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A treatise onclassical Latin epitaphs by an Italian Jesuit. Its chapters include a key to common abbreviations (HSE: Hic sepultus est, here is buried; STTL: Sit Tibi Terra Levis, May the earth rest lightly upon you; HFC: heres faciendum curavit, their heir had [the tombstone] made, etc) and there follow a series of accounts of epitaphs for particular contexts: parents, children, men, women, mothers, spouses and even animals. Another considers satirical epitaphs: ‘salsis et ridiculis’. Of Proficio we have been unable to discover anything more; Tractatus de Epitaphiis was apparently not published in print but another manuscript copy is held by the Biblioteca nazionale Braidense in Milan (dateable to before 1625).

Our copy is almost certainly the Baldassare Boncampagni copy (item 454 in his 1892 catalogue, and 409 in the 1862 edition), described as ‘legato in pergamena ornata di dorature e stemma d. C. de G’. That catalogue gives 55 leaves (rather than 66) an error found also in the old pencil manuscript foliation of the last leaf of the manuscript marked ‘55’ recte 66, but the dimensions given in the catalogue also correspond precisely. Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni-Ludovisi (10 May 1821 – 13 April 1894), was an Italian historian of mathematics and aristocrat. His library contained some 650 manuscripts and 20,000 printed works and was sold in Rome in 1898. Parts of the manuscript collection are now held by the Universitetsbibliotek (Stockholm), Trinity College Library (Dublin), Cornell, as well as the Vatican library, Columbia (NY) and the Biblioteca Comunale in Treviso. Catalogo di manoscritti ora posseduti da D. Baldassare Boncompagni, Rome 1892.

First edition, one of 55 copies of a unique production, with the French text of the Song of Songs entirely in manuscript and 30 superb eroticised plates by Jean-François Favre. The entire edition was evidently produced over several years — the Neuchatel copy (which also contains a duplicated explanation not present in our copy) is dated 1954, where ours is 1956. Swiss artist Favre was born in 1940, studied in Paris and spent several years in Polynesia and Guyana. His figures certainly owe something to Gaugin. Worldcat locates a 2 copies (Neuchatel Bibliotheque publique and an unspecified location).

A collection of manuscript and watercolour drawings, being maquettes for an apparently unpublished game, including portion of a folding game mat on linen, a sheet of counters (uncut) on parchment, numerous drawings and sketches on paper and tracing paper(some coloured) as trials for the game positions, several sheets of manuscript instructions in French and Spanish. The game seems to have been a type of lotto, with the parchment counters corresponding to game squares which were to be placed in a spherical wooden ‘bank’ for shuffling before being drawn by the players.

Its origin in a French household at Saint Sébastien is indicated by the use of numerous scraps of waste paper from the French Consul’s office their. It was perhaps, therefore made by a member of his own family. The sketches are highly accomplished and carefully rendered often in several preliminary sketches before reduction in goauche to the size of the parchment game counters.

Alphabet (upper and lower case), several decorative lines and two verses: ‘Is there ambition in my heart / search gracious God and see...’ [Isaac Watts] and ‘Teach me to live / that I may dread/ the grave as little / as my bed // Teach me to die ‘ that so I may / with joy behold /the judgement day’ [Thomas Ken, and later sued by Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure]. Needlework samplers remain one of the most widespread manifestations of the teaching and learning of basic literacy among girls and young women and, as here, reflect a strongly moralistic background.

A delightful woolwork sampler made by Emma Angelina Proctor at the the age of 11, with a single alphabet and numerous decorative animals, birds, flowers and ornaments. Needlework samplers remain one of the most widespread manifestations of the teaching and learning of basic literacy among girls and young women

First edition, apparently transcribed from a genuine Middle English original. The title-page notes: ‘The Manuscript to be disposed of. – Apply to the Printer’. pp. 61-70 is an ‘Astronomical and Astrological Appendix’ from a work published in 1647. Caleb Stower (d. 1816) was an interesting and prolific printer with Unitarian connections.

A large and striking broadside printed on vellum by an unknown press, presumably in France around the year 1700. The text is of 20 ‘maximes du sage’, wise and stoic counsels for the government of the mind, spirit and body. The typography is competent but occasionally irregular, reflecting the difficulty of handling such a large sheet of vellum in the press, but also suggesting the possibility of a private press. The floral borders are stylised, with decorative swags and ribbons at the head, but with recognisable lilies, rose, carnations and iris on either side, and blue chine bowl with tulips, fritillaries and other flowers at the foot.

