A Rare Print Makes A Poor Fan But A Great Find!

Cotsen 5363140

I came across the above item while rummaging through a box of unprocessed prints. I was immediately struck by the unusual semi-circle shape of the paper. Then, I was taken in by the details of the image and what they could tell us about who this item was for and when it was created. Upon even closer inspection, I was delighted to observe that the image was printed with color, using a rare and time consuming technique.

The dealer who sold it to us believed (and I think correctly) that the unusual shape indicates that the print was intended for use as a hand fan. The outside curve of the print does seem to suggest this. But the shape of the print is missing some key features that we usually see in a fan leaf: namely a second, lower curve cut out of the bottom center (for mounting to a collapsible handle) as well as acute angles at the bottom edges. See for example this contemporaneous unmounted fan from the British Museum:

Fanology or Speaking Fan (London: William Cock, 1797). The British Museum, Museum number
1891,0713.508, Asset number 361519001.

The position of the image on the sheet may explain why our fan shape is inconsistent with other fan sheets. If a semi-circle was cut out of the bottom, it would have cut out a piece of the image! The image was printed, perhaps by mistake, too low on the sheet. This might explain why our fan leaf did not receive additional cuts to form a fan shape and why it was never ultimately mounted as a fan.

Though this print may have made a bad fan, it’s still a fascinating image which seems to illustrate a typical upper-middle class (haute bourgeoisie) family in post-revolutionary France.

The period dress suggests a date range around 1800 to 1830. The man wears breeches and a tailcoat, while his son wears a similar jacket but with ankle-length trousers suggesting a date around the turn of the nineteenth century when long pants began to supplant the popularity of breeches. The seated woman wears an “empire gown” with a high bodice just below the bust, so called by later English commentators because this style of dress became popular in France during the First French Empire (1804-1814). This style of dress began to become unfashionable in middle class and high society in the 1830s, when, In England at least, it was supplanted by hour glass Victorian dresses. Since this style of dress was popular throughout Europe, we’ll have to rely on another detail which suggests the country of origin.

This small book, which the mother is handing to her son, is inscribed “Télémaque”. This is a truncation of Les Aventures de Télémaque (The Adventures of Telemachus) first published in 1699 by François Fénelon. It was written earlier as a didactic novel meant to instruct Louis, Duke of Burgundy (grandson of Louis XIV and second in line to the French throne) who Fenelon was tutoring. The novel follows Telemachus (son of Odysseus in Homer’s poems) as he journeys around Greece and receives moral tutelage from the goddess Minerva (disguised as his tutor, Mentor). As a thinly veiled rebuke of autocratic rule and by extoling peace and equality, the novel proved hugely popular into the the turn of the nineteenth century, especially in revolutionary France.

Other details of the print include recreations for well-off children typical of the period. The daughter clutches a dolly. A drum and a diabolo (a juggling toy) sit in the foreground on the right. A large Punch doll hangs from the tree in the background on the right. The implication here is that the family depicted is wealthy enough to afford leisure, having both the time and money to enjoy it, even for the children.

A harlequin doll resembling the character Punch, famous in British Punch and Judy puppet plays. In the early nineteenth century Punch and Judy plays were also extremely popular in Paris.

All of these details taken together suggest that our print was intended for an upper-middle class French woman around the turn of the nineteenth century. After all, hand fans at this time would have typically been used only by adult women in this class. If we examine the material production of the print itself, we discover further evidence of its high cost of production; suggesting that it would have been a costly item and a signal of wealth.

From the detail above (and the other images already shared) you can see that this print is special for its use of color printing. Intaglio prints of this period were usually printