A Medieval Beetle in the Rare Books Collection

Eight-legged flying beetle with antlers While much is known about the cultural depiction of beetles in the Classical period and during the Renaissance, much less is known about the cultural representation and meaning of beetles during the Middle Ages. This may be beginning to change with the contemporary digitisation of illuminated manuscripts, books and artworks, and the development of online translators, translations and dictionaries, which are providing new methodologies for analysis and interpretation.

Recently I came across a drawing of an eight-legged flying beetle with antlers in the Baillieu Library’s Hortus Sanitatis (1491)[1], or Garden of Health, which I was able to compare with digitised copies located in other international collections[2]. The beetle is categorised in the section ‘Tractatus De Avibus’ (Treatise on Birds) and is displayed alongside other fantastic drawings like that of a man lying naked in a field being attacked by hornets and that of a myrmecoleon or ant-lion.

A man being attacked by hornetsOn close inspection the drawing in the Hortus appears to be a rudimentary sketch of the European stag beetle (Lucanus cervus). Stag beetles are named after their large antler-like mandibles. Only the males possess these horns and use them to joust with other males in territorial disputes. Stag beetles live in forests, woodlands, hedges and gardens, but they are currently listed as a protected species in the United Kingdom and are thought to have disappeared from certain parts of Western Europe on account of environmental changes and habitat destruction.

A myrmecoleon or ant-lionBy modern standards the beetle-drawing in the Hortus is anatomically incorrect in a number of respects. The beetle has no antennae. It lacks a meso-thorax. It has eight legs rather than six, which technically makes it an arachnid, and its feet are cloven rather than clawed or hooked with tarsi. Having noted these anatomical errors, the stag beetle is identifiable with regards to its brown colouring, spectacular antlers, and general shape. Together with the accompanying textual description, it offers invaluable insights into how Europeans thought about insects towards the end of the Middle Ages:

‘A flying beetle is similar in style to the cricket. They fly towards night and make a waspish noise. He has long horns that are medicinal, [and] those horns be bright and branched like teeth. The head may be taken off yet it [moves not] long without the body. The body without the head [moves] but not so long as the head’[5].

Text describing the stag beetleChristopher Harrington

PhD candidate

School of Communication

University of Melbourne

Interested in finding out more?

Read about the Baillieu Library’s copy of Hortus Sanitatis in the University of Melbourne Collections magazine.

Browse the digitised version online

Endnotes

[1] Hortus sanitatis. [Mainz : Jacob Meydenbach, 23 June 1491].  UniM Bail SpC/RB MTC/20 Incunabula

[2] These include the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, one of the world’s pre-eminent science and technology libraries.

[3] Lister, Martin. Historiae Animalum Angliae. Londini : Apud Joh. Martyn Regiæ societatis typographum, 1678.  Digital version available at http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/nat_hist/id/22115.

[4] Merian, Maria Sibylla. Metamorphasibus Insectorum Surinamensium. Tot Amsterdam, Voor den auteur…, als ook by Gerarde Valck, [1705].  Digital version available at http://lhldigital.lindahall.org/cdm/ref/collection/nat_hist/id/1049.

[5] Hortus sanitatis.

Full page image from the 'Tractacus de Avibus'

“Single men from Scotland keenly sought”

“Single men from Scotland are keenly sought” writes James Butchart to his father on his arrival in Port Phillip, where he expects his exercise of the three virtues, “patience, prudence and perseverance”, will enable him to thrive. (James Butchart, Melbourne, to father, 15 February 1842, 1990.0083.00005). Recently digitised correspondence reveals the journey of one man from migration to establishment in Victoria. Correspondence to family and friends trace James, aged just 19, from his voyage from Fifeshire, Scotland to Melbourne, where over the course of a decade as he worked his way through various pastoral occupations in Port Phillip.

Butchart was enthusiastic about life in Australia, trying to convince his father to migrate “For the meanest servant in this country would turn up his nose at the style of living which thousands of respectable people are obliged to adopt in the old country”. (James Butchart, Smeaton Hill, to George, 1 February 1845, 1990.0083.00015). Appealing to his sisters Cecilia and Isabella in May 1846 he writes “if you come we will very soon attain independency which I am afraid we never could do in Scotland as things go now” and “I do not suppose there is any place in the world where you can get all the necessaries of life cheaper than you can in Melbourne”.

