Baskerville and James Whatman
A. T. Hazen
In discussions of Baskerville's innovations, the use of wove
paper is often cited, along with his blacker ink, hot-pressed
sheets, and new types; and he is therefore often credited with the
manufacture of the first wove paper. The difficulty began in his
own time, for Dr. John Bedford of Durham wrote, 29 October 1758:
"By Baskerville's Specimen of his types, you will perceive how much
the elegance of them is owing to his paper, which he makes himself"
(Nichols, Illustrations, I, 813). Similarly, Samuel Derrick
wrote in 1760 that Baskerville manufactured his own paper. So it is
not astonishing, perhaps, that the Vergil of 1757 has ever since
been called, in numerous handbooks, the first book on wove paper,
and Baskerville is credited either categorically or doubtfully with
the invention: he is so acclaimed in a standard encyclopedia
revised in 1950.
To some extent Baskerville himself is to blame for the error.
The Vergil was advertised as to be "on a very fine writing Royal
paper," and in his Preface to the Milton of 1758 Baskerville spoke
of "the improvement in the manufacture of the paper" used for the
Vergil. Even more dangerous, perhaps, was his letter to Dodsley in
1756 concerning "the paper scheme," in which he proposed to send
samples to the Prince of Wales "as a sample of English
manufactory"; and in advertisements as well as in his Proposals for
Milton he offered writing paper "of his own manufacture." But in
these latter references, as the punctuation indeed suggests,
Baskerville was certainly speaking of his novelty, ornamented
writing papers, and perhaps also of his new process of glazing and
hot-pressing. The two references to the paper of his Vergil are to
be understood as expressing his satisfaction in the new paper he
was using, not a claim for its manufacture.
Baskerville said nothing of the paper when he wrote to Dodsley
in 1752 concerning his care about punches, printing press, ink, and
printing; and in his appeal to Horace Walpole in November 1762 he
added a postscript: "The ink, presses, chases, moulds for casting,
and all the apparatus for printing were made in my own shops."
Clearly, Baskerville never said he manufactured the new wove paper
or any other paper, whatever practical interest he may have had in
the improvement of paper manufacture.
If Baskerville did not manufacture, or invent, the first wove
paper, however, it is of some interest to know who did. Baskerville
was conscious of the effect of the paper in setting off his new
types—hence his calendering of the fresh-printed sheets—and
we
may fairly assume he used the new wove paper purposefully but
experimentally. No paper-maker is known who would seem more likely
to have invented wove paper than James Whatman, the man who lifted
English paper-making from obscurity to pre-eminence. His
association with Baskerville and with early wove paper seems
sufficient to suggest that he (and his son) did in fact develop the
first wove paper.
The art of making woven wire does not seem in itself to be the
important technical accomplishment, although it is the
prerequisite. But its application to the art of paper-making, as a
way to eradicate the irregularity caused by chain-lines, must have
proved difficult: not only do the first specimens in England show
an imperfect fusion with the established method of parallel laid
wires, but twenty years later (after Franklin in 1777 exhibited
specimens of English wove in Paris) Johannot and Montgolfier did
not succeed in producing a satisfactory wove or papier
vélin for two or three years.
The association between Whatman and Baskerville has to be traced
through William Shenstone and Dodsley, but it is nevertheless
exactly demonstrable; and because of the proposed new bibliography
of Baskerville, this association may well be stressed now.
Shenstone wrote, 7 March 1757: "My neighbor Baskerville, at the
close of this month, publishes his fine edition of Vergil. It will,
for paper and type, be a perfect curiosity."
Then
Shenstone wrote to Percy, 11 August 1760: "Have you ever yet seen
the Prolusions? [completed by Dryden Leach in October
1759,
but delayed in publication] . . .'Tis indeed a specimen of
type and paper that is meant to alarm my
neighbor
Baskerville. . . . However, Tonson [publisher of Milton as well as
of Capell's Prolusions] having sent it to Baskerville, is to
find it surpassed in Dodsley's Fables."
The Vergil of 1757 is partly on a new paper perhaps made by
placing woven wire or a stiff cloth screen on a conventional mould,
since it is in effect an unwatermarked wove paper but shows
translucent chain-lines. The second part and the cancels are on an
excellent, unwatermarked laid paper with closely spaced
chain-lines. But Capell's Prolusions is printed on a
completely satisfying wove paper, watermarked some half-inch from
the edge with a small block W, a paper fully as good as that in the
Vergil but not hot-pressed.[1] And we
know from a letter of James Whatman the Younger, in 1768, that he
made the paper for the Prolusions: he says that Crown No.
2
is the common size, "and is made upon wove moulds and is the same
sort of paper I made for Mr. Caples Prolusions." (Quoted by James
Wardrop in Signature No. 9, 1938, from a transcript in the
BM.) Prolusions is therefore on wove paper manufactured by
Whatman, and we know that
Shenstone was very favorably impressed by the new papers used in
the Vergil and in Prolusions.
