 1 [ DISCOVERY ] The Name of the Scribe SOLVING A MYSTERY BEHIND THE HUNTINGTON’S CANTERBURY TALES by Mary Robertson name). It was the crown jewel of the great English ESPITE SIX CENTURIES OF INTENSIVE Renaissance library purchased by Henry Huntington for study by generations of scholars, the $1 million in 1917.The celebrated volume is the model for Huntington’s famous “Ellesmere Chaucer” most modern printed editions of Chaucer’s greatest work. manuscript still guards some of its secrets. Questions about the manuscript have always captured DAlthough scholars have long understood it to be the earliest the attention of scholars. For whom was the manuscript complete text of the Canterbury Tales, the identity of its made? Why does the Hengwrt copy, written by the same scribe has remained a mystery. Until now. Credit for this landmark discovery goes to Linne R. Mooney, an American scholar who is a professor of The Huntington’s celebrated Medieval English Palaeography at the University of York, in North Yorkshire, England.Thanks to her, we can at volume is the model for most long last put a name to the Ellesmere scribe. He was Adam Pinkhurst, member of the Scriveners’ guild of modern printed editions of London, professional copyist, sometime moonlighting accountant for the powerful Mercers’ (clothiers) Company, Chaucer’s greatest work. and almost certainly a man employed for many years by Chaucer himself as scribe and copyist. scribe, vary in so many details, omit some of the text, and Over the years, scholars had worked doggedly to learn rearrange the order of the tales? Was the Hengwrt written as much as they could about the Ellesmere manuscript. first, as most scholars now believe? Could either or both They have known, for instance, that the scribe worked in have been made in Chaucer’s lifetime, and if so, could the or around London within a decade of Chaucer’s death in poet himself have been involved in 1400.The same scribe also made another copy of the poem, their creation? Who were the earliest now in the National Library of Wales (the “Hengwrt” owners of the Ellesmere Chaucer, manuscript—pronounced “HENG-ert”). Chaucer’s own and—more frivolously—which handwritten drafts have not survived, so the Ellesmere and of them scribbled in the Hengwrt manuscripts are the closest we can come to his preliminary flyleaves, original intent for the work.The layout of the text and its “Margery seynt John decorations appear carefully designed to create a unified ys a shrew”? whole from the disparate stories of 23 pilgrims.Three Sometimes, after anonymous artists collaborated to create miniature paint- many long years of ings of Chaucer and the other pilgrims, presenting a vivid, pursuit, answers visual cross section of late medieval English life to match emerge.And sometimes, the literary genius of the text. By the early 17th century a certain amount of the precious manuscript had come into the possession of serendipity enters the pic- the Egerton family, who were dukes of Bridgewater and ture. Mooney’s epiphany earls of Ellesmere (from whom the volume took its nick- came in the course of her more general research on Left: The opening page of the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Huntington Library. Right: The Wife of Bath, detail from the medieval English scribal prac- Ellesmere Chaucer, Huntington Library. tices.After spending a morning HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 3 Scholarly precision required further proof, however, and after more than a year of additional meticulous research the full details of Professor Mooney’s argument have only recently appeared in her article “Chaucer’s Scribe” in the THE WRITING ON THE PAGE January 2006 issue of Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Paleography (literally, “ancient writing”) is the study of Academy of America.We now know far more about Adam older forms of handwriting and their evolution over Pinkhurst’s life as a professional scribe in the world of time. Expert paleographers recognize the personal char- London manuscript production, about the production and acteristics of individual scribes, such as the idiosyncratic dissemination of Middle English poetry, about his work “double slash–dot–double slash” decorative flourishes for the Mercers’ Company, about the nine other (so far) (seen above) used by Adam Pinkhurst in the Ellesmere surviving literary or business manuscripts written in his Chaucer. Because most medieval scribes remain uniden- hand, and most importantly about his long and close work- tified, scholars rely on paleography to establish the dates ing relationship with Chaucer, for whom he apparently of manuscripts and the circumstances of their copying. made the first copies of the poet’s three great works—Boece Professional scribes could write in any of several and Troilus and Criseyde as early as the mid-1380s and the styles of handwriting, depending on the type and con- Canterbury Tales around the time of Chaucer’s death in tent of the text required.