Hack & Inky: Fleet Street (City of London)

William Caxton was the first person to publish a book in English. He realised the intellectual and commercial potentials of the new printing technology while working as a merchant in the Low Countries and Germany. Around 1475, he set up his own press in London.
Born in Kent in the early 1420s, William was sent to London as a teenager and apprenticed to Robert Large, a successful merchant. He was soon trading in the Low Countries where he lived for thirty years. For four of those years, under the patronage of Edward IV, he acted as Governor of the Merchant Adventurers at Bruges, protecting economic interests of the English government and his fellow merchants.
Bruges at the time was the commercial centre of Northern Europe, with traders coming from as far as the Middle East. Caxton sold English woollen cloth and bought foreign luxury goods for import to England. In his official capacity he negotiated trade agreement with the city’s rulers, the Dukes of Burgundy.
In 1471, Caxton moved to Cologne. A university city and emerging trading centre, it was the printing headquarters of north-west Germany. Working in the office of Johann Schilling, he acquired first-hand knowledge of how books were produced. For his first Cologne imprints, Caxton used type that had been created by Johan Veldener in the ‘learned’ Gothic-style handwriting that was in general use at universities.

Caxton was a translator and publisher rather than a printer. While still in Bruges, he had made a start on an English translation of Raoul Le Fèvre’s Recueil des Histoires de Troye, a set of stories on the Trojan Wars. In 1472 he returned to Bruges where he presented the finished manuscript to the Duchess of Burgundy. Three years later he set up his own press and soon after published the first printed book in English entitled Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in a type designed by local craftsmen to match the handwriting of the manuscripts.
In 1476 he returned to London, bringing with him the type needed to set up his own printing press at Westminster. The venture proved an instant success. Caxton published around a hundred books, several of them his own translations of French originals. Wynkyn de Worde, working as an apprentice to Johannes Veldener in Cologne, met William Caxton on his visit to the city in 1471 and joined him in Bruges. When Caxton installed his printing press near Westminster Abbey, Wynke accompanied him. During the latter’s career as a printer his name appears in a number of variant forms, but his Christian name was most likely Wynkyn, whilst Worde indicates his family’s origin in Woerden in the Netherlands. On Caxton’s death in 1492 Wynkyn took over the business.

Using his former employer’s device, fonts and woodcuts, he rapidly expanded the publishing house. In 1500 he moved the business to St Bride’s, Fleet Street, to exploit the mercantile patronage of the City. Located close to a tavern named the Swan, he used the imprimateur ‘emprynted at the sign of the Swan in Fletestrete’.
Wynkyn turned away from printing the Court material Caxton favoured and concentrated on religious and educational works instead. Collaborating with many of outstanding grammarians of his day, he acted as their publisher. He also maintained contacts with the Low Countries and fellow immigrants. He was associated with the York printer Hugo Goes and employed a number of men with Dutch sounding names such as Robert Maas and others.
Book historians tend to present Caxton as a literary scholar, whilst considering Wynkyn as a mere artisan. With the wide variety of books he published (some 800 in total) in mind and the vision he showed in expanding the business, this seems a rather crude simplification.
Considering the fact that England had fallen behind in developing the new technology, it is not surprising that printers from the Continent filled the gap in the market. William de Machlinia was born in Malines (Mechelen) in the Low Countries. Having settled in London, he assisted John Lettou (the name is an old form of Lithuania, but whether the printer came from there is not known).
In 1481, Lettou and Machlinia printed the first book on English property law. Written by Thomas Littleton, it was entitled Treatise on Tenures. The work was written in a peculiar dialect compounded of Norman French and phrases in English known as ‘law French’. Although Edward III had laid down by statute that viva voce proceedings in court should not take place in French, a language that was ‘much unknown in the realm’, the practice however lingered on for some considerable time. It became officially prohibited by a statute passed during the Commonwealth of 1650.

Between 1483 and 1490 Machlinia issued at least twenty-four books as a sole printer, none of those are dated, though some contain his name and place of printing, i.e. London (Fleet Bridge and Holborn). He was responsible for the printing of Pope Innocent III’s bull, granting dispensation for the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York in March 1486.
The very first book with an attempt at a title-page is the Sermo ad populum predicabilis by Arnold Therhoernen. The sermon was printed at Cologne in 1470, but a full title-page was not generally adopted till half a century later. Around 1482, Machlinia printed the first book in England that contains a title-page. Written by Canutus, Bishop of Aarhaus, its title reads as A passing gode lityll boke necessarye & helpefull agenst the Pestilence. It is interesting to note how quickly the art of printing was promoted by the authorities to highlight matters of social concern. London printing almost immediately became a tool in the fight against the plague.
Machlinia either retired or died around 1490 and his business seems to have been taken over by Richard Pynson (a native of Normandy), who used Machlinia’s woodcut borders and other materials. Thanks to the presence of the printing industry, the taverns of Fleet Street became central to London’s literary and intellectual life. The street itself and the surrounding area long maintained the link between journalistic writing, printing and drinking. One of the most famous of the pubs where both ‘hack and inky’ – journalist and printer – used to drink was the Printer’s Devil (slang for a printer’s apprentice) at Fetter Street.
Fleet Street remained the home of British national newspapers until the 1980s and continues to be used as a metonym for the press in the country. The link with the Continent was there from beginning to end. Having moved to Fleet Street in 1939, the Reuters agency was the last major British news office to leave the area for Canary Wharf in 2005. Reuters was founded in 1851 by Kassel-born Julius de Reuter, a German Jewish immigrant.

The Shibboleth Test : Thames Street (City of London)

A shibboleth is a linguistic identity marker. It is a phrase (or custom) that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. Its functions as a password and excludes those that do not ‘belong’. A person whose way of speaking violates a shibboleth is identified as an outsider.

The book of Judges (chapter 12: 1-15) describes the battle between two Semitic tribes in which the Ephraimites are defeated by the Gileadites. The victorious soldiers set up a blockade across the Jordan River to prevent fleeing enemies to get back to their territory. The sentries asked each person who wanted to cross the river to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites, who had no sh sound in their language, pronounced the word with an s. They were thereby unmasked and killed. In ethnic conflicts language is all too often is a tool for persecution and brutality.

