American Book-Plates: A Guide to Their Study with Examples. Charles Dexter Allen
pieces and going out on a bridge over the Schuylkill River, threw them in! There they may be looked for by any who choose.
The counterfeit of this plate appeared in an auction sale of books, in the city of Washington, about the year 1863. The late Dr. W. F. Poole with Dr. J. M. Toner was present at the sale. The plate was placed in these books for the purpose of getting a higher price for them than could
otherwise have been obtained. These gentlemen detected the fraudulent plate, and denounced it as such in the auction-room, and the books brought only their actual value as books. Copies of this plate turn up now and then, and the unsuspecting are still deceived by it. It is readily detected if one is forewarned. The work is manifestly inferior to the good plate, the alignment of the name is poor, the quality and appearance of the paper belie its professed age, and the printing is of decidedly different appearance, being bold and strong in the genuine, and weak and thin in the forgery. A further difference is noted in the crest, which is tinctured gules in the forgery and sable in the genuine. These plates are sometimes claimed to be genuine and to be an early and unsatisfactory piece of work, which Washington rejected, and which was replaced with the other and accepted plate. This idea is plausible perhaps to some, but to any who had information from Dr. Poole it is an impossible theory. Another source of confusion is in the reproductions of the plate which have been made from time to time to illustrate works on the life of Washington, some of these being quite faithful duplicates of the genuine plate with its trifling flaws; but the paper and the printing are usually conclusive proof of the age of the print. It is safe to say that there is but one genuine Washington plate. It is true that the re-strikes of the original copper are about, but these, too, are readily distinguishable by the printing and paper.
The plate of Bushrod Washington, nephew of George, is also of much interest, and the manifest similarity of its design to some of the plates by Dawkins has led to the suggestion that he made this plate. But to the mind of the writer, Dawkins was not a man of originality, and was a regular copyist when it came to book-plates; the similarity of the plate of James Samuels to this plate is rather to his mind a further evidence of the clever adoption of a reasonably good design by Dawkins, than of his having been chosen by Judge Washington to engrave his book-plate. The design of this plate is more spirited than any of the authenticated work of Dawkins; indeed, it surpasses the plate of the General in that respect.
The arms are the same in these two Washington plates. In his “Barons of the Potomac and the Rappahannock” (published by the Grolier Club, 1892), Mr. Moncure Daniel Conway has referred to the older form of the arms as used by earlier members of the family. The earliest shields held “Gules on a barre argent 3 Cinquefoiles of ye first.” The second step was made by changing to the following, “Gules on a fesse sable 3 mullets.” The last and present form is, “Argent, two bars gules: in chief three mullets of the second.” These last, it is claimed, suggested our national flag.
The plate of Elizabeth Graeme of Philadelphia should be noted here, as it is the only example of an heraldic plate used by a lady of colonial times. It is fully described in the list.
Leaving now these older plates of special interest to be discovered in the Lists, we turn to a few modern plates which are worthy of particular attention.
The plate of Daniel Webster is a plain armorial with the motto, Vera pro gratis, on the ribbon below the shield.
The etched plate of the late James Eddy Mauran, the early collector of American and other book-plates, was an armorial of very handsome appearance. The shield is surrounded with the style of decoration used on the Chippendale examples, oak leaves being used in lieu of mantling.
An earlier plate in two sizes shows some differences in the design.
The plate of the late George W. Childs seems wholly in keeping with the career of its distinguished owner. The sword, broken into pieces by the quill, is depicted within an oval garter which bears the motto, Nihil sine labore. The words from Lytton’s Richelieu, The pen is mightier than the sword, are also given just within the frame.
Coming now to mention a few plates of our well-known men of letters, we naturally accept the plate of Oliver Wendell Holmes as worthy of the chiefest place. In this the motto, Per ampliora ad altiora, is given on a ribbon beneath a beautiful representation of the “Chambered Nautilus,” the
Ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purple wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
“If you will look into Roget’s ‘Bridgewater Treatise,’ ” said the Autocrat one morning, “you
will find a figure of one of these shells and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?
“ ‘Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.’ ”
A plain armorial plate with the motto, Vitam impendere vero, and the name in fac-simile of his autograph, was used by J. G. Holland.
The plate of Brander Matthews, designed by Edwin A. Abbey, represents the discovery of a mask of the old Greek comedy by an American Indian. With feathers stuck in his scanty hair, and his tomahawk laid on the ground beside him, he appears to deliberate upon the possible use of the enormous face which grins at him from his knee. On a circular frame surrounding this picture the following words from Molière are given, Que pensez vous de cette comedie. The appropriateness of the design is apparent for one who is a collector of the literature of the French drama, and the author of several books relating to the stage both in America and France.
In the plate of Edmund Clarence Stedman, the author of “The Poets of America,” we see Pan piping in the sylvan glades; the shepherd and the