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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
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
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