The word ‘mob’ is derived from the Latin phrase ‘mobile vulgus’ (the fickle crowd). It had its origin at the period of the Exclusion Crisis when the nation became divided into party and faction, Whig versus Tory. Elections for parliament and other public meetings inevitably resulted in fights and disturbances. Initially the word the ‘mobile’ circulated to describe rioters. It was soon shortened to ‘mob’. Over the following decades, Londoners started to use the ‘slang’ neologism to describe urban disorder.

The connotation of ‘political’ unrest may be a relatively recent one, but rioting had long been a facet of urban life. Londoners were used to social havoc in the metropolis. The first manifestation of mob violence was caused by the imposition of the poll tax in 1381. The revolt took place in the dark aftermath of the Black Death epidemic of the late 1340s which had devastating socio-economic consequences both in rural and urban parts of the country.

Rioters rebelled against the landowning classes and Richard II’s government. Laying siege to the Tower of London, they murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer of England and numerous lawyers and Royal servants. The Peasant’s Revolt began in Essex in May 1381. Unrest spread quickly through the county and then into Kent. In June Wat Tyler joined the uprising in Maidstone and assumed leadership of the Kentish rebels. He marched his men into London and left a trail of destruction behind him. His men burned Savoy Palace, home of the hated John of Gaunt (Ghent), fourth son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, who took his name from the Duke of Brabant, his godfather and one of Edward’s allies in the Low Countries.

Bringing the riot to an end proved difficult and the rebellion appeared to be out of control. A horde of drunken men went in search of immigrants and a massacre took place in the neighbourhood of St Martin’s Vintry. The riot turned into a lynch party long before the word ‘lynching’ was entered into the dictionary. The spirit of rebellion lasted all summer.

The violence in London was related by the anonymous author of the Anonimalle Chronicle 1333 to 1381 in the following record: ‘whoever could catch any Fleming or other aliens of any nation, might cut off their heads … they went to the church of St Martin’s in the Vintry, and found therein thirty-five Flemings, whom they dragged outside and beheaded in the streets. On that day there were beheaded 140 or 160 persons. Then they took their way to the places of Lombards and other aliens, and broke into their houses, and robbed them of all their goods that they could discover’.

Jack Straw was a leading figure in the London riots who was later executed for his involvement. In The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Geoffrey Chaucer (whose father lived locally) refers to the massacre of Flemings by Straw’s gang:

Jack Straw and all his followers in their brawl | Were never half so shrill, for all their noise, | When they were murdering those Flemish boys.

One of the victims was the wine merchant and land-owning financier Richard Lyons. He owed a large house in Thames Street, a narrow riverside street in Vintry, which contained grand residences of courtiers and merchants. The street represented authority and foreign influence. Of Flemish descent, Lyons was killed in Cheapside on June 13, 1381, and his head was carried around the city on a pole.

Dozens of Flemings were dragged from their dwellings and the sanctuary of city churches, beheaded and their bodies left to rot. Nobody was spared during that violent outburst, except those who could plainly pronounce the shibboleth ‘bread and cheese’. If their speech sounded anything like ‘brot and cawse’, off went their heads, as a sure mark they were Flemish.

Jean Froissart was born in 1337 at Valenciennes, Hainault, which was then part of the Low Countries. Around 1360 he was employed by Philippa of Hainault, Queen Consort of Edward III, as court poet and historian. In his Chronicles he described Wat Tyler’s rebellion and the violence against immigrants.

A lavishly illustrated edition of his account was commissioned by Louis of Gruuthuuse, a nobleman within the Burgundian court and bibliophile from Bruges, who was awarded the title of Earl of Winchester by Edward IV in 1472. The four volumes contain 112 splendid miniatures, including images of Richard II meeting the rebels and the murder of Wat Tyler, in the style of Flemish illuminator Loiset Liédet. The London cityscape figures splendidly in the background of both scenes. It is a bitter irony that one of the bloodiest moments in London’s history of xenophobia helped to bring about what is arguably the capital’s most superbly illustrated book.

This is a chapter from European Londoners. Get a free digital copy from the complete book. Mail: [email protected] and we will send you one!

Gustave Flaubert & Bibliomania

Black pencil sketch of Gustave Flaubert by his brother Achille, around 1829.

Gustave Flaubert began to test his ability as a writer during his school years. On February 12, 1837, he published a novella called Bibliomania in the pink pages of the Rouen literary journal Le Colibri. His fantasy exercise in the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffmann (an author Flaubert admired and read at a young age) about a bookseller’s obsessive love of books was inspired by a trial account published on October 23, 1836, in the Parisian La Gazette des Tribunaux. The article was not signed and attributed to an unnamed correspondent in Barcelona.

Flaubert’s fictional version of the report would not reappear in print again until 1910 with the publication of the first volume of his Oeuvres de jeunesse inédites, three decades after his death.

Legend of Don Vincente

Don Vincente was a monk in the Cistercian Poblet Monastery near Tarragona in Catalonia. A man with a passion for books, he acted as keeper of the cloister’s valuable library. During a political disturbance in 1834 the religious house was attacked with the loss of priceless treasures as well as rare books. Rumors circulated that Vincente had collaborated with the plunderers in order to secure precious books for himself.

Shortly after the shocking event he left the Order, traveled to Barcelona, and opened a bookshop with a remarkable stock of rare books although he hardly ever sold an important item. When he had a chance to buy a precious book, he was with great reluctance obliged to sell an item from his stock.

His sole passion was to own rare publications. As he was never seen reading a book, some clients questioned whether Don Vincente could read at all.

In 1836, a highly collectable copy of Furs e ordinacions de Valencia (“Edicts and Ordinances for Valencia”) printed in 1482 by Lambert Palmart, Spain’s first printer, came up for auction in Barcelona. The announcement caused a stir and some booksellers formed a consortium in order to outbid the “hoarder” Don Vincente. They knew that if this unique gem would find a place in his collection, it was lost to forever and never shared with others. Antiquarian bookseller Augustino Patxot acted on the group’s behalf.

In spite of Vincente’s frenzied bidding in the salesroom, he was beaten by his competitor in what felt like a deadly duel. The loser flew in a threatening rage and refused to accept the customary “reales de consolacion” (an amount of money the highest bidder had to pay the next highest). Three days later, Patxot’s shop was ablaze. His corpse was recovered under the debris of burnt books.

The fatal fire was assumed to be an accident as the owner’s body was found clutching his pipe. He had likely fallen asleep whilst smoking. In the immediate aftermath, nine other bodies were found around Barcelona, although there were no clear traces of robbery or theft. There was no apparent connection between the victims apart from their passion for books. Don Vincente may have felt safe – but coincidence intervened.

