Untold lives blog

The transmission of secret messages through codes or ciphers has throughout history often been a matter of life or death. One only needs to think of Mary Queen of Scots, who was beheaded for treason when her cipher was broken, or Alan Turing, who, by creating a machine to decode messages encoded by the Enigma, saved millions of lives in the Second World War.

For the expression of romantic emotions, less complex codes have found a wide usership. Most famous among these is perhaps the language of flowers. A beautiful example of a key to flower symbolism is this little book illustrated by Kate Greenaway.

  


Title and sample page from Language of Flowers, illustrated by Kate Greenaway. c.1884, 7032.aaa.19

During the Victorian age, the language of flowers became extremely popular, which made it a widely understood means of communication. However, this rendered ‘floriography’ useless to anyone desiring to keep romantic communication private in order to circumvent parental disapproval or public humiliation.  The unknown author(s) of the 1854 Electro-magnetischer Liebestelegraph, oder neue Zeichensprache zur Verständigung unter Liebenden und Anderen (‘Electro-magnetic love telegraph, or a new sign language for the communication between lovers and others’) therefore believed a new secret language was required.

Title page from Electro-magnetischer Liebestelegraph oder eine Zeichensprach zur Verständigung unter Liebenden und Anderen. 8415.a.64

The exchange of ordinary items was encoded to transmit very specific messages. If the item was inconvenient, for example a postman or an oven, then a toy replica, a drawing of the item or the word alone was used. The author(s) took great pains to come up with whole sentences that could be signified through objects.
 

Page from Electro-magnetischer Liebestelegraph oder eine Zeichensprach zur Verständigung unter Liebenden und Anderen. 8415.a.64

The assigned meanings are supposed to resemble the ‘natural significance’ of their objects. A letter or postman means ‘awaiting a message from you’; a hand -‘desiring your hand in marriage’; a knife -‘your words have caused me deep pain’; a peacock -‘your vanity makes you unbearable’; an oven -‘being near you warms my heart.’ Curious examples include a Badewanne (bathtub), signifying ‘only from the moment I saw you did my life truly begin’; a Pantoffel (slipper) -‘to kiss you would be a punishment for me’; a Kaffeelöffel (coffee spoon) -‘when I see you, all my sorrows disappear’; a Biber (beaver) -‘if you can offer me a house of my own, ask again’; or an Ananas (pineapple) -‘nothing compares to the sweetness of your kiss’.

The author(s) of this work were aware that their code was not the most poetic way for the communication between lovers. Moreover, it is probably a good idea to take this Liebestelegraph with a grain of salt, as the text moves between helpful instructions and amusing banter. The appendix for example includes helpful suggestions of other ways for secret communication such as musical code (see image below), or hiding a message on a candy wrapper, which is an example for steganography (simply hiding a message), which constitutes the oldest form of secret writing.

 Keeping the Liebestelegraph in mind, however, can also add a bit of secret fun to the exchange of ordinary items in everyday life. Perhaps the next time someone hands you a book, you should ask yourself: is he or she trying to say ‘let my pleading open your closed heart to me’?

Lena Böse
Intern, Western Heritage Collections

Further Reading:
Simon Singh, The Science of Secrecy. The Secret History of Codes and Codebreaking. (London, 2000) YC.2001.a.11619

Visit the website of the Royal Collection Trust to learn more about the Victorians and floriography

When Thomas Hickey sketched Prince Shukr Ullah on January 13 1801, this elegant ten year old boy’s life had just undergone a seismic shift. In 1799, when he was 8 years old, his father, Tipu Sultan of Mysore, had died in battle against the English East India Company.

WD3213 - Shukr Ullah, 7th son of Tipu. Inscribed, “Shuk’r Ullah Saheb, 7th and favourite son of the late Tippoo Sultaun and aged about 10 ½ . Jan 13 1801.” 

Tipu Sultan’s death brought the turbulent Mysore Wars to an end. The East India Company now controlled most of southern India. To ensure this victory, the Company’s next move was to quietly destroy Tipu Sultan’s family. The British placed a new, compliant ruling family onto the throne of Mysore, and Tipu Sultan’s potential heirs, his thirteen sons, were moved to Vellore Fort, the East India Company’s strongest fortress in the Carnatic.

