manuscripts

An early seventeenth-century heraldic pedigree of the Offley family of Madeley (Staffordshire) with the arms of their prominent dynasty of London guildsmen, which include Henry Offley (d. 1613) who had married Mary, the daughter of Sir John White Lord Mayor of London; and Thomas Offley (1501-1582), a successful wool and cloth merchant — Lord Mayor of London in 1556. Also in the lineage is Stephen Jenyns (1453-1523) another important London Lord Mayor with Wolverhampton origins whose arms are accompanied by an elaborate cartouche noting his mayoralty. An early docket on the verso (legible with ultra-violet light) reads: ‘The Pedigree of Stephen Jenings’.

The youngest member of the Offley family shown is John (b. 1586). He was educated at Middle Temple and married in 1605. He was knighted in April 1615, served as sheriff of Staffordshire in 1616-17 and was a magistrate for the county by 1621. 1625-6 he was MP for Stafford. Another contemporary version of the pedigree is described in the Staffordshire Visitation of 1614:

‘Quarterly — 1. Argent, on a cross fleurettée azure a lion passant-guardant or [OFFLEY]; 2. Azure, a chevron between two eagles displayed in chief and a lion passant in base or [NECHELLS]; 3. Argent, a chevron gules between three plummets sable [JENNINGS]; 4. Azure, a tiger passant or [LANE]. CREST— A demi-lion rampant-guardant or, holding an olive branch vert, fructed gold’ (’Heraldic Visitations of Staffordshire in 1614 and 1663-64’, in History of Staffordshire, 1884).

The fashion for dressing prints existed probably from the origin of printed illustrations themselves, though it was a widespread, predominantly female recreation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, often with a devotional intent.

The subjects here are Franciscan: Francis himself in a version of the legend of the appearance to him of the Virgin and Infant Christ, and Anthony of Padau in friar’s habit with an infant and a cherub. St Francis is the most elaborate of the two, with almost all of the cut print’s surface covered with colour, several silk brocade fabrics (brown, black, white and silver), gold paper highlights and glittering ground glass. Cherries on a tree above the group are rendered in tiny red wax spots, giving a round and shiny surface to each. The border is of black lacquer-like paint and gold paper, and an engraved Latin caption reads: ‘Quid parvum Francisce adeo miraris Iesu / Expecta pendens in cruce maior erit’. The surrounding parchment surface is illuminated with full borders of pink roses. Saint Anthony’s robe is rendered with a single piece of shiny brown silk, with narrow painted bands of the original print giving the impression of its folds. The grassy ground on which he kneels, and the tree above him shine with fragments of ground green glass.

An antiquary’s heraldic manuscript of the arms of the archbishops of Canterbury from Lanfranc (d. 1089) to Charles Manner-Sutton (installed 1805) copied from a manuscript made for John Whitgift (archbishop 1583-1604) still in the library of Lambeth Palace (MS 555). Much of the heraldry relating to the archbishops of Canterbury is displayed in the church of St Mary-at-Lambeth in London, near to Lambeth Palace the London seat of the archbishops. The manuscript records the arms, together with some etymological explanations of names, and opens with the arms of the See of Canterbury. Included are the arms of Thomas Becket, Stephen Langton, Simon Sudbury, Thomas Cranmer, Reginald Pole, Matthew Parker, John Whitgift, Richard Bancroft and William Laud. It was in the collections of Sir Charles George Young (1795–1869), officer of arms who served in the heraldic office of Garter King of Arms, the senior member of the College of Arms in England, from 1842 until his death in 1869.

Nuit pleine, while characteristic of De Bournazel’s astonishing unique books, also signals new directions. A profound black occupies many of the spaces between the teeming figures inhabiting each page, and on close examination they emerge from this darkness through negative spaces. The pages mirror several of her recent panel paintings where figures are revealed from blackness in the same way. Nuit pleine seems to explore a more contemporary scene than many of her books and among the the hybrid figures we surely find protesters among the crowds with placards, flags and even a cellphone. Angular structures in the puzzle-like backgrounds suggest an urban rather than rural scene, and yet timeless figures of mermaids, jesters and death itself anchor the book in a cyclical timeless continuum.

