1912. His father had by now taken holy orders and Part One was vicar of St Laurence’s church in Upton, across the river from Eton in what is now part of the urban sprawl of Slough. The family later moved to a living 1924 to 1941 in Little Faringdon, near Kelmscott Manor on the upper reaches of the Thames, and then, for most The founder of the Rampant Lions Press, Will of Will’s teenage years, to Chalvey Park, back in Carter (1912–2001), was the youngest of four Slough. children of an architect turned parson, Thomas After a preparatory school in Sunningdale, Buchanan Carter (1871–1934), who came from a line Will went to Radley, but was not academically of Eton schoolmasters and clerics (with no traceable inclined: his interests were always manual and family connection with Harry Carter, printing practical. Shortly before his twelfth birthday, with historian and archivist at Oxford University Press, a school friend whose guardian was Professor of and his son Matthew, the type designer). Thomas Greek at Oxford, he was taken on a tour of Oxford Buchanan had married Margaret Stone, from an University Press, where he was able to set and equally large family with a similar background. Her proof a visiting card in Fell roman, one assumes brothers included Christopher Stone, one of the with a good deal of guidance. He must have shown founders of The Gramophone magazine with his an intelligent interest, since a few days later, on 8 brother-in-law Montague Compton Mackenzie (of September, John Johnson, who became University Whisky Galore fame), and Ned, father of the wood Printer the following year, sent him a packet, with a engraver Reynolds Stone. covering letter: Will’s elder brother John was born in 1905, ‘Dear Carter, I am sending you quite a lot of type and went to Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, in a separate parcel. It will make you, I hope, an where he achieved a double first in classics. From amusing and useful hobby. Yours sincerely, J. de M. Cambridge, he joined the New York firm of Johnson.’ Scribner’s, in their London antiquarian department. A family friend donated a flatbed Adana press. In 1934, in collaboration with Graham Pollard, he John, now an undergraduate at King’s, suggested published the innocuously titled An Enquiry into the Press name, after the family coat of arms the Nature of certain Nineteenth-century Pamphlets, (although in fact it had been poached from a which exposed the fraudulently manufactured grander but defunct Carter family some generations ‘pre-first-editions’ of works by Elizabeth Barrett back by a dynastically ambitious forebear), and the Browning and a number of other notable Rampant Lions Press was born. nineteenth-century writers. Although Carter and A surprising amount of early ephemera survives Pollard stopped short of directly accusing the from the Chalvey period, mostly letterheadings culprit in the book, their fingers pointed firmly at for family and friends, but including some more T J Wise, one of the most eminent bibliographers ambitious leaflets. Will was obviously able to of the day, and a previously unassailable figure in draw on quite a large range of typefaces. There are the field. Their later publications on the subject variations in quality, of course, but the range is confirmed this accusation. The affair aroused a impressive. considerable degree of interest at the time. Will left school at 18. He got a general John married an American, Ernestine Fantl, in apprenticeship with the printing firm of Unwin’s 1936, and after the war spent time as an advisor at Woking, but must have gone on printing at to the British Ambassador in Washington. On home at weekends, as a lot of printing survives his return to London, he joined Sotheby’s as from around 1931, and has Chalvey in the imprint. their bibliographical consultant. He published a The house where he lodged in Woking was called number of books on bibliography, including the Byfield: there are some rather distressing pieces classic ABC for Book-collectors (1952). Ernestine of stationery set in Cheltenham, with the first and was a distinguished fashion writer, and became an last letters of each word set much larger than the associate editor of The Sunday Times. John died in rest. It looks as if Will cannot have read any Stanley 1975, and Ernestine in 1983. Morison at this point, although it is possible he was Two sisters, Mary and Elisabeth, were born next, printing for the people with whom he was lodging, and William Nicholas arrived on 24 September and yielding to their taste. 