Butchart worked hard, finding employment in various pastoral capacities until he acquired land for himself and entered into a stock and station agency partnership, Kaye & Butchart. He also ran a successful business in Bourke Street enabling him to build a mansion in Mornington and retire. He died there on 11 Nov. 1869, aged 47.

To access James Butchart’s correspondence use the search term “Butchart” in UMA’s online Digitised Items Catalogue

The James Butchart Collection was digitised through the Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Fund.

Ballooning, steam and Victorian fantasies

1959.3586-MF

The month of May marks the 150th anniversary of The Great Exhibition of 1851 that took place in Hyde Park, London from 1 May to 11 October. The Victorian-era Great Exhibitions were platforms that launched countless inventions. The newly developed ‘cast plate glass,’ for example, made possible the construction, to a design by Joseph Paxton, of the very building that housed the exhibition, dubbed ‘The Crystal Palace.’ Paxton, also a gardener of renown, based the Crystal Palace on a greenhouse he designed for the recently discovered giant Victoria amazonica waterlily. The Crystal Palace embodied both the Victorian imagination and the greatest offerings of industrial manufacturing. Another new technique promoted at the Exhibition – steel plate engraving – resulted in prints which commemorate the event.

(Above) Samuel Read, The Crystal Palace international exhibition of 1851, (c.1851), etching and engraving, gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

1959.3134-MF

Joseph Paxton, The Crystal Palace and Park, 1854, engraving,  Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959. Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

 

At this time the industrial revolution was buoyed both by balloon ascensions and the marvel of steam power. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1838 ushering in a distinctive era of art and culture. Manufacturing was not the only thing to be transformed; this was also a time of lofty ambitions and wafting imaginations.

The first manned hot air balloon ascension had taken place in the previous century at the Palace of Versailles in 1783. Jean-Pierre Blanchard’s flight to cross the English Channel soon followed in 1785. Blanchard’s balloon was propelled by the balloonist flapping a pair of oars back and forth, which can be seen depicted in the distant background of the stipple engraving by William Birch. In literature, Jules Verne’s popular novel Five weeks in a balloon (1863) expanded the ambitions of the adventurous to every cloud, mountain and ocean. The Victorians saw in the balloon a vehicle for turning an inflated idea into an innovation. It is interesting note that the first model of propelled balloon was designed by Australian aviator David Bland and was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

1959.2403-MF

William Birch after Thomas Rowlandson, Dover Castle, 1789, stipple engraving,  Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

Another vehicle traversing the sky was the airship. These curious leviathans of the air enabled improved travel, and they began taking over the skies of London during the World Wars. Scotland’s Forth Bridge, itself a monument to the wonder of Victorian engineering, in Lumsden’s etching, is partnered by airships and also the steam train, both elevated into the stratosphere.

 

0000.1155.000.000

 Ernest Stephen Lumsden, Forth Bridge, (1940-46), etching, Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.

The individual who dramatically advanced transport on land was engineer George Stephenson, who enabled the public to travel by steam locomotive for the first time in 1825. The invention of the railways evolved, surprisingly, alongside the sewing machine, which transformed the textile industry and factory work. One memento in the Print Collection capturing these historic developments is an unusual transport souvenir. This piece of textile immortalises Stephenson and his innovations through the medium of machine embroidery; the image was probably adapted from an engraved image.

Unknown artist, Robert Stephenson and rocket locomotive, (19th century), Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959. Baillieu Library Print Collection, Uinveristy of Melbourne.

Unknown artist, Robert Stephenson and rocket locomotive, (19th century), Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton, 1959. Baillieu Library Print Collection, Uinveristy of Melbourne.

The contraptions for ballooning, locomotion and manufacture let fly numerous Victorian fantasies which were captured in print media. These often aerial ambitions enabled the Victorians, at the same time, to soar through industrial advancements.

