Part 10
Charles Eliot Norton is a case in point in my contention that to secure the maximum from a college course a man should take two years at eighteen and the remaining two after he has reached forty. I was not unique among the Harvard undergraduates flocking to attend his courses in Art who failed utterly to understand or appreciate him. The ideals expressed in his lectures were far over our heads. The estimate of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold, that Mr. Norton was foremost among American thinkers, scholars, and men of culture, put us on the defensive, for to have writers such as these include Norton as one of themselves placed him entirely outside the pale of our undergraduate understanding. He seemed to us a link connecting our generation with the distant past. As I look back upon it, this was not so much because he appeared old as it was that what he said seemed to our untrained minds the vagaries of age. Perhaps we were somewhat in awe of him, as we knew him to be the intimate of Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell, as he had been of Longfellow and George William Curtis, and thus the last of the Cambridge Immortals. I have always wished that others might have corrected their false impressions by learning to know Norton, the man, as I came to know him, and have enjoyed the inspiring friendship that I was so fortunate in having him, in later years, extend to me.
In the classroom, sitting on a small, raised platform, with as many students gathered before him as the largest room in Massachusetts Hall could accommodate, he took Art as a text and discussed every subject beneath the sun. His voice, though low, had a musical quality which carried to the most distant corner. As he spoke he leaned forward on his elbows with slouching shoulders, with his keen eyes passing constantly from one part of the room to another, seeking, no doubt, some gleam of understanding from his hearers. He told me afterwards that it was not art he sought to teach, nor ethics, nor philosophy, but that he would count it success if he instilled in the hearts of even a limited number of his pupils a desire to seek the truth.
As I think of the Norton I came to know in the years that followed, he seems to be a distinctly different personality, yet of course the difference was in me. Even at the time when Senator Hoar made his terrific attack upon him for his public utterances against the Spanish War, I knew that he was acting true to his high convictions, even though at variance with public opinion. I differed from him, but by that time I understood him.
“Shady Hill,” his home in Norton’s Woods on the outskirts of Cambridge, Massachusetts, exuded the personality of its owner more than any house I was ever in. There was a restful dignity and stately culture, a courtly hospitality that reflected the individuality of the host. The library was the inner shrine. Each volume was selected for its own special purpose, each picture was illustrative of some special epoch, each piece of furniture performed its exact function. Here, unconsciously, while discussing subjects far afield, I acquired from Mr. Norton a love of Italy which later was fanned into flame by my Tuscan friend, Doctor Guido Biagi, the accomplished librarian of the Laurenziana Library, in Florence, to whom I have already frequently referred.
Our real friendship began when I returned from Italy in 1902, and told him of my plans to design a type based upon the wonderful humanistic volumes. As we went over the photographs and sketches I brought home with me, and he realized that a fragment of the fifteenth century, during which period hand lettering had reached its highest point of perfection, had actually been overlooked by other type designers (see _page 16_), he displayed an excitement I had never associated with his personality. I was somewhat excited, too, in being able to tell him something which had not previously come to his attention,--of the struggle of the Royal patrons, who tried to thwart the newborn art of printing by showing what a miserable thing a printed book was when compared with the beauty of the hand letters; and that these humanistic volumes, whose pages I had photographed, were the actual books which these patrons had ordered the scribes to produce, regardless of expense, to accomplish their purpose.
The romance that surrounded the whole undertaking brought out from him comments and discussion in which he demonstrated his many-sided personality. The library at “Shady Hill” became a veritable Florentine rostrum. Mr. Norton’s sage comments were expressed with the vigor and originality of Politian; when he spoke of the tyranny of the old Florentine despots and compared them with certain political characters in our own America, he might have been Machiavelli uttering his famous diatribes against the State. Lorenzo de’ Medici himself could not have thrilled me more with his fascinating expression of the beautiful or the exhibition of his exquisite taste.
Each step in the development of the Humanistic type was followed by Mr. Norton with the deepest interest. When the first copy of Petrarch’s _Triumphs_ came through the bindery I took it to “Shady Hill,” and we went over it page by page, from cover to cover. As we closed the volume he looked up with that smile his friends so loved,--that smile Ruskin called “the sweetest I ever saw on any face (unless perhaps a nun’s when she has some grave kindness to do),”--and then I knew that my goal had been attained (_page 32_).
