Manuscript Mania How Sir Thomas Phillipps built the world’s greatest collection of medieval manuscripts Toby Burrows, School of Humanities, University.

Manuscript ManiaHow Sir Thomas Phillipps built the world’s greatest collection of medieval manuscripts

Toby Burrows, School of Humanities, University of Western Australia

Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872)

The Halliwell feud

It appears that you have no power now Harriet to effect a reconciliation between us. The consequence will be that you will fall under the Curse destined for all disobedient Children ‘unto the 2nd & 3rd generation’. I understand the Curse had already commenced by your eldest Daughter being half-witted, & your second is afflicted with a Spinal Complaint. Your husband seems determined that the third shall also incur some misfortune by refusing to make me the Compensation which I understand he once promised.

In such case neither you nor he can expect any blessing of

Thos Phillipps

[1867] James Orchard Halliwell

“... he is a notorious liar ...”

The anti-Catholic

Can ye, men with reason blest

And a parent’s feeling breast,

Stand on Britain’s Isle confest

Advocates of Popery?

See a Phillipps nobly stand

Holding freedom in his hand!

He who loves his King and land,

Give to him a willing voice.

‘Gainst vile Popery he draws

Weapons to support your cause,

And support old England’s laws –

Freeman, now make him your choice.

Invocation to the Freemen of Grimsby by Miss Webster (1826)

Your copy of the ‘Indication’...did not

arrive this morning... Ought I not to

have had it this morning? If I ought,

then there has been foul play at the

Jesuit Post Office here. Did you fasten

it, so that it could not be taken out of

the Envelope without violence? If you

did not, it has probably taken a walk to

the Jesuit Monastery here, for the

edification of the FATHERS!!! You are

not aware perhaps that this Post Office

employs a Papist Boy to deliver Letters.

Letter to Charles Bird of the Protestant Alliance22 May 1863

Re-creation of Phillipps’ shelves: Grolier Club, New York

How big was the collection?

Total size• 1829 – 4,000

• 1840 – 11,000

• 1844 – 14,000

• 1856 – 20,000

• Printed catalogue goes up to no. 23,837

• Thomas Fenwick (grandson, d. 1938) spent fifty years reorganizing and renumbering: up to no. 38,628

• His estimate of the total was close to 60,000 (volumes and individual documents)

• Average weekly accessions: about forty items (Munby)

• Also had 50,000 books as well as many prints, photographs, drawings and paintings

John Glover (1769-1849), The Rainbow (1794)Metropolitan Museum of Art

How much did it cost?

Total cost• £200,000 – £250,000 (Munby’s estimate)

• Average £4,000 – £5,000 a year for fifty years

• Phillipps’ annual income was about £6,000

• Most expensive single item: £590 in 1857

What is this worth today?• £149,000,000 – £186,250,000

• £2,980,000 – £3,725,000 p.a.

• £4,470,000 p.a.

• £375,000

Converted using “Average Earnings” method:Lawrence H. Officer, "Five Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a UK Pound Amount, 1830 to

Present," MeasuringWorth, 2011 URL: www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/

How does it compare with other collections?British Museum (British Library) – foundation collections (1753):

• Sir Robert Cotton: 1,400

• Harleian (Earls of Oxford): 7,000 (+ 14,500 documents)

• Sir Hans Sloane: 4,100

• Old Royal Library: 2,000

British Library today: 30,000 Western medieval volumes

Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: 600

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York: 1,360

Bavarian State Library (BSB): 17,000 Latin and 10,500 German

Bibliothèque nationale Française: 21,600 Latin, 5,000 Greek, 33,000 French (in mid-19th century)

CERL Portal: 15,000 digitized manuscripts (BSB, US Digital Scriptorium, Manuscriptorium – Eastern Europe, Dutch collections, Lund University)

The British Museum:Panizzi and Madden

He persists in heaping on his shelves

Romances and other compositions of

Europe and the Middle Ages mainly

for the vanity of inserting them in his

own catalogue! I am sick of it!

Sir T.P. is an arrant fool… I have the

most profound contempt for all he

says and does. He is the most

narrow-minded bigoted man I ever

knew, and his course throughout life

has been that of a selfish madman.

Journal of Sir Frederic Madden (20 Feb. 1836 and 1 October 1859 )

Sir Antony (Antonio) Panizzi

Principal Librarian, British Museum, 1856-66

The British Museum:Madden and Panizzi

By opposing the Museum, he

prevents the public from having

access to these works, merely to

gratify a selfish and silly feeling,

which manifests itself in carrying

home cart-loads of MSS. to be

rendered for a time of no avail,

and to be exposed to the risk of

fire &c. ... I have a great respect

for Sir T.P. but a very great

contempt for his proceedings in

this respect – and he is daily

becoming a dog in the manger.

