FOLIOCollections • Research • Events at the National Library of Scotland ISSUE 9 AUTUMN 2004

CREATIVECARTOGRAPHYHow Scotland WentOn The Map

SIGNED ‘SIRWALTER’?Fakes, Frauds andFacsimiles

HAND-HEWNIDENTITYSculptor PittendrighMacgillivray

SO WELLCONNECTEDThe John MurrayArchive

F O L I O2

‘Continue now, look atScotland and enjoy a feastfor the eyes.’ So wrote theDutch mapmaker Joan

Blaeu in ‘Greetings to the Reader’ at thestart of his 1654 Atlas Novus. Publishedin Latin in Amsterdam, the work containsforty-nine engraved maps of Scotland(and six of Ireland) and 154 pages ofdescriptive text. In combining maps withwritten descriptions, Blaeu’s Atlas Novusoffers an unrivalled picture of the nationin the mid-seventeenth century.

But why should a Dutchman publisha work of Scottish geography? Who wasJoan Blaeu? How did he do it? Tounderstand what the Atlas is, we have tounderstand how it came about. It wascertainly not Blaeu’s work alone. It waspublished in 1654, but the atlas was theresult of over seventy years of map-making and editorial activity in Scotlandand England as well as in the LowCountries. The history of the AtlasNovus is a story of war, avariciousprinters, neglectful children,underachieving churchmen and anxiousstatesmen concerned with Scotland’sgeographical representation. It is a storytoo of poetic professors, Antwerpmapmakers as well as Amsterdampublishers, English and Scottishhistorians and the view of Royalty aboutthe power of maps.

The story begins with the maps onwhich the Atlas is largely based, those ofTimothy Pont. From the little we knowof Pont’s life, his epic survey of Scotlandwas packed into two or at the most threedecades, following his graduation in1583 from St Andrews. We know thatPont was appointed minister of Dunnetparish in Caithness in 1601 and that hiswritten Description of Cunningham datesto about 1604–08. With one exception –his map of Lothian and Linlithgowengraved sometime before 1611 – Pontfailed to get his work into print.According to Robert Gordon, Timothywas ‘defeated by the avarice of printersand booksellers’, a reference perhaps tothe various monopoly agreements thenmade by some Edinburgh printers. In1606, for example, the Edinburgh printerThomas Finlayson acquired a 25-yearlicense to print and import all maps andcharts, which effectively deterred mappublication until the late 1620s. And by1615, from a deed that only came to

light earlier this year, we know thatTimothy Pont was dead.

In the years after Pont’s death interestin the maps waned, and his heirs, Isobelhis widow and children Timothy andMargaret, were later accused ofneglecting them. Fortunately forposterity the Lord Lyon, Sir JamesBalfour of Denmilne, acquired the mapsfrom them in or shortly before 1628,perhaps deriving some of his owntopographic descriptions(Adv.MS.33.2.27) from Pont’s materials.By 1631 Balfour had passed some of themaps on to the Blaeu publishers inAmsterdam. The key intermediary in thisprocess, the man who in effect became

Putting Scotland on viewJoan Blaeu’s 1654 Atlas Novus

What shape is Scotland? How hasit been mapped? This year marks

the 350th anniversary of thepublication of Scotland’s firstatlas, the Atlas Novus, by theDutch mapmaker Joan Blaeu.

Based upon the earlier mappingwork of Timothy Pont and that of

several contemporaries, Blaeu’sAtlas provides an unparalleled

geographical picture of Scotlandand an important source in

Scottish map history. ChristopherFleet outlines the sources behindBlaeu’s work and the National

Library of Scotland websitedevoted to the Atlas, Ian

Cunningham sheds light on theAtlas’s production in discussingits translation into English fromthe original Latin, and Charles

Withers documents theintellectual background to this

landmark publication inEuropean history and geography.

IAN CUNNINGHAM,CHRISTOPHER FLEET & CHARLES W.J. WITHERS

the Scottish editor and promoter of theAtlas, was Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit.

Scotstarvit held the political offices ofDirector of Chancery, Lord of Sessionand Privy Councillor, and through thesehad the influence in Scotland and theLow Countries to drive the projectforward. Discovered in 1967, a set offifteen letters (Adv.MS.17.1.9) fromWillem and his son Joan Blaeu toScotstarvit, written in the years 1626–33and 1641–57, provide vital informationon the progress of the Atlas. From them,we know that by 1642 Blaeu hadengraved about forty of the forty-ninemaps within the Atlas directly fromPont's work, and provided a list of theareas for which maps were lacking.

The few remaining maps within the Atlas, as well as some textualdescriptions, were the product of RobertGordon of Straloch – Blaeu praises himas ‘the phoenix of geographers’ – whowas enlisted to help from the mid-1630s.His son James, Parson of Rothiemay, alsoassisted surveying new maps, such as thatfor Fife, in the 1640s. In the 1640s,Scotstarvit petitioned the GeneralAssembly for its ministers to draw uptopographical descriptions of theirpresbyteries and thus provide material forthe atlas scheme. Although the requestwas repeated four times, it met with onlypartial success. By the mid-1640s, Blaeuwas increasingly desperate for textualcontent. Fortunately, in September 1645Scotstarvit escaped from the Civil Warand spent over two months inAmsterdam helping Blaeu directly. By1647 Blaeu had applied for copyrightprotection for the Atlas, and by 1649 theDutchman informed Scotstarvit that hewas ready to start printing. Sadly, eventsconspired against them. The execution ofKing Charles I in January 1649 and thesubsequent Cromwellian administrationdeprived Sir John Scot of his officialposts, and war between Britain andHolland (1652–54) acted to halt allprogress for five years. Blaeu did notreceive full copyright protection for thework until August 1654. Only then werethe first copies printed. With somejustification, Robert Gordon could writein his prefatory letter, ‘Now at last, aftermany labours endured, the loss of muchtime and troubles such as the mindshudders to recall, our Scotland is put onview’.

F O L I O 3

All the texts (with one smallexception, Pont’s notes on the AntonineWall, and one possible larger one, the listof islands on Loch Lomond) wereoriginally written in Latin, still in 1654the common language of scholarship inEurope. French, German, Dutch andSpanish editions followed soon after, butrather surprisingly, an English one seemsnever to have been projected. As theability to read Latin fluently has steadilydeclined and threatens to become veryrare, the texts have required translation –also a matter of ‘much time and troubles’– in order to provide access to them.

Occasionally the texts confirm what isotherwise known about the creation ofthe Atlas or give new information on it.Blaeu tells us in his ‘Letter to the Reader’for example, that Sir John Scot sat in hisoffice in Amsterdam and from memorydictated many additions. This is vividlyillustrated in the description of Kyle,where Scot’s vernacular quotation of theexpression ‘I bide my time’ is takendown by the Dutch clerk as ‘Y beyd mijnthijm’. Blaeu’s compositors were

generally excellent, but unfamiliar namesoccasionally defeat them: misprints suchas ‘Dalbeith’ for ‘Dalkeith’ and ‘planus’for ‘Blanus’ (the River Blane) could

scarcely have gone unnoticed by any Scotand confirm that no proofs were sent toScotland. On the other hand, thatLauderdale was to be described by its earl(who was prevented from doing so by hiscapture at the battle of Worcester andsubsequent imprisonment) is known onlyfrom Blaeu’s apology on the matter.

The main interest of the texts lies intheir content about Scotland in generaland its individual regions. A summarydescription of the country is taken fromBook 1 of George Buchanan’s History,first published in 1582 (the partsconcerning the Hebrides, Orkney andShetland are placed separately), togetherwith the (otherwise unknown andremarkable) versification of it by AndrewMelville, dating from 1604. RobertGordon discusses a variety of antiquarianmatters, frequently taking issue withCamden: the outline and names onPtolemy’s map, the Roman walls, thedisplacement of Gaelic by Scots, and theidentity of Thule. Political, legal andecclesiastical administration is described,perhaps by Sir John Scot.

In one letter to Scot (10 March1642, Adv.MS.17.1.9, f.5) Blaeu sets out

A portrait of Joan Blaeu (1598/9–1673), paintedbetween 1645 and 1654 by Samuel vonHoogstraten. This illustration is by permission ofthe Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam.

Scotia Regnum from Blaeu’s Atlas.

F O L I O4

the information he wishes in the localdescriptions: commodities of each region,crops, metals, fauna, etc.; nobility, etc.;genealogies. These are, by and large,what the various authors provided,though the order and the amount ofdetail vary greatly. To take an example,Robert Gordon’s ‘New Description ofFife’ covers the following topics: name,boundaries and size; soil and farming;woods, rivers, climate; products;harbours; old inhabitants; towns,especially St Andrews and its university;abbeys, etc.; nobility and gentry. Intothis have been inserted poems by ArthurJohnston on the coastal towns of Fifeand St Andrews.