While the Humanistic type was being cut, Doctor Biagi came to America as the official representative from Italy to the St. Louis Exposition. Later, when he visited me in Boston, I took him to “Shady Hill” to see Mr. Norton. It was an historic meeting. The Italian had brought to America original, unpublished letters of Michelangelo, and at my suggestion he took them with him to Cambridge. Mr. Norton read several of these letters with the keenest interest and urged their publication, but Biagi was too heavily engaged with his manifold duties as librarian of the Laurenziana and Riccardi libraries, as custodian of the Buonarroti and the da Vinci archives, and with his extensive literary work, to keep the promise he made us that day.
The conversation naturally turned upon Dante, Biagi’s rank in his own country as interpreter of the great poet being even greater than was Norton’s in America. Beyond this they spoke of books, of art, of music, of history, of science. Norton’s knowledge of Italy was profound and exact; Biagi had lived what Norton had acquired. No matter what the subject, their comments, although simply made, were expressions of prodigious study and absolute knowledge; of complete familiarity, such as one ordinarily has in every-day affairs, with subjects upon which even the well-educated man looks as reserved for profound discussion. Norton and Biagi were the two most cultured men I ever met. In listening to their conversation I discovered that a perfectly trained mind under absolute control is the most beautiful thing in the world.
* * * * *
Climbing the circular stairway in the old, ramshackle Harper plant at Franklin Square, New York, I used to find William Dean Howells in his sanctum.
“Take this chair,” he said one day after a cordial greeting; “the only Easy Chair we have is in the _Magazine_.”
Howells loved the smell of printer’s ink. “They are forever talking about getting away from here,” he would say, referring to the long desire at Harpers’--at last gratified--to divorce the printing from the publishing and to move uptown. “Here things are so mixed up that you can’t tell whether you’re a printer or a writer, and I like it.”
Our acquaintance began after the publication by the Harpers in 1906 of a novel of mine entitled _The Spell_, the scene of which is laid in Florence. After reading it, Howells wrote asking me to look him up the next time I was in the Harper offices.
“We have three reasons to become friends,” he said smiling, after studying me for a moment with eyes that seemed probably more piercing and intent than they really were: “you live in Boston, you love Italy, and you are a printer. Now we must make up for lost time.”
After this introduction I made it a habit to “drop up” to his sanctum whenever I had occasion to go to Franklin Square to discuss printing or publishing problems with Major Leigh or Mr. Duneka. Howells always seemed to have time to discuss one of the three topics named in his original analysis, yet curiously enough it was rarely that any mention of books came into our conversation.
Of Boston and Cambridge he was always happily reminiscent: of entertaining Mr. and Mrs. John Hay while on their wedding journey, and later Bret Harte, in the small reception room in the Berkeley Street house, where the tiny “library” on the north side was without heat or sunlight when Howells wrote his _Venetian Days_ there in 1870; of early visits with Mark Twain before the great fireplace in “the Cabin” at his Belmont home, over the door of which was inscribed the quotation from _The Merchant of Venice_, “From Venice as far as Belmont.”--“In these words,” Howells said, “lies the history of my married life”;--of the move from Belmont to Boston as his material resources increased.
“There was a time when people used to think I didn’t like Boston,” he would chuckle, evidently enjoying the recollections that came to him; “but I always loved it. The town did take itself seriously,” he added a moment later; “but it had a right to. That was what made it Boston. Sometimes, when we know a place or a person through and through, the fine characteristics may be assumed, and we may chaff a little over the harmless foibles. That is what I did to Boston.”
He chided me good-naturedly because I preferred Florence to Venice. “Italy,” he quoted, “is the face of Europe, and Venice is the eye of Italy. But, after all, what difference does it make?” he asked. “We are both talking of the same wonderful country, and perhaps the intellectual atmosphere of antiquity makes up for the glory of the Adriatic.”
Then he told me a story which I afterwards heard Hamilton Mabie repeat at the seventy-fifth birthday anniversary banquet given Howells at Sherry’s by Colonel George Harvey in 1912.
Two American women met in Florence on the Ponte Vecchio. One of them said to the other, “Please tell me whether this is Florence or Venice.”
“What day of the week is it?” the other inquired.
“Wednesday.”
“Then,” said the second, looking at her itinerary, “this is Venice.”
“I was born a printer, you know,” Howells remarked during one of my visits. “I can remember the time when I couldn’t write, but not the time when I couldn’t set type.”
