“The perusal of valuable books, besides enlarging the mind, and promoting our temporal comfort and advantage, may be the means of spreading before us a pleasing view of the beauty and excellence of religion”
A catalogue of the books, belonging to the Friends of Leeds Particular Meeting
(Leeds: Printed by J. Binns, 1794)
As part of our ongoing project to convert the card catalogues, all the Library’s pre-1801 published English stock was added to the online catalogue by 2009. Or was it? Despite meticulous planning, organisation and checking, one item at least appears to have slipped through the net. A serendipitous find, while searching the main card catalogue, has brought to light a rare late 18th-century work published for Friends in Leeds – A catalogue of the books, belonging to the Friends of Leeds Particular Meeting (Leeds: Printed by J. Binns, 1794) (Shelf reference: Vol. 337/7).
To cap this discovery, it turned out that the publication was not – until now – recorded on the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), the online database of items published between 1473 and 1800, to which we have contributed our holdings.
It was hardly surprising the ESTC didn’t have this title until we added it. This was a provincial publication, with a small print run: perhaps a few dozen copies were run off for the use of members of Leeds Quaker Meeting. It does appear, however, in Joseph Smith’s Descriptive catalogue of Friends’ books (1867). Our copy is bound in a tract volume with over twenty other Quaker meeting library catalogues.
Leeds Particular Meeting catalogue bound with over 20 other Quaker meeting library catalogues
The Leeds Friends’ library catalogue is divided into five sections according to the size of the books: “folio”, “quarto”, “octavo”, “duodecimo & infra”, and “pamphlets”, with blank pages for new books to be added to the library – or perhaps for pithy comments once read. The titles are numbered and the contents of bound volumes listed. The compiler gave no publication details, and not always the author, although in our copy an author’s name has sometimes been added in manuscript. The owner has also made a small pencil line by most of the titles, indicating that this copy was used for checking, but whether this was made as part of a stock check by Friends in Leeds, by a bibliographer comparing the Leeds Friends’ library with another collection, or as a record of reading, we can only guess.
Pages from the Leeds Particular Meeting catalogue showing annotations and pencil lines next to publication titles
Other manuscript annotations include careful corrections (one title described as quarto has been corrected to “8vo”), notes (“Dup” for duplicate title, or “not a fd.” to indicate that the author of the title was not a Friend, i.e. not a Quaker), and additions (five new titles have been added in ink in another hand).
The library books listed were bought by Leeds Meeting for members to read. Should an 18th-century Leeds Friend have wished to borrow one, size mattered: eight weeks were to be allowed for reading a folio, six for a quarto, four for an octavo, three for a duodecimo and just one for a pamphlet.
The printer of the catalogue, John Binns senior, had taken over the business of J. Wilson in 1769. At the time this work was published, he was trading in Briggate, Leeds as a bookseller and binder, printer, music seller, and sometime author. This Library holds six other works in which his name appears in the imprint, mainly as a bookseller. This work features some rather lovely printer’s devices, and even a manicule:
Earlier this year the blog carried a report from a student conservator about some simple repairs she did while on placement in the Library. There was such a warm response, we thought you might be interested to learn more about the work our NADFAS volunteers do to help preserve some of the Library’s modern pamphlets.
As our retrospective cataloguing project progresses, and more and more nineteenth and twentieth century publications are added to the online catalogue, the relative fragility of modern printed items is amply demonstrated. Not only are the papers used since the early nineteenth century less stable and durable than the rag paper of earlier years, but bindings are often weaker and the leather prone to degradation.
The Library holds a vast quantity of pamphlet material from this period, including tracts, campaigning material, ephemera, and a wide range of cheaply produced modern publications. A typical pamphlet consists of a few sheets folded in a single section, held together by staples down the fold – and there’s the rub. Over time the metal of the staples rusts (rapidly, if they have been stored in damp conditions). The rust damages the paper, and use hastens the damage.
The Library’s stalwart team of NADFAS volunteers are working in tandem with the retrospective cataloguer to tackle the problem of rusty staples.