No other example of the broadside has been located, though the text is almost identical to that of a fine manuscript on vellum probably made at the behest of Louis XIV (1638-1715) for the philosophical education of his son Louis, the Grand Dauphin (1661-1711) (sold at Sotheby’s Paris, 6 July 2017, collection of Mme Djahanguir Riahi, lot 28). A quotation of a fragment of the text appears in the Clef du cabinet des princes de l'Europe, 21, October 1714, p. 237, appearing also as advice to princes, but we have not found any other printed version of the complete text.

‘Adore le Createur de l’Univers, & l’aïme de toute ton Ame: Honore ceux qui t’ont mis au monde; obeïs aux loix; revere les Puissances: Faits à autruy comme tu voudrois qu’on te fît à ton mesme. Sois humain, civil & bien faisant à tous les hommes. Aïme tes proches, aïme tes amis; mais plus que tour aime ta Patrie, & procure le bien public. Respecte les gens de bien, fuy les méchans, & ne hante que ceux à qui tu veux ressembler, Reconnois les biensfairs, n’attire pas les injures, Connois-toy toy-mesme, mesure tes desseins à tes forces, ta dépense à ton bien, & l’un & l’autre à la raison. Exerce moderement ton corps, applique fortement ton esprit: Ecoûte beaucoup, parle peu, regle tes pensées & pese tes paroles. Abhorre le menteur & le mensonage, mais souviens-toy que toutes vertitez ne sont pas toûjours bonnes à dire, Pardonne beucoup aux autres, rien à toy, & sois plûtost ennemy de tes vices. Que censeur de ceux d’autruy, Songe que le repentir suit de pres la faute, & que le premier fruit des bonnes actions est la plaisir qu’il y a de les faire. Ne prens jamais de mauvaises voyes pour arriver a une bonne fin. Tiens les flateurs pour tes plus grands ennemis, pour tes meilleurs amis ceux qui te voyent plutost à cause de toy qu’à cause d’eux-mesmes. Prens conseil, mais forme tes resolutions toy-mesme. Sois ferme non pas opiniâtre, & si tu as à changer d’avis, que ce soit par raison, non par legereté. Desire ce que t’est propre, supporte ce qui t’arrive. Sois le maître non pas l’esclave de tes passions, qu’elles servent à t’avancer, non pas à t’égarer. Modere tes desirs, tu augmenteras tes biens, il est assés riche qui est content, & il est content qui est sage’.

An extensive military manuscript, unpublished in print, consisting of order issues by the Savoyard minister of war, comte Bogin in 1752-3, setting out detailed procedures for ordering, drilling and manoeuvring in the infantry regiments of the armies of the King of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel III. Presumably a contemporary copy of orders sent out to the regiments themselves, each part ends with the dated subscription (in copy) of Bogin at Turin. The manuscript is highly detailed, with 43 chapters across the two parts, covering rifle exercise (including bayonets), flag bearing, drilling, marching, battle formations and the conduct of firing in battle. The mid-eighteenth century Savoyard/Sardinian armies counted over 30 infantry regiments among their forces.

The island of Sardinia had been ceded in 1720 by the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants of the Spanish throne to the Duke of Savoy, Victor Amadeus II. The Savoyards united it with their historical possessions on the Italian mainland, while the monarchs of the House of Savoy ruled from their mainland capital of Turin, but styled themselves primarily with the royal title of Sardinia, ‘rois de Sardaigne’, as superior to their original lesser dignity as Dukes of Savoy.

A satire on contemporary student life, addressing the traditional pursuits of the young denizens of the rue Saint Jacques — drinking, smoking, gaming, dancing and womanizing.

This is one of the many such little Physiologies illustrative of ‘the craze that swept Paris in the early 1840s for a series of small illustrated volumes marketed under the general title of physiologies [looking back, perhaps, to Brillat-Savarin’s bestselling Physiologie du goût (1826) and Balzac’s Physiologie du marriage (1830)]. Some 120 different physiologies were issued by various Parisian publishers between 1840 and 1842 (ranging alphabetically from the Physiologie de l’amant to the Physiologie du voyageur), and it is estimated that approximately half a million copies of these pocket-sized books were printed during the same two-year span’ (Sieburth, p. 163).