During a police inspection of his premises, an officer noticed the copy of Furs e orinacions on one of Vincente’s shelves. As the sale of this famous book had reached the news, further investigations were carried out. Various titles were identified that had been removed from the private libraries of the dead men. Vincente was arrested.

After first claiming to be innocent, Don Vincente finally admitted to theft and murder on the understanding that his personal library would be protected and remain intact. Before the judge he justified his criminal acts in the following terms: “Men are mortal. Sooner or later, God calls them back to him. But good books need to be conserved.”

In court, the biggest blow was dealt to him when his lawyer claimed that his client’s ownership of Furs e orinacions was circumstantial as there was another copy unearthed recently and offered for sale in a French bookseller’s catalogue. Horrified by this news, Vincente lost his cool and composure. Until the hour of his execution he was repeatedly heard muttering the words “My copy is not unique.”

Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness, London 1809.

Monomania

In the early nineteenth century, book collecting became a competitive obsession among British gentlemen in particular. The bloody end of the French Revolution saw an influx of collectibles arrive on the market as private libraries were emptied. The phenomenon was labeled “bibliomania,” a term coined in 1809 by the physician and author John Ferriar in a poem dedicated to the book collector Richard Heber (co-founder in 1812 of the Roxburghe Club of bibliophiles).

That same year, cleric and bibliographer Thomas Frognell Dibdin published The Bibliomania; or Book Madness, a satire of those afflicted with this “neurosis.” He was probably the first to medicalize the condition. He listed a number of “symptoms” displayed by bibliomaniacs, including an obsession with uncut copies, books printed on vellum, morocco bindings, black letter books, first editions, illustrated copies, and works condemned or suppressed by the authorities.

Coined around 1810 by the French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirrol, the concept of “monomania” pointed at the presence of an expansive fixed idea in which the mind was deranged in some facets. It was treated as a form of partial insanity, conceived as single mental obsession in an otherwise sound mind. Bibliomania was seen as specific manifestation of this phenomenon.

Scientific research into mental aberration attracted Romantic artists and novelists who questioned Enlightenment rationality. They examined the influence of mental states and shared the belief that a face most accurately revealed character, especially in madness and at the moment of death. Théodore Géricault’s painting “Monomane de l’envie” (Monomaniac of envy) was created in 1822 as part of his series of ten portraits on the mentally ill. The “Portraits of the Insane” had been commissioned by Étienne-Jean Georget, a doctor at the Salpêtrière hospital and asylum in Paris.

Monomania was a condition that intrigued many writers who created tales in which the narrator and protagonist would suffer some form of the malady and become fixated on an idea, an object, an urge or a person, often to the point of mental destruction or criminality. French authors were quick to utilize the concept.

Balzac made it a driving theme in his novels Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Père Goriot (1835) and Eugène Scribe’s one act comedy Une monomanie performed in Paris in 1832 used the disorder as an excuse for a character to fake their own suicide. Flaubert’s cheating heroine Madame Bovary suffers from this condition in the form of an incessant guilt and fear of discovery.

Diffusion of the Legend

Shortly after its publication, an abridged version of the article from the Gazette des Tribunaux was reproduced by the Parisian illustrated magazine Le Voleur (“The Thief”). In an age of pervasive plagiarism, this journal was notorious for lifting stories from other publications without any form of credit. The editors took pride in “pillaging” whatever they fancied from newspapers and journals that were published in the capital (according to their editorial in its first issue of April 5, 1828). Young Flaubert would have enjoyed consulting its sensational and irreverent contents.

No historical evidence of Don Vincente or a court case against him has ever been found; his crime did not appear in local newspapers at the time; there was no monk by the name of Fra Vincente at Poblet at the time of its closure. The anonymous article in La Gazette des Tribunaux was fiction and possibly intended as a morality tale rather than an actual story of bibliomania.

The history nevertheless reached far at the time and was cited as a true tale in France and elsewhere in Europe (while remaining virtually unknown in Spain). In 1837 Scottish surgeon Robert Macnish quoted the case in an extensive appendix to his Introduction to Phrenology as an extraordinary example of “Homicidal Monomania” which was understood in scientific terms as an abrupt “lesion” of the will capable of driving an otherwise sane person to murder.

Gustave Flaubert, Bibliomanie; publ. by Jean-Cyrille Godefroy. Paris1982.(Traversée du XIXe siècle)

Flaubert’s Version

In his first ever published narrative, Flaubert drew upon this fertile story. He could have consulted either of the two articles that circulated at the time to create a fictionalized version of Don Vincente’s story. He introduced him as the bookseller Giacomo, a taciturn and sombre character driven by a single passion: books. It was a wild fire that “burned within him, used up his days, devoured his existence” and pushed him to the edge of insanity.

It must have tickled the aspiring author’s rich sense of irony to encounter an individual who had killed to own a unique book, only to be presented with an auction catalogue in which another copy was offered for sale.

The concept of monomania was current in medical and artistic discourse during Flaubert’s formative years. The youngster was prone to the tendency himself. His intense hatred of bourgeois mentality that erupts time and again in his novels and letters, would become a monomania with him. He sought refuge in writing and, young as he was, he may well have identified with the figure of Don Vincente.

Every post we do a little advertising for a great and moving book, written by my friend, the eminent scholar and writer Jaap Harskamp. This book, European Londoners will be published here in installments. But you can get a digital copy for free if you mail to [email protected]. There is a beautiful printed version that you can order too, if you, like us, love books!

THE BOOK BLOGGER

In Praise of Print on Paper: Authors, Publishers, Private Presses, Booksellers, Typographers, Bibliophiles, Bibliomaniacs, Librarians & Auctioneers

Much has been made in recent years about the rise of the eBook and the imminent “death” of the printed book. Such discussions remain both fashionable and fruitless. As long as people read, the shape or form of the book is irrelevant.

The electronic book has been a blessing in disguise for those who vigorously defend the value and beauty of the printed book. The application of new technologies in producing texts allows for fewer, but better-produced books in print.

The concept of the small high-quality Press has returned and with it a renewed interest in typography, paper, illustration and design. Fine printing is re-conquering a place in the battle for public attention and affection. Photography did not kill off portrait painting as it was once feared; neither will the eBook condemn the printed text to the dustbin of history.

