Walter Hamilton

“ Helmet, wreath, and mantling disappear, whilst the shield and coronet no longer face one boldly and squarely, but appear in fantastic perspective; the supporters assume attitudes never before contemplated in heraldry—under or over the shield, or playing at hide and seek behind the shield. Cupids, angels, cherubim, and mythological deities lend their aid, and a background of clouds, with or without rainbows, completes the curious fashion in vogue about 1750, which lasted, with some modifications, down to the time of the Revolution. ”

“ BOOK-PLATE OF MONS. WOLF.
As in literature, so in art, the Devil of the French, may be grotesque, bizarre, comic, terrible, yet in all he is a superior being, in short a Gentleman in Black, never the hideous, repulsive individual we are accustomed to see portrayed (with two horns and a tail) in English comic art. ”

“ For many ages the game cock, as brave and noble a bird as any that lives, was the badge of our Gallic neighbours:
“Le coq français est le coq de la gloire,
Par les revers il n’est point abattu;
Il chante fort lorsqu’il à la victoire,
Encor plus fort quand il est bien battu.
Le coq français est le coq de la gloire
Toujours chanter est sa grande vertu.
Est il imprudent, est-il sage?
C’est ce qu’on ne peut définir:
Mais qui ne perd jamais courage,
Se rend maitre de l’avenir.”
Besides being a national emblem, many ancient and noble French houses bore a cock on their shields. ”

“ The style of a book-plate may be taken as some indication of the tastes and nature of the owner, and this is particularly true of modern French ex-libris, in which artistic fancy and originality have full swing. From this point of view a collection may have more value than might at first be supposed. It would be claiming too much to assert that no great man ever had an ugly or an inappropriate ex-libris, yet it may be safely assumed that few but men of taste and culture possess really artistic book-plates. ”

“ THE FIRST REPUBLIC. N Great Britain political changes have had comparatively little effect upon the development of art, whereas in France the great events of her history have left their impress deeply on her arts, and during the last hundred years especially, nearly every political convulsion (and there have been many) has been rapidly followed by some great change in the fashion of her book-plates. It therefore becomes absolutely necessary to refer to some of the leading features in French history in order properly to appreciate the ex-libris of the various periods. ”

“ The task of identifying unknown ex-libris of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, those which bear a simple coat-of-arms without name of owner, or of artist or engraver, requires some patience, a collection of books of reference, and a knowledge of at least the rudiments of heraldry. The collector will soon learn to distinguish early French woodcuts from German, one marked difference being that nearly all German work was cut in relief, whilst French artists worked in the hollow, thus producing an engraving which feels rough where the ink lies. ”

“ There is no Heraldic Society, yet some persons, without legal authority, occupy themselves with questions of nobility, but they necessarily cannot be regarded as altogether trustworthy. Not knowing of a Heralds’ College in France, I cannot accuse the Commune of having burnt the archives. ”

“ It ruined France, but, whilst it lasted, the kings and their mistresses, the nobility, and the clergy, enjoyed most of the pleasures, and all the vices, this life could afford.
Of the military men who acquired power few appear to have indulged in literary tastes, or to have formed libraries. Many handsome ex-libris exist, carrying warlike trophies,—cannons, drums, tents, and flags,—such, for instance, as that of Claude Martin, but few indeed of these plates bear the names of any of the more famous French commanders. ”

“ Another feature in Napoleonic heraldry was the revival of an ancient ordinary, entitled champagne, occupying a third of the shield in base; it frequently occurs in arms granted under the Empire, but is now obsolete. In fact, on the restoration of Louis XVIII., an ordinance was issued abolishing all the innovations introduced by Napoleon, some of which deserved a better fate.
One of the most delightful traits in the character of the French people is their readiness to laugh at their own little national failings, their vanity, their volatility, and their political instability. ”

“ The term Ex-libris is now generally understood to refer to the labels, either printed or engraved, fixed by owners inside their books, to show by names, arms, or other devices, to whom the volumes belong. But French collectors employ the term Ex-libris in a much wider sense than we do; as, for instance, in reference to the manuscript entries of ownership in books, as we shall see later on, when dealing with the so-called ex-libris of François Rabelais and of Charlotte Corday, which are in reality but the autographs of these celebrities written in books which once belonged to them. ”