There is much repetition in andbetween the various texts, largely due tothe circumstances of compilation of thework. The basis for the description ofeach region is the short passage on it inCamden’s Britannia (1607 edition).Frequent short additions and updates aredue to Sir John Scot. Sometimes that isall that was available. But when fullerdescriptions arrived (from RobertGordon, David Buchanan, the ministers,and others), they were simply appended,despite the fact that the author frequentlystarted from Camden, clearly notexpecting his words to appear above hisown. For each of Orkney and Shetlandthere are two base texts, Camden andGeorge Buchanan, and two new texts,one based on each of these. ForSutherland Robert Gordon madeextensive use of the manuscriptbelonging to (but not apparently writtenby) his namesake, the tutor of the earl.Gordon himself was an inveterate reviserof his own writing (as can be seen fromhis drafts in Adv.MS.34.2.8), and for Fife

two versions of his description have beenprinted consecutively.

From such evidence, it is clear thatTimothy Pont’s map making, crucialthough it is, was not the only influenceupon Blaeu. Three further elements mustbe recognised. The first is the impetusafforded by the Antwerp-bornmapmaker, Abraham Ortelius. Thesecond is the influence of that pioneeringwork of British historical writing, WilliamCamden’s Britannia, first published in1586. Finally, as we have noted, Blaeudrew upon geographical descriptionsfrom several Scots, none a geographer inany formal sense, but each of whomhelped provide accounts of parts of thenation.

Geography in the age of Pont andBlaeu was not as we now understand theterm. Geographical knowledge then hadthree main forms: descriptive geography,mathematical geography andchorography. Where geography’s concernwas the description of the whole world,chorography aimed at regionaldescription. This crucial distinctionbetween geography, the accuraterepresentation of the whole knownworld, and chorography, the pictorial andwritten ‘impression’ of local areas andplaces was widely used. Why? Becausechorography appealed to late Renaissanceideas of intellectual order. More thanthat, the chorographic/geographicdistinction was the most importantclassifying scheme for maps at that time.And it allowed a standard model of howspace should in future be mapped.Chorography worked also through theconjunction of images and writtendescriptions. Chorography’s textualfeatures took several forms, includingtopographical poetry, for example.Chorography emphasised the local anddid so with reference to the genealogiesof notable families and to the remarkablefeatures in a place – just those features

noted here of the ‘New Description ofFife’. Geography, strictly put, followedfrom and depended upon chorography.

What of the importance to Blaeu’sAtlas of Abraham Ortelius, who in 1570had published his Theatrum OrbisTerrarum, a comprehensive collection ofmaps of the world’s countries? With itspublication the idea of the modern atlasas a bound collection of maps of uniformsize was born. The Theatrum wasimmediately successful. From 1625, JoanBlaeu’s father, Willem Janszoon Blaeu,acquired the copyright for it. WillemBlaeu had trained under Tycho Brahe,the leading astronomer-mathematician,and through him understood howaccurate map making was a means toproper natural and national knowledge.In 1631, Willem Blaeu produced anappendix to Ortelius’s Theatrum, and, in1634, published the first volume of hisown intended world atlas entitledTheatrum Orbis Terrarum sive AtlasNovus – a title which owes obvioushomage to Ortelius. This ‘new Atlas’ wasthe endeavour to which Blaeu wascontributing in his 1654 work.

But let us return to Ortelius. Like hiscontemporaries, Ortelius was interestedin regional description, in historicalorigins and in subjecting ancients’geographical accounts to scholarlyscrutiny. These interests were reflected inhis Parergon (1584), a collection of mapsillustrating ancient history, chieflymainland Europe’s Roman legacy.Importantly to our story, it does not

Letter from Blaeu to Scot, 17 June 1631.(Adv.MS.17.1.9, f.11)

The Atlas of Scotland was published as volume V ofJ. Blaeu’s Atlas Novus.

James Gordon’s map from the Blaeu Atlas, showingSir John Scot’s house and estate, Scotstarvit, inFife.

F O L I O 5

Note on sources

The National Library of Scotland holdsseveral copies of Blaeu’s Theatrum orbisterrarum, in various languages, includingthe Scottish volume of the Atlas Novus(Vol. V, 1654) and the Atlas Maior (Vol.VI, 1662) with Latin text, both atWD.3B. Much of the supporting texts forthe Atlas and related materials are in theAdvocates Manuscripts. David Buchanan’s‘Provinciae Edinburgenae descriptio’ isAdv.MS.31.6.19, and Sir James Balfour’s‘Collections on the Shires’ is Adv.MS.33.2.27. The fifteen letters from Willemand Joan Blaeu to Sir John Scot ofScotstarvit are Adv.MS.17.1.9. Several ofRobert Gordon of Straloch’s draftdescriptions of provinces can be found inthe ‘Topographical Notices of Scotland’,Adv.MS.34.2.8, and transcribed versionsof these have been printed in Sir Arthur Mitchell’s Geographical Collectionsrelating to Scotland made by WalterMacfarlane II (Edinburgh, 1907) SCS.SHS.51-53. The Library has numerouscopies of George Buchanan’s RerumScoticarum Historia from 1582 onwards.An edition of Abraham Ortelius’sTheatrum Orbis Terrarum c.1592,dedicated to William Camden, is atRSGS.45. Copies of the 1607 edition ofWilliam Camden’s Britannia can befound at EU.9.C.1 and Gray.645.

include Britain. Yet in 1577, Ortelius hadmet the man who would provide anhistorical and geographical account ofBritain – or, to use its correct title as aRoman province, ‘Britannia’. That man,encountered only in passing so far, wasWilliam Camden.

William Camden was a 35-year-oldOxford-educated schoolmaster when hepublished Britannia in 1586, a historicaland geographical description of theBritish Isles. He did so at Ortelius’sprompting, in order to provide coverageof Britain – Roman Britain – hithertolacking. The work was hugely successful.Later and revised editions appearedthroughout Camden’s lifetime and longafter: the passages relating to Scotlandare taken from the much-expanded 1607Latin edition. Like Blaeu and the AtlasNovus in which he is cited, Camden waswell connected and his Britannia drawsupon others’ works. In Oxford and inLondon, he was part of the social andintellectual circles of influential menengaging with the power of geography.These men included John Dee, thealchemist (and the first man to speak ofthe ‘British Empire’). Dee introducedOrtelius and Camden. Camden’s circlealso included John Stow the topographerand author, in 1599, of the Survey ofLondon; Richard Hakluyt the Younger;and Richard Carew of Antony inCornwall, author in 1602 of the Surveyof Cornwall.

Like the Atlas Novus, Britannia is amajor monument of British andEuropean history and Camden a keyfigure amongst the Atlas’s ‘authors’.Britannia’s importance in relation to theAtlas Novus rests in its method andbecause it helped further establishchorography as a form of regional geo-historical description. Camden’scontribution to the Atlas is alsoimportant because it is, in severalrespects, added to and even corrected byScottish commentators describing theircountry’s geography. That is why theScottish humanist and historian GeorgeBuchanan begins his 1582 History with adetailed geographical description. Likeothers then, Buchanan knew thatgeography, in the form of chorography,was an essential part of the historicalunderstanding of one’s nation. In Blaeu’stime, other Scottish men of letters andpolitical influence were producinggeographical writings. The manuscript‘Topographical Descriptions relating toScotland’, compiled between 1632 and1654 by Balfour of Denmilne comes intothis category. And had Sir John Scot ofScotstarvit’s plan in August 1641 to‘have a description of our Shyredomes’

met with greater success, we would havehad more entries in the Atlas like thosefrom John MacLellan, a Kirkcudbrightminister, who wrote the geographicaldescription of Galloway, and WilliamForbes of Innerwick who wrote on theLothians.

Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Novus is a majorwork of Dutch publishing and of Scottishgeography and history which, as we havedemonstrated, should be understood asthe result of interrelated Europeanscholarly worlds. For monarchs,ministers, mapmakers, merchants andmathematicians alike, maps were routesto national knowledge. The maps aremainly Pont’s or modifications of themby Robert Gordon and others. Much ofthe descriptive content is taken fromCamden and Buchanan. Certain places –Amsterdam, Oxford, London, StAndrews – are more important in itspublishing history than others. Certainpeople are likewise: an Englishantiquarian (Camden), a Scottishhistorian (Buchanan), Scots politicians(Balfour of Denmilne, Scot ofScotstarvit), a handful of Scottishchorographers and churchmen (led byRobert Gordon of Straloch) and, notleast, a father-and-son firm of Amsterdampublishers.

Blaeu’s Atlas Novus is a monument toScotland’s up-to-date vision of itself.Scotland really was ‘put on view’ as neverbefore. Interested readers can ‘putScotland on view’ for themselves. Thewebsite (http://www.nls.uk/maps)presents a fully searchable electronicfacsimile of the entire Blaeu Atlas as itrelates to Scotland, allowing maps andtexts to be searched and browsed in anumber of ways. High-resolution,zoomable images are presented, and thewhole volume can be accessed withrelevant links between maps and texts.Scholarly indexes of place-names andpersonal names have been compiled,

complementing full keyword searchpossibilities. Related textual materials arealso included, such as David Buchanan'sdescription of Midlothian (intended forthe Atlas but omitted), and the moredetailed description of Aberdeenshire andBanffshire by Robert Gordon that onlyappeared in the 1662 edition of theAtlas. Supplementary essays andbiographies of the leading figuresinvolved provide further detail on thismost remarkable publishing achievementand work of geography.