There is and there has always been ample space for different forms of presentation. Printing is a proper Palace of Variety. The blogs presented here are a celebratory toast to the book’s wellbeing – not an obituary.

Jaap Harskamp, November 2024 (Ely, Cambridgesire) For his New York blogs, see: Jaap Harskamp, Author at New York Almanack

Get a free digital copy of the author’s latest book: European Londoners, Contact: [email protected]

Refugees & Migrants: St Paul’s Cross (City of London)

The designations ‘alien’ and ‘stranger’ were used in the early modern period to refer to foreign-born individuals residing in the realm, but with none of the franchises of native Englishmen. The term ‘immigrant’ was rarely used at the time and belongs to later ages of concern. As a legal term, the word alien refers to a person who is in a country, but not a resident of that country. There were four types of persons known to the law: natural born subject; denisen; alien friend; and alien enemy. The Crown possessed absolute power over alien enemies. Alien friends (Protestant refugees) were protected by law and were granted limited rights. Immigrants were not allowed to own property; they were not entitled to vote or hold office; they were required to pay double the rates of taxation; and in times of war or political conflict the authorities reserved the right of immediate expulsion.
An alien could become an adopted subject with the acquisition of a letter of patent. There was a financial cost involved, but the most valued aspects of the letter of denisation were its grant of permanent residency and protection from expulsion. The letter of naturalisation from Parliament offered full security and rights. Naturalised aliens were able to trade freely, purchase (and bequeath) property and enjoy the same tax status as natural born subjects. Few aliens were able to acquire this status as acquisition of the letter was costly. During Elizabeth’s reign only twelve acts were granted.
The rise of the cloth industry in the fourteenth century gave the country her first considerable manufacturing base. It is noteworthy that the initial influx of foreigners into England during that period was by Royal invitation when, in 1331, Edward III asked a group of Flemish weavers to revive a decaying local industry.
Early immigration was economically determined, strangers were invited because of their superior skills, although strict conditions were imposed which was an early attempt at formulating an ‘immigration policy’. At a time that the potentialities of government action were limited, the encouragement of a refugee influx was a significant act of state in the socio-economic sphere.
In the course of the sixteenth century an increasing number of religious refugees found asylum in England. Most of them moved to London and settled outside the City walls. They brought with them new skills and techniques which gave them the edge over local Londoners in trades as diverse as weaving, silver and gold-smithing, tailoring, clock-making or brewing. In addition, there were printers, basket makers, joiners and caterers.
Initially, immigrant businesses offered employment to local Londoners who were able to adopt the new techniques for their own advancement. The recession of the early 1500s hit the capital hard. Foreigners were blamed for hunger and poverty. In 1517, provoked by a racist speech by Doctor Beal [Bele] at St Paul’s Cross, several hundred of hungry artisans and apprentices took to the streets in Stepney in search of foreigners and, in the process, killing many immigrants.
The riot is known as Evil May Day and has entered popular mythology as a gruesome occasion. The punishment meted out to the rioters was ferocious. Fifteen Londoners were hung, drawn and quartered for their part in the anti-alien fury. The surviving prisoners were charged with the offence of ‘breaking the peace of Christendom’, another capital crime. This harsh treatment was an attempt by the authorities to stamp out extreme hostilities against immigrants. Yet, xenophobia persisted. The landscape of sixteenth century urban history is dotted with outbursts of anti-alien sentiment.
The first major arrival of refugees during the reign of Elizabeth I coincided with a period of considerable instability. An economic slump, an unsettled religious situation and the hostility of Catholic nations, made Elizabeth’s seat of power unsteady. In 1558, she appointed William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, as her Secretary of State. By 1572 he was named Lord High Treasurer and became chief Royal advisor.
Cecil was a prominent defender of the concept of asylum. He sympathised with Continental migrants as fellow Protestants, but also sensed that the settling of skilled workers could be useful to develop the nation’s backward economy. In his policy making there was an attempt to balance the protection of natural born subjects with the aspirations of refugees and immigrants.
Religious instability was one of the concerns about the mass arrival of aliens. Protestantism was more readily embraced in the South and East of England (Essex and Kent stood in the vanguard) than elsewhere in the country. London became the centre where all books and pamphlets from the Continent were smuggled to (by 1518 Martin Luther tracts were easily available in the City — printing had become a formidable power) and where all heretics and ‘evangelical brethren’ gathered. It was feared that an increasing number of foreigners would constitute a possible ‘fifth column’ in the struggle against the Catholic Church. From the beginning, asylum has been accompanied by varying degrees of xenophobia and resentment.
There was also disquiet about the non-integration of refugees. Settling in ‘foreign quarters’ and being supported by their (stranger) churches, it was feared that refugees barely needed to accommodate themselves to the local way of life. The inability of Dutch or Flemish characters to speak English became a standard joke in Tudor comedy.
The feeling that strangers deliberately excluded Englishmen from their business relations was one of the grievances behind the simmering agitation of native craftsmen. In 1570 thirty immigrants from the Low Countries made enquiries if they could settle in Rye (Sussex). Seeking advice from the Privy Council, local authorities received a directive that reads like a summary of sixteenth century immigration policy. These were the criteria for settlement laid down in this document: refugee settlements had to be composed of Protestants; immigrants must possess skills that would benefit the economy and teach those skills to local citizens; the number of strangers had to be controlled; in order to minimise local hostility, settlers had to be distributed around the country in groups of limited size. If the first requirement was not fulfilled, the others did not matter. In 1574, some 1.500 strangers in London who could not show Protestant credentials were ordered to leave.
The era is typified by a dichotomy of attitudes. Many Elizabethans, whatever their ‘class’ or position, did not trust immigrants whilst others supported the concept of limited asylum. Guildford-born George Abbot, later Archbishop of Canterbury, commented in one of his morning lectures in Oxford (1572) upon the many conspiracies in London ‘intended against outlandish folks’. He was ashamed of the fact that they were treated ‘no better than French dogs’. Godly people, he insisted, treat ‘aliens as brethren’.
Grievances were mainly of an economic nature. In September 1571, the ‘Citizens of London’ sent a petition to the Queen outlining seven complaints directed against foreigners, six of which dealt with alien merchants. Early migration shows that where immigrants sprang from an economically progressive background, they contributed to the extension of technical enterprise. The stranger from a developed community proved a unique vehicle for economic enterprise able to manage the affairs of its hosts as he was not bound to their ethical standards or business conventions.
When Daniel Defoe somewhat unkindly said that the Englishman had invented nothing and improved everything, he may have been hinting at the nation’s ability to ignore ideas in the abstract, but quickly adopt new propositions when practical exposition was provided. Many of the skills and techniques brought in from the Continent became part of the socio-industrial fabric of the nation. Entrepreneurial activity and economic prosperity were kick-started by immigrants.

