The name of William Morris today may be more familiar to booklovers than that of Cobden-Sanderson, but I venture to predict that within a single decade the latter’s work as printer and binder at the Doves Press at Hammersmith, London, will prove to have been a more determining factor in printing as an art than that of William Morris at the Kelmscott Press, and that the general verdict will be that Cobden-Sanderson carried out the splendid principles laid down by Morris more consistently than did that great artist-craftsman himself.
T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON, 1841–1922
From Etching by Alphonse Legros, 1893
The story of Cobden-Sanderson’s life is an interesting human document. He told it to me one evening, its significance being heightened by the simplicity of the recital. At seventeen he was apprenticed to an engineer, but he worked less than a year in the draft room. He disliked business as business, and began to read for Cambridge, with the idea of entering the Church. While at Trinity College he read for mathematical honors, but three years later, having given up all idea of going into the Church, he left Cambridge, refusing honors and a degree, which he might have had, as a protest against the competitive system and the “warp” it gave to all university teaching. Then, for seven or eight years, he devoted himself to Carlyle and the study of literature, “Chiefly German philosophy,” he said, “which is perhaps not literature,” supporting himself by desultory writing and practicing medicine. When he was thirty years old he was admitted to the Bar, which profession he abandoned thirteen years later to become a manual laborer. The following is quoted from notes which I made after this conversation:
I despaired of knowledge in a philosophical sense, yet I yearned to do or to make something. This was the basic idea of my life. At this time it was gradually revealed to me that the arts and crafts of life might be employed to make society itself a work of art, sound and beautiful as a whole, and in all its parts.
It is difficult to associate Cobden-Sanderson’s really tremendous contributions to bookmaking as an art with his self-effacing personality. If I had met the man before I had become intimately acquainted with his work, I should have been disappointed; having had him interpreted to me by his books before I met him, his unique personality proved a definite inspiration and gave me an entirely new viewpoint on many phases of the art of typography in its application to human life.
In person, Cobden-Sanderson was of slight build, with sloping shoulders, his most noticeable feature being his reddish beard tinged with gray. He was nervous and shy, and while talking seldom looked one squarely in the eye, yet at no time could one doubt the absolute sincerity of his every word and act. He was hopelessly absent-minded. Invited to dine with me in London, he appeared the evening before the date set, retiring overwhelmed with embarrassment when he discovered his mistake. On the following evening he forgot the appointment altogether! Later, when in Boston, he accepted an invitation to dine with a literary society, but failed to appear because he could not remember where the dinner was to be held. He had mislaid his note of invitation and could not recall the name of the man who sent it. On that evening he dashed madly around the city in a taxicab for over an hour, finally ending up at his hotel in absolute exhaustion while the members of the literary society dined without their lion!
While president of the Society of Printers in Boston, I arranged for Cobden-Sanderson to come to America to deliver some lectures on The Ideal Book. Among these were four given at Harvard University. At the conclusion of the last lecture he came to my library, thoroughly tired out and completely discouraged. Seated in a great easy chair he remained for several moments in absolute silence, resting his face upon his hands. Suddenly, without a moment’s warning, he straightened up and said with all the vehemence at his command,
“I am the veriest impostor who ever came to your shores!”