Designed for mass consumption, these satirical guides to particular social types were based on ‘the witty interaction of image and text, drawing and caption, seeing and reading … Byproducts of the recent technological advances in printing and paper manufacturing which had made illustrated books more commercially feasible and analogous to the various dioramas and panoramas which enjoyed a considerable popularity during the period, these illustrated anthologies of urban sites and mores catered to the public’s desire to see its social space as a stage or gallery whose intelligibility was guaranteed both by its visibility as image and its legibility as text …

‘Quickly produced and marketed, consumed and discarded, … the physiologies (like the sensational tabloids or canards hawked on Paris streetcorners of the period) are early instances of the cheap, throwaway “instant book” whose appeal lies in its very topicality and ephemerality’ (op. cit., pp. 165–7). Richard Sieburth, ‘Same difference: the French Physiologies, 1840–1842’, Notebooks in Cultural Analysis (Duke UP, 1984), pp. 163–200.

An illustrated companion to the private china collection of Mrs Sophia Wilson of Ledstone (Yorks), beginning a history of ceramics from its beginning to the date of composition, including the origins of porcelain in China, and recent developments in Europe by Wedgwood and the factories of Sèvres, Dresden and Berlin. There is also an interesting account of the process of contemporary British transfer decoration, illustrated with an original transfer paper:

‘When the paper comes from the printing press, it is, of course, found to be stamped with the intended pattern. It is then delivered, while wet with the colour, to a girl, who cuts off the supefluous paper with a pair of scissors, and passes it to another girl, who immediately applies it to a piece of biscuit ware, and then delivers it to a third who fixes it more firmly by rubbing it very hard with a piece of flannel tightly rolled’ [and so on].

The lithographs are evidently original (and probably not published elsewhere) and the manuscript may have been destined for private publication in lithograph, since we know that Dodds prepared a similar collection guide for Mrs Wilson’s collection of fossils Companion to the Minerals and Fossils, Contained in the Ledstone Museum (1827), privately printed. It is also known that the Wilsons had moved by 1834 to another part of Yorkshire, living at Oxton Hall near Tadcaster from 1841.

Sophia Wilson was evidently a major collector. The last few pages of the manuscript contain a description of her china rooms: with a vast Chinese ceiling lamp, two Sèvres urns (the gift of George IV), ‘a group representing a bower formed of espaliers and flowers in which is a negro with a flower basket, the gift of the Marchioness of Hertford’, together with other gifts from the Earl of Strathmore, the Countess of Darlington, Countess Fitzwilliam and the Countess of Lonsdale (and several others).

The author, George Dodds, was curate of Rochdale (Lancs), then Gainsborough (Lincs). He was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge and became chaplain to the Marquis of Queensberry.

Lettice Hallett (1787–1859) was the eldest daughter of the Radical reformer William Hallett of Denford Park, near Kintbury, in Berkshire. She married solicitor Nash Crosier Hilliard (1789–1844), of Grey’s Inn, in 1819. The three-page section of writing here, dated 20 November 1825, records ‘A list of the several person of the respective Families of Nash Crosier Hilliard and of Lettice Elizabeth Hilliard living at this Period’: Hilliards, Halletts, Nelsons, and Fowles. The first section, for which the book has been turned on its side, in oblong format, contains poetry: a 24-line poem ‘On Science’ (‘E’er yet the Morn of Science rose on Earth …’) by ‘W. D.’; ‘Lines found deeply engraved on the Bark of a large Tree in the Neighbourhood of Mentz [i.e. Mainz] in Germany’; ‘Music’ by William Strode (1598–1645; ‘When whispering strains do softly steal …’); ‘To a Friend in Distress’ (‘Shrink not to meet with adverse fate or part, / When black the scene, then bravely arm your heart …’); ‘The Morning before the Ball’, ‘The Morning after the Ball’, and extracts from ‘The Traveller’ and ‘The Deserted Village’ by Goldsmith.

The other end of the book (for which the book has been flipped over to write) is taken up by a history of England, seemingly paraphrased, and expanded, by Lettice from Trusler’s Compendium of Useful Knowledge (1784 and later editions), from the Ancient Britons up to William the Conqueror and his sons.