In the autumn of 1759 Dodsley planned the printing of his
Selected Fables of Aesop, during discussions with Shenstone
and Baskerville. Then in June 1760 Dodsley wrote about the
Fables to Shenstone: "I hope that Mr. Baskerville will be
quite ready for me; I shall send him the paper in a fortnight." And
when the book was completed, Baskerville advertised it as on
superfine paper; it was published in February 1761, "price bound
five shillings"—on the same wove paper, watermarked W near the
edge, that Whatman had made for Capell's Prolusions. (Mr.
Wardrop noted the paper of the Aesop in his article in
Signature.)
Now it is true that Dodsley's selection of a wove paper made by
Whatman, in 1760, on which Baskerville was to print his Aesop's
Fables, does not exactly prove Whatman to be the originator.
But it does link Whatman very firmly to Baskerville in connection
with one book, and no other source of Baskerville's supply has ever
been established. Furthermore, since Whatman had the same paper
available for Capell's Prolusions in 1759, Whatman is
clearly proved to be the first maker of wove paper save for the
unidentified maker of the experimental wove used for the first part
of the Vergil. Perhaps there is some pattern to the other papers
used by Baskerville in books of about the same period.
Most of the books printed in the early years are on good laid
paper, sometimes without watermarks, sometimes with marks that can
not be assigned to one mill. The Juvenal of 1761, in quarto, is on
laid paper much like that used in the second part of the Vergil, a
good laid with chain-lines rather closely spaced, without
watermark; it is presumably paper from the same mill. The octavo
Milton of 1758, printed by Baskerville for Tonson who published
Capell's Prolusions, and the earlier Proposals
for Milton are on very similar paper: it has the same closely
spaced chain-lines (about ¾"); but it was not glazed and
calendered like the Vergil, so that it seems a little heavier and
less translucent; again, it seems likely to have come from the same
mill. The octavo Milton of 1760 is less interesting, chiefly
because the chain-lines are more normally spaced. The Horace of
1762, in duodecimo, is on a fine unwatermarked paper with
chain-lines still more closely spaced (the cancels, however, are on
rather ordinary paper of the period); and if this paper came from
Whatman or another English maker, that used in Aesop's
Fables of 1764 becomes an apparent attempt in Holland to
imitate it. This second Baskerville edition of Aesop's
Fables has chain-lines very closely spaced (about ½"),
and the watermark is a post-horn, Superfine, and countermark
Amsterdam.
Other books are on the whole rather less interesting. Two
quartos, Gardiner and Dalby, printed in 1762, are on trade demy
paper: lily watermark, with IV countermark. The 1758 Avon,
in quarto, is similar. The Book of Psalms, 1762, in duodecimo, has
a normal lily in shield, LVG, with IV countermark. These could be
imported Dutch paper, or English paper using the standard marks.
Much the same is true of the Addison and Congreve, 1761.
But Edwin and Emma, 1760, in quarto, has (one sheet
in
one copy, both sheets in another) the watermark lily, Strasburg
bend, LVG, with countermark (I think) JW. The initials are in the
binding, but this is almost certainly the same Whatman laid paper
that appears in other royal quartos of that date—the best laid
paper on the market.
The reprint of the Vergil, customarily dated ca. 1771,
is
on an apparent wove paper that is not especially good; the
wire-lines and chain-lines are rather dim, so that it passes for
wove paper. This can hardly be ascribed to Whatman: it is not at
all as satisfactory as the Aesop's Fables of 1761, or even
the Vergil of 1757. One other book is of interest, though, the
quarto Paradise Regained of 1759: this is an excellent and
undoubted wove, very much like that in Capell's Prolusions
save that I find no watermark in Paradise Regained.
The pattern of these few books is perhaps this: various books
printed on good paper as it became available, with a sharp eye out
for the typographical effectiveness of an experimental new paper.
The Vergil begun on the experimental paper in which the chain-lines
were nearly obliterated by the use of woven wire; Paradise
Regained of 1759 on a much more satisfactory wove; the latter
half of Vergil and most of Tonson's Miltons on a fine laid with
experimentally narrow chain-lines; and Aesop's Fables on a
fine Whatman wove supplied by Dodsley.
Only the paper used in Aesop's Fables and in Capell's
Prolusions is demonstrably Whatman's wove; and yet there
is
a demonstrable association between Whatman and Baskerville by way
of Tonson, Dodsley, and Shenstone. If I were seeking for the
originator of wove paper for Western Europe, a quarter of a century
before Johannot and Montgolfier learned to make wove at Annonay, I
would begin by studying the products of the Whatman mill.
Notes