“ About the same time a new style of ex-libris comes in, more fanciful and artistic than of yore, but it must be confessed of a less practical character. These remain, for the greater part, heraldic in design, in fact, more pretentiously heraldic than ever. For, with the progress of education and the advance of philosophical speculation in France, people began to realize the absurdity of purchasing heraldic bearings, and, seeing what a sham the whole thing had become, finished by assuming arms and coronets to keep in the fashion. ”

“ The books of the first Napoleon were sumptuously bound, but he used no book-plate. Monsieur L. Joly, in his Ex-Libris Imaginaires, furnishes one such as might well have been used by the great soldier and law-maker. An imperial eagle casts a thunder-bolt, which illuminates the peaks of the Alps; below are seen the emblems of war, the owl, symbolic of wisdom, the Cross of the Légion d’Honneur, and the books of the Code Napoléon. ”

“ IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION. COLLECTOR will probably find it more difficult to identify and classify the ex-libris of France than those of any other country. The number of anonymous plates of comparatively early date is so large, the coronets of nobility are so irregular and so frequently misappropriated, and the great Revolution created such a general confusion in family history and in heraldry, that the identification of anonymous French ex-libris is embarrassing in most instances, impossible in some. ”

“ The late Lord de Tabley, in his “Guide,” says: “This engraver signs and dates a fine, but coarsely executed, anonymous armorial plate. The shield is untinctured and quarterly; first, a star, on a chief, three trefoils slipped; second, a cross pattée; third, a wing; fourth, two bars, in base a wheel; over all an escutcheon charged with a fesse. Fine leaf-like, simple mantling to helmet. No crest. I have no further knowledge of the artist. The more modern French form of this surname is Regnault. Riomi is an old-fashioned town in Auvergne, just north of Clermont.” ”

“ To collect early bindings is a noble hobby, but one which is, and ever must remain, the hobby of a few wealthy collectors, whereas the collection of ex-libris was, until quite recently, a taste requiring patience and skill rather than a well-filled purse. ”

“ Artists. A collection of signed plates carefully arranged under the names of their artists would, no doubt, be of great interest for comparison and study, but rather more for the lover of engraving pur et simple than for the lover of ex-libris, or for the student of heraldry and family history.
The great difficulty of any system of classification by the design is, that some plates might very properly be placed under three or four categories, so that, unless the collection be carefully indexed, the trouble is great in seeking hurriedly for any particular plate. ”

“ Bouland, President of the French Society, I am greatly indebted for the loan of several interesting reproductions, and my thanks are also due to Messieurs Aglaüs Bouvenne, Henry André, L. Joly, Léon Quantin, le Père Ingold, and other artists and owners of book-plates for their kind permission to reproduce them here.
A final tribute of gratitude remains to be paid to one who shares all my labours, or my cares, and adds that charm to life that makes success worth striving for. ”

“ Until the downfall of Louis XVI., the aristocracy of France was not only the most ancient and the proudest in Europe, but, speaking generally, possessed higher hereditary privileges and greater power than the nobility of any other civilized nation in the world. ”

“ But in those troubled times most men of any position had far more serious topics to occupy their minds than the planning of ex-libris for their books, and indeed the poor heraldic engravers found their business coming to an end, and one of them, M. Crussaire, finding himself without work, advertised that he would gladly execute “tout espèce de sujets sérieux ou agréables relatifs aux diverses circonstances de la Révolution, pour boites, bon-bonnières, boutons, medaillons.” ”

“ This practice gives the collector a great insight into the progress of art, and the development of taste, yet it demands both time and patience to carry it out. Finally, it is true, the collector will have formed a continuous series of heraldic devices illustrating family history more completely than can be arrived at in any other manner. It is only by this constant study and comparison that the student of French ex-libris can hope to acquire a knowledge of their details, so as to be able to arrange his collection with a due attention to time, place, and families. ”

“ Then came the great upheaval of society, and during the first period of the Revolution, when even to be suspected of nobility was a crime, haste was made to erase, or omit, all the signs of noble descent which had hitherto been so readily assumed, and in their places to insert caps of liberty and Republican mottoes, such as Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, or La Liberté ou la Mort. ”

