The device of Ferdinand de Lesseps was a Hercules with the motto “Aperire terram gentibus,” in allusion to his great work on the Isthmus of Suez. He did not then foresee his defeat and ruin in the Panama Canal.
The Comtesse de Noë possesses a name which permits her to represent the prehistoric ark as a kind of rebus; whilst Mons. Eugène Jacob, notary of Angerville, possesses a small ex-libris, designed by his nephew, Mons. Métivet, which represents a Jacob’s ladder crowded with book-loving angels.
Albert Tissandier, the learned aëronaut, proclaims his specialty on his circular book-plate, which shows an inflated balloon soaring aloft to the realms of thought and ideality.
Whilst Prince Roland Bonaparte, who possessed one of the largest and most valuable libraries of modern collectors, was content to use nothing more elaborate than the Napoleonic eagle.
One of the most interesting and also one of the scarcest book-plates of modern French men of letters is the tiny ex-libris of Prosper-Mérimée, whose library was burnt during the troubles of the Commune in 1871.
It is, as nearly as possible, the size of a penny postage-stamp, but it was designed and engraved by no less a man than Viollet Le Duc. The Gothic letters P. M. are surrounded by a scroll in the shape of a horse-shoe, with the opening directed upwards. The motto, in Greek, may be thus translated, “Do not forget to doubt.” Here, too, is the unpretentious plate of the bibliophile Jacob, with angels bringing him his favourite volumes; whilst that of Charles Monselet, the author, has been inserted already in the chapter on punning plates.
A well-known plate is that designed by Gavarni for the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, and engraved by Jules de Goncourt himself. These brothers have written much on French art, and, in allusion to their literary partnership, the plate shows a sheet of paper on which are the letters E. J. held down by the two outstretched fingers of a hand. The design is at once simple and striking, but it has the great demerit of not proclaiming its owner’s name, which is, after all, the raison d’être of a book-plate.
I cannot conclude this short chapter on distinguished plate-owners better than by giving the Japanesque ex-libris of Octave Uzanne, who has not only produced many charming volumes, the delight of all book-lovers, but is also himself an enthusiastic collector of ex-libris, and a writer of authority on their history.