A SUPERB LARGE-SCALE COLLAGE BY ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHER AND DESIGNER ANGUS MCBEAN, COMBINING MANUSCRIPT MODIFICATION, SURREALISM AND HIGH CAMP. It uses portions of McBean’s own original photograph of actress Pamela Stanley as the young Queen Victoria in the adaptation of Laurence Houseman’s Victoria regina (1934) at the Gate Theatre in 1938 ― an image from his surrealist series for the weekly Sketch magazine, (bromide print, 1938 original size 289 × 239 mm).
Angus McBean (1904-1990) was one of the most important theatrical photographers and designers of his era and transcended the confines of his medium through his brilliant and eccentric collages made throughout his career. The Pamela Stanley photograph series brought together two of his personal icons, the actress and Queen Victoria, here used with iconoclastic glee to modify an enormous engraved and calligraphic royal grant of 1853 (to one John Henry Johnson of Lincoln’s Inn) with added hand colouring, ink drawing, cuttings from the original photograph, gilt paper decoupage, glitter, shells and string. McBean made collages throughout his later career, often in the form of miniature stage sets which he then photographed for this much-prized Christmas Cards. This Queen Victoria collage is among the largest he attempted and was part of the collection left on his death to partner David Ball.

The Hon. Margaret Pamela Stanley was the daughter of the 5th Baron Stanley of Alderley and acted on the stage and in films in the 1930s as Pamela Stanley. She appeared on Broadway as Ophelia opposite Leslie Howard in Hamlet before a triumphant return to London in her role as Queen Victoria in June 1937. Provenance: The Angus McBean Collection, 12 April 2013, Lacy, Scott & Knight (Bury St Edmunds), lot 242.

A contemporary manuscript, probably authorial, of an unpublished novel, aptly described by the French literary euphemism as ‘plus que galant’. By the colourful abbé Aunillon, who was evidently more interested by the intrigues of the salon and the coulisses of the Parisian theatres than the contemplations of the cloister, Memoires de Madame Vanfeld tells the story of the corruption of a young woman and of her subsequent scandalous exploits, almost invariably at the hands of a series of depraved clerics. Told in the words of Madame Vanfeld herself and addressed to a confidant, the marquise de Ronceval, the novel is one of illicit liaisons in convents and country houses, and of stolen moments out of sight of family and convent superiors. It is never precisely explicit but is always entirely transparent. The preface describes it as a roman à clef, with names changed, and a list of the original characters supposedly consigned to the flames. A slightly later editor has made numerous corrections and emendations to this manuscript, including changing most of the names once more. A note at the end in a later hand, suggests that the action has at least some basis in fact, pointing to correspondences between at least one episode and passages in Aunillon’ Mémoires published in 1808.

Aunillon (1684-1760) was descended from a prominent Anglo-Catholic family (said to have changed their name from O’Neill to Aunillon). A fascinating figure he seems to have turned his back on the church to concentrate on writing for the theatre. He wrote several plays, a fairy tale, at least one other novel and is said to have been a permanent fixture in the Parisian theatres, where he befriended the actresses and became their confidant. He also appears, in 1746, to have acted as a French secret agent in the Rhineland.

The illustrator Louis Vigée (1715 – 1767) who supplied the four fine illustrations here was a French portraitist, fan painter, artist in pastels and a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc (and a friend of Vernet and Greuze). He is perhaps most notable as the father of the painter Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun. He was also a correspondent of Madame de Graffigny, and a transcript of a letter from her, having read the Memoires is found at the end of the second volume here. The manuscript corresponds with that described in the sale of the library of A.L.S. Bérard, Paris, 7 May 1829, lot 1088, where the manuscript corrections are described as being in Aunillon’s autograph.

A series of witty and finely executed erotic miniatures, presumably a Paris souvenir made with an anglophone audience in mind, most likely the American servicemen in Paris after 1945.

Three superb preliminary drawings for lithograph caricatures on the Civil War: Saturn is pleased to see it is not just he who devours his own children, as the figure of America in a feathered head-dress gobbles up one of her people; American game animals congratulate themselves on the chaos of the war, which leaves them safe and sound; while the figure of Europe falls asleep watching the spectacle of war.

1. Le vieux Saturne voyant avec plaisir qu’il n’ya pas que lui qui dévore ses enfants, (168 × 212 mm).
2. Le Gibier américaine se felicitant de la Guerre civile qui lui laisse la paix et la tranquilité, (170 × 212 mm).
3. Finissant par s’endormir à force de leur voir faire toujours la même chose depuis deux ans, (182 × 230 mm).

These three images, by the pre-eminent French caricaturist of the day, were published as lithographs in the Paris journal, Charivari. Cham (1818-79) worked very much in the spirit of Daumier and contributed to the the Charivari for some thirty years; he had also created first French comic book (‘bande dessinée’), Histoire de Mr. Lajaunisse in 1839.