This is the first chapter of European Londoners. If you like it: you can get the complete book for free, as a PDF. Mail [email protected]

European Londoners

After a long silence we are going to revive our blog – recently we published this great book, by Jaap Harskamp: European Londoners. We will publish it on line, in installments. But you can get the complete digital version now, and for free. Just send a mail to [email protected] to receive a PDF. You may want to own and read the paper version. This costs 40 pound / euro (including packing and posting). We think that in a time when bigots start to hunt immigrants we need different voices. This book is such a voice.

SCHWITTERS AND JARRY AT THE GABERBOCCHUS PRESS | Randolph Avenue (Maida Vale)

Franciszka Weinles was born on 28 June 1907 in Warsaw, the daughter of the Jewish artist Jakub Weinles. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw in 1931. Stefan Themerson was born on 25 January 1910 in Plock, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). His Jewish father was a physician and social reformer. Stefan studied physics and then architecture at Warsaw University, but his real early interest was photography and film making. The two met in 1929 and were married two years later.

Living in Warsaw until 1935, Stefan wrote children book that were illustrated by Franciszka. Together they produced a number of short experimental films. In the winter of 1937/8 the couple moved to Paris joining an international circle of artists and writers. Stefan wrote for various Polish publications in Paris; Franciszka illustrated children’s books for Flammarion.

With the declaration of war in 1939, both enlisted. Stefan joined the Polish army; Franciszka was seconded as a cartographer to the Polish Government in Exile, first in France and from 1940 in London. With the German invasion and the Allied collapse, Stefan found himself desperately trying to escape from France. Towards the end of 1942 he succeeded to make his way to Lisbon and was transported to Britain by the RAF.

Having been reunited with his wife, he joined the film unit of the Polish Ministry of Information and Documentation. There he and Franciszka produced Calling Mr Smith, an account of Nazi atrocities in Poland. In 1944 the Themersons moved to the West London district of Maida Vale, where they would stay for the rest of their lives. At the time of their naturalisation on 13 April 1954, the couple lived at no. 49 Randolph Avenue.

Stefan and Franciszka established the Gaberbocchus Press in 1948. The choice of name was inspired by the Latinised version of Lewis Carroll’s inventive nonsense poem ‘Jabberwocky’ that was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass.

With Franciszka as artistic director and Stefan as editor, the Press was active until 1979 and published fifty-nine titles. In the typical private press tradition, work began from home by printing their first books on a hand-press using hand-made paper. As the press developed the titles were professionally printed. They kept an office in Formosa Street where, from 1957 to 1959, they also ran the Gaberbocchus Common Room which was a meeting place for artists, scientists, and members of the public to exchange ideas and enjoy readings, music performances, and film screenings.

A characteristic of all the Press’s publications was the intimate relationship between image and text as an expression of content. The output included works by Apollinaire, Jankel Adler, and Bertrand Russell’s The Good Citizen’s Alphabet. Gaberbocchus also introduced Kurt Schwitters to an English audience.

Born in June 1887 in Hanover and educated at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Dresden, Schwitters was conscripted into the army between March and June 1917, but was declared unfit for active service. The senseless slaughter of war had shaken his faith in the cultural norms of his generation. He became a prominent figure within the Dada movement, but his status was undermined with the rise of Hitler.

In 1937, four of his works were included in the notorious Entartete Kunst (‘Degenerate art’) exhibition. Thirteen other works were removed from German museums. Forced to leave Germany he settled at Lysaker, near Oslo. When German forces attacked Norway he fled to Britain, arriving in Edinburgh in 1940.

Kurt’s Dadaist reputation meant nothing in England. Singled out as an enemy alien, he was interned at Douglas on the Isle of Man. Behind barbed wire, Hutchinson Internment Camp held so many academics and artists that it functioned as a kind of university-in-exile. Kurt Schwitters performed his poems there and painted portraits.

After obtaining his freedom he returned to London and moved into an attic flat at no. 3 St Stephen Crescent, Paddington. He exhibited in several galleries, but with little success. At his first solo exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery in December 1944, forty works were displayed but only one was sold. An outsider, he remained virtually unknown as an artist. In 1944, he met Edith ‘Wanty’ Thomas. In 1945 they moved to Ambleside in the Lake District. On 7 January 1948 Schwitters received news that he had been granted British citizenship. He died the day after.

Themerson first met Schwitters in 1943 at a London meeting of the PEN Club. Kindred spirits, they became friends. In 1958, the Gaberbocchus Press published Schwitters in England: 1940-1948, the first presentation of the author’s prose and poems in English. In his introduction Stefan praises Kurt’s art of collage as a conscious attempt to ‘make havoc’ of cultural conventions. The presentation of the book was a fitting tribute. Its unorthodox design with multi-coloured papers and striking cover reflects a rejection of established procedures that Schwitters would have appreciated.

Averse of the vulgar commerciality of publishing, a key objective of the Press was to produce ‘best lookers rather than best sellers’. A refusal to conform is best illustrated by the 1951 publication of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi.

Hallmarks of the playwright’s style are absurdity and irreverence, characteristics that inspired the Themerson edition. Printed on yellow paper, Barbara Wright produced her translation by hand on lithographic plates to which Franciszka added the witty drawings that capture the spirit of the play. For its presentation and design, it became the most acclaimed book of the Gaberbocchus Press.

In 1952, Franciszka created masks for a reading of the play at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; she also designed life-size puppets for s stage performance by the Stockholm’s Marionetteatern in 1964, and finally drew ninety episodes of a comic-strip version of Ubu in 1969.

At Themerson’s invitation, the Gaberbocchus Press was taken over by De Harmonie publishers in Amsterdam in 1979. Two years later, Stefan delivered the annual Huizinga Lecture at Leiden University and it was through this strong Dutch connection that some of his novels gained recognition in the English-reading world. In 1985, De Bezige Bij in Amsterdam published a translation of an English manuscript which they titled Euclides was een ezel (‘Euclid was an ass’). It motivated Faber & Faber to publish an English version in 1986, now called The Mystery of the Sardine.