Diane de Bournazel (b. 1956) creates books as ‘poems without words’ in her unique pen, ink and gouache style, filling each page with mazes of vegetation, mysterious borders, structures and figures, opening windows within pages allowing us to see behind and beyond them, suggesting a series of alternative worlds and narratives. Drawing on the universals of the cosmos, the natural world, of childhood and human relationships each of her books invite careful ‘reading’ and multiple interpretations. Collectors have found the books to speak for themselves, and the artist writes of her work simply as:

‘Poésie sans paroles.
Il s’agit bien de ça.
Mettre en images le monde et l’arrière monde,
Comme un poète mais sans mot dire’.

De Bournazel has recently been the subject of an essay by French medievalist and cultural historian, Michel Pastoureau, entitled ‘Fenêtres sur le rêve’ (2024) written to introduce the artist’s first major Paris exhibition. Following a deep consideration of the artist’s visual world he concludes: ‘The reading of Diane de Bournazel’s work takes a deliberately plural path, as in a fairy tale or a dream. It is obviously this way that she wants to lead us. And herein lies the magic of her art, an art that is both bewitching and bewitched, absolutely original, impossible to photograph and still less describe or explain. Her creations appeal not only to our imagination but to all our senses at once. You have to look at them, listen to them, feel them, breathe them and, ultimately, savour them’.

Fatrasie is a twenty-first century visual interpretation of a rare and highly distinctive medieval poetic form of satirical nonsense verse. In the Fatrasie form, early French rhymers subjugated meaning to the rhythm of repeated sounds and syllables and yet were able to hide piquant criticisms of prevailing power structures within their verses. It is a particularly apt title among Diane de Bournazel’s unique artist’s books, which frequently conceal their narratives and meanings within the artist’s dense iconography.

Diane de Bournazel (b. 1956) creates books as ‘poems without words’ in her unique pen, ink and gouache style, filling each page with mazes of vegetation, mysterious borders, structures and figures, opening windows within pages allowing us to see behind and beyond them, suggesting a series of alternative worlds and narratives. Drawing on the universals of the cosmos, the natural world, of childhood and human relationships each of her books invite careful ‘reading’ and multiple interpretations. Collectors have found the books to speak for themselves, and the artist writes of her work simply as:

‘Poésie sans paroles.
Il s’agit bien de ça.
Mettre en images le monde et l’arrière monde,
Comme un poète mais sans mot dire’.

De Bournazel has recently been the subject of an essay by French medievalist and cultural historian, Michel Pastoureau, entitled ‘Fenêtres sur le rêve’ (2024) written to introduce the artist’s first major Paris exhibition. Following a deep consideration of the artist’s visual world he concludes: ‘The reading of Diane de Bournazel’s work takes a deliberately plural path, as in a fairy tale or a dream. It is obviously this way that she wants to lead us. And herein lies the magic of her art, an art that is both bewitching and bewitched, absolutely original, impossible to photograph and still less describe or explain. Her creations appeal not only to our imagination but to all our senses at once. You have to look at them, listen to them, feel them, breathe them and, ultimately, savour them’.

A unique album written and illustrated by the artist and illustrator W. Graham Robertson for Marion (‘Binkie’), daughter of artist Arthur Melville who had died in 1904. It is one of several (another is in the Ray collection in the Morgan Library, New York) devoted to the young girl who became Robertson’s muse in the years following Melville’s tragic death. It comprises ‘Six Songs of the Day’ and ‘Six Songs of the Dusk’, the typed poems accompanied by his illustrations, usually depicting himself ‘Ba’ and the infant Binkie, and bear titles such as ‘Glad Day’, ‘Sea Pinks’, ‘Sand Castles’, ‘The Nowhere Place’ and ‘The Lady Dream Come True’. The larger watercolours are on Robertson’s Rutland Gate stationery.