A small exhibition, Scotland’s First Atlas:the nation displayed by Joan Blaeu, willrun until 31 January 2005 in theLibrary’s George IV Bridge Building.

Maps of Scotland are displayed athttp://www.nls.uk/maps on the Library’s website.

William Camden, author of Brittania.

deception is integral to the wholeundertaking. A facsimile, on the otherhand, is not intended to deceive –though it may indeed do so, albeitunintentionally, and often long after itwas made. Times change, and with themour understanding of the market formemorabilia at the period when thefacsimile was made. Facsimiles were oftenproduced as illustrations to nineteenth-century ‘life and letters’ publications.Quite regularly, facsimile signaturesderived from letters appear below portraitengravings. A Victorian periodical, TheAutographic Mirror (EL.4.83.1), wasintended to build up into acomprehensive ‘paper museum’ of hands,to satisfy the natural curiosity of readers.Scott is represented by several diverseexamples; in addition to letters, gobbetsfrom novel manuscripts were chosen forinclusion, seemingly without any

apparent significance in the selection oftext extract. Sometimes facsimiles have apermanent value, in that they maypreserve the only surviving memory of aparticular manuscript originial.

One Scott facsimile in particularcauses a problem, and to that I shall turnpresently. But first I must mention apeculiar instance of a Scott facsimilewhich still regularly deceives on accountof the excellence of its production andthe exceedingly cunning way it wasconceived and executed.

In the spring of 1830, the Londonpublisher Charles Tilt sent Scott a copyof the first number of his new work,Landscape Illustrations of the WaverleyNovels, and received a short butcourteous acknowledgement. Tiltevidently recognised in this a potentialopportunity to puff his publication,making as it might seem a sort ofunofficial endorsement of the work and atestimonial from the Author of Waverleyhimself. So, immediately after Sir Walter’sdeath in September 1832, theenterprising Tilt produced a lithographedfacsimile, which, with a slightly laterreprint, has proved to be the mostpernicious Scott ‘autograph letter’ inexistence. Produced as a marketing ploy,it was never released with any intentionto deceive; in fact it seems to have beendistributed by Tilt to his bettercustomers. Today even dealers andauction houses are fooled by theexcellence of the facsimile. Does this,then, constitute a copy or a fake? TheNational Library of Scotland acquired theoriginal letter (at least I think weacquired the original!) in 1988 (MS.23141, ff. 9-10). The paper iswatermarked 1827, entirely consistentwith something Scott wrote in 1830.Tilt’s lithographer had made the mistakeof producing his facsimile on paperwatermarked 1831 and subsequently1832, facts incompatible with adocument purportedly written in 1830.Tilt had the two postmarks copiedexactly (though, in the original, one is inblack and the other red ink: some of thefacsimiles reproduce both in black), andeven went to the length of having a redwax seal, broken as if opened on receipt,attached to the address sheet. (This sealis the real give-away because, though itwas evidently individually applied to each

F O L I O6

The Hand of the Master?Scott fakes and facsimiles as souvenirs or scams

Manuscript letters purportingto be written by Sir WalterScott, but which are readilyidentifiable as fakes, are not

uncommon. Many are the work ofAlexander Howland (‘Antique’) Smith,who was active towards the end of thenineteenth century and whose career as afaker ended with a prison sentence in1893. He had specialised in Burns andScott, whose hands he imitated in areasonably competent but not entirelyconvincing way.

Weaknesses in his method were thepersistent reliance on the wrong kind ofpaper, nibs that were not like those ofthe purported authors and whichbehaved differently in use, and atendency to fold and seal the lettersincorrectly. On one or two celebratedoccasions distinguished scholars havebeen forced to eat their mortarboardswhen it has been demonstrated thatcertain of their arguments have beenbased upon documents subsequentlyproved to be spurious ‘Antique’ Smithcreations.

Smith produced fakes and forgeries,but habitually referred to his productionsas ‘facsimiles’. In this debatable land,what exactly is the distinction betweenfake and facsimile, between souvenir andscam? Furthermore, in the field of Scottmanuscripts, some ‘facsimiles’ are morethan simply copies or reproductions, forwhat they offer the reader is actuallysomething not originally or entirelywritten by the great man or, moreaccurately, something not originallywritten in the same form as the specimenoffered in supposed ‘facsimile’. So theadditional question, ‘When is a facsimilenot a true facsimile?’, may also be posed.Particularly interesting is the case of the‘dedication’ of the so-called ‘MagnumOpus’ edition of the Waverley Novels.

Fakes are clearly intended to deceive,and a commercial motive is almostinvariably involved. Letters or verses inthe style of the author in question are themost common types of such production.Verisimilitude is conferred if the faker canlink his efforts to known and genuinecorrespondence or poems; but converselythere is commercial mileage in creatingan episode otherwise unknown tobiography or literary criticism. So, in afake or forgery, the element of wilful

An American fur-trader andsometime Edinburgh Universitystudent, Henry Brevoort, was sopleased to receive a letter from

Sir Walter Scott in 1813acknowledging a present of a book

that he had a facsimile of thedocument produced for

circulation to friends. Copiessubsequently found their way intomany great libraries – which all

thought they had the original.Even experts have been fooled by

such reproductions. To paraphraseOscar Wilde, to find one Scott'autograph letter' is fortunate,

but failing to realise thatlithographers had been at work

sounds like carelessness. Here, the National Library’s

own Scott expert goes forensic onScott fakes and facsimiles.

IAIN GORDON BROWN

F O L I O 7

facsimile, it is invariably larger thanScott’s original drop of wax. The paperof the real letter has been torn in theaction of opening the seal, whereas in thefacsimiles the wax seals have merely beenapplied rather than serving a serious iftransient purpose.) The outer addresspanel is artificially dirtied and dust-darkened along its folds in a convincing ifperhaps rather overdone way, though inthe later printing this almost-too-good-to-be-true detail is omitted. One featurenot present in the facsimiles is the barelydiscernible offsetting of ‘Mr CharlesTilt/ Bookseller’, which feature is visiblein the original where Scott has folded hispaper before the ink was quite dry onthese last words. Certain of the letter-forms in the facsimiles show a closing-upof loops, indicators all of thereproductive methods used.

To bring the viewer close to the mindand spirit of the writer was certainly themotivation behind the production of alater ‘facsimile’ of Scott’s holographdedication to King George IV of the‘Magnum Opus’ edition of 1829. Thevicissitudes of the ‘Magnum’ dedicatoryleaf are indicative of the immensepopularity of Scott immediately beforeand for many years after his death.

On 11 May 1828 Scott recorded inhis journal that, having dined with theKing, he had spoken to His Majesty’sPrivate Secretary, Sir William Knighton,‘about the dedication of the collectedworks’. Knighton had indicated that thesuggestion would be ‘highly well taken’.At the end of that year, Scott composedthe royal dedication and sent it, alongwith other copy for the new edition ofthe Waverley Novels (which was by thistime known to all involved as the‘Magnum Opus’) to his publisher,Robert Cadell. On 18 May 1829 the firstvolume of the new edition was sent tothe King at Windsor.

The Dedication appeared in the firstvolume of the Magnum Waverley, afterthe title-page and before theAdvertisement: a handsome piece of

John Watson Gordon’s portrait of Scott waspainted for Robert Cadell in 1830 and was firstengraved by John Horsburgh. In this later versionby W. Holl, a facsimile signature of the sitter hasbeen inserted between the typeset words ‘Sir’ and‘Bart.’. (MS. 23060, f. 19). Many nineteenth-centuryportrait engravings were ornamented withfacsimiles of handwriting derived from letters.They satisfied a natural curiosity to know what agreat man’s hand looked like.

An example of the facsimile of the Tilt letter,showing the address panel, false red wax seal,reproduction postal marks (both in black ratherthan one red, one black) and artificial dust staining. (Acc.12101)

F O L I O8

steel-engraving by William Home Lizarsin which the florid royal title at the headof the Dedicatory Epistle was balanced bythe facsimile signature of Scott at its end.Cadell preserved an interesting paperrelating to this signature. Scott had cometo his shop in St Andrew Square one dayin March 1829 to provide a specimenautograph for engraving. This wasthought too stiff and stilted, and Cadell,in annotating the sheet bearing thespecimen, commented that the facsimile,as published, ‘was taken off the freerunning signature of a letter’. (At thesame time, ‘as a bit of fun’ – notsomething one associates with RobertCadell – Scott was persuaded to sign thepaper additionally in his customary styleused on court documents as Clerk ofSession, ‘WScott’ [sic]. Cadell observedthat an American visitor had once readthis as ‘Whop’!)