Each boxful of pamphlets added to the catalogue is methodically examined, de-stapled and single section pamphlets re-sewn using a simple, safe and easily reversible technique. This is how they do it.
Step 1: Carefully remove the staples using special gadget.
Step 2: Brush out any fragments of rust onto a tray to be discarded.
Step 3: Stitch along the fold, using existing perforations (if sound) and new ones, following this pattern (C – B – A –B – D – E – D – C):
The thread should start and end at the mid-point inside the fold (C)
Step 4: Tighten the thread gently and tie both ends across the long central thread going from B to D.
Step 5: Trim the ends to 1 cm each and fray them with the needle to flatten the thread
The end product is attractive, free from sharp or rusty metal, and safe to handle. This simple measure has prolonged the life of countless pamphlets in our collection. Finally, as they examine every item in the boxes that pass through their hands, the NADFAS volunteers are also able to provide a survey of conservation needs, noting any damaged items needing professional conservation work.
Some of the NADFAS volunteers at work
Hurrah for the NADFAS volunteers!
On venturing into one of our strongrooms on the 19th November you would have been forgiven for thinking you had walked onto the set of a sci-fi film, with men in masks, plastic sheeting and strange equipment.
For the last three weeks, Harwell Document Restoration Services, a specialist company with experience of handling archive and library collections, has been cleaning one of our strongrooms; walls, floors, ceilings, shelving, cupboards, light fittings and collections.
Dust found in libraries and archives is likely to contain mould spores, pest detritus, skin cells, textile fibres, degraded leather and other matter. It enters strongrooms though doors and by people, or was already present on material when it was donated. The Library, therefore, has a regular cleaning programme to prevent the build up of dust to levels that may cause a nuisance to users and damage to our collections. Handling dirty items is not only unpleasant, but can be a health risk, allergies can be triggered. Dust also attracts pests such as moths, booklice, silverfish and carpet beetles which can destroy text blocks and bindings.
Silverfish (from Bugwood.org. Creative Commons licence)
Harwell used dry cleaning methods and avoided cleaning agents and liquids, which cause often irreparable damage to collections. For each type of material, be it a volume, box or unbound papers, there is a different way of cleaning. “Dust bunnies” (soft cloths) were used for cleaning most bindings, and soft natural bristle brushes used for leather, bookcloth, paper, suede, parchment and vellum bindings, where cloths can be abrasive. Smoke sponges and low suction vacuum cleaners were used to clean text blocks in good condition and where possible, dusting trays and boxes were employed to reduce the amount of dirt spread around during cleaning.
Some examples of special cleaning equipment used.
Throughout the cleaning, collections were kept in sequence; they were removed shelf at a time, placed in shelf order on a trolley, cleaned and replaced. Special care was taken over items that are particularly fragile or damaged.
The old proverb “Cleanliness is a fine life-preserver” is indeed true; by keeping our collections clean we are extending their usable life.
For what excess of Riot, Uncleanness, Prophaneness, Intemperancies in Meat and Drinks, Words and Works, with all kinds of Superfluity of Naughtiness do the greatest number of People not commit in these days (which yet they call Holy) … Entertaining our selves … with Tables not only full spread, but over-charg’d with heaps of high rich-Compounded Foods, and a variety of strong Cordial drinks
Christmas contemplations (1688)
Not long ago an American bookseller offered the Library a copy of a rare 17th century pamphlet, entitled Christmas contemplations or, Some considerations touching the due keeping of that solemn festival, as likewise of several irregularities therein, too frequently practiced (London: Printed by George Larkin, at the Two Swans without Bishopsgate, 1688). Just one copy of this tirade against Christmas excess is recorded on the English Short Title Catalogue, and the bookseller had become rather excited. Its only indication of authorship was a printed signature at the end – “Your well-wishing Friend, T.T.” – from which he rashly concluded that the author must be a Quaker, most probably Theophila Townsend, author of An epistle of love to Friends in the women’s meetings in London (ca. 1680) and three other short works.