A superbly executed manuscript miscellany of short works by the eccentric antiquary and bibliophile Laurent de Crozet (1809-1872). The volume was edited posthumously by his son Amédée de Crozet (1847-1896) and is in the hand of a master scribe, Alphonse Pelletier of Marseille. The choice of contrasting quires of coloured papers aptly reflects some of the author’s curious bibliophilic practices. A prolific author of pamphlets and articles, it was said that he preferred to have each work printed in small editions by different printers, sometimes even ordering different gatherings from different printers. His aim was to make collecting his works as challenging as possible, so that only he and one other ever achieved a complete collection. Notably modest, de Crozet also published anonymously and adopted pseudonyms (such as the ‘Chevalier Apicius à Vindemiis’), a characteristic alluded to in the the author’s portrait (’Auctoris vera effigies’ which mentions a limitation of 50 copies) depicting a man sitting on an immense barrel, his pockets stuffed with pipes and bottles and his head in a book, so that his face is entirely obscured). De Crozet was a major collector of earlier French books (Perrier, Bibliophiles et les collectionneurs provencaux, 1897).

The contents comprise: Volume I: Du Coeur de l’homme selon la Philosophie ancienne; Reflexions; Notes de voyage (Hôtels, Registres des Etrangers; Enseignes; Voyageurs en Suisse, L’Amateur); Sur Cicéron; Lucrèce Borgia; Les Fiancés par Manzoni; Messe en Fa de Chérubin; Cicéron et Lord Byron; De la Décentralisation littéraire; Pensées; Histoire de l’Angleterre par Hume; Considérations sure les premiers siècle de notre histoire; Sur la foi. Volume II: De la Recherche des plaisirs’ De la Connaissance de Dieu; De l’Esclavage en Turquie; Memoires d’un Président de Conférences; Réponse de Mr. Casimir Bousquet; Notes sur Haitze’ Rapport; Notes bibliographiqes.

An attractive miscellaneous collection of painted arms, some perhaps dating from soon after 1800, some from the later nineteenth century and some from the twentieth. They provide an interesting overview of the arts of the heraldic miniature painter and calligrapher. Two good examples come direct from the College of Arms (both dated 1907), one of the larger pieces (315 × 255 mm) bears the arms of Thomas James Summers and is signed on the back ‘Painted by J. Eedes. 63 Great Titchfield St. Oxford St and a fine painting on vellum is marked in contemporary manuscript on the back ‘Painted by Peters & Sons Coachmakers London November 11 1858’. Some, including a couple bearing royal arms have evidently been cut from the original grants of arms.

A delightful, accomplished and idsiosyncratic illuminated manuscript in neo-gothic style by a French woman, one Sophie Mallet, probably as a wedding gift for a female friend or relation: Jeanne or ‘JMN’. The texts include familiar words of advice for a young wife, scriptural and otherwise, while a section titled ‘Vie du monde’ includes personal and original advice addressed to ‘ma Jeanne’. Among the texts are: ‘Qui trouvera une femme forte?...’ (Proverbs 31 [incorrectly given as Ecclesiasticus here], ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies’); ‘Bienheureux les pauvres d’esprit...’ (Matthew 5, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven); ‘Faites comme les petits enfants qui de l’une des mains se tiennent à leur père’ (St Francis of Assisi, ‘Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me’), and there are excerpts from the Imitation of Christ and from St Bernard.

The real pleasure of the manuscript lies in its illumination, expertly done with unusual and quirky details. The borders include numerous recognisable birds, insects and flowers rendered in impressive detail. Colours are applied very skilfully as are metallic highlights, including burnished and liquid gold, often on raised or otherwise textured grounds. Best of all is the colophon or tailpiece, which includes an entwined pair of longtailed dragons looking more like dinosaurs than medieval beasts.