According to the inscription on the drawing of Shukr Ullah, he was the “7th and favourite son of the late Tippoo Sultaun”. It is entirely possible that Tipu wanted this “favourite son” to ascend the throne of Mysore, but instead, he lived the rest of his life under house arrest. It is difficult to understand why the British found Shukr Ullah so threatening; At his young age, he probably hadn’t lived beyond the palace confines of the zenana.

Thomas Hickey’s sketch of Shukr Ullah was made into an oil painting, which is now in the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta. It was part of a set of 16 portraits by Hickey, which were sent to Calcutta in 1804 to be framed and displayed in the Governor General’s residence. All 16 portraits depict Indian men and boys whose fates were altered by the British after the Fourth Mysore War. Shukr Ullah’s six older brothers were painted as part of this set, but his six younger brothers were not. Today, the 16 Hickey portraits are in Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial Hall and in Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.

In July 1806, Shukr Ullah’s older brothers were implicated into a Sepoy mutiny at Vellore Fort. Soon afterward, their place of internment was moved from Vellore to Rasapagla, in Bengal. Shukr Ullah died there on 25 September, 1837 at the approximate age of 47.

Jennifer Howes
Art Historian specialising in South Asia

Further Reading:
British Library, IOR/F/4/113, 2126. Pages 24L, 24M.
William Dalrymple. “Tipu Sultan: Noble or Savage?” The Open Magazine, 27 November 2015.

According to Picasso, a picture can serve as a stepping stone to other worlds.  A picture of a bookbinding, in itself a work of art, can do the same.  The thousands of images of bindings which the British Library released on Wikimedia Commons in August 2015 can take the viewer on unexpected journeys: to discover what Queen Elizabeth I’s books look like or to answer the question when is a binding not a binding? When it comes from Mrs Wordsworth’s wardrobe!  Robert Southey’s female friends were reputed to have covered his library books using dress fabric.

Scholars who appreciate the relevance of bookbindings to their field of study are familiar with websites which can help their research, for example the British Library’s image database of bookbindings but you do not need specialist knowledge to admire a bookbinding. 

Serendipity occurs when we happen upon something amazing while seeking something else, and Wikimedia provides an exciting opportunity for bindings to be discovered in this way.  Publishing the Library’s bookbindings images on Wikimedia Commons means that they can be readily accessed and be easy to browse.  Hopefully the creative copyright commons licenced pictures will be available on other sites, guiding people to this fascinating but little considered subject.

At a time of limited resource, institutions can achieve a great deal with existing digital material, if they are prepared to be cooperative and generous. With this aim in mind, Mahendra Mahey and colleagues in BL Labs have explored how the bindings database could be exploited to reach a wider audience.   With the help of knowledgeable volunteers and students, notably Dimitra Charalampidou, who were given the opportunity of working with the Library’s technicians on real data (images and text), existing treasure troves were assessed, and others like Ed King’s research on stunning Victorian trade bindings were added, to expand the resource even further. We particularly thank Ed for his wonderful contribution.

The images are out there. We hope you enjoy them!

PJM Marks
Western Heritage Collections

View the collection British Library Bookbindings

To celebrate New Year's Day, here are pictures of two greetings sent to Sir Louis Dane when he was Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab 1908-1913.

The first is an illuminated address for New Year 1911 presented to Dane and his family by Pandit Deo Kak Shastri of Srinagar.

 
MSS Eur D 1103/8/8  

The second is a card signed by the Maharaja of Idar.

MSS Eur D 1103/8/8   

Happy New Year!  We look forward to sharing with you many more stories from the British Library collections in 2016.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

The bookbinding career of Roger de Coverly (1831-1914) seems to be characterised by a desire to leave it!  His apprenticeship with the flourishing firm of Zaehnsdorf’s was so “colourless and humdrum” that he petitioned for time off to study the violin. His name recalls a 17th century English folk dance but his passion was for music, not dancing, and this sustained him throughout his life.

The British Book Maker vol V, no 6 Feb 1892 p179

Roger completed his apprenticeship (but left early albeit with Zaehnsdorf’s agreement).   He decided to try bookselling and applied to Mr Lilley of Pall Mall who could not offer employment but strongly recommended that Roger stuck with binding!  After assisting in a stationer’s shop, Roger rededicated himself to his original trade.