The attribution of authorship seemed unlikely. Not only was Christmas Contemplations absent from Joseph Smith’s magnificent Descriptive catalogue of Friends’ books (1867), but the entry for Theophila Townsend in the Oxford dictionary of national biography (by our reader Catie Gill) made no mention of it, nor any reason to suppose her to be the previously unidentified author.
After looking into the matter, we thought it much more likely that “T.T.” was actually Thomas Tryon (1634–1703) the vegetarian. The case was clinched when we found that Tryon’s collected Miscellania (London, 1696) included the work. We informed the bookseller, the editors of the English Short Title Catalogue and the owners of the only other known copy (St. John’s College, Cambridge), and their records were duly altered. Bibliographic satisfaction achieved.
Some memoirs of the life of Mr. Tho. Tryon, late of London, merchant (London: printed, and sold by T. Sowle, 1705)
That wasn’t the end of it, though. As far as we knew, Thomas Tryon wasn’t a Quaker. Yet in our collection there were already two other works by him. Should Christmas contemplations have a place here too? If not a Quaker, what, if any, was the connection between Thomas Tryon and the Society of Friends?
One of the books we held was a treatise on plants of the Indies and ill usage of slaves, bound into a volume of pamphlets: it might have been acquired by virtue of its companion pamphlets or because it was printed by a Quaker, or perhaps because of its views on slavery (Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies, by Philotheos Physiologus. – [London]: Printed by Andrew Sowle, in the year 1684).
Part 1 of Thomas Tryon, Friendly advice to the gentlemen-planters of the East and West Indies (1684)
The other, however, was a copy of Tryon’s autobiography, Some memoirs of the life of Mr. Tho. Tryon, late of London, merchant: written by himself: together with some rules and orders, proper to be observed by all such as would train up and govern, either familes [sic], or societies, in cleanness, temperance, and innocency (London: printed, and sold by T. Sowle, 1705).
Thomas Tryon’s astrological birth chart from Some memoirs of the life of Mr. Tho. Tryon, late of London, merchant (1705). Folded frontispiece verso
Tryon was a man of many parts – an extraordinary self-taught polymath and mystical vegetarian, who wrote advice books on health, household management, brewing, animal husbandry and cookery, education and manners. He was a hatter from Gloucestershire who lived most of his life in Islington, but spent some years in Barbados; a keen amateur musician (he studied the bass viol); and a proponent of strict and idiosyncratic views on temperance, fasting and vegetarianism. He advocated a simple diet, avoiding certain mixtures of foods, “strong” foods and spices as well as meat, which he condemned as the cause of all sorts of ailments, including gout, dropsy, fever, wind and insomnia. Puddings (“such as are enricht with various sorts of Spanish Fruits and Indian Spices” … “a strange disorderly jumble and mishmash”) were a particular bug-bear, and currants were “most excellently fit to be thrown away to the Dunghil”.
Although not a Quaker, he evidently engaged with Quakers at some level: possibly some were sympathetic to his views, others certainly hostile. Many of Tryon’s works were printed by Andrew Sowle, the official printer to the Quakers, including his enticingly titled and several times reissued Way to health, long life and happiness (1683) and The way to make all people rich (1685), and the posthumous Memoirs (1705) were printed by Tace Sowle, Andrew’s daughter and successor. The Sowles didn’t only print for the Quakers; their output included works by other non-conformist and radical writers. It’s noteworthy though that the Quaker John Field (1648?-1724), although not personally acquainted with Tryon, published a theological rebuttal of his vegetarian arguments – The absurdity & falsness of Thomas Trion’s doctrine manifested, in forbidding to eat flesh (London: Thomas Howkins, 1685).
John Field’s refutation of Tryon’s vegetarian arguments, The absurdity & falsness of Thomas Trion’s doctrine manifested (1685)
Whether or not the friends who arranged the publication of Tryon’s Memoirs after his death included any Quakers, there was certainly some intersection between Tryon and the Quakers. Did any of them, we wondered, subscribed to his views on diet and fasting? In the end we didn’t buy Christmas considerations from the American bookseller, but we enjoyed the closer acquaintance with Thomas Tryon, gent., that ensued from his offer.