Franciszka died in London in June 1988. Stefan passed away in September that same year. Together, they had spent more than four creative decades in exile, underscoring Stefan’s credo that writers carry their culture with them wherever the city of refuge may be. Having to resist threats of patriotic fervour and nationalism, exile – be it externally or self-imposed – is the artist’s natural condition.

Jaap Harskamp, PhD at Amsterdam University (Comparative Literature), Researcher at European University Institute (Florence), Curator Dutch & Flemish Collections at British Library (retired), Researcher at Cambridge UL. His work has been published by the Wellcome Institute, British Library, and Brill. He writes a weekly blog for the New York Almanack at

www.newyorkalmanack.com/author/jharskamp/

Porn and Pansies – Red Lion Street (London)

During the later nineteenth century middle class society was obsessed with righteousness and ill at ease with modernist art. Whilst the writer depicted the bourgeois as a malicious fool (le père Ubu is the ultimate caricature in a tradition going back as far as Balzac’s César Birotteau), the upright citizen fought back by taking the artist to court and making him pay for his ‘immoralities’.

Rejecting much of contemporary written and visual art, opponents argued that vicious doctrines vitiate the mind of the young, indecent pictures befoul their imagination, explicit books deprave their character. Goethe had no hesitation in stressing that the young can read without risk, but alarmists disagreed. They warned parents to protect their children against the treacherous power of fine sounding words and alluring imagery.

The battle between writer and censor has raged for centuries throughout Europe. It was a conflict in which the latter long held the upper hand. The French Revolution acknowledged the communication of ideas as a fundamental human right. Every citizen shall be free to speak, write, or print. The reality of these freedoms was continuously undermined – even in France. Political censorship was not abandoned.

The censor was supposed to uphold the moral fibre of the nation too. In Britain, the Walpole Government passed a law in 1739 which handed the Lord Chamberlain the authority to oversee public performances. Unlicensed productions were punished by closure of the theatre and imprisonment of its actors.

This power was extended by the 1843 Theatres Act. Works by Dumas and Ibsen were refused licenses, as was Oscar Wilde’s Salome. Even The Mikado had its permit temporarily withdrawn on the occasion of a visit by the Japanese Crown Prince in 1907. Before 1968, theatres were prevented from staging any play that mentioned homosexuality, venereal disease, or birth control. In that year, a new Theatres Act was passed that removed the Lord Chamberlain’s licensing power. Plays were left subject to scrutiny under obscenity laws only.

Sigmund Freud’s thinking on sexuality had a liberating influence upon literature. In parallel with the demand for modernity rose the emancipation movement. In 1928 Radclyffe Hall published The Well of Loneliness. The fact that the novel portrayed lesbianism as ‘natural’ outraged both critics and readers. Although without direct sexual references, a British court judged the novel obscene as it defended ‘unnatural practices between women’. Publicity over the legal battle increased the visibility of lesbians in society.

Charles [Carl] Lahr was born in 1885 at Bad Nauheim, Rhineland, into a farming family. A political agitator, he fled Germany in 1905 to avoid military service and went to England. In London he encountered the anarchist Guy Aldred, founder of the Bakunin Press. During Kaiser Wilhelm’s state visit to London in 1907, Lahr was bundled out of a restaurant on Leman Street for yelling out that the bastard should be shot. He remained under police suspicion. After the declaration of war in 1914, he spent four years of internment in Alexandra Palace alongside hundreds of other ‘enemy aliens’.

In 1921 Lahr took over the Progressive Bookshop at no. 68 Red Lion Street, Holborn, which he ran with his wife Esther Archer. Their tiny outlet may have shared the ground floor of an eighteenth-century building with a jumble shop, but it played a cameo role in countless literary memoirs of the twenties and thirties.

In addition, Charles and Esther set up the Blue Moon Press, publishing small editions of short stories. They taunted the inter-war censor with pamphlets on The Benefits, Moral and Secular, of Assassination, and with James Hanley’s the homo-erotic fiction. The couple also produced a literary magazine named New Coterie (Aldous Huxley and D.H. Lawrence were amongst its contributors).

Lahr took the risk of distributing the first edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (published in 1928 by the Italian bookseller Pino Orioli). Banned in Britain and America, dispatch of the novel proved difficult, and copies were scarce. This created a vacuum that was filled with pirate editions.

Lawrence decided to produce a cheap edition of Lady Chatterley to undercut the illicit trade, but he was unable to find a publisher prepared to brave the censor. Victor Gollancz was interested, but would only consider an expurgated manuscript. Lawrence refused. The novelist finally found a publisher in the intriguing figure of Edward William Titus, a Polish-born American who was married to the cosmetics giant Helena Rubinstein and owned the Montparnasse rare bookstore ‘At the Sign of the Black Manikin’ (opened in 1924) and was founder of the Black Manikin Press. Titus brought out a cheap, paper-bound edition of Lady Chatterleyin May 1929.

In London, Lahr continued as a clandestine distributor of the novel, agreeing to take 200 copies of the paperback. By March 1930 D.H. Lawrence was dead. That year, the first London edition of Lady Chatterley was produced in a basement workshop near Euston Station. There were 500 copies in all, each bearing a false Florentine imprint: ‘the Tipografia Guintina, directed by L. Franceschini’.

Following the controversy surrounding Lady Chatterley, postal workers acting under instruction from Scotland Yard opened a registered parcel sent by Lawrence from Florence to his literary agent Curtis Brown in London. The package contained two typescripts of Pansies, the last book of poems Lawrence saw published in his lifetime. It was confiscated on grounds of indecency.

Even though abridged versions were circulated by Martin Secker in London and Alfred A. Knopf in New York (in July and September 1929 respectively), Lawrence promptly produced a fuller version. The typescript was smuggled through English customs by Welsh novelist Rhys Davies. Printed in August 1929 by P.R. Stephenson of no. 41 Museum Street, London, an uncut edition of the book was published privately for an audience of 500 subscribers by Charles Lahr.

The Obscene Publications Act was passed in 1959. The bill intended to strengthen the law concerning hard-core material and divided such publications into the two categories of pornography and literature. It was left to a jury to decide whether a printed document (as a whole) had sufficient redeeming merit as literature to sanction its preservation.