What concerns us here is the way theautograph manuscript of the dedicationwas presented to a public which boughtvarious editions of the Waverley Novelsthroughout the remainder of thenineteenth century. For, in time, and inorder to convey a feeling of immediacy,the publishers included in their bookswhat appears to be a facsimile of theoriginal dedicatory letter to the King. Yetin fact what they printed was afabrication, which is itself abibliographical curiosity of some interest. The autograph manuscript of thededication is bound into the first volumeof the famous Interleaved Set of theWaverley Novels (MS. 23001). It is a sadand pathetic object. The evidence ofScott’s mental confusion and physicaldeterioration is apparent: there are messyalterations, excisions, slips of the pen,repetitions and ungrammaticalconstructions. Clearly reproduction ofthe manuscript in facsimile would havedone Sir Walter’s shrewd and hard-headed publisher no service. Cadell wasacutely aware that Scott was a valuable,money-making commodity. The publicmust not know that his powers werefailing, that the Waverley stream ofromance might soon dry up, and thatwith that the profits from his over-worked brain would be curtailed or evenstopped. Hence the engraved version ofScott’s epistle. But when Scott was deadthese evidences of his enfeebledcondition as he strove valiantly to clearhis debts and pay his creditors could beseen only as touching and affecting. Whathad formerly repelled or appalled was, inretrospect, and in a perverse way,attractive and even a selling-point. Abrisk trade developed in Scottmemorabilia, and scraps of manuscript

The autograph manuscript of Scott’s dedication to the King of the ‘Magnum Opus’ edition of the WaverleyNovels, published between 1829 and 1833 (MS. 23001, f. 4). Scott’s mental and physical infirmities arepainfully obvious.

Scott’s dedication of the‘Magnum Opus’ asreproduced in ‘facsimile’in the first volume ofCadell’s AbbotsfordEdition (Edinburgh 1842).The original text has beenradically but silentlyaltered, and the layoutchanged. (Hall.185.a.2)

F O L I O 9

Note on sourcesFake? The Art of Deception edited by MarkJones (London 1990: GBE.1), thecatalogue of a major British Museumexhibition, is instructive on all aspects ofthe subject of forgeries. Fakes and Frauds.Varieties of Deception in Print &Manuscript, edited by Robin Myers andMichael Harris (Winchester 1989:H3.89.4247) focuses on (mainly olderand mainly printed) literary deceptions.J.A. Farrer, Literary Forgeries (London1907: T.162.e) has a chapter on forgedletters by famous authors. On ‘Antique’Smith see William Roughead, The Riddleof the Ruthvens and Other Studies(Edinburgh 1936: X.171.e). The articleby T.J. Brown, ‘The Detection of FakedLiterary MSS’, The Book Collector, 2(1953), pp. 6–23 is fundamental(HJ.3.1191). The entry on ‘Facsimilesand Fakes’ in John Carter, ABC for BookCollectors, 7th edition by Nicolas Barker(London, 1994: SU.35) offers a usefulsummary. On Scott’s ‘Magnum Opus’ seeJane Millgate, Scott’s Last Edition(Edinburgh 1987: H2.87.961). For thehistory of Scott collecting in the NationalLibrary of Scotland see Iain GordonBrown, ‘Collecting Scott for Scotland,1850–2000’, The Book Collector, 49(2000), pp. 502–34.

were collected rather like holy relics.That, after all, was why the autographmanuscript of Waverley was presented tothe Advocates’ Library in 1850: thedonor could not trust himself not to tearout more leaves to give away. So tomarket Scott, as it were, with all hisfaults, might now be good posthumousimage-making PR. Thus when Cadellbegan to issue the Waverley Novels witha facsimile of the autograph dedicationhe was tapping into a vein of sentimentthat betokens a wish to get near to Scottthe man, with all the failings of age andinfirmity and ill-health evident in hisfaltering hand and egregious errors.

But matters are not so simple.Readers of editions from 1842 onwardswho encountered the facsimile dedicationcannot have imagined that what theyheld in their hands was anything but areproduction of an original they couldnot examine. No deception was beingperpetrated. However, when copiesbegan to circulate separately from theaccompanying letterpress the troublebegan. These still fool private individuals,tyro collectors and even dealers. Andthere is more. The ‘facsimile’ firstproduced by the opportunistic RobertCadell in his Abbotsford Edition in 1842was not in fact a true facsimile at all, forit offers up a text never originally createdby Scott in 1828.

Cadell’s Magnum Edition had beenaimed at ‘the less opulent classes of thecommunity’. The Abbotsford, however,was to be ‘of a different character’. Theprefatory notice states: ‘This is the age ofgraphically illustrated Books; and itremained to affix to these Works… suchEngraved Embellishments as, had theAuthor himself been now alive, hispersonal tastes and resources would mostprobably have induced him to placebefore students of antiquity and lovers ofart.’ Scott had been a famous collector ofobjects which illustrated historical eventsand personalities. The AbbotsfordEdition would present an album ofimages of these objects in order toillustrate the body of Scott’s fiction.Great emphasis was laid on faithfulcopying of originals, in contrast to the‘fancy and ingenuity’ previouslyemployed in the illustration of Scott. Yetthe irony is that, despite this stress onauthenticity and on drawing from theultimate source, Cadell’s whole grandnew project begins with a fabrication. Forthe royal dedication, listed as a woodengraving ‘Fac-simile of Sir WalterScott’s Handwriting’, drawn by W.Dickes and engraved by John Greenaway(father of the famous Victorian artist,Kate), does not reproduce what Scott

actually wrote some years previously.Comparison of the original manuscriptand the 1842 ‘facsimile’ demonstratesthe point. On a textual level Scott’srather rambling sentiments have beenmodified and sharpened, and a note ofverbal and grammatical economy hasbeen introduced. Aesthetically the lookof the piece has been much improved bythe silent removal of some (though notall: one has been left in for‘authenticity’s’ sake) of Scott’s excisionsand corrections. Line length has beenshortened, the better to accommodatethe manuscript to the format of theprinted page. The small piece ofoffsetting visible towards the foot of theletter, caused by Scott’s folding his paperwith the ink on the date still wet, hasbeen preserved, again for the sake of‘authenticity’, though the most distinctof these intrusive marks has beenremoved in the facsimile’s ‘dutifulsubject…’ subscription. Altogether thereis a host of differences betweenautograph and ‘reproduction’: sometwenty-two words have been cut; twentywords have been supplied, either bycopying from elsewhere other examplesof Scott’s writing of these same words, orby skilful fabrication; a few words orphrases have been transported into otherplaces in the text, which has been joinedtogether as seamlessly as was technicallypossible. All in all, this is a remarkableexample of the engraver’s art, which leadsone to recall Ross Roy’s observation (inthe context of the silent emendation ofBurns’s texts in the course oftransmission down the years) that ‘evennineteenth-century engraved facsimileshave been made in such a way that adeletion is not apparent.’ The possibilitiesfor distortion of original manuscripts infacsimile reproduction was evidently notone that had occurred to ThomasFrognall Dibdin on his celebrated‘bibliographical, antiquarian andpicturesque’ tour to Edinburgh in 1838,when he remarked on a reproduction ofpart of Marmion in Cadell’s possession:‘The fidelity of this lithographic copycannot be surpassed.’

The Abbotsford Edition also boasted‘Fac-similes’ of Scott handwriting atvarious other points. That at the head ofthe first chapter of Waverley is afabrication, made up from one or otheroccurrence of the name of [Edward]Waverley in the novel manuscript, thesubtitle ‘or ’tis sixty years since’ being insome way mocked-up by the engraver asthe phrase does not, in fact, occur in thesurviving portion of the manuscriptextant in 1842. On taking over the Scottcopyrights the firm of A. & C. Black re-

used the ‘cod’ dedication in their LibraryEdition Waverley volume of 1852; andthough this ‘facsimile’ was dropped forBlack’s 1871 Centenary Edition, themock-up ‘Waverley/or ’tis/ sixty yearssince’ headpiece reappears, this timeattractively set as part of a decorativeengraving of the ‘bear gates’ of themansion of Tully-Veolan. The excellentcatalogue of the Scott Centenaryexhibition of 1871, so rich in originalmaterials, prints the first true facsimile ofthe autograph dedication as aphotolithographic reproduction oppositepage 130 of the second volume. This wastaken from the manuscript in the firstvolume of the Interleaved Set, then inthe possession of A. & C. Black. Yetoddly some later editions of the WaverleyNovels, notably the Melrose Editionpublished in London by the CaxtonCompany and in Edinburgh by T.C. &E.C. Jack (1898) revert to the 1842Cadell pseudo-facsimile. It is copies ofthis, some still bound into their cheaptrade bindings and for all their obviouslook of the printed reproduction onincorrect paper, which still today deceivethe hopeful owner of ‘a Scott manuscript’– with all its suggestions of money, andthe magic of a great name.