Those of us who are vegetarians may well relish Tryon’s impassioned invective against the flesh-eating habit. His esoteric views on the dangers of mixing food ingredients might have fewer adherents though. We fully intend to enjoy our Christmas Pudding, and we hope you do too.
Merry Christmas!
By Matt Riggott from Edinburgh, Scotland (Christmas Pudding Uploaded by fluteflute) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) ], via Wikimedia Commons
For Londoners and visitors alike navigating our great metropolis is likely to involve a descent into the earth, a tremendous gust of whistling wind and a warm, rattling rush beneath the familiar streets of this city. Our experiences of life in London are shaped by those journeys – by the trains, the passenger information systems and the design of the stations and interchanges.
This year sees the 150th anniversary of the London tube: the world’s very first underground train made its first passenger journey from Paddington to Farringdon on 9 January 1863. The anniversary will be marked by all sorts of celebrations, including heritage outings and events organised by the London Transport Museum (Tube150) and a conference at the Centre for Metropolitan History at London University (Going Underground, 17-18 January, Institute of Historical Research).
Arnos Grove Underground Station. Photograph by jelm6 on Flickr
One name which will come up again and again during the anniversary year is that of the architect Charles Holden (1875-1960), who designed numerous tube stations during the 1920s and 30s, commissioned by Frank Pick, general manager of the Underground Electrical Railways Company of London. Holden was the architect of the remarkable London Underground headquarters at 55 Broadway, SW1 (the tallest steel framed office building in London when it opened in 1929, and later listed as one of “Pevsner’s Fifty”), as well as tube stations from Cockfosters to Morden, Sudbury Town to Wanstead. In addition to his stations he also designed equipment and furniture, and made a great contribution towards a coherent visual identity for the underground system.
While many of Holden’s stations have been completely remodelled in the intervening decades, most visitors to London will have passed through some of them. Who has been to London and not wandered around the underground booking hall and circulating area at Piccadilly Circus, designed by Charles Holden (completed in 1928 at a cost of over half a million pounds)?
Charles Holden, by Benjamin Nelson. Oil on canvas, 1910. National Portrait Gallery NPG 6808
© National Portrait Gallery, London
(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Charles Holden and his partner Margaret Macdonald (who wrote books and articles on country life as Margaret Holden) lived at Harmer Green, Hertfordshire, from 1907 until the end of their lives, and attended Hertford Quaker Meeting, although neither were formal members of the Society of Friends. Margaret served with the Friends Emergency Committee for the Assistance of Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in Distress during World War One. Holden described himself as “nine-tenths Quaker”, and after his death in 1960, his ashes were scattered in the garden at Hertford Friends’ Meeting House
Apart from his work for the London Underground, Holden’s architectural legacy includes the former British Medical Association Headquarters on the Strand (now Zimbabwe House), notorious at the time for the sculptures of nude figures by Jacob Epstein representing the development of science and the ages of man (Epstein’s first major commission). The public uproar against nudity in Epstein’s sculptures did nothing to discourage Holden from commissioning him for the London Underground headquarters at 55 Broadway (besides sculptures by Eric Gill, Henry Moore and Samuel Rabinovitch, among others), and he wished he could have used his work again in the design of London University’s iconic and controversial Senate House.
Jacob Epstein’s Day and Night (1928) Portland Stone, carved for London Underground Headquarters at 55 Broadway.
Photograph © Andrew Dunn, 29 September 2004, from Wikimedia Commons
(CC BY-SA 2.0)
Which leads one to wonder – how different might Friends House have looked, had the architect been Charles Holden instead of Hubert Lidbetter?