 

Kerrianne Stone (Curator, Prints)

 

Reading with the young Charlotte: celebrating the 200th birthday of Charlotte Brontë with some books from an unconventional childhood

Cover image of Charlotte Brontë, Rare Books Collection
Cover image of Charlotte Brontë, Rare Books Collection

This month marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, the third-born and longest lived of the six children of Patrick and Maria Brontë, and the author of the classic novels Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853) and The Professor (1857).  Much has been written about Charlotte and her famous 19th century literary family, and the mystique of their lives and legacy has been the subject of continuing interpretation and reinterpretation.  The Baillieu Library is very fortunate to hold some important early Brontë editions, together with copies of several titles which they are known to have read, if not devoured, as children.

The timeworn autobiographical themes of the Brontë story are familiar to most readers of English literature: the isolated parsonage on the edge of the Yorkshire moor; the bleak childhoods of Charlotte, Emily and Anne, overshadowed by the premature death of their mother and two elder sisters, and misfortunes of brother Branwell; and the untimely deaths of Emily and Anne by the age of 30, and Charlotte at 38.  Like most legends, the Brontë one is part myth, part truth, and it seems that despite their many adversities, the Brontë home was a warm and happy one, and Haworth was a small bustling town, where the Brontës lived in a manner that was no worse, and often better, than their neighbours.

Engraving of Haworth Church and Parsonage, Rare Books Collection
Engraving of Haworth Church and Parsonage, Rare Books Collection

An unconventional childhood and the Brontë’s book interests

Less prominent in the popular imagination, and what set the young family apart from their village counterparts, was the children’s unconventional upbringing and education.  A precocious curiosity was encouraged by their Rousseau-like father, Reverend Patrick Brontë, who had taken up the perpetual curacy of St Michael and All Angels’ Church in 1820.  A Cambridge-educated scholar from a poor Irish background, Patrick included his children in adult conversations and his business affairs and encouraged them to read and discuss the books, journals and newspapers which he added to his library [1].  The children consumed omnivorously, the only recorded restriction to their literary diet being the popular gossipy women’s paper, the Lady’s Magazine; or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1770-1847), as it contained ‘foolish love stories’ [2].

A glimpse of the parsonage bookshelves is provided by Charlotte’s first biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell:

‘the well-bound were ranged in the sanctuary of Mr B’s study…up and down [the house] were to be found many standard works of a standard kind’.  These were supplemented by some books from Maria Brontë’s side of the family – ‘mad Methodist Magazines full of miracles and apparitions…preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; and the equally mad letters of Mrs Elizabeth Rowe, the popular 18th century author of Friendship in Death (1728)’ [3].

Some of the children’s favourites included natural history and geographical works – Bewick’s Book of Birds (1804),The Garden and Menagerie of the Zoological Society (1831), and Goldsmith’s Grammar of General Geography (1819), copies of all of which can be found in the Baillieu’s Rare Book Collection.  Their young imaginations were stirred by stories of The Arabian Knights (1706), the Romantic works of Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and John Bunyan, and a volume containing dramatic scenes by engraver John Martin (1789-1954).

Title page of The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, Rare Books Collection
Title page of The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society, Rare Books Collection

Reverend Brontë subscribed to several journals including the Leeds Intelligencer, Blackwood’s Magazine and Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, all of which contained news and articles on contemporary events, people and places [4].  These were as an important influence on the children as the fictional stories that they read, with the children absorbing ‘information from every possible source, devouring newspapers, magazines, annuals, children’s books and their father’s library for their source material for their own creations’ [5].

Contents page from Blackwood's Magazine, August 1827, including an article on The Duke of Wellington, Rare Books Collection
Contents page from Blackwood’s Magazine, August 1827, including an article on The Duke of Wellington, Rare Books Collection

Imaginative influences and first writings

This rich literary environment provided inspiration for the young Brontës’ games, which became further animated when brother Branwell was given a set of toy soldiers as a gift from his father.  Sharing the soldiers with his sisters, the children began writing scripts of adventure, mimicking the adult publishing world in a series of tiny hand-manufactured books.  Charlotte’s first book was written in 1824 when she was nine as a present to her younger sister Anne.  It took the form of a manuscript about the size of a matchbox and penned in minuscule handwriting, now preserved with several other examples in the Brontë Museum in Haworth.  Other examples of Brontë juvenilia are held by the Houghton Library (Yale University), the British Library and the Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris.