Mound. He studied water-colour, but fellout with the tutor in the antique drawingclass and left aged seventeen. This wasthe only formal art education he receivedin his life. Nonetheless he had workshown in the RSA from 1872 to 1876.At the end of his apprenticeship hemoved to Glasgow to work under JamesSteel, modeller. Then he was with JohnMossman, sculptor, for two years. After abrief, unsuccessful sojourn in London, hereturned to Glasgow, where he took astudio in Bath Street. In 1886 he wentback to London and, while there,married Frieda Rettig Röhl, a Germanpainter. At his studio in Chelsea hespecialised in medallions and busts, butcommercial success did not materialise.Back in Glasgow in 1888, Macgillivraybecame first manager of the Scottish ArtReview, a short-lived Scottish version ofThe Studio. That same year, he was afounder of the ‘Glasgow Boys’. The onlysculptor in the group, he prided himselfon his involvement and felt piqued ifjournalists failed to accord him duemention; he would upbraid editors,leaving them in no doubt as to what heperceived as the crucial significance of his role.

At that time west coast artists felt thattheir colleagues in the east held too manyof the senior positions in the RoyalScottish Academy. Macgillivray wasdelighted to be elected an associate in1892 and a member four years later.Commissions rolled in, and with them acomfortable income. This influenced thecouple’s decision to settle in Edinburghin 1894, by which time they had twodaughters, Ina and Ehrna. Macgillivraydesigned and built a substantial house atthe top of Murrayfield Road, with anadjacent, spacious studio. Then personaltragedy struck. Frieda died in 1910 andIna seven years later, aged only thirty. Among Macgillivray’s papers is atestimonial to his family affections: ahand-sewn volume, largely in typescript,including family photographs and someof Frieda’s letters, usually signed ‘Yourown Rhet’. Macgillivray’s tribute to herdescribes their last outing:

Away into the country we went in thesunshine – saw the gathering of the corn,the golden stooks, and the ruddy colouringof the Autumn on the trees; more splendid

F O L I O2 310

My grandfather Louis ReidDeuchars (1870–1927) lefta frustratingly meagrepaper trail and because the

family had scant evidence of his career Ihad to turn to other sources such as theNational Library. On one foray I decidedto hunt for clues among the papers ofJames Pittendrigh Macgillivray, acontemporary sculptor.

It was a daunting prospect to be facedwith the index to the 223 files ofMacgillivray’s papers. Letters to and fromother artists proved fascinating, but therewas nothing from my grandfather. Imoved on to material relating to workMacgillivray was doing at the timeDeuchars came to Edinburgh. Thisproved to be the Gladstone Memorial,now in Coates Crescent Gardens.Although Macgillivray said that he neveremployed assistants, these records told adifferent story. Before me was evidencethat grandfather had started work on oneof the large female figures in December1908. Unfortunately, his engagementonly lasted three weeks, despite areference from F.W. Pomeroy: ‘I… haveheard that he is a good hard workingfellow and one willing to do what he istold.’ Macgillivray’s other assistantsreceived similar short shrift: only onelasted for as long as a year.

My grandmother had spoken of a‘Jimmy Deas’ who owed her husbandmoney. The significance of this story nowdawned on me. My suspicions wereconfirmed when I read Macgillivray’s curtcomment regarding my grandfather: ‘Iplaced his case in the hands of A.Menzies, W.S., Rutland Street, whosettled him.’

Once I had culled everything ofrelevance to my grandfather, that couldhave been the end of my interest inMacgillivray’s papers, but I was thenasked to write a piece about theGladstone memorial.

His autobiographical notes claiming‘Highland extraction’ and descent from aJacobite ‘who was out in the ’45’demonstrate a fierce pride in his familyhistory. He was born on 30 May 1856 inPort Elphinstone, near Inverurie,Aberdeenshire, to Margaret Pittendrighand William Macgillivray, a sculptor andmonumental mason. The family movedto Edinburgh around 1865 so that his

A Guarantee and a Slogan

LOUISE BOREHAM

The unexpected discovery is one ofthe joys of research. Louise

Boreham had few leads about thelife of her sculptor grandfather

until she delved into manuscriptcollections at the Library and

experienced that ‘eureka’moment. She learned among

other things that he had crossedswords with the larger than lifesculptor-poet, James Pittendrigh

Macgillivray (1856–1938), whosework includes the GladstoneMemorial, the statue of JohnKnox in St Giles’ Cathedral,

Edinburgh, and the Robert BurnsMonument in Irvine.

father could take up employment in thestudio of William Brodie. In 1869, Jameswas apprenticed to Brodie for six yearsand at fifteen he entered the Board ofManufactures Art School in the RoyalScottish Academy building on the

James Pittendrigh Macgillivray, no ordinary sculptor

Pittendrigh Macgillivray lost in a book.(Dep.349/219 picture 5)

than it had been for many years in this part.It was all beautiful! – a fine moment forone who had loved and painted landscape,as she had, to take farewell of the outerworld – and her last outing it proved. …(how quiet she was, what long dreamlikememories were passing with the landscapewe drove by – we scarcely spoke – her handin mine). (Dep.349/219)

Sculpture commissions virtually dried upafter 1920 and Macgillivray seems tohave become an increasinglycurmudgeonly old man. But, everresourceful, he turned to prints,zincographs, paintings and photographsof his work. Macgillivray wrote poetry inScots and English, which he publishedprivately: Pro Patria appeared in 1915and Bog-Myrtle and Peat Reek in 1922.Among his papers is a collection of eighty‘Sonnets in Petrarchan form dated …1898 to 1934’; but it appears that onlytwelve typed editions were produced.

A strong Scottish Nationalist,Macgillivray corresponded withChristopher Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid),who declared in a letter to The ScottishEducational Journal, July 1925, that hewas ‘by far our best complement toBurns as a vernacular poet’ and extolledMacgillivray’s achievements as an artist:

… let him be seen as the founder andfountainhead of a truly national school ofsculpture and as one of the most delightful,versatile, bracing and vital artists Scotlandhas ever possessed and lamentablymisprized, despite a certain amount of lip-service, and as a giant among pygmies so faras all his self-conceived rivals in the Art of

F O L I O 11

Sculpture today are concerned. PittendrighMacgillivray – the very name is a guaranteeand a slogan! He will assuredly come intohis own yet!

MacDiarmid was ‘strongly attracted byMacgillivray’s energy and force ofpersonality’, as Alan Bold has pointed outin his Letters.

It looks as if personal vanity as muchas nationalist politics drove Macgillivray’sattempts to revive the office of H. M.Sculptor-in-Ordinary for Scotland, whichhad been in abeyance for decades. Thecampaign was ostensibly organised by G.Emslie Troup on behalf of the StAndrews Society, but the representationto the Secretary of State for Scotland wasactually drafted by Macgillivray. Withsupreme confidence in his own self-worth, he made the case for hisappointment to the office:

… there has recently been erected in theCapital of Scotland a national monument toMr. Gladstone. In unveiling that Memorialin January 1917, Lord Rosebery eulogisedit as ‘a noble monument’; and the generalopinion of those competent to judge, isthat the work is the most important andartistic manifestation of MonumentalSculpture which has yet been produced inScotland. The designer and artist of thework is Mr. Pittendrigh Macgillivray,R.S.A., LL.D. a widely known artist ofvaried ability and high reputation, and onewho within and outside the artisticprofession would at once be acknowledged

as the chief representative of his Art inScotland. (Dep.349/101)

Signature slips in support of thecampaign were sent out to the great andthe good, with bulk supplies dispatchedto Dundee and Aberdeen to avoid anyaccusation of favour towards the centralbelt. However, despite all this effort andexpense, the original submission wasrejected on 30 December 1919.Macgillivray immediately drafted afurious retort, asserting there to be

… an impression that pains have been takento deny and annul this little mark ofSovereign favour towards the Art ofSculpture in Scotland, either on the groundof some petty economy as Scotland isusually made the victim of by Englishofficials; or because there is considered tobe no one in Scotland as distinguished inSculpture as the Limner in Painting or theHistoriographer in History.(Dep.349/101)

Troup tried to persuade Macgillivray toleave further representations to the StAndrews Society, but that would havegone against the grain. He was stillstinging two years later when he wasoffered a Civil List Pension of £75. In aletter written to Lord Carmichael inspring 1921 he launched a tirade:

… why is this granted separate from thetitle which ought to go with it and give itdignity? – a dignity which is my due bothfor my work in and on behalf of Sculpturein Scotland, during the last 30 years? – Whyshould it be made half an act of charity tomy circumstances? (Dep.349/101)

Macgillivray’s self promotion was finallyrewarded. In June his appointment asSculptor in Ordinary to His Majesty forScotland was confirmed. Despite the factthat the honour came with noremuneration and Macgillivray had to paystamp duty on the Warrant, he wroteimmediately to accept. The announce-ment brought considerable press coverageand a flood of letters of congratulation,all preserved among his papers.