His next employment at John and James Leighton’s of Brewer Street provided more fun.  His fellows there shared Roger’s love of chess, which they played during their lunch-break and at meetings of the Bookbinders’ Amateur Chess Club founded c1852. Music was not neglected and Roger’s solo performance for the Battersea Vocal Association was commended in the Music Times of 1 March 1861.

When Roger established his own workshop (in Leicester Square and later 6 St Martin’s Court and 91 Shaftsbury Avenue), there was little time for the extra- curricular activities he loved.  As a one man band, he had to ‘forward’ and ‘finish’ the bindings himself.  His wife Elisabeth contributed financially by opening a school for young ladies.  Slowly, however, the bindings business began to flourish.  It was patronised by aristocrats, noted writers (for example T E Lawrence) and artists.  His style was rather conservative and retrospective but the good quality materials used and his stated goal, to bind “excellently rather than cheaply” made up for lack of originality, for some at least.

 
British Library c108d11 

William Morris wrote to the poet Swinburne in April 1882; “I am sending you by parcels Delivery, the North's Plutarch I spoke of: it is a very pretty edition, I think the first. Item, the bookbinder I told you of really rejoices in the name (or says he does, which is the same for our purpose) of Roger de Coverly: his address is 6 St Martins Court. He is not a man of any taste … but is careful, & will do what you tell him, & is used to dealing with valuable books”. (Incidentally, birth records indicate that De Coverly was baptised Edward Roger.)

Despite this lukewarm opinion, Morris’s friend T. J. Cobden-Sanderson chose to serve a short apprenticeship there from 1883-4. He later became one of the most influential binders in England.

Fortunately, Roger’s sons Edward, Arthur and William proved adept at bookbinding and bookselling.  By 1892, Roger was able to confess in an interview that “he does not now give his whole attention to his binding business, having besides one or two hobbies; he is an enthusiastic amateur musician and collector of old music … ; he has founded  two or three glee and madrigal societies and loves above all to take part in orchestral concerts or string quartets, varied with glee singing. He is a member of the Royal Choral Society".

The connection between the name of de Coverly and bookbinding lasted into the 1960s when H[orace] A. de Coverly was known to have bound, taught and written about the subject.  An example of his work can be seen in the Library’s online image database of bookbindings.

P J M Marks
Curator, Bookbindings; Printed Historical Sources

Further reading;
Richard Ovenden, ‘An edition binding by Roger de Coverly for Alfred de Rothschild’ in Book Collector 47:1  1998 pp.79-82
The British Book Maker vol V, no 6 Feb 1892 p179-80.

To celebrate the birth of the visionary poet and artist William Blake #onthisday in 1757, I’ve chosen to write about one of his most beautiful yet bleak poems, London.

    I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
    Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
    And mark in every face I meet
    Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

    In every cry of every Man,
    In every Infants cry of fear,
    In every voice: in every ban,
    The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

    How the Chimney-sweepers cry
    Every black’ning Church appals,
    And the hapless Soldiers sigh
    Runs in blood down Palace walls

    But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
    How the youthful Harlots curse
    Blasts the new-born Infants tear
    And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

I always seem to turn to this poem just after the clocks go back and London seems particularly dark, damp, busy and cold.

London was first drafted in 1792 and published in 1794 as part of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience which showed ‘two contrary states of the human soul’.

Title-page to Songs of Experience by William Blake, London, 1794. Plate 29. Relief etching with hand-colouring. British Museum 1856,0209.365.

The poem forces the reader to follow narrow, dark and unfriendly London streets while contemplating the brutal nature of the city. Streets and rivers alike are ordered by man, blackened churches loom while palace walls run with blood.  Soldiers sigh, harlots curse and babies cry: even the sounds described allude to desperation and woe. Blake’s London is a near-apocalyptic vision of the rotting heart of a nation.

The British Library owns the original manuscript for London which shows Blake developing the imagery within the poem. Here, Dr Linda Freeman explores the manuscript further.

The notebook of William Blake (Rossetti Manuscript) showing the draft of London in the upper left-hand corner. 1792. Add MS 49460.

The published poem was accompanied by one of Blake’s relief-etched illustrations which depicts a blind and aged man led by a small child. This version in the British Museum is hand-coloured and printed in a red-orange ink.

