A GREAT PRINTER
By SIR SYDNEY COCKERELL
CHARLES HARRY ST. JOHN HORNBY, whose Ashendene 'Press shares the renown of the Kelmscott and Doves Presses all the world over, died at his home in Dorset on April 26th at the age of 78. As it has been my privilege to be a close observer of all three enterprises I feel impelled to set down for lovers of fine printing some information that I alone possess.
It is recorded in my diary that on March t3th, 1895, St. John Homby came to Hammersmith to see the Kelmscott Press, of which I was then secretary, and stayed to tea at Kelmscott House with William Morris. I well remember that sunny afternoon, and that the Oxford crew practising for the race happened to row upstream past the window of the room in which the two men were talking. Homby interjected that he had been in the same boat five years before. They got on capitally together—Morris hearty and welcoming, Hornby gentle, respectful and keenly interested in all that was shown him. The Kelmscott Press was in its fifth year, and was busy with its great folio Chaucer. The first production of the Ashendene Press, The Journal of Joseph Hornby, a modest booklet of which only 33 copies were printed, had just been finished, and the second, Dante's Vita Nuova, was begun. Hornby parted with his host in a state of elation and high resolve. This was the only encounter that took place between the founders of those two great Presses.
My next memory of Hornby belongs to the last quarter of 1900. It is again a vivid one, as the incident I am about to recall was the beginning of our long and intimate friendship. We had just left an office at 16 Clifford's Inn, where I had recently started a happy partnership of four years with the great typographical expert, Emery Walker. Hornby and I paused under the arch to finish a discussion of his still humble Press, which by then had issued twelve small books, in a variety of existing types. At the moment of parting I suddenly exclaimed " Why don't you have, like Morris, a special type of your own? " " I can't afford such a luxury." " It would cost you Doo," I hazarded. " If that is all," he answered, " let us set about it at once." Morris had died in 1896. In 1892 he had bought a copy of Augustine's De Civitate Dei printed in 1467 by Sweynheym and Pannartz in the monastery of Subiaco near Rome. The type, never used elsewhere, is a somewhat compressed one, very elegant, neither Roman nor Gothic. Morris at once decided to have a new type based on this model, and he actually designed a lower-case alphabet ; but it went no further. Recalling this experi- ment, I sought out a photograph of Morris's designs. After con- sultations with Emery Walker and Robert Proctor, Hornby came to the conclusion that he could not do better than take up what Morris had abandoned ; so he instructed the firm of Walker and Cockerell to go ahead. Well within a year, the " Subiaco " type was designed and cut. Hornby's bill for it was exactly Ltoo. On November 3rd, 1901, he set up and printed in his house in Chelsea trial pages of Dante's Inferno and The Song of Songs. He sent them to me on the following day with a letter expressing his delight. In 1902 these books were issued to subscribers. The output of 1903 was confined to three octavos, two of them being the Alcaics and Sapphics of Horace, which were great favourites with the printer.
In the next two years the Purgatorio and the Paradiso appeared, and in 1906 More's Utopia, a noble quarto with red side-notes. It was then that the Press approached its climax. The Utopia started a procession of splendid volumes, which came out at about the rate of one a year until it closed in 1935. These included large folios of Dante, the Morte Darthur, the Decameron, Spenser (2 vols.), Don Quixote (2 vols.) and ilucydides ; as well as a Vergil, a Lucretius, an Apuleius, the Fioretti of St. Francis, Ecclesiasticus, and Daphnis and Chloe, all in large quarto size. Many of them were illustrated and some of them were enriched-with coloured initials designed by Graily Hewitt. A special hand-made paper was used. A few copies of most of the books were printed on vellum: These are now hotly competed for by collectors. A vellum copy of the Morse Darthur recently fetched L42o at auction.
In 1927 Homby had a -second type cut, based on that used. by
F. Holle for the Ulm Ptolemy of 1482. The " Ptolemy," as l'e named it, is a more rounded type than the " Subiaco," and is rather more legible, though less ,technically perfect. It was employed for the Don Quixote, the Thucydides, and the Daphnis and Chloe, as well as for the fortieth and final book, which was a bibliography of the Press compiled by its founder, with a great wealth of detail and illustrative matter. It is a masterpiece, in all respects worthy of its subject.
The first ten issues of the Ashendene Press, only one of them exceeding fifty copies, were not for sale. Of those offered to subscribers Aucassin and Nicolete, The Song of Songs, and the Vergil are now hardly 'procurable. The number of copies of these• three books was in each case limited to 4o. All the copies of The Song of Songs were printed on vellum and illuminated by Florence Kingsford. In addition tc the forty major issues there are thirteen items that the bibliography classes as minor pieces and ten that come under the heading of ephemera. All these are exceedingly scarce, the two scarcest items of all being a tiny Horace printed for Queen Mary's Dolls' House, and the few survivors of a far more important work. the abortive 1931 edition of Daphnis and Chloe,- the bulk of which had to be destroyed because the sheets were folded before the ink was dry. Of each of these great rarities there are only ten existing copies.
Two months ago, on March 5th, Hornby wrote in a letter to me: " My Press has been the most absorbing interest of my life, and I never tire of thinking over the many happy hours- I spent in that little room at Shelley House. The satisfaction and pleasure to be got out of a handicraft is only known to those who have experienced it. It is a wonderful relaxation, too, from all the cares of life and business worries I wouldn't have been without it for anything " (a striking avowal!).
From his hobby and recreation this master-craftsman has won imperishable fame.
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