Books At about this time last week, I was sat in a small, atmospheric library in a Georgian town house with a Shakespeare First Folio on the table in front of me. Touching the bound single plays from a folio at the University of Liverpool was a huge privilege. But this was my first chance to see a complete book without the barrier of a glass case, to be able to turn through the opening pages as they were originally printed and read the text just as someone would have done throughout its life. Facsimiles offer a sense of what this must have been like, of course they do, but they don't have the smell from four hundred years of life or the sheer sense of occasion of being in the presence of a precious object and as was the case here, being left alone with it. Reader, I may have sobbed a bit.
When I emailed the Sir John Soane's Museum about seeing their copy of the folio, I didn't think that they'd agree, especially because it wasn't for academic reasons, just because I'm an enthusiast. But they couldn't have been more accommodating. Their copy is especially interesting because one of its previous owners has had the book washed and pressed and inlaid into newer paper around the edges, cleaning away any imperfections and leaving scope for the reader to leave marginalia. The volume is also thicker than the other due to extra pages having been added between the genre sections and at the front and back presumably also for adding notes. It's a reminder that for much of their lives these were working books and not treated with the reverence with which we do now.
This work was carried on behalf of the historic actor John Philip Kemble, brother to the slightly more famous Sarah Siddons. There's a painting of Kemble playing Hamlet by Sir Thomas Lawrence in the Tate's collection and he would have owned this book when he was at the height of his career (and there are plenty more images of him during that period and after). The provenance before him is murky but it came into his possession in 1807 and he sold it on auction in 1822 to James Boswell the younger, whom we last met when talking about one of the Bodleian Library copies who had Edmund Malone's copy as a loner until he bought this. Boswell then sold it on again in 1925 (perhaps having completed work on his volume of the plays) and it was picked up by Sir John Britton on behalf of Sir John Soane.
The librarian at the museum was kind enough to dig out from the files an original letter from Britton to Soane detailing the processes of the procurement:
Along with a copy of the museum's own publication The Cloud-Capped Towers': Shakespeare in Soane’s Architectural Imagination by Frances Sands, Alison Shell, Stephanie Coane and Emmeline Leary (2016) which includes a transcription of the text:
Amazing. As
Rasmussen and West's The Shakespeare First Folios relates, the notes of the original curator of the museum, George Bailey explain how Soane commission Britten to buy the book without naming a price with Britton leaving late for the sale and reached the sale room within moments of the Lot being put under the hammer. Fortunately for Soane he won it. Soane had a full set of all four Folios. He also had
a bust of Kemble by John Gibson.
Spending time with the Folio meant I was able to look at some details which are usually hidden or at least very difficult to see in display cases. The replacement binding from when Kemble had the volume reset:
The soot burn within the new margins which shows that it was definitely used in this later state.
The list of principle actors.
Not to mention the ability to choose which play I wanted to photograph for the opening image of this blog post (see above). It's unlikely a copy on display in an exhibition would be represented by this play.
After about twenty minutes, I bid my farewells to the librarian and headed out into the steaming hot weather and back next door to join the queue for the museum itself.
Sir John Soanes was a leading British architect who specialised in neo-classical architecture. The son of a bricklayer, he rose to such prominence that he built the original Bank of England, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the building which now currently houses the Cabinet Office, was clerk of works at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, St James's Palace, The Palace of Westminster and built an extension to the Freemasons' Hall in London. But he also designed and built the town houses where the museum now resides on the edge of Lincoln's Inn Fields, an even posher version of Falkner Square in Liverpool, large enough to accommodate tennis and netball courts and the rather nice
Pear Tree Cafe where I had my evening meal of welsh rarebit.
The museum was the result of an act of parliament a few years before Soanes's death in which he disinherited his son and instead stipulated that the house and contents would pass to the care of trustees who on behalf of the nation would preserve the property much as it had been when he died. The reason for this was: Soanes was a
collector, of paintings, sculpture and statuary, furniture and books, his library number over seven and a half thousand volumes and he had numerous archaeological objects including the Sarcophagus of Seti I. These objects are displayed across the numerous rooms, filling spaces with fascinating objects.
This website has a Quicktime panorama of a typical space and
their own website has some VR explorations. Here's what it's like to be inside the space:
As an architect Soanes knew all about light and how it illuminates interiors. In one of the spaces the sun was blasting through the skylight windows striking against the relief underneath.
One of the volunteer invigilators stood in just such a light in the basement and she
glowed.
As you can imagine, my main point of interest was the Picture Gallery, a space roughly the size of a modern train carriage containing such things as Piranesi's architectural landscapes drawings, Sir James Thornhill's Sketch Design for the ceiling of the Queen's State Bedchamber at Hampton Court Palace, Watteau's L’Accordée du Village, three paintings of Venice by Canaletto and two sets of Hogarth paintings:
A Rake's Progress (which is only accessible briefly each day for conservation reasons so I missed it) and
The Humours of An Election. The latter has another Shakespeare connection in that according to a tour guide it was bought straight off the painter's walls by
David Garrick after a dinner party.
Here is a guide to the whole room.
Wandering around the museum, I did keep my eyes open for any other Shakespeare merchandise and sure enough there were at least two busts, an plaster copy of the Edgar George Papworth portrait:
And at the top of some stairs, a reproduction of the Shakespeare funerary monument from Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon. In 1793, during Soanes's lifetime, Edmond Malone (yes, him again) persuaded the vicar of the church to paint the original monument white, so this is how it would have looked then. The colour wasn't restored for another sixty tears based on the remaining pigments which could be seen behind the white paint later.
After leaving the museum and the aforementioned dinner, I had to find something to fill the period before the train home. But that's a story for another time.