He referred to his boyhood experiences in the printing office at Hamilton, Ohio. His father published there a Whig newspaper, which finally lost nearly all its subscribers because its publisher had the unhappy genius of always taking the unpopular side of every public question. Howells immortalized this printing office in his essay _The Country Printer_,--where he recalls “the compositors rhythmically swaying before their cases of type; the pressman flinging himself back on the bar that made the impression, with a swirl of his long hair; the apprentice rolling the forms; and the foreman bending over them.”
The Lucullan banquet referred to outrivaled that given by Colonel Harvey to Mark Twain. How Mark Twain would have loved to be there, and how much the presence of this life-long friend would have meant to Howells! More than four hundred men and women prominent in letters gathered to do honor to the beloved author, and President Taft conveyed to him the gratitude of the nation for the hours of pleasure afforded by his writings.
In the course of his remarks, Howells said:
_I knew Hawthorne and Emerson and Walt Whitman; I knew Longfellow and Holmes and Whittier and Lowell; I knew Bryant and Bancroft and Motley; I knew Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe; I knew Artemus Ward and Stockton and Mark Twain; I knew Parkman and Fiske._
As I listened to this recapitulation of contact with modern humanists, I wondered what Howells had left to look forward to. No one could fail to envy him his memories, nor could he fail to ask himself what twentieth-century names would be written in place of those the nineteenth century had recorded in the Hall of Fame
* * * * *
My library has taken on a different aspect during all these years. When I first installed my books I looked upon it as a sanctuary, into which I could escape from the world outside. Each book was a magic carpet which, at my bidding, transported me from one country to another, from the present back to centuries gone by, gratifying my slightest whim in response to the mere effort of changing volumes. My library has lost none of that blissful peace as a retreat, but in addition it has become a veritable meeting ground. The authors I have known are always waiting for me there,--to disclose to me through their works far more than they, in all modesty, would have admitted in our personal conferences
VI
TRIUMPHS OF TYPOGRAPHY
In gathering together his book treasures, a collector naturally approaches the adventure from a personal standpoint. First editions may particularly appeal to him, or Americana, or his bibliomania may take the form of subject collecting. I once had a friend who concentrated on whales and bees! My hobby has been to acquire, so far as possible, volumes that represent the best workmanship of each epoch, and from them I have learned much of fascinating interest beyond the history of typography. A book in itself is always something more than paper and type and binder’s boards. It possesses a subtle friendliness that sets it apart from other inanimate objects about us, and stamps it with an individuality which responds to our approach in proportion to our interest. But aside from its contents, a typographical monument is a barometer of civilization. If we discover what economic or political conditions combined to make it stand out from other products of its period, we learn contemporaneous history and become acquainted with the personalities of the people and the manners and customs of the times.
No two countries, since Gutenberg first discovered the power of individual types when joined together to form words down to the present day, have stood pre-eminent in the same epoch in the art of printing. The curve of supremacy, plotted from the brief triumph of Germany successively through Italy, France, the Netherlands, England, France, and back again to England, shows that the typographical monuments of the world are not accidental, but rather the natural results of cause and effect. In some instances, the production of fine books made the city of their origin the center of culture and brought luster to the country; in others, the great master-printers were attracted from one locality to another because of the literary atmosphere in a certain city, and by their labors added to the reputation it had already attained. The volumes themselves sometimes produced vitally significant effects; sometimes their production was the result of conditions equally important.
* * * * *
The first example I should like to own for my collection of typographical triumphs is, of course, the _Gutenberg Bible_ (_opp. page_); but with only forty-five copies known to be in existence (of which twelve are on vellum), I must content myself with photographic facsimile pages. The copy most recently offered for sale brought $106,000 in New York in February, 1926, and was later purchased by Mrs. Edward S. Harkness for $120,000, who presented it to the Yale University Library. This makes the _Gutenberg Bible_ the most valuable printed book in the world,--six times as precious as a Shakespeare first folio. Fortunately, the copies are well distributed, so that one need not deny himself the pleasure of studying it. In America, there are two examples (one on vellum) in the Pierpont Morgan Library, in New York; another in the New York Public Library, and still another in the library of the General Theological School; while the private collections of Henry E. Huntington and Joseph E. Widener are also fortunate possessors. In England, one may find a copy at the British Museum or the Bodleian Library; on the Continent, at the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, at the Vatican Library in Rome, or in the libraries of Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, or Vienna. Over twenty of the forty-five copies are imperfect, and only four are still in private hands. Of these four, one is imperfect, and two are already promised to libraries; so the copy sold in New York may be the last ever offered.