The first test of the new Act was the Lady Chatterley trial. The prosecution failed. A less repressive regime was imminent. A mature society would no longer accept random censorship by the authorities. Following the dramatic court case, Penguin won the right to publish the novel in its entirety in October 1960. The first run of 200,000 copies was sold out on the first day of publication.

Exile is a double-edged experience. James Joyce and Ezra Pound stressed the intellectual necessity of being abroad, presenting exile as a vehicle for individuality and liberation. For others, exile was a bitter and frustrating experience. In his career Charles Lahr went through the whole gamut of emotions. He started his career in London as an ‘outsider’ with the courage to take on the authorities as a publisher and bookseller, but his later years were dark. By the 1930s he found himself in financial difficulties. Friends gathered a collection of stories together on his behalf, published in 1933 as Charles Wain, but his problems deepened.

In 1935, Foyle’s in Charing Cross Road reported theft from its stock. The thieves were caught and they claimed to have sold on the stolen books to the Progressive Bookshop. Lahr was arrested. Threatened with deportation to Germany – a terrifying prospect for a denaturalised citizen with a Jewish wife – he confessed and spent six months in Wandsworth Prison. His bookshop was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1941. He ended up selling books for the Independent Labour Party at King’s Cross. Lahr died in London in 1971 – an immigrant martyr for the freedom of expression.

www.newyorkalmanack.com/author/jharskamp/

Beyond the religious divide: Rubens and Mayerne in London St Martin’s Lane (Covent Garden)

By Jaap Harskamp / you can find more articles by his hand here

Peter Paul Rubens was a painter with a Baroque brush. He was admired by his contemporaries as the creator of dramatically charged and sensual scenes. As a person, by contrast, he established a reputation for tact and discretion. His genius opened doors to European monarchs and statesmen. He offered the perfect profile as a covert diplomat, his art providing cover for politically sensitive activities.

In 1629 he was sent to London by Philip IV on a (nearly) ten month mission to pave the way for a peace treaty between Spain and Britain. Charles I took this opportunity to conclude the details of a substantial commission for the ceiling paintings at Banqueting House, Whitehall Palace, in memory of his father James I. The nine canvases were produced at Rubens’s factory-like studio in Antwerp and eventually installed in 1637. For his diplomatic efforts and artistic skills, he was knighted by both monarchs.

Although eager to return to Antwerp, his long stay in London was productive from a creative point of view. Having brought his brushes with him, he accepted a number of commissions, including a three-quarter length painting of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, whose collection of classical sculpture was accommodated in a mansion on the Strand.

Another and more intimate work shows the wife (Deborah Kip) and children of Middelburg-born Balthazar Gerbier, probably painted at York House where the latter was employed as keeper of and agent for the outstanding picture collection of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

Mingling with London’s diplomats, it was inevitable that Catholic painter Rubens would meet Protestant physician and polymath Theodore de Mayerne. It turned out to be a happy meeting of minds – in spite of religious differences.

On his penultimate day in London, Rubens paid an unauthorised call to the Chelsea residence of Albert Joachimi, Ambassador of the United Provinces in London. During this visit he made an unsuccessful plea for a truce in hostilities between the Netherlands and Spain. It seems likely that this meeting between two opponents was facilitated by Mayerne who, that same year, had married Joachimi’s daughter Elisabeth in Fulham.

Theodore de Mayerne was born at Geneva on 28 September 1573 and was named after his god-father, the reformer Theodore Beza. He studied medicine at Montpellier, before being appointed physician to Henry IV. When his Protestant background barred his career advancement, he moved to London in 1611.

Having settled at St Martin’s Lane, he was appointed Physician-in-Ordinary to the Stuart court. He kept a record of the many afflictions and final illness of James I (a cadaverous appearance, weak legs, swollen feet, arthritis in the joints, sore lips, and bad breath, the King repelled those close to him by hiccupping and belching). Charles I kept Mayerne in his post requesting a report from him on measures to prevent a plague epidemic. During the turmoil of civil war, Mayerne balanced himself between Parliamentarians and Royalists and he survived Oliver Cromwell’s rule unharmed.

At a time that the profession of physician in England was barely developed, Mayerne was part of a European medical clerisy, a group of elite practitioners who, writing and conversing in Latin, pushed medicine away from preachers and quacks. Cholera does not attend church, the plague has no pulpit. Disease is the great equaliser.

Mayerne was among the first to apply chemistry to the compounding of medicines. He experimented with drugs that were not recommended in the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis compiled in 1618 by fellows of the Royal College of Physicians. His clinical reputation kept them from taking action against his ‘unorthodox’ approach of prescribing chemical remedies.

Mayerne’s interest in the structure and properties of substances extended into other domains of activity. He applied scientific methodologies to the study of artistic techniques (and pondered how painting could benefit from the development of chemical knowledge). The British Library holds the splendid ‘Mayerne manuscript’ (MS 2052, acquired by Hans Sloane, and catalogued as Pictoria, sculptoria et quae subalternarum atrium). Dated between 1620 and 1646, the manuscript contains notes on the making of pigments, oils, and varnishes; the preparation of surfaces for painting; and the repair and conservation of works of art.

Mayerne was in personal contact with Dutch and Flemish artists who had made London their home and involved them in his research. He interviewed Anthony van Dyck and it has been suggested that his research into the properties of pigments helped fellow Swiss immigrant Jean Petitot to reach the perfection of his colouring in enamel. Considering all this, it is not suprising that Mayerne was keen to meet great Rubens during his London mission. The British Museum holds a sketch in black chalk which Rubens later used for his Mayerne portrait (executed in Antwerp in 1631).

Like a number of medical men in history, Mayerne was also interested in the art of cooking (to the Romans, the word ‘curare’ signified to dress a dinner as well as to cure a disease). Mayerne’s 1658 cookery-book bears title Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus[The Anglo-French chef].

As he was regularly invited to gatherings organised by the Lord Mayor, he named his first recipe ‘A City of London Pie’. This gastronomic tour de force contains the following ingredients ‘eight marrow bones, eighteen sparrows, one pound of potatoes, a quarter of a pound of eringoes, two ounces of lettuce stalks, forty chestnuts, half a pound of dates, a peck of oysters, a quarter of a pound of preserved citron, three artichokes, twelve eggs, two sliced lemons, a handful of pickled barberries, a quarter of an ounce of whole pepper, half an ounce of sliced nutmeg, half an ounce of whole cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce of whole cloves, half an ounce of mace, and a quarter of a pound of currants. When baked, the pie should be liquored with white wine, butter and sugar’.