Charles Holden’s style changed over his career, but was distinguished by simplicity and modernity. Nikolas Pevsner credits his underground stations with helping to “pave the way for the twentieth-century style in England” (An outline of European architecture, 7th ed., Pelican, 1963). To quote himself, Holden had a “passion for building and for service … [and] an invincible belief in the power of the human soul, the God in man, to rise above and master ugliness and desolating conditions.” (Adams, Holden and Pearson archive, RIBA BAL, AHP/28/23/1)
Further reading
In the Library:
Christian Barman, The man who built London Transport: a biography of Frank Pick. Newton Abbott: David & Charles, 1979
Eitan Karol, Charles Holden, architect. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2007
David Lawrence, Bright underground spaces: the railway stations of Charles Holden. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport Publishing, 2008
Edward H. Milligan, Quakers and railways. York: Sessions, 1992
Charles Holden, Letter from Charles Holden, London, to Samuel Graveson (11 December 1932) Samuel Graveson Papers. Temp MSS 58/3/6 (“Dear Mr Graveson, You can ask me to design anything from a railway station to a university and I might be able to make somewhat of a charitable[?] job of it – but please oh! Please don’t make me talk about it!”)
Online:
Charles Hutton, ‘Holden, Charles Henry (1875-1960)’, revised by Alan Crawford. In Oxford Dictionary of national biography. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online edition Oct. 2007. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33927 (accessed January 2013)
David Burnell, A Quaker and the underground. London Historians, 2011. Online document. http://www.londonhistorians.org/index.php?s=file_download&id=27 (accessed January 2013)
‘Charles Holden’. In Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holden (accessed January 2013)
The second in our series of readers’ stories is from Bill Chadkirk, a former member of Friends House staff. Once we’d stopped blushing at the compliments we realised we had to blog Bill’s light hearted account of doing research in the Library: otherwise he might stop sharing his bottomless fund of jokes.
Bill is currently researching Quaker membership and theology over the 19th and 20th centuries for an MPhil at Birmingham University. His interests also include the work of the Friends Ambulance Unit and Friends Emergency & War Victims Relief Committee during World War One and Quaker relief in Russia 1916–1923
I can’t speak for other Library users but I know that once I’ve negotiated the rather aggressive automatic doors and entered the Reading Room, I relax. It looks like a library, book lined from floor almost to ceiling; it sounds like a library, quiet and studious; and it smells like a library, the peculiar odour of old leather, paper and polish that all serious libraries have.
Did I say serious libraries? Only serious in the sense that it is an important, purposeful library. The staff are far from serious. They are a friendly and open bunch, always willing to share a joke, some titbit of Quaker arcanery, a comment about the weather or some of their extraordinary expertise and knowledge. I sometimes wonder if there was ever a Quaker whose life story is not known to one member of staff or another, or whether there is a book, file or archive that one or the other has not pored over and committed to memory. I suppose there must be, but in years of using the library I haven’t experienced a single failed request for information. Well, there was one, but I was directed to a retired librarian who answered by return of post!
And the richness of the Quaker stories locked away in the basement stacks! There are enough to keep the idly curious and the serious scholar engrossed for many a long session. Among my favourites are the Elbow Street Scandal in which a respectable Friend attending London Yearly Meeting was imprisoned by the madam of a brothel on, yes, Elbow Street, until he paid a ransom. Then there was John Tawell, a Quaker who slew his mistress in Slough and was caught by means of the newly invented electric telegraph. And then in the 1980s I came in on the tail end of Quaker work in the Soviet Union. Realising I lacked a historical background, I embarked on a history degree and when it came time to write a final year dissertation I asked the then Librarian, Malcolm Thomas, for suggestions. He offered Quaker work in Russia during the 1917 revolution or Quaker diplomacy around the building of the Berlin Wall. I chose the former and ended up writing a dissertation, The Imperial eagle and the Quaker dove, on Quaker contact with both the Czarist and Communist authorities from Peter the Great onward. I have rarely had so much sheer fun in an academic task! The story of Quakers and the Berlin Wall remains to be written…
I’m still using the Library. I’m going there as soon as I put the final full stop to this. All I’m currently doing is checking my transcription of hundreds of figures from the Tabular Statement (the annual statement of membership of the Society of Friends in Britain) into a spreadsheet, but I’m really looking forward (as I always do) to using the Library of the Society of Friends.
If you’d like to be in touch with Bill about his current research into membership of the Society of Friends, you can contact him care of the Library. He’d be particularly interested to hear from anyone who has kept records of attendance at their Quaker meetings over any period of time.