9 book sold by the shop: tens of thousands must have been printed.) Later he was made assistant works manager. He found a small flat in Jordan’s Yard, at that time a medieval alleyway off Bridge Street. The alley is still there, but now, after you go through the half-timbered building which has been preserved on the Bridge Street frontage, all that remains on the left is a wall with some nineteenth-century buildings housing a restaurant, and on the right a new building with a café. The Yard now leads down to a multi-storey car park which covers the site of the building where Will lived. In this tiny flat he printed his early books, although the first title, A Preface, appeared in July 1934, when he was still using the Chalvey address. Two years later came his first book of any serious ambition, a book of poems by Robert Nichols called A Spanish Triptych (cat 3). For this he needed a larger press; he borrowed money from relatives, and bought an Albion hand-press, though he was rather defensive about this making him seem arty-crafty. Will sent a copy of A Spanish Triptych to Bernard Newdigate, who gave it a favourable mention in one of the ‘Book Production Notes’ he wrote for the literary magazine The London Mercury, in the March 1937 number. This led to one of Will’s After Unwin’s, Will worked, I remember him most important epistolary friendships, with the telling me, at the advertising agent J Walter American calligrapher Paul Standard (1896–1992). Thompson, though I have no further information Standard quickly enlisted Will’s participation in about this. He then worked briefly for James Shand one of the most attractive of the early Typophile at the Shenval Press in Hertford, and lodged in publications, Left to their own Devices, a collection Shand’s house, but apart from hearing that he found of Typophile logos from a variety of hands, Shand difficult and abrasive, I never found out including his cousin Reynolds Stone’s, another much about this period either. of Standard’s protégés. Will’s contribution was a In 1934, the year of his father’s death, and his simply drawn calligraphic TP. brother’s sudden notoriety because of the Wise Up until this point Will’s typographical style was affair, Will moved to Cambridge to work at very much in the English tradition, and might be Heffer’s printing works, which was then by the described as Newdigate-and-water. It underwent a roundabout at the end of Station Road, on the edge considerable change when he bought some Goudy of the Botanic Gardens. At that time the Heffer Text. This was spurred on by his admiration for family had a printing and publishing business, a the work of Rudolf Koch, and he admitted that the bookshop in Petty Cury (‘the bookshop which is choice of Goudy’s blackletter was a second best. The known all over the world’), and a large stationery more Germanic blackletters, even Monotype ones, shop. Will’s job was in the print order department, were too difficult to obtain, and although later in and involved designing anything that needed 1941 he negotiated with Monotype over Berthold designing so that the estimators could estimate Wolpe’s Sachsenwald, his call-up intervened. The for it. As his calligraphic skills developed, there first major book in the new type was the ambitious was quite a bit of scope for this activity as well, large quarto, The Song of Solomon (cat 6). including a rather magnificent German-inspired The next book, Memorandoms by James Martin large envelope design. (After the war he designed a (cat 5), led to a friendship with its editor, Charles calligraphic Heffer’s bookmark that went in every Blount, a young graduate of Pembroke College, who 10 later a keepsake was printed to celebrate the new arrival. This is unfortunately the last diary entry in the book, although there are lists of buyers and accounts for several early books. Will’s interest in the work of Rudolf Koch began early on: some of his first jobbing printing had been in Koch Antiqua, and he collected the beautiful type specimens produced by the Klingspor foundry. This interest led to an important visit in the summer of 1938. Through a family friend he made contact with Koch’s son Paul, who was running a craft workshop in an historic building in the old town in Frankfurt, the Haus zum Fürsteneck. Paul invited him to visit during his holiday in July, and he and Charles Blount duly arrived. As Will later described it in an essay in a festschrift celebrating Hermann Zapf’s seventieth birthday (Will’s essay was printed in English): ‘The workshop of the “Haus zum Fürsteneck” was in a large room of a big historic house which had been built by Bürgermeister Johann von Holzhausen in 1362. The walls were of rich oak panelling, and there was a wonderful great spread of plaster ceiling, and all was brightly lit by tall windows.