The copy I love best to pore over is that bound in four volumes of red morocco, stamped with the arms of Louis XVI, in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This perhaps is not so historical as the one De Bure discovered in the library of Cardinal Mazarin in Paris in 1763,--three hundred years after it was printed, and until then unknown; but the dignity of those beautifully printed types on the smooth, ivory surface of the vellum possesses a magnificence beyond that of any other copy I have seen. Also at the Bibliothèque Nationale is a defective paper copy in two volumes in which appear rubricator’s notes marking the completion of the work as August 15, 1456. Think how important this is in placing this marvel of typography; for the project of printing the _Bible_ could not have been undertaken earlier than August, 1451, when Gutenberg formed his partnership with Fust and Schoeffer in Mayence.
To a modern architect of books the obstacles which the printer at that time encountered, with the art itself but a few years old, seem insurmountable. There was the necessity of designing and cutting the first fonts of type, based upon the hand lettering of the period. As is always inevitable in the infancy of any art, this translation from one medium to another repeated rather than corrected the errors of the human hand. The typesetter, instead of being secured from an employment office, had to be made. Gutenberg himself perhaps, had to teach the apprentice the method of joining together the various letters, in a roughly made composing stick of his own invention, in such a way as to maintain regularity in the distances between the stems of the various letters, and thus produce a uniform and pleasing appearance. There existed no proper iron chases in which to lock up the pages of the type, so that while the metal could be made secure at the top and bottom, there are frequent instances where it bulges out on the sides.
From the very beginning the printed book had to be a work of art. The patronage of kings and princes had developed the hand-lettered volumes to the highest point of perfection, and, on account of this keen competition with the scribes and their patrons, no printer could afford to devote to any volume less than his utmost artistic taste and mechanical ingenuity. Thus today, if a reader examines the _Gutenberg Bible_ with a critical eye, he will be amazed by the extraordinary evenness in the printing, and the surprisingly accurate alignment of the letters. The glossy blackness of the ink still remains, and the sharpness of the impression is equal to that secured upon a modern cylinder press.
It has been estimated that no less than six hand presses were employed in printing the 641 leaves, composed in double column without numerals, catch words, or signatures. What binder today would undertake to collate such a volume in proper sequence! After the first two divisions had come off the press it was decided to change the original scheme of the pages from 40 to 42 lines. In order to get these two extra lines on the page it was necessary to set all the lines closer together. To accomplish this, some of the type was recast, with minimum shoulder, and the rest of it was actually cut down in height to such an extent that a portion of the curved dots of the _i_’s was clipped off.
Monographs have been written to explain the variation in the size of the type used in different sections of this book, but what more natural explanation could there be than that the change was involuntary and due to natural causes? In those days the molds which the printer used for casting his types were made sometimes of lead, but more often of wood. As he kept pouring the molten metal into these matrices, the very heat would by degrees enlarge the mold itself, and thus produce lead type of slightly larger size. From time to time, also, the wooden matrices wore out, and the duplicates would not exactly correspond with those they replaced.
In printing these volumes, the precedent was established of leaving blank spaces for the initial letters, which were later filled in by hand. Some of these are plain and some elaborate, serving to make the resemblance to the hand-lettered book even more exact; but the glory of the _Gutenberg Bible_ lies in its typography and presswork rather than in its illuminated letters.
* * * * *
Germany, in the _Gutenberg Bible_, proved its ability to produce volumes worthy of the invention itself, but as a country it possessed neither the scholars, the manuscripts, nor the patrons to insure the development of the new art. Italy, at the end of the fifteenth century, had become the home of learning, and almost immediately Venice became the Mecca of printers. Workmen who had served their apprenticeships in Germany sought out the country where princes might be expected to become patrons of the new art, where manuscripts were available for copy, and where a public existed both able and willing to purchase the products of the press. The Venetian Republic, quick to appreciate this opportunity, offered its protection and encouragement. Venice itself was the natural market of the world for distribution of goods because of the low cost of sea transportation.
I have a fine copy of Augustinus: _De Civitate Dei_ (_page 205_) that I discovered in Rome in its original binding years ago, printed in Jenson’s Gothic type in 1475. On the first page of text, in bold letters across the top, the printer has placed the words, _Nicolaus Jenson, Gallicus_. In addition to this signature, the _explicit_ reads:
_This work_ De Civitate Dei _is happily completed, being done in Venice by that excellent and diligent master, Nicolas Jenson, while Pietro Mocenigo was Doge, in the year after the birth of the Lord, one thousand four hundred and seventy-five, on the sixth day before the nones of October (2 October)_