Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/191

 9>"s.iX.MA B cn8,i902.} NOTES AND QUERIES.

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pocket-book that has been in use since 1861, and is still serviceable.

This now brings us to the subject of a sub- stitute for leather ; and that is not difficult to find in the very great improvement in book- binders' cloth, much of which has endured since its introduction in 1836, and has out- lived the library bindings affected since then. I have now before me a copy of 'Sketches by Bpz ' which is as perfect, as regards durability, as if done yesterday, though the back is faded, the decoration on the sides, marking the transition period, being em- bossed in imitation of a " blind " pattern suggested by single-line gouges.

1 send you also a specimen of durable binding in buckram, a binding that is devoid of animal or mineral aid, being a vegetable product, save and except the size that may have been used in binding.

As a test of durability the great thing is the hinge, and to test materials stuffs should be subject to a perpetual hinge motion to see which endures the test for the longer period.

Of course, if a high class of decoration with exquisite finish be desired, leather must be used ; and if the tooling is to be very fine, then the leather must be as thin as paper, that the heated metal may reveal the sharp- est form.

As a destroyer the bookbinder is quite as great a culprit as the currier, his beautiful tree marbles and inlays being greatly detri- mentalindeed, many of the books bound within the last thirty years are only held together by their vegetable sewing and the bands that are " drawn in " at the hinge.

This brings us to the lasting quality of flax, and the importance of binding in buck- ram, which is most enduring, samples having been found in the Egyptian tombs, where all leather has perished.

I would note that the samples of hogskin have had imparted to them a morocco grain, and I am told that all leathers suffer soon in warm and hot climates, ants being very destructive to leather and paper, though colocynth or bitter aloes, if used in the paste employed, deters them.

Finally, as to sewing, I say 'ware wire, as damp rusts it. Vellum is an excellent material, and, indeed, books sewn upon vellum bands, with flaxen thread in lieu of sunken saw cuts, have proved most excellent. Nearly every kind of material has been used as a covering for books, including even the peau humaine, which somewhat, in colour, resembles vellum, probably the most durable of all. JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A.

Ormonde, Regent's Park.

THE MARYBOROUGH FAMILY. In cata- loguing the library of the Catholic Cathedral, Northampton, I came upon a Book of Common Prayer, London, 1678, which, from the internal evidence, had plainly been the property of the Marlborough family. It bore the auto- graph of the haughty duchess, "S. Marl- borough," dashed off in a bold imperious hand very characteristic of the writer. Above it, at the top of the page, was a note in another hand : " This Bible [sic] was my

dear mother's, and was the 27 day of

July, 1693." The binder has cut away two or three words, which we may, however, assume were "given me." To judge from the context, the recipient must have been the Lady Anne Churchill, second daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Marborough, who was married in January, 1700, to Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland, and by whom she had three sons. One of these now became possessor of the book, for just below his grandmother's autograph he records the untimely deaths of both his parents as follows : " My dear Mama Sunderland Died April the 15, 1716"; "My dear papa Died April the 18, 1722." It was popularly supposed at the time that his death was attributable to poison, but the doctors failed to detect any evidence to sup- port it. At the end of the book, still in the same handwriting, is the following in- teresting note recording the death and burial of the greatest of our military leaders, the only one of whom it can be said that he never fought a battle without winning it, or sat down before a fortress without taking it : "June the 16, 1722, about four a clock in the morning, The Duke of Marlborough Died, my dear Grandpapa, and he was in- terred the 9 of August at Westminster Abby."

It is most probable that the writer and possessor of the book was the Hon. John Spencer, the third son of the Earl of Suuder- land, and the ancestor of the present Earl Spencer, as there is a book-plate with the Spencer crest with " Wimbledon " written on the scrollwork. The great duchess bought Wimbledon Manor, after the South Sea collapse, from Sir Theodore Jansen, and built a house which became her favourite resi- dence. The manor afterwards descended to the Spencer family, but the mansion was burnt down in 1785. J. S. S.

BURNS AND JAMES CRIRIE. In one of his letters to Peter Hill, the bookseller, Robert Burns criticizes and somewhat extravagantly praises James Cririe's 4 Address to Locn