This was all highly gratifying, butmoney remained an issue and the lack ofa Civil List pension rankled. In 1933 hecomplained to the RSA about thehonorarium of £98 a year received byD.Y. Cameron as HM Limner forScotland:

He is very well off. His Art achievement isoff [sic] little moment compared to mine,and he has given little public service.’(Dep.349/92)

Pittendrigh Macgillivray’s bookplate. (Dep.349/165)

Pro Patria was issued in a limited edition of 400copies, signed by the author. (Dep349/186)

Note on sources

The papers and publications of JamesPittendrigh Macgillivray are mostly to befound in his considerable deposit,Dep.349, but there are also someaccessions: Acc.2920, Acc.3328,Acc.3501, Acc.5656 Acc.7534,Acc.10477 and Acc.11224/1. Alsoavailable are his two poetry collections,Pro Patria, 1915 (R.25.c) and Bog-myrtleand Peat Reek: Verse mainly in the Northand South country dialects of Scotland,1922 (X.191.a), and seven items ofephemera – speeches on art and ImmortalMemories. The Letters of HughMacDiarmid edited with an introductionby Alan Bold (Lit.S.33.M) reproducesseveral friendly letters from MacDiarmidto Macgillivray, whom he liked andrespected. Jennifer Melville’s PittendrighMacgillivray (HP3.88.535), the catalogueof an exhibition held at Aberdeen ArtGallery in 1988, provides a well-illustratedaccount of the artist’s life and work, whileLouise Boreham’s paper on ‘TheGladstone Memorial’ appears inDangerous Ground: Sculpture in the City,Scottish Sculpture Trust, 1999(HP3.200.0792). The Library also hasthe monthly periodical, the Scottish ArtReview, which ran from June 1888 toDecember 1889 (Q.53).

F O L I O12

Macgillivray also felt slighted that theRoyal appointment brought nocommission from the King.

He frequently lamented having had tosell his house. The Valuation Rolls ofEdinburgh and Midlothian show thatownership of Ravelston Elms passed tothe 4th Marquess of Bute in 1917, withMacgillivray continuing to live there astenant until the end of his life. Hisrelationship with the Bute family appearsto date from when he was working onstatues for the Scottish National PortraitGallery, a building whose progress wasclosely followed by the 3rd Marquess.His son’s philanthropic gesture towardsMacgillivray was no surprise to me, sincemy own grandfather had been helpedfinancially by him. Although he carped tofriends about his treatment by hislandlord, Macgillivray was not abovewriting obsequious letters to him. In1933 Bute asked if he wanted to disposeof his ‘fine collection’ of old tartans,because the Marquess wanted to getideas for a tapestry being woven at theDovecot Studio for Mount Stuart (thefamily home on Bute). Macgillivrayreplied that he could reluctantly let hisLordship have the collection for £200.He concluded

… with gratitude to the generous spirit youhave shown in allowing me to remain hererent free, and I want you to know that Itake great care of the place and keep thegarden in perfect order. (Dep.349/109)

During his latter years, an exhibitionorganised by Alexander Reid & Lefèvrein Glasgow in 1927 resulted in somesales, but Macgillivray grumbled that thedealer had done little to promote hiswork. His old friend, Thomas Corsan

Morton, then curator of Kirkcaldy ArtGallery, allowed him to have a loanexhibition there in 1928, but sales weredisappointing. An exhibition inEdinburgh at Parson’s Galleries in 1930later transferred to his own studio andwas still available in 1933, when he wasurging Lord Bute to come and see it.Macgillivray must have been strugglingfinancially, but, in addition to the moneyfrom the Civil List, he was also in receiptof pensions from the RSA and theNasmyth Fund. However, his spirit wasunbowed. In 1937, his response to aletter from Alfred Longden in Londonwas as biting as ever:

If anyone knowing Scotland, and me, andmy position in the Country in relation tothe Art of Sculpture ever had the least ideathat I would send photographs of my workto London and to the studio of Reid Dick,for adjudication by him and a sub-committee of a Glasgow (Empire)exhibition:- they were vastly mistaken!(Dep.349/107)

My own feelings towards Macgillivray areequivocal. I respect him for his ability asa sculptor, yet he could displaybreathtaking arrogance. This manifeststime and again through the papersdeposited in the Library. I would findmyself thinking: the sheer cheek of theman! He often referred to his humbleorigins with pride, but the fact that hewas not born into privilege perhapsengendered a certain resentment towardsthe Scottish establishment and drove hisbrash insistence that the world shouldaccord his achievements due respect. Myview of him is coloured by his attitudetowards my grandfather. After his briefstint with Macgillivray, Deuchars went on

A family snap showing Ina and Ehrna Macgillivraywith dogs. (Dep.349/219 picture 3)

to work with thearchitect RobertLorimer, who gave hima commission for alarge war memorialgroup that Macgillivraydoubtless thoughtshould have been his.This provoked avenomous vendettaagainst the architectand my grandfather,which Macgillivraycontinued long afterboth had died.However, the ‘hand-sewn volume’ devotedto the memory ofMacgillivray’s wife and daughter does reveal a softer private aspect.

Macgillivray died on 2 May 1938,aged nearly 82. He was buried in thegraveyard of Gogar church, beside hiswife and daughters. When he chose the‘quaint picturesque place, on risingground by a slow stream, and beside alittle chapel of XIII century days’, helittle dreamed of the adjacent multi-lanehighway now disturbing the peace. Hemust be birlin!

Frieda Macgillivray with her daughters.(Dep.349/219 picture 14)

F O L I O 13

The House of Murray isundoubtedly best known as thepublisher of Lord Byron, somuch so that Byron’s Murray is

sometimes mistakenly regarded as itsfounder. In fact, the business wasestablished a generation earlier, in 1768 –Byron would not be born for twentyyears – by Edinburgh-born John Murrayand run by him until his death in 1793.His son entered the business soon afterand, with Byron and other notableauthors in his lists, achieved prominenceand made a small fortune.

While few researchers have come tothe Murray Archive in London to delveinto the eighteenth-century period, thematerials for these early years of thefirm’s history offer a rich and uniquerecord of the culture of the past.

Nearly twenty years ago, while a post-graduate student at EdinburghUniversity, I first visited the MurrayArchive at 50 Albemarle Street inLondon in search of material about theScottish historian Gilbert Stuart(1743–86). As hardly anyone had heardof this shadowy figure, who lurked onthe darker side of the so-called ScottishEnlightenment, he seemed like anappealing choice for a doctoraldissertation. It was amazing to learn thatStuart’s publisher, John Murray, was stillin business after more than 200 years.

Stuart challenged the opinions ofmany of the leading writers of the day,including David Hume and WilliamRobertson. As a literary critic andhistorian, he wrote in a politicised and personalised manner that wasuncharacteristic of the generally well-mannered Georgian society in which helived. Stuart’s sharp mind – admired byBoswell among others – earned himrespect, but his contentious approachsecured his reputation as a trouble-maker.

An anecdote about Stuart inCalamities of Authors: Including someInquiries respecting their Moral andLiterary Characters, 1812, first alertedme to the possibility that some ofStuart’s letters to Murray might survive.In this collection of twenty-seven essayson copyright, criticism, satire and literarygenius, Isaac Disraeli included an accountof Stuart: ‘Literary Hatred: Exhibiting aConspiracy against an Author’, in whichhe quoted letters of Stuart to the first

John Murray – letters he had borrowedfrom the publisher’s archive. ‘In thepeaceful walks of literature’, he wrote,‘we are startled at discovering geniuswith the mind, and, if we conceive theinstrument it guides to be a stiletto, withthe hand of an assassin – irascible,vindictive, armed with the indiscriminatesatire, never pardoning the merit of rivalgenius.’

Stuart’s trail led me to the MurrayArchive, but not without a detour.

The address for John Murray given inthe imprint of Gilbert Stuart’s works is32 Fleet Street. This shop, however, is nolonger home to the publishing house. (Itis now a Starbucks.) In 1812, when hewas well established, the second JohnMurray left Fleet Street for the morefashionable West End, settling in at 50Albemarle Street, the first one-way streetin London. It was to this address that Iwrote in the hope of finding Stuart’sletters and from which I received a replyfrom the archivist, Virginia Murray,inviting me to visit.

Everyone who walks into the drawingrooms at Number 50 feels somethingspecial. It is the power and continuity ofhistory – the cultural history of Britain,and far beyond its shores, over twocenturies. Since Murray’s arrival in 1812,the impressive public rooms have onlybeen redecorated once. Fine portraits ofliterary giants, such as Byron, WalterScott, and Washington Irving, and of theheads of the publishing house, line wallscovered in splendid gilt-embossedwallpaper. Shelf after shelf of Murraypublications surround the visitor in ashrine to words and ideas. The list ofauthors who discussed their works inthese rooms with generations of Murraysand who left a record of theircontributions in the archive downstairsdazzles and even confounds theimagination.