A spectacular and unique interpretation of Baudelaire by Neville Lytton including twenty original watercolours with illuminated borders. Each of Lytton’s images is in the visionary tradition ―most have an otherworldly quality, and some border on Surrealism.The twenty poems comprise: Le Calumet de la Paix - Bohémiens en voyage - La Géante - Le Cygne - La Beauté - L’Idéal - La Vie antérieure - Sisina - Un Voyage à Cythère - XVIII - A une Passante - L’Albatros - L’Ennemi - Bien loin d’ici - Une gravure fantastique - L’Amour et le Crâne - La Cloche fêlée - Le Voyage - Le Balcon - Les Bijoux.
Most of the poems are given in two calligraphic versions, one probably written with a steel nib, the other with an oblique nib, perhaps a quill-pen. Three poems appear in only one version: La Cloche fêlée in steel nib version only and Le Balcon and Les Bijoux only in quill pen.
Neville Bulwer-Lytton (1879-1951) was grandson of the novelists Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Rosina Doyle Wheeler and his siblings included the suffragette Constance Lytton and Emily Lutyens. He was a man of many parts: a military officer, cricketer, Olympic athlete and artist ― educated at Eton and the École des Beaux-Arts. He was also an accomplished morris dancer and played an ivory flute.
Among several notable portraits, he painted George Bernard Shaw in papal robes (in imitation of Velazquez) and a series of fashionable women in sumptuous velvets and silks, but he is best known for the series of First World War frescoes for the Victory Hall at Balcombe, Sussex. Throughout his career he also painted watercolour miniatures, intensely detailed with a distinctive coloration ― a style entirely suitable for these Baudelaire illustrations. His first wife was Judith Blunt, daughter of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (divorced in 1923), and he was an important member of circles of artists and connoisseurs around the turn of the 20th century. He was friendly with Sydney Cockerell, spent weekend with the Churchills, and Eddie Marsh claimed that it was meeting Lytton that inspired his love of collecting. In 1924 Lytton married Rosa Alexandrine (Sandra) Fortel of St Rambert-en-Bugey, near Lyon and settled in France, asborbing himself deeply in French artistic culture. He wrote: ‘‘I love France because I am an artist, and in this glorious country artists are considered to be sacred --- to them gratitude is shown for the renouncing of material wealth and worldly values and the adoption of a life of struggle which as a rule is only understood by a small number of contemporaries’ (‘Reasons why I love France’ in Life in Occupied France, 1942).

A striking and moving memorial to a young boy, a vision of a child’s paradise with chromolithograph scrapbook cuttings of birds, horses, children, dancers, flowers and foliage, together with cuttings of hair (some woven). It combines two popular Victorian domestic crafts of hair art and scrapbooking, within an accomplished (but probably also domestic) wooden frame in the gothic style. With its supersized hair-carrying birds dwarfing diminutive dancers this is an inadvertently unsettling piece of Victorian naïve art.

An extensive cookery and domestic and medical receipt book once bound as a notebook, now loose but substantially complete with circa 120 complete recipes in several hands. Though mostly undated, two entries later in the collection are recipes copied from magazines of 1815. It is not possible to identify the owner of compiler, Mrs Barber, and the entries include a wide variety of regional and local recipes making it almost impossible to suggest a region of origin — though Dorsteshire and Somersetshire are both referred to.