Prominent amongst Charlotte’s childhood heroes was the Duke of Wellington, a passion she shared with her father Patrick Brontë, and she named her toy soldier after him.  The Blackwood’s reports in turn provided models for many of her juvenile stories, infusing a cast of ‘important aristocratic figures engaged in struggles over power…with the addition of many tangled love affairs’ [6].  One story involved an attempted poisoning, and in another his sons, Arthur and Charles were the subject of a bid to kidnap them.

Page opening from an example of Charlotte Bronte's juvenilia, Houghton Library, Yale University
Page opening from an example of Charlotte Bronte’s juvenilia, Houghton Library, Yale University

On 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birthday it is intriguing to pause and reflect on the many books which fostered her highly imaginative inner life as a child.  By revisiting this rich source material, modern researchers can continue to obtain privileged insights into the early influences and lasting literary legacy of this gifted writer and those of her remarkable family.

Susan Thomas (Rare Books Curator)

George Dawe's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, 1829, The Hermitage, St Petersburg
George Dawe’s Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, 1829, The Hermitage, St Petersburg

Endnotes

[1] Wilks, B. The Brontës: an illustrated biography. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1986, p. 63

[2] Ingham, P. The Brontës. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 70

[3] Elizabeth Gaskell in Lane, M. The Brontë story. [London]: Fontana, 1973, pp. 108-109

[4] Ingham, P. Op cit, p. 72.

[5] Wilks, B. Op cit, p. 54

[6] Ingham, Op cit, p. 72

Interested in learning more?

Select bibliography

Bentley, P. The Brontës. London: Pan, 1973.

Hughes, G. ‘The Brontës and Yorkshire’ in The Oxford guide to literary Britain & Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 233-234.

Ingham, P. The Brontës. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Lane, M. The Brontë story. [London]: Fontana, 1973.

Wilks, B. The Brontës: an illustrated biography. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1986.

Wollaston, E. Little book of the Brontë sisters. [Swindon], UK: Green Umbrella, 2008.

“The countenance is the portrait of the soul and the eyes mark its intentions”

Percy Grainger was well-pleased with a likeness the celebrated Danish academician Knud Larsen (1865-1922) made of him during a visit to Jutland in 1909—and the Museum’s collection includes not just the finished watercolour painting but the preparatory drawings as well. With pencil, Larsen familiarised himself with Grainger’s features and captured contrasts of expression.  One sketch of the musician in profile freezes a wistful, unselfconscious expression, seemingly executed seconds before the posed finished work, which exudes self-confidence—the two appearing almost filmic in sequence.

‘Fancy, Knud Larsen did a not ½ bad drawing of me yesterday, which he has given me. And his elder girl Gerda…draws simply ravishingly. She said to him, “have you ever seen anyone so beautiful as he” meaning me, so he tells me.’ [2]

Knud Larsen 1865-1922), Percy Grainger, 1909. Watercolour and graphite on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Knud Larsen 1865-1922), Percy Grainger, 1909. Watercolour and graphite on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

The Grainger Museum collection holds more than 600 works of art, a significant proportion of which are portraits or representations of people engaged in some kind of activity. Many of these, naturally, depict Percy Grainger himself, but family, friends, acquaintances, fellow musical personalities, admirers and people who influenced Grainger are also represented. The stylistic approaches of the artists whose works are represented in the exhibition Water, marks and countenances: works on paper from the Grainger Museum collection range vividly from the formal commissioned work straight out of the halls of the academy—to the irreverent and light-hearted barrack-room caricature.

Up until the late 19th/early 20th century the two primary expectations people had of a portrait were that it provide a physical resemblance, and disclose something about the sitter: an indication of their character, their social standing or perhaps occupation.

There are an abundance of early portraits of Percy Grainger in the Grainger Museum’s collection, for example, that depict him golden-haired, youthfully serious and impeccably dressed, seated at a piano or holding an instrument or a sheet of music—thus announcing to all those viewing the picture that they are looking at a portrait of a musician, and probably a famous one at that. The most iconic of these of course is Rupert Bunny’s large scale oil painting of 1902—but the drawings and sketches from the same period in this exhibition present a rather more personal quality.

The famous British actor Ernest Thesiger (1879-1961) made several appealingly gentle pastel portraits of Grainger during their years of friendship in London. Thesiger, who was himself an amateur musician, had studied painting and drawing at the Slade School of Art.