 
London, plate 46 from Songs of Experience by William Blake, London 1794.  Relief etching with hand-colouring. British Museum 1856,0209.382.

Blake’s place of burial is marked in Bunhill Fields which despite once being semi-rural, now sits between the financial district near Liverpool Street to the south and the oppressive Old Street roundabout to the north.

William and Catherine Blake’s gravestone in Bunhill Fields, London. Photograph taken by the author.

William Blake's London has inspired so many artists, writers and musicians but probably the most heart-breaking and beautiful example is Sparklehorse’s London of 1995. Sparklehorse was led by the musician Mark Linkous who tragically committed suicide in 2010. The combination of Blake’s words and Sparklehorse and Tuli Kupferberg's haunting melody bring the poem alive.

#WilliamBlake #London #OTD #OnThisDay #Sparklehorse #Linkous

Alexandra Ault, Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1601-1850 @AlexandraAult @BL_ModernMSS

Many hidden narratives are wrapped up within the British Library’s collections of decorated papers.  Some are addressed in Thames & Hudson’s new book published in association with the British Library, An Anthology of Decorated Papers.

Making block printed papers was potentially fatal for workshop owner Jean-Baptist Réveillon (1725-1811) when the mob stormed his prosperous factory, one of the first incidents in the French Revolution.  His life was saved but his business was lost, taken over by others who concentrated on the production of patriotic red, white and blue printed papers!

In 18th century Germany youngsters, including the writer Goethe, collected brocade papers gold embossed with scenes from stories, trade, the New Testament and exotic animals (sometimes spending as much as a penny!).  A pattern in the Goethehaus in Frankfurt am Main depicts scenes found on Hirsch J303.  Less fortunate children had to help in the manufacture of decorated papers either in family workshops or large factories.

 
British Library Hirsch J303

Decorative paper wrappers were found in the possession of those with high status and low, from Queen Charlotte of England’s music manuscript book to the more modest  History of birds (price six pence).

This type of paper (J315) also celebrated topical events, including the building of the railway from Nuremberg to Fürth on 7 December 1835.

British Library Hirsch J315 

Magic powers imbued some Japanese block-printed sheets which were affixed to doors to ward off earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Benjamin Franklin believed marbling would add an extra level of security in the printing of money and sourced the paper used for the production of three pence notes by his grandson.  The system was not without flaw.  In England the forger William Chaloner produced his own marbled £100 notes.  Isaac Newton, Master of the Royal Mint, kept a close eye on Chaloner’s scams and the counterfeiter was hanged in 1699.

There are as many stories as papers! 

PJM Marks
Curator of Bookbindings

Further reading:
Olga Hirsch Collection of Decorated Papers
Wolfe Richard J. Marbled Paper: Its History, Techniques, and Patterns,  Philadelphia, 1990.
Porck, Henk J., and Krause Susanne Buntpapier : ein Bestimmungsbuch = Decorated paper: a guide book = Sierpapier: een gids , Hamburg, 2009.

Architect, mathematician and astronomer Sir Christopher Wren was born #onthisday in 1632.

We have a number of manuscripts by or relating to Christopher Wren in the Manuscripts Collection at the British Library. Probably the most beautiful are two drawings which relate to the Monument to the Great Fire of London which are housed in a volume of drawings once belonging to Sir Hans Sloane.  

There is a brilliant article by Matthew Walker about the design of the Monument and its attribution to Robert Hooke.  Among Hooke’s drawings, some of which were signed by Wren, are two advisory drawings by Wren himself. One depicts a statue of Augusta and the other depicts an urn, both for the termination of the Monument . 

 Sir Christopher Wren, Advisory drawing of a statue of Augusta for the termination of the Monument, 1675. Sloane MS 5238 f. 69.

Sir Christopher Wren, Advisory drawing of an urn for the termination of the Monument, 1675. Sloane MS 5238 f. 77.

As well as these two beautiful drawings we also own the manuscript report by Wren on the Monument,  the manuscript for Parentalia or Memoires of the Family of the Wrens, and the accounts and estimates for Marlborough House.

Alexandra Ault
Curator, Modern Historical Manuscripts and Archives 1601-1850