Here, I thought to myself, is asplendid place to do some research. Here too was a busy office, doing what it had done so well for centuries:publishing books.

The archivist, Virginia Murray,greeted me, and soon after theformidable John (Jock) G. Murray, thesixth in the line, strode through theroom and asked, ‘What brings you toMurray’s?’ I stumbled an answer andcowered whenever he appeared.

The Alluring Archive of John Murray

BILL ZACHS

Backed by the Scottish Executive,the National Library of Scotland

is pursuing with energy andcommitment the opportunity to

acquire the John Murray Archive.The Heritage Lottery Fund will

announce its decision on theLibrary’s application early in

2005. Integration of the archiveinto the Library’s collections will

enhance understanding of thecultural history of Britain and its

empire in the last 200 years, apoint emphasised in this article byBill Zachs, biographer of the ‘first’

John Murray in the greatpublishing dynasty.

Reflections of a researcher

Portrait of Gilbert Stuart by John Donaldson, thisbeing the frontispiece to the 1805 edition (A.107.b)of Stuart’s History of the Establishment of theReformation of Religion in Scotland, first published in1780.

F O L I O14

were Murray’s ‘day-books’ which herecorded every single transaction over hisshop counter.

With these materials, I could nowproperly tell the story of Stuart’sproductive if unhappy life. Angry at hisfailure to achieve popularity or financialsuccess equal to his fellow writers, anddisappointed at the loss of aprofessorship at Edinburgh University,he drank himself to death. His goodfriend Murray put it best just after thesad event when he wrote: ‘Stuart wasthe greatest enemy to himself. Hecould not endure to be thoughtsubject to human infirmities.’

Looking more generally throughthe eighteenth-century documents inthe Murray Archive, I also realisedthat here were the makings of a newproject – an account of the first Murray’scareer. Such an undertaking might justenable me to retain my seat in thatinspiring drawing room at Number 50for a while longer.

My next visit produced yet furtherrevelations. As I pored over Stuart’sletters and accounts, Virginia Murrayappeared at my desk with a frameddrawing in her hand. It was the originalpencil sketch of Gilbert Stuart by theScottish miniaturist John Donaldsonfrom which an engraving, prefixed to hisHistory of the Establishment of theReformation of Religion in Scotland(1780) had been taken. Handstrembling, I held the drawing, lookeddeeply into Stuart’s penetrating eyes, andfelt the past move yet another step closerto the present. A chill ran through my

body, and it felt as if Stuart himself wasin the room.

It was not easy for a newcomer likeMurray to break into the top ranks of along-established, closely-knit Londontrade. Making a living was a constantstruggle, such that he would lament toone author: ‘Commend to me a saleablework like Robinson Crusoe that will pleasethe millions. What signifies a learnedwork when there are not learned menenough to buy it’.

Despite many setbacks, Murraydeterminedly struggled on and found arelatively lucrative niche in thecompetitive London marketplace,particularly as a medical publisher. Withthe inheritance of about £2,000 from awealthy uncle in Ireland, Murray was ableto take more risks. The landmark 1774House of Lords decision that limitedcopyright and began to break themonopolistic practices of the book trade,created further opportunities for anaggressive, hard worker like Murray. Over1,000 books published during a 25-year period include his name in theimprint. In 1783 he established andhimself edited the English Review, amonthly periodical that secured a place asa rival to the longstanding MonthlyReview, and Critical Review. Murrayrecruited able writers, including WilliamGodwin, and paid them well. At his deathin 1793 the journal was amalgamatedwith the Analytical Review.

In all, the first Murray did more thanenough to perpetuate his name. Thebusiness he purchased for £700 in 1768

However, it was impossible not tooverhear his conversation with an authorin an adjacent room that morning – anda meeting with his editorial team in theafternoon. I could easily imagine GilbertStuart and the first Murray, or Byron andthe second, engaged in similardiscussions 200 years before.

During this initial visit I examinedfourteen letters written by Stuart toMurray, each one full of fresh and usefulinformation. To my surprise these letterswere not the ones referred to by Disraeli.It turned out that the cache of more thanforty Stuart letters, borrowed by Disraelifor the Calamities, had never beenreturned to Albemarle Street. (I wouldlater track them down at the BodleianLibrary where they are deposited amongthe Hughenden Papers.) Fortunately,there was not enough time to transcribeall fourteen letters, giving me a goodexcuse to return to the wondroussurroundings of 50 Albemarle Street afew weeks later.

On this next visit more Gilbert Stuartmaterial lay in store. Virginia Murraytook me downstairs into the old winecellar, in recent times used to store theearly documents of the firm. She directedme to a shelf of vellum-bound foliovolumes. These, it turned out, containedcopies of nearly every letter the firstMurray wrote during his booksellingcareer. Among more than 5,000 letterswere nearly 150 to Gilbert Stuart. Therewere also volumes of account ledgerswith entries for Stuart that revealed many literary projects besides his knownpublished works. Stuart served as aregular reader for Murray; he anonym-ously translated a number of Frenchworks for British publication, and hiscritical eye is evident in many Murraybooks. In addition to these ledgers, there

Darwin correspondence and a first edition of Onthe Origin of Species (1859); from the John MurrayArchive.

An account book showing details relating to JaneAusten’s Emma, 1815–16; from the John MurrayArchive.

Travel and exploration made a strong strand of theMurray publishing output. This image from thearchive shows a letter and photographs by theintrepid Isabella Bird.

F O L I O 15

Note on sources

The presence in Scotland’s NationalLibrary of the papers of Blackwood,Constable, Ballantyne and Smith Elder –archives of world significance – meansthat it is an international centre forresearch into the history of publishing.Should the John Murray Archiveeventually come to the Library, it wouldtake its place alongside thesecomplementary archives and, of course,the firm’s output represented in itscollections of printed books. Rather thansingle out individual examples, this noteon sources places the emphasis on the‘Scottish’ connection, which provedinfluential in the conduct of the firm’sbusiness on many levels. The ‘first’ JohnMurray was a Scot. In 1768, afterattending Edinburgh University andhaving worked on an estate near Elgin,he travelled south to London, where heused his inheritance of £60 to enterpublishing. He established a reputation as one of the foremost publishers of theday, producing books across a wide rangeof subjects including literature, travel andmedicine. Following in his father’sfootsteps with energy and sound businessacumen, John Murray II used theScottish connection to establish beneficialalliances north of the border withWilliam Blackwood and ArchibaldConstable. A key function of publishingis to promote the work vigorously inorder to maximise readership. The firmof John Murray was never short of therequisite flair. John Murray II had it inspades: the first edition of Lord Byron’s

(with money borrowed from his wife) wasvalued at over £12,000 when he died atthe age of 56, giving his son a solidfoundation on which to build what wouldbecome the most renowned publishinghouse in nineteenth-century Britain.

Research into the career of the firstMurray brought me regularly toAlbemarle Street for several years. Alaptop computer in tow, I set aboutreading through all the letters Murraywrote and all that he received. To bestorganise this material, and as a service toother scholars, I prepared an index of thisextensive correspondence, noting lettersto and from many notable figures –letters virtually unread since theircomposition. An endless list of furtherprojects suggested themselves, but I wasdetermined to remain focused on the first Murray.

The further realisation that hiddenbehind the volumes of the first Murray’sletters and accounts lay the virtuallyintact archive of another eighteenth-century bookseller (Charles Elliot ofEdinburgh) gave me hopes of a lifetimeof research at Albemarle Street. But itclearly made more sense to leave thistrove to others, and now WarrenMcDougall is working his way throughthis rich vein of material. (The Elliotpapers ended up at Albemarle Street as aconsequence of the marriage between thefirst Murray’s son, John Murray II, andElliot’s daughter, Anne.) Newinformation about many of the leadinglights of the day – David Hume andRobert Burns among them – is to befound in these papers.

Meanwhile, Virginia Murray, togetherwith her husband John (seventh in theline) and the redoubtable ‘Jock’, whodied in 1993, encouraged me at everyturn as the first Murray’s story began totake shape. Although my fondest hopehad been to have my book bear theMurray imprint, their suggestion that I find an academic publisher ultimatelyhad my best interests at heart. I workedat the archive so often that friendshipsdeveloped not only with the Murraysthemselves but with members of theirstaff. One summer I was even asked toplay in the firm’s rounders team.