It is hardly surprising that, in late life, obesity made him immobile. Ironically, the cause of his death in March 1655 was attributed to consuming bad wine at the Canary House tavern in the Strand.

Lay Down Your Weary Tune : Palace of Westminster (Westminster)

The Renaissance held music in high regard. It played a prominent part in religious, court and civic life. The interchange of ideas in Europe through ever closer economic and political contact brought about the creation of new musical genres, the development of instruments, and the advancement of specialist printing.

By about 1500, Franco-Flemish composers dominated the domain. Most prominent among them was Josquin des Prez who, like fellow artists at the time, travelled widely between nations. The intensity of international encounters led to stylistic developments that have been appreciated as being truly European.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century Antwerp had developed into a hub of musical activity. The most important initiatives were undertaken by the church. Antwerp Cathedral employed twelve choristers who lived in a private house where they received instruction from a singing master. At the beginning of the century this office was held by Jacob Obrecht who was famous for his polyphonic compositions. The composer’s prolific output consists of some twenty-six masses, thirty-two motets, and thirty secular pieces, not all texted. Antwerp also employed a company of fiddlers for both secular and ecclesiastical performances.

Composers from all over Europe chose Antwerp as their home, amongst them a number of English musicians. Peter Philips had moved to the Continent as a Catholic refugee. In 1593, he travelled from the Southern Netherlands to Amsterdam to ‘see and heare an excellent man of his faculties’. The man he referred to was organist and composer JanPietersz Sweelinck, known as the ‘Orpheus of Amsterdam’. The latter had converted to Calvinism in 1578, but he was not unsympathetic to his old faith. Philips was one of many Catholic musicians who had left England. A prolific composer of Latin sacred choral music, he was made organist to the Chapel of Archduke Albrecht in Antwerp.

Another refugee was Hereford-born John Bull. Appointed chief musician to Prince Henry in 1611, he furtively disappeared to Flanders after the death of his patron in November 1612. Bull later explained his flight because of the accusation of Catholic sympathies made against him. He moved to Brussels where he was briefly employed as one of the organists in the Chapel of Archduke Albrecht VII, sovereign of the Habsburg Netherlands. From September 1615, he held the post of organist of Antwerp Cathedral. In December 1617 he acted as city organist at ‘s Hertogenbosch. Bull’s later reputation rests mainly on his keyboard music. The composition of God Save the Queen has been attributed to him.

Antwerp acquired a reputation for its printing skills. Originally, all music was notated by hand. Manuscripts were costly and owned exclusively by religious orders, courts, or wealthy households. That all changed in 1501 when Venetian printer Ottaviano Petrucci published Harmonice musices odhecaton, the first significant anthology of (100) polyphonic secular songs. The availability of notation in print boosted the development of instrumental music for both soloists and ensembles, and engendered the creation of new genres.

In Flanders, Tielman Susato was the first printer to gain esteem for producing music books. Nothing is known about the date or place of his birth – he may have been Dutch or German. Details about his activities begin in 1529 when he was working as a calligrapher for Antwerp Cathedral. He also played the trumpet and was listed as a ‘town player’ in the city. In 1541, he created the first music printing company in the Low Countries which he combined with selling musical instruments from his home. During his prolific publishing career he was responsible for twenty-five books of chansons, three books of masses, and nineteen books of motets.

The indefatigable Christopher Plantin was also active in printing music and produced some of the finest choir-books of his day. From the 1570s onwards, the Bellerus and Phalesius families were leading printing houses within the domain. The whole contemporary repertoire was made available by Antwerp presses: vernacular song books and psalms as well as polyphonic secular and religious music. Composers from all over Europe had their work printed in this, the most musical of all cities at the time.

Flourishing musical life in Antwerp and Brussels did not go unnoticed at the English court. In fact, a number of outstanding Flemish musicians were invited to cross the Channel. Henry VIII had received a thorough musical education and was a dedicated patron of the arts. He was accomplished at the lute, organ, and virginals and, apparently, could sing as well. Henry recruited the best musicians to join his court. There are a number of Flemish musicians amongst the many Europeans that were attracted to join the music scene in and around London.

Dyricke Gérarde [Derrick Gerarde] arrived in England in 1544. Little is known of his life, but almost his entire musical output is contained in manuscript in the British Library. These manuscripts constitute one of the largest collections of polyphony by a single composer to have survived from the Elizabethan era. His achievement however was overshadowed by the reputation of a Flemish composer who had arrived in London some two decades previously.

Lutenist Philip van Wilder was first recorded as a resident in London in 1522. By 1529 he was a member of the Privy Chamber, the select group of musicians who played to the king in private. During the second quarter of the sixteenth century Van Wilder oversaw secular music-making at the court, a position that brought him close to Henry VIII. He taught playing the lute to Princess (later Queen) Mary and subsequently to Prince Edward (later Edward VI).

At the time of Henry VIII’s death in 1547 Van Wilder was Keeper of the Instruments and effectively head of the instrumental musical establishment at Westminster, a post later known as Master of the King’s Music. The upkeep of the Royal instruments at Westminster was a heavy duty. The scope of that task becomes clear from the inventory of Henry’s possessions at his death, listing thirteen organs, nineteen other keyboard instruments (virginals and clavichords), and several hundred smaller wind and string instruments including viols, lutes, and recorders.

Van Wilder continued to enjoy Royal favour during the reign of Edward VI. He was granted a coat of arms and crest and, in 1551, authorised to recruit boy singers for the Chapel Royal from anywhere in England. Three years after his death in February 1554 an anonymous tribute was paid to the musician and printed by Richard Tottel in his collection of Songes and Sonettes (1557), commonly known as ‘Tottel’s Miscellany’, containing the following line:

Laye downe your lutes and let your gitterns rest.

Phillips is dead whose like you can not finde,

Of musicke much exceeding all the rest.

Renaissance court and civic life teaches our age the salutary lesson that a nationalist message is one of isolationism. The appeal to nativist emotions conceals the yearning for an ideal world that never was. The cultural strength of a country manifests itself in the openness of its borders, in the assimilation of alien concepts, in the embracing of external influences. It takes a cosmopolitan mind to be a veritable patriot.

On Books, Streets & Migrant Footprints

by Jaap Harskamp and Paul Dijstelberge