‘Never have I had, never will I have, a portrait of me more like, more true, more characteristic, more satisfying than yours. Only a real real [sic] sensitive artist could produce a work so full of insights, so apt, so sweetly done.’ [3]

Ernst Thesiger(1879-1961), Percy Grainger, 1903. Pastel on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Ernst Thesiger(1879-1961), Percy Grainger, 1903. Pastel on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

In 1901, South Australian-born artist Mortimer Menpes (1855-1938) invited Grainger to perform in his palatial London studio to a very select group of potential patrons. Menpes had been making portraits of wealthy aristocrats and cultural luminaries.  His formal portrait of the irascible artist, James McNeill Whistler, included in this exhibition, was one of a series he executed of his friend and one-time mentor, before the two men had a cataclysmic falling out.

Mortimer Menpes(1855-1938), Whistler no. 11, 1912-1913. Etching and drypoint on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Mortimer Menpes(1855-1938), Whistler no. 11, 1912-1913. Etching and drypoint on paper.  Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

The development of mechanised image-making in the nineteenth century brought with it a challenge to the whole notion of portraiture as an artform with the advent of the formal, posed photograph having a significant impact upon the style of images rendered by the artists’ hand. The latter started to take on different, more private or intimate functions. Artists began to feel able to explore series of ‘dashed off’ sketches of their friends or models (or strangers across the room) as a legitimate subject for exhibition.

Augustus John (1878-1961), for example, was particularly renowned for his spontaneous style of portraiture in which he produced simple line drawings that successfully managed to capture his sitter’s essence. The fragile, almost ethereal drawing of Grainger’s wife Ella, executed on washroom paper towelling, is indicative of this style. Ella met Augustus John while she was studying at the Slade School of Art in London in around 1914, more than a decade before she met Grainger.

Augustus John (1878-1961), Ella Viola Ström, n.d. Graphite on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Augustus John (1878-1961), Ella Viola Ström, n.d. Graphite on paper.  Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Jacques Emile Blanche’s idiosyncratic little sketches of Debussy dated 1902 in Dieppe are bare scratchings of pencil on rough paper, yet they capture perfectly the composer’s distinctively identifiable quiff. The drawings hint at a private occasion or conversation long hidden from the contemporary viewer.  Grainger credits Blanche with having introduced the music of Debussy to him. Perhaps Blanche made these drawings while talking with Grainger when the two were holidaying in Dieppe in 1902.

Jaques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942), Claude Debussy, 1902. Graphite on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Jaques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942), Claude Debussy, 1902.  Graphite on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

A number of witty caricatures of Grainger and other significant musical personages of his time, such as the internationally acclaimed violin virtuoso Efrem Zimbalist, are also displayed in this exhibition.

Leonard Frank Reynolds (1837-1939), Caricature of violin virtuoso Efrem Zimbalist, 1927. Ink on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Leonard Frank Reynolds (1837-1939), Caricature of violin virtuoso Efrem Zimbalist, 1927. Ink on paper. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Prints by well-known (and not-so-well-known) artists include a beautifully executed and rarely exhibited lithograph by William Newzam Prior Nicholson (1872-1949) depicting a pensive Rudyard Kipling—who was one of Grainger’s major influences.

William Newzam Prior Nicholson (1872-1949), Rudyard Kipling, 1899. Lithograph. Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

William Newzam Prior Nicholson (1872-1949), Rudyard Kipling, 1899. Lithograph.  Grainger Museum collection, University of Melbourne

Also of significance is a series of delicate watercolours portraying women by Melbourne miniaturist Bess Norriss Tait (1878-1939). Viewed together, these ‘countenances’ span almost a century of styles and provide an interesting insight into the history of the portrait genre.

Bess Norriss Tait (1878-1939), Miss Helen Lempriere (aged 14 years), 1924. Ink and watercolour on paper

Bess Norriss Tait (1878-1939), Miss Helen Lempriere (aged 14 years), 1924. Ink and watercolour on paper

Astrid Britt Krautschneider (Curator, Grainger Museum)

 

[1] The title quote is from Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC).

[2] Letter from Percy Grainger to Rose Grainger, 13 September 1909.

[3] Letter from Percy Grainger to Ernest Thesiger, 25 December 1909.

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