Of American women, in the early days of independence, only one is known to have used a book-plate. This lady was Elizabeth Græme, the youngest child of Dr. Thomas Græme, member of the Provincial Council, and in other ways a distinguished and wealthy citizen, who owned Græme Park, an estate lying some twenty miles from Philadelphia. Elizabeth was born in 1737. At seventeen she was engaged to be married, but her engagement was suddenly—why, we learn not—broken off. To divert her mind, she set to work to translate Télémaque. She carried out the task, but it was never published, and lies to-day, as she wrote it, in the Philadelphia Museum. Her next engagement was to a man ten years her junior—a Mr. Ferguson; him she married, but, her husband taking the Crown's part, they separated. By the time of her death, in 1801, she had grown needy, despite the fact that she received money from her literary productions, which were numerous. Though evidently a staunch Republican, she was the bearer of the famous letter from the Rev. Jacob Duché to Washington, in which the writer begged his correspondent to return 'to his allegiance to the King.' The book-plate, which is, in every way, curious and interesting, is Armorial.
An interesting point about American book-plates—which illustrates a distinctive feature in social life there—is the existence of a large number belonging to Friendly Societies, Mutual Improvement Societies, and institutions akin to them; for the books forming the libraries of these bodies contain some of the most curious and characteristic American book-plates. Amongst the number may be mentioned those of the New York Society Library, the Farmington Library, the Hasty Pudding Society and the Porcellian Club in Harvard College, the Linonian Society and the Brothers of Unity in Yale, and the Social Friends in Dartmouth College.
None of these are particularly early, indeed the majority must be dated after the establishment of independence, but they are well worthy of study. Allegory runs wild in the book-plates—there are three mentioned by Mr. Dexter Allen—of the first-named Society, and Minerva is prominent in all. Let me endeavour to describe two, both the work of Maverick. In one she hands a volume of the Society's Library to an Indian, whose attitude in receiving it suggests that he had never seen a book before; in which case its contents cannot have done him much good. In the other she has just descended from Olympus, entered the library, and seized a volume from the book-shelf, which she presents to an apparently more appreciative red-skin. I say appreciative, for in return he hands the goddess his tomahawk. Minerva with a tomahawk! Can anything be more delightfully absurd?
One might go on with many pages of these descriptions, but enough has been said to show the burlesque spirit in which allegory is treated, doubtless quite unintentionally, on American Society book-plates. In that fact lies much of their interest. More happy in conception and execution is the homelier design appearing on the book-plate of the Village Library in Farmington, which, if not a beautiful piece of engraving, is at least free from grotesqueness.
'In this,' says Mr. Allen, 'we see the interior of a room in which a young lady patron of the library is storing her mind with those choice axioms which, if put in practice, far exceed the attractiveness of mere personal beauty; so says the couplet beneath the picture:—
'Beauties in vain, their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sense, but merit wins the soul.
A writer in the Ex Libris Journal points out that, after the Revolution, till about the year 1810, there were scarcely any American armorial book-plates. Perhaps one of the earliest is that of 'Samuel Elam, Rhode Island,' which appears to have been engraved about 1800. It is 'Pictorial' in style, and shows a shield, bearing arms, resting against a tree-stump, with a landscape background. The majority of American book-plate possessors, from 1810 until the fashion of using a book-plate became common some little time back, seem to have been members of the legal profession.
During the last few years many American book-plates have been as wild and meaningless in design as the majority of those recently produced in England; although, as Mr. Allen's illustrations show us, a few truly artistic and appropriate examples have appeared. One modern book-plate from across the Atlantic is sure to attract English eyes; for the owner's works are read as eagerly, and appreciated as fully, here as in the States,—I mean that of 'Oliver Wendell Holmes.' This, too, is appropriate for the man, consisting simply of a motto-scroll, on which is written Per Ampliora ad Altiora, and a nautilus—'the ship of pearl,' as he calls it; 'the venturous bark that flings
'On the sweet summer winds its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea maids rise to sun their streaming hair.'