Tea at Trianon: The Sauce of the Middle Ages

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 8, 2020

The Sauce of the Middle Ages

From History Today:

If the name Charles Dyson Perrins strikes a chord of recognition today, it is probably in connection with the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce developed by his grandfather, which helped create the family’s fortune. In Worcestershire, Perrins’ name remains associated with his many philanthropic projects, from hospitals to the Dyson Perrins Church of England Academy. But for scholars of manuscripts he is known because of the imposing catalogue of 135 volumes written for Perrins by George Warner, retired Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum, published in 1920.

As with most early 20th-century collections, however, the catalogue only includes a selection of the manuscripts that passed through Perrins’ hands – those deemed most significant. Tracing Perrins’ collecting habits through dealers’ records, meanwhile, builds up a fuller picture. What is revealed by this are the ways in which lavish publications such as Warner’s catalogue have helped reinforce ideas about what is considered an ‘important’ manuscript – and in turn influenced the shape of Medieval Studies as a discipline.

The varying values placed on medieval manuscripts by wealthy collectors such as Perrins, scholars like Warner and other people involved in the early 20th-century book trade have had an outsized impact on the ways in which the Middle Ages have been perceived, both within the academic community and by the wider public.

Perrins’ first major purchase of a manuscript became a legend of the book trade. The story goes that in July 1904 Perrins went into a bookshop in search of something to read on the train. He came out with a large and richly illuminated 14th-century psalter, which he took home for inspection. The asking price was £5,250 (very approximately £500,000 today), so Perrins sought the opinion of an expert, Sydney Cockerell, a former secretary to William Morris, who was then earning a living writing catalogues for collectors.

Grasping the opportunity, Cockerell advised Perrins to buy it and went on to write a monograph on the psalter (now known as the Gorleston Psalter and held in the British Library) and include it in his 1908 Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition of illuminated manuscripts in London. Although the purchase of the psalter represented a huge increase in his spending on manuscripts, Perrins had bought medieval manuscripts before, as an extension of his interest in early printed books. Indeed his collection focused predominantly on late medieval and renaissance books, with a preference for illuminated material. Only part of his collection of early printed material (the Italian books) was ever published and this, together with the treatment of books and manuscripts in separate publications, has helped focus attention on his manuscript collecting. (Read more.)