A Receipt for Blacking; To make a Cake with Custard; To preserve Damsons; To pickle Pork; To make a Cake; To make White sauce for Fowls; Plum Cake; Treacle Beer; Rice Cheesecakes; To lake Muffins; Mrs. Gilks’s receipt to make a Cake; To make a green Ointment; Yellow Pickle; Currant Wine; Apricot Jam; For a Cough; To make a Mead; To make Raisin Wine; To pickle Salmon; A common Rice pudding; To make little Cakes; To make Breakfast Cakes; To make Snail Milk; For a scald or Burn; Shrub; Ratafia; Goldbold’s Vegatable Balsom; To make Nankeen Dye; Friend Day’s Receipt to make Parsnip Wine; Nitrous Fever mixture; Milk of Roses; Fine Sope; Gargle for a Sore Throat; Hiera Piera; A Plaister to be worn for pain restraint; Daffy’s Elixir; Stoughtons Elixir; For the Piles; Bread Pudding; Blanc Mange; Cure for Cancers; Yellow Pickle; To make Macceroons; To make Rattifies; Shrewsbury Cakes; Mint Drops; For a Violent Lax; M. Smith’s way to make Ginger Wine; S. Cash’s way to make Cowslip wine; Directions and outward Applications for all Wounds without Inflamations; Application for Swellings that are likely to break and come to a Wound; For a Cough; Nurse Jones’s Receipt for the Rheumatism; To make Potatoe Cheesecakes; To make Vinegar; To make Raspberry Jam; To make Banbury Cakes; Mr. Bickmore’s receipt for light batter puddings; Currant Wine; Another Way; To Keep Damsons; Chese of Damsons; Receipt for the Jaunders; ED receipt for the ague; Plumb Cake; Cousin Crabbs way to make Ginger Wine; To make a sere cloth plaster; To make Gingerbread; To make a Melbet Pudding; Susanna Barrats way to make Walnut Ketshup; To make Elder Ointment; To make Lime water; A Receipt for the Rheumatic Complaint; Pound Cake; To make Yorkshire tea cakes; For a cough; To make Oat or Hava Cakes; [?] Tutty’s reciept for a Cake; N. Taylor’s reciept for minced pyes; Rev’d Bishops Biscuits; Cousin Townsends receipt for British Madeira; To clean Stoves; Another way to clean Stoves; To make wash Ball; Cheap and Excellent Custards; To make Sprats taste like Anchovies; Black Currant Wine; Soft Cheese; M. Garrards Ginger bread Cakes; Fr. Ransomes Cake; To Pickle Walnuts; The manner of cureing the Bread-bag in Dorsetshire for making Cheese; Somersetshire Frumity; A method of preserving Cream; To prevent milk & Butter from tasting of Turnips; To make a Cake Fr. Moore’s way; To boil Coals in milk for Rheumatism; Preservative from Moths in Books & Clothes; Aromatic Vinegar; [4pp. on the treatment of coughs]; Doctor Badeleys first prescription for [?S or L. Martin] aged 15 supposing the fits were occasioned by indigestion. 16pp. Dell’s prescription for M Matthew’s Shortage of breath; For [illegible] or other weaknesses; November’s magazine,1815 From the practice of J. Want late Surgeon to the North London Despensary 11 North Crescent Bedford Square [followed by a disqusition on the symptoms and treatment of epilepsy and coughs, and the possible significance of variations in weather, prompted by Want’s Monthly Report of Diseases in N.W. London: from November 24 to December 24, 1815, in The Monthly Magazine, No. 277]; For Infectious Fevers Fumigation; Good Family Pills; An excellent Fever mixture; To ease a cough; To Polish Horns; For a weak Stomach; To make Calomel Ointment; A Receipt for the Scurvy; For the Rhumatism; Huxhams Tincture of Bark, 2 separate leaves and 4pp., probably formerly part of (ii). Leaf 1: Duke of Buckinghams Pudding; Duke of Cumberlands Pudding; Red Currant Wine as made in 1818; Potatoe Pudding; Elder Rob. Leaf 2: Monthly Report for October 1816 From August 24 to Sept 24; Eye Water. 4 pp: [3pp. (partial) treatment instructions]; Ginger Beer from the Monthly Magazine.�

An attractive illuminated leaf in gothic type. The text is a portion of the Office of the Dead from a Book of Hours and opens with the prayer or chant: ‘Ne recorderis peccata mea domine. Dum veneris iudicare saeculum per ignem’ (Remember not my sins, oh Lord. When thou shall come to judge the world by fire).
Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner. Catalogue 7 (1962), item 135, illustrated (£3.10).

