“Yours very truly,
“Walter Crane.”
At a later date, on returning a book, the kind originator of my treasure added some notes in pencil about this particular kind of work; notes quaint and full of pith as the writer’s drawing.
“You have given me a handsome certificate as a book-plate designer and I must live up to it, though, so far, book-plates have only been a small part of my work. I am not always Ex Libris, but like a rest inside the pages, you know, letting one’s fancy loose, both as a writer and as a decorator and illustrator. All the same, there are moments when one is inclined to shriek, with Hilda in Ibsen’s Master Builder, ‘Books are so irrelevant,’ and, again, at other times to say (with Disraeli, was it not?), ‘When I want a book, I will write one.’”
Another note given below enclosed his own book-plate:
“I send you my own book-plate with the greatest pleasure. It has been done some years, and I do not think it is as nice a one as yours—though I say it! I am glad that yours not only pleases you, but your friends. I don’t know whether you saw it in the Arts and Crafts, but it was there.”
As to book-plates, seeing that books are a particularly treasured kind of personal property and cannot yet be considered as communal as umbrellas; and because borrowers of books like long leases, but are generally provided with short memories, the possibly harmless, but certainly most necessary, book-plate has a distinct raison d’être.
Furthermore, they afford an opportunity of embodying in a succinct, symbolic, and decorative form the concentrated essence of the character, performances, career, and descent of the book-owner or lover. Thus book-plates acquire a certain historic interest in course of time, and may from the first possess as well an artistic interest; but this, naturally, depends on their design and treatment.
Next appears a notable figure thrown upon my cinematograph stage by the rapid process of setting free successive memories.
Watts. For a lover of pictures, what recollections that name implies!