“ But the new nobility of the Empire cared little for heraldic insignia, and still less for books or book-plates, consequently for the next ten years the crop is small and comparatively uninteresting. As a rule the plates of the Empire are easily identified; if heraldic, by the simplicity and regularity of the design, and by the peculiarly characteristic cap, or toque, designed by David, Napoleon’s favourite artist, which was used on most of them in place of crest or coronet. ”

“ BOOK-PLATE OF F. DES ROBERT, 1878.
Some well-known artists of the day having set the fashion, it became “the thing” with literary men—plebeian people, of course—to discard heraldry, and to have ex-libris emblematical of their studies, their tastes, or their principal works, as in the plates, for instance, of Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Manet, the Brothers Goncourt, Octave Uzanne, Paul Lacroix, and others. ”

“ In the rare cases where the book-plate remains fixed in the book to which it originally belonged, some little assistance may be derived as to its date and possible ownership, and at least one point may be settled with tolerable certainty, namely, that the engraving has really been intended for, and has served as, an ex-libris; whereas, when once extracted from its book, many an early armorial ex-libris may be easily mistaken for a woodcut used on a dedication, or for an illustration extracted from some old treatise on heraldry. ”

“ ECCLESIASTICAL EX-LIBRIS. O long as the government of France was monarchical, it was largely influenced by the priests, and her most famous statesmen were such princes of the Church as Richelieu, Mazarin, De Retz, Rohan-Soubize, La Rochefoucauld, and Talleyrand-Périgord. Whether their power was always exercised solely for the good of France is not a question to be discussed here, but, speaking generally, it is certain that they did much to encourage the progress of art, science, and literature. ”

“ In provincial towns there is, of course, less demand for plates, but a second-hand book shop in a French provincial town is usually a depressing place, and the books they have for sale seldom contain plates more interesting than a school or college-prize label. Yet these are occasionally very pretty little engravings, and the collector who prizes pictorial ex-libris would be glad to possess such a plate as that, for instance, designed by Apoux for the Institution Guillot, of Colombes (Seine) . ”

“ A well-known plate is that designed by Gavarni for the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, and engraved by Jules de Goncourt himself. These brothers have written much on French art, and, in allusion to their literary partnership, the plate shows a sheet of paper on which are the letters E. J. held down by the two outstretched fingers of a hand. The design is at once simple and striking, but it has the great demerit of not proclaiming its owner’s name, which is, after all, the raison d’être of a book-plate. ”

“ Toison d’Or wished to alter all this, and the salons were greatly disturbed as he went to work chipping off titles and prefixes of nobility right and left. But all to no purpose, except indeed to cast doubts upon all French heraldry since the downfall of the Bourbons.
A title in France costs nothing, and deceives no one who has the slightest knowledge of family history and genealogy. ”

“ In conclusion, I can only repeat that the choice of the system of arrangement depends more upon the tastes of the collector himself than upon any other consideration; but that, on the whole, the balance of advantages appears to incline in favour of the alphabetical classification under surnames, keeping each family as distinct as the information, heraldic and other, on the plates will allow. ”

“ M. Gambetta carried this bird, in the act of crowing, on his book-plate, with an equally gallant motto, “Vouloir c’est Pouvoir,” but we seek in vain to learn of what was composed the library of Gambetta. This is a mystery! It may be readily surmised that he had not many of the tastes of a bibliophile, nor time in which to indulge them. As to the plate itself, the design was probably suggested by Poulet-Malassis, and it was engraved by M. Alphonse Legros about 1874, when that artist was commissioned by Sir Charles Dilke to go to Paris to procure a portrait of M. Léon Gambetta. ”

“ Bazot, Notaire Amiens, had an imitation of the old style of armorial plate, with a ribbon on which the dates 1548 and 1848 appear. There is no explanation known of the first date, 1548.
Milsan attempts a weak pun on his name, bank notes for 1,000 and 100 francs represent the words Mille cent. This is the kind of joke that even a virtuous man might make in the seclusion of his own family circle, but that any sane man should engrave, revise it, print it, and finally paste it in all his books is something which almost destroys our faith in human nature. ”

“ In the best period of French heraldry, supporters were less frequently found than in British heraldry, and it was a rule, or a tradition, that, as marking the divine right of kings, only members of the royal family of France should carry angels as supporters. They were, however, assumed by the illegitimate descendants of the kings, who carried the royal arms with the usual differences. ”