CHAPTER XI
LADIES' BOOK-PLATES
There seem to be really several good and logical reasons why we should separate, for consideration by themselves, the book-plates which have been used by ladies. To mention two: there are certain differences (such as the shape of the shield in which the arms are borne) which, by the rigid laws of heraldry, ought to appear on these book-plates when belonging to a maid or widow; moreover, ladies' book-plates, though sometimes mere printed labels, are generally more fanciful in design than the majority of those owned by the sterner sex.
The whole subject of ladies' book-plates has been so exhaustively treated by Miss Norna Labouchere that it need not take up much space in the present chapter. When, however, in this work, Miss Labouchere asks where are book-plates of the English feminine bibliophiles of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries—Dame Juliana Berners, Margaret Roper, Lady Jane Grey, Mary Stuart, and the ladies of Little Gidding—the answer, I am afraid, is: they had none. Had they possessed them, they would, in this book-plate-spying age, have been discovered.
LADY BATH'S BOOK-PLATE.
But, be it said to the credit of the ladies, some of the earliest dated English book-plates belonged to them. It is true these are merely name-tickets, such as that of Elizabeth Pindar, 1608, in the Bagford Collection, kindly pointed out to me by Mr. W. Y. Fletcher; but the fact of their existence deserves notice, because it shows the readiness of the fair sex to lay hold of a new fashion; and having a book-plate in the early years of the seventeenth century was a new fashion, at least in England.
The first Armorial ladies' book-plate is that of the Countess-Dowager of Bath, already very fully described. I will only add that readers who refer back to what I have said about her matrimonial arrangements (vide [p. 38]), will see that she is heraldically accurate in not bearing her arms in a lozenge. The laws of heraldry do not allow ladies, while married, to place their arms in lozenge-shaped shields; and this fact enables some feminine book-plate owners to demonstrate the possession of a virtue which women are often taxed with lacking—economy. Ladies frequently made the same designs do duty as their own book-plates which had served for their husbands. But, according to Miss Labouchere, the husband sometimes used his wife's book-plate; for the book-plates—identical, save for the inscriptions—of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, Lord and Lady Roos, and some others, show, on examination, that the words indicative of ownership by the lady have been erased, and over-engraved by those indicative of possession by her lord.