Journal of Sir Frederic Madden (19 Feb. 1836)

Sir Frederic Madden (1801-73)Keeper of Manuscripts, British

Museum

Hospitality to other scholars

I have rarely passed so agreeable or so profitable a week. Sir

Thomas Phillipps is renowned for his hospitality, and on

this occasion it was bestowed in the most liberal and

generous manner. He devoted nearly the whole time to me,

assisting me in finding manuscripts, and himself searching

for such as would be to my purpose. His daughters are

accomplished young ladies. The dinner hour was six

o’clock, and the evenings were passed most agreeably in

examining the curious books among his collection, and

conversing on the subjects of them.

American historian Jared Sparks, 1840

“I became a perfect Vello-maniac”In amassing my Collection of MSS. I commenced with

purchasing everything that lay within my reach, to which I was instigated by reading various accounts of the destruction of valuable MSS ... I had not the ability to select, nor the resolution to let anything escape because it was of trifling value.

My chief desire for preserving Vellum MSS. arose from witnessing the unceasing destruction of them by Goldbeaters; my search for charters or deeds by their destruction in the shops of Glue-makers & Taylors.

My object was not only to secure good manuscripts for myself but also to raise the public estimation of them, so that their value might be generally known, & consequently more MSS. preserved. For nothing tends to the preservation of anything so much as making it bear a high price.

Phillipps, Preface to My Catalogue of Manuscripts (c. 1828)

Rescuing the past

More MSS. are destroyed by ignorant people, than by civil wars – I once found a bookseller at Madrid occupied in taking off the parchment covers from a large pile of old folios and throwing them inside into his cellar to sell by weight to the grocers: I opened one, and immediately bought the whole (120 volumes) at about 2s. per vol: you will hardly believe that among them was one of the most precious volumes in your collection; a volume of original documents relating to England in the time of Philip the second! – But it is not in Spain alone that these things occur, for I bought in London the original papers and correspondence of Govr Bernard, Govr of Massachusetts at the commencement of the American War; which had already been sold for waste paper: and partly used as such!

Bookseller Obadiah Rich to Phillipps, 1843

Probably Phillipps MS 25342, a collection of documents from the Medina Sidonia archives, containing Philip II’s autograph orders concerning the Armada; now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

What happened to the collection?

Negotiations with the Bodleian Library, 1828-1861

Negotiations with the British Museum, 1862

“Whatever may become of his

vast collection of MSS, I trust

they will not in my time come to

the Museum, - at all events, if Sir

T.P. is alive, to interfere with the

arrangement and cataloguing.”

(Frederic Madden’s journal, 17th July 1862)

Fenwick family (1886-1945):

• Sales to interested libraries and governments (Germany, Belgium, France, Wales) – more than 2,500 items

• Auctions (22) at Sotheby’s, 1886 to 1938 – over 22,000 lots for £97,000 (over £30 million)

• Remainder (12,000) sold to Robinsons in 1945 for £100,000 (£9.8 million)

Robinsons (1945-1977): auctions and catalogues

Phillipps manuscripts in Australia

State Library of Victoria: 10 +1

State Library of New South Wales: 3

Ballarat Art Gallery: 2

ANU & UWA: 1 each

Total = 18

Most (10) acquired in 1940s; earliest in 1910 (3); latest in 1977 (2)

Sinclair (1969) also recorded one MS in a private collection

Previous owners:

• Phillipps estate (10)

• R.A. Crouch (2)

• Geoffrey Cohen, Sir William Dixson, Nelson M. Richardson, R.C. Sticht, Angus & Robertson

Mostly14th or 15th century (14)

Mostly Italian in origin (9)

Mostly liturgical (5) or classical (4)

Boethius, De musica (11th century, Northern Italy)State Library of VictoriaPhillipps MS 3345

Scriptores Historiae Augustae (c. 1479, Florence)State Library of VictoriaPhillipps MS 2163

Ptolemy, Almagest(c. 1200-25, Northern Italy)State Library of VictoriaPhillipps MS 6551

Sir William Dixson(1870-1952)

• Engineer

• Businessman

• Collector – pictures and Australiana

• Historian

• Benefactor and philanthropist – State Library of N.S.W. & University of New England

Robert Carl Sticht(1856-1922)

• Metallurgist and engineer

• General Manager of Mt Lyell copper mine, Tasmania

• Collector – books, manuscripts and art

• Collection sold after his death – National Gallery of Victoria, State Library of Victoria

Richard Armstrong Crouch (1868-1949)

• Solicitor

• Soldier – Gallipoli veteran

• Politician – Federal

• Historian, writer, novelist

• Collector, benefactor, philanthropist – Ballarat Gallery of Fine Arts

Cyril Pearl (1906-1987)

Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris(c. 1450-70, France)Phillipps MS 2862