This attractive fragment includes the opening of the prayer to the Virgin ‘O intemerata’ (O Immaculate), commonly included (with the ‘Oscecro te’) in a medieval Book of Hours. Folio Society, Collectors Corner (n.d, ?1960) £2.

Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society, Collectors Corner, catalogue 2 (1961), item 66 (£2.10).

An attractive single leaf from a Book of Hours including, as an antiphon, the opening verses of Psalm 95, ‘Cantate Domino cantico novum; cantate Domino omnis terra’ (O sing unto the Lord a new song). Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner, catalogue 9 (1962), item 173 (£3)

A well-presented Victorian monogram album containing over 1600 cut monograms. Many here are private monograms and include a large number of women’s christian names, while there are pages devoted to regiments, naval ships, clubs, associations and Oxford and Cambridge colleges. The presentation is typical, but especially neat and varied, with the cut monograms arranged on decorative pen and watercolour grounds. These are often geometric (circles and other interlocking figures are frequent) but include a gothic window, patriotic flags, mossy borders, anchors and a heraldic garter. Monogram collecting was hugely popular in the mid-nineteenth century and collections like this usually included genuine examples cut from stationery, together with others specially produced by stationery companies capitalising on the fashion. These latter monograms, evidently sold in sets can be quite elaborate, often featuring gold inks and sometimes with amusing and whimsical subjects.

Slavery in France was abolished during the Revolution, but was reintroduced by Napoleon in 1804 and not finally abolished until 1838. In April 1826 Charles X had signed a treaty formally recognising the independence of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and it seems likely that these notes were written for a speech given shortly after that date. Barante notes that some viewed the treaty as an act of submission, but he states that the king and the negotiators who signed the treaty had ‘une horreur sincère pour cet infame trafic’ and that the loss of the colony was no threat to France. In the light of the treaty, Barante believes that this was a favourable moment to advance the cause of abolition. Towards the end he refers to the famous saying of Robespierre: ‘Périssent les colonies plutôt qu’un principe’ (though he simply writes ‘périsse les colonies...’ here) but he goes on ‘ces paroles sont atroces — le premier de tous les principes est l’horreur du crime... Cependant ce principe auquel on faisait des sacrifices humains était un principe et de cruauté’. For Barante therefore the fight against the injustice and cruelty of the slave trade is of the highest importance, and these eight pages clearly reveal his humanity and support for the cause of abolition.
Prosper de Barante (1782-1866), a prominent liberal voice in nineteenth-century France was variously a diplomat, politician, statesman, historian and writer. From 1807-9 he was a ‘sous préfet’ in the department of Ardèche, and from 1813-15 prefect of Loire-Inférieure at Nantes. He made several diplomatic visits to Spain and Poland and was a close friend of liberal thinker Benjamin Constant. He was also a member of the Coppet group in the circle of Madame de Staël.

It deals with the various attempts to frame legislation on human rights from the English Bill of Rights of 1688, the Rights of Man in the American Revolution, the French Revolution, to his own time. He examines each and discusses the difficulties of framing a Declaration of the Rights of Man. This manuscript was evidently the basis of his essay ‘Déclarations des droits de l’homme et du citoyen’ published in Études littéraires et historiques (1858).

Prosper de Barante (1782-1866) a prominent liberal voice in nineteenth-century France was variously a diplomat, politician, statesman, historian and writer. From 1807-9 he was a ‘sous préfet’ in the department of Ardèche, and from 1813-15 prefect of Loire-Inférieure at Nantes. He made several diplomatic visits to Spain and Poland and was a close friend of liberal thinker Benjamin Constant. He was also a member of the Coppet group in the circle of Madame de Staël.

A rather extraordinary faithful manuscript copy of Marjory Bowen’s set of seven strange satirical tales originally published in the Pall Mall Magazine, December 1913-June 1914, complete with copies of the original illustrations by Bowen’s sister Phyllis Vere Campbell. The identity of the very accomplished copyist is provided only by the monogram on the title-page ‘FMSB’.