As a regular visitor to the MurrayArchive, I often met other researcherswho were delving into different aspects ofthe publishing house and its authors.There were the Byronists, of course, butalso a steady flow of book tradehistorians, among them Peter Isaac,William St Clair and Angus Fraser (whoseimportant archive of George Borrowmanuscripts has been bequeathed to theLibrary, Acc.12091). There were such

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage sold out afterthree days. As the poet commented in hisjournal, ‘I awoke one morning and foundmyself famous.’ Success breeds success,and John Murray II attracted a glitteringconstellation of literary stars, includingJane Austen and Herman Melville, aswell as many of the great thinkers andcommentators of the day. It must havebeen a hard act to follow for JohnMurray III, who took the reins in thelater nineteenth century. In 1859 hebecame the publisher of perhaps the mostcontroversial scientific book of all time:Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.Knowledge and expertise was passeddown the generations of Murrays, witheach successive incarnation of thebusiness benefiting from the web ofcontacts and nexus of know-howestablished by its predecessors. Further information on the subject isavailable from Bill Zachs’ illuminatingThe First John Murray and the LateEighteenth-Century London Book Trade(H3.200.1939), and his Without Regardto Good Manners: Biography of GilbertStuart 1743–1786 (H3.98.2525).Calamities of Authors: Including someInquiries respecting their Moral andLiterary Characters by Isaac Disraeli,1812, is to be found at Dav.I.5/3.

Illustrations accompanying this articleshowing items from the John MurrayArchive are reproduced with the kindpermission of John Murray.

well-known writers as Miranda Seymourand Humphrey Carpenter, who ispresently continuing the history of thefirm down to the present day.

Rather like the first Murray’s convivialgatherings with authors such as GilbertStuart, or the second Murray’s well-known circle of ‘4 o’clock Friends’, morerecent researchers at Albemarle Street haveshared in their own sense of camaraderie,largely facilitated by the warmth andenthusiasm of the Murrays themselves. Theircommitment is grounded in the belief that thehistory of the firm and the story of their familyare inseparable. The authors who filled theirlists and the researchers who plumb theirarchive are all part of a wider family circle.

If the drawing rooms at 50 AlbemarleStreet have long been my home fromhome, the reading rooms of the NationalLibrary of Scotland are undoubtedlyhome itself for me as a researcher. Thepossibility that the Murray Archive willcome intact into the national collection

is a welcome and exciting one for allparties involved.

Just as the second Murray’s movefrom Fleet Street to Albemarle in 1812created a setting from which he wouldbuild an unrivalled publishing empirewhose books were read by millions, thearrival of the archive in Scotland’sNational Library (where it would joinother important publishers’ archives suchas Bell & Bradfute, Blackwood,Constable, Ballantyne and Smith Elder)would create an unrivalled centre forcultural studies that would be visited bypeople young and old, from far and wide. The first John Murray, who was bornnearly 270 years ago in a tenement atBaillie Clerk’s Land, less than fifty yardsfrom the present headquarters of theNational Library in the Lawnmarket,would, I can imagine, have looked inwonder at the legacy he established and relished its final return to the city of his birth.

F O L I O16

Notes on contibutorsLOUISE BOREHAM, retired college lecturer,has published several articles based on herthesis, Louis Reid Deuchars (1870–1927)and the Relationship between Sculptors andArchitects. Her paper, ‘The GladstoneMemorial’ in Dangerous Ground: Sculpturein the City, Scottish Sculpture Trust, 1999,looked at Macgillivray’s largest commissionand the problems over its location. She hasalso given two lectures on his work: thebust of Sir Robert Rowand Anderson andthe 1928 Kirkcaldy Art Gallery exhibitionand its aftermath.

DR IAIN GORDON BROWN has served theNational Library of Scotland and theworldwide scholarly community for nearlytwenty-eight years. He is Principal Curatorof Manuscripts, and is a Fellow of the RoyalSociety of Edinburgh. The literature andculture of the age of Walter Scott is one ofhis chief curatorial responsibilities, and inthis field he has written (in addition tomuch other published work) a number ofimportant articles, including a history of theLibrary’s Scott collection, and has editedScott’s Interleaved Waverley Novels: anIntroduction and Commentary (1987) andAbbotsford and Sir Walter Scott: the Imageand the Influence (2003).

IAN CUNNINGHAM formerly worked in theNational Library of Scotland, latterly asKeeper of the combined Department ofManuscripts, Maps and Music. He was firstchair of Project Pont, editing The NationSurvey’d, and in his retirement hastranslated the Latin texts of the Blaeu Atlasof Scotland into English. CHRISTOPHER

FLEET is Deputy Map Curator at theLibrary, and he has taken a leading role increating the Library’s map websites.CHARLES WITHERS is Professor of HistoricalGeography at the University of Edinburgh.He has published widely on the historicalgeography of Scotland and on the historicalgeographies of science.

BILL ZACHS, author of The First JohnMurray and the Late Eighteenth-CenturyLondon Book Trade (Oxford UniversityPress, 1998) and Without Regard to GoodManners: Biography of Gilbert Stuart1743–1786 (Edinburgh University Press,1992). He lives in Edinburgh where he iscurrently editing a volume of JamesBoswell’s correspondence and writing astudy of the Rev. Hugh Blair (1723–1800).He is also working on a new project, ‘TheScottish Endarkenment’, an alternative viewof eighteenth-century Scotland.

BE A FRIENDThe Friends of the National Libraries

is dedicated to helping the libraries and record

offices of Britain acquire books, manuscript

treasures and archives for the nation, especially

those which might otherwise be exported.

It has been doing this valuable work since 1931,

and has helped the National Library of Scotland on

many occasions. Annual membership is £15:

contact Dr Iain G Brown of the Manuscripts

Division for information on joining the Friends.

National Library of ScotlandGeorge IV BridgeEDINBURGHEH1 1EWTel 0131-226 4531Fax 0131-622 4803www.nls.uk

If you have any comments regarding Folio, orwould like to be added to the mailing list toreceive it (or if you would prefer a large printversion), please contact Jackie Cromarty,Marketing Services by telephone on 0131-6224810 or via e-mail at j.cromarty@nls.uk

Folio is edited by Jennie Renton

ISSN 1475-1151Cover: ‘Eos’ sculpted by Pittendrigh Macgillivray.(Acc.3501/36)

NLS diary datesNOVEMBER-JANUARYThe Private Lives of Books: this freeexhibition features books belonging tofamous Scots and to ordinary people whichillustrate the relationships that developbetween books and their owners. Scotland’sFirst Atlas: The Nation Displayed celebratesthe 350th anniversary of this landmarkvolume, Atlas Novus by Joan Blaeu (see thearticle ‘Putting Scotland on View’ inside formore information). Both exhibitions runfrom 13 November to 31 January 2005.Open Monday – Saturday 10am to 5pm,Sunday 2pm to 5pm.

DECEMBERJack O’ Lantern Shadow Puppet TheatreThe renowned shadow puppet theatrecompany performs ‘Michael Scot and theDevil’. All ages welcome. Tuesday 14 December 6pm

Our Favourite Books at Christmas: InConversation at the National LibraryWe welcome book lovers and creativewriters to share thoughts and readings onfavourite books to give and read at thistime of year… not necessarily aboutChristmas! With Rosemary Goring, LiteraryEditor of the Herald. Thursday 16 December 7pm

JANUARY 2005World Burns NightA global cultural event celebrating RobertBurns’ worldwide appeal and influence. Arich variety of music, song and refreshmentswill be on offer. All communities warmlywelcome. Tuesday 25 January 7pm, CausewaysideBuilding

Spring 2005CONNIE BYROM’s ‘Blessings As Well AsBeauties’: The Edinburgh New TownGardens is due out in 2005. Her researchhas yielded some surprising findings, notleast the rather fortuitous development ofmany of the open spaces in the New Town.She drew from many different sources, buther research at the Library, in particularamong the Harden papers, brought to thefore the human element of this fascinatinghistory, while William Playfair’s letters tothe Rutherford family were another richresource.

KEN COCKBURN, editor of The DancersInherit the Party: Early Stories, Poems andPlays by Ian Hamilton Finlay, describeshow the Library’s archive of the artist'scorrespondence and other paperscontributed to the compilation of thevolume. Highly innovative, Finlaydeveloped his aesthetic through variousmedia. His prevailing themes have beenexpressed in a sequence of forms – painting,short stories, plays, poems, concrete poems,sculptural poems – culminating in thecreation of the world-famous garden, LittleSparta.

J. FORBES MUNRO, Emeritus Professor ofInternational Economic History in theUniversity of Glasgow, examines theinvolvement of Sir William Mackinnon, oneof Victorian Scotland's most successfulentrepreneurs, in the 'opening-up' of East-Central Africa to David Livingstone's idealsof ‘Christianity, Commerce andCivilisation’. Using papers held in theLibrary and elsewhere, he looks at thevarious elements of geo-strategic thinking,commercial considerations andhumanitarian impulses which informedMackinnon's actions, as well as those offellow Scots.

JENNIE RENTON, a freelance editor andjournalist, discusses some excitingpossibilities arising from Edinburgh’s newstatus as first Unesco World City ofLiterature and asks: How does thisdevelopment connect with the NationalLibrary of Scotland’s current strategy? Shealso takes a look at the splendidly producedtwo-volume book which presented the case.The Library has a copy of this publication,describing the city’s rich literary lifecontemporary and historical.