A unique artist’s book. A powerful fusion of the Dance of Death with the creatures of a Medieval bestiary in De Bournazel’s extraordinary style. Tumbling figures, furtive forest creatures, and a grinning death’s head, combine in this meditation on human mortality, made as a visual diary of the artist’s own personal bereavement. Adieu Vat (an archaic French term of farewell) expresses the sense of incomprehension (a lone figure holds a placard reading ‘NON’, the only word in an otherwise wordless book), of anger, despair, ultimate acceptance and, occasionally humour and consolation. Made in 2016 the book has been retained by the artist until now.

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’.

Her work is represented in private and public collections in France (including the Bibliothèque nationale), the United Kingdom and in the United States (Boston Athenaeum, San Francisco Center for the Book etc).

A pocket treatise on the art of war, probably compiled in the aftermath of the Seven Years War. This anonymous manuscript comprises six chapters: [1] Maximes générales; [2] Des Camps de Rassemblement; [3]. La Guerre de Campagne, comprend l’objet, le plan général, le plan particulier, la conduite, re résultat et la fin des operations; [4] Campagnes de deffensive; [5] Campagnes d’hiver; [6] des Capitulations. Written from the point of view of a prospective military commander or general, it introduces the principles and objectives of campaign warfare of the sort that dominated European history in the eighteenth century. It makes occasional references to historical persons (Turenne and the Duc de Broglie) as well as to more recent events, such as the winter campaigns of 1757-9).

Provenance: Early ownership inscription: Antonio Lopez; Marquis d'Astorga, sale 1870 (described as from the library of the Dukes of Sessa); Bookplate of Ricardo Heredia, comte de Benahavis, sold as lot 551, Paul, Huard & Guillemin, Drouot (Paris), May, 1891.

An unpublished French translation of Wheaton’s influential History of the Northmen (1831) by Emma Chuppin de Germigny (1809?-1852). History of the Northmen is notable as the first book in English to claim that America had been discovered by the Norse before the voyage of Columbus.

The translator Emma Chuppin de Germigny was the daughter of a noble emigré settled in Normandy after the Revolution. A long biographical entry in the Mémoires of the Caen Académie recounts her life: her family’s reduced circumstances necessitated her work as a schoolmistress in Caen, during which time she produced a series of scholarly works (including the Wheaton translation). She published a history of music in Normandy from the ninth century to her own day (1836) and an account of the Bayeux Tapestry (1846). Her translation of Wheaton’s work was not published, though the form of this manuscript, and Emma’s circumstances, strongly suggests it was intended to be. It is almost certainly in her autograph, with occasional corrections. In the event, a French edition by Paul Guillot, with numerous additional apparatus, appeared at Paris in 1844.

Wheaton, a native of Providence, Rhode Island and an alumnus of Brown University was prominent as a lawyer, diplomat and antiquarian. His research into Scandinavian history began with his appointment to Denmark as chargé d’affaires in 1827.

A very neat collection of popular songs, most from the 1850s, of the sort circulated in ephemeral printed and manuscript song sheets. Highlights include: Est-ce le hatchich qui t’a mis comme ça: an uncommon reference to hashish in this context, and a song (in common with several others in the manuscript) for which we can find no printed source. Sung to the tune of ‘Aÿ chiquita’, this is a woman’s complaint to her suitor, with the chorus:

‘Est-ce l’absinthe, ou bien encore,
Le hatchich qui t’as mis, dis-moi,
Dans cet état que j’aborre,
Et tu veux m’aimer! Ah! Tais-toi.’

This is hardly Baudelaire, but a pleasing contemporary parallel to Les Paradis artificiels.

Others include Les Cris de Paris, Les Chemins de fer and Les Anges de la charité ou les inondés de 1856 and there are songs attributable to Pierre Dupont and Charles Durand, both popular in the 1850s and 60s. Some are in dialect and typically, the subjects tend towards love, drink and gastronomy, but there are also a couple alluding to the language of flowers. The compilation is scrupulously neat—and is presumably, in part, an exercise in penmanship.

Some twenty years’ accounts kept on behalf of a Burgundian landlord, of 5 métayer tenant farmers, who farmed on his land, with his resources, in exchange for a share (notionally a half) of the profit. These were principally livestock farmers raising cattle and sheep, so the accounts provide interesting first-hand details of the economics of the French meat and wool industries of the period. All the farmers are named on the title-page, but Isac Lebeuf’s farm was run after his death by his widow, Marie, so the account for 1736 is in her name. Prices are given for animals bought as stock and then sold to butchers or sheared and the fleeces sold. The accounts give a very clear and intelligible picture of the initial capital of each farm, of introduced stock, of running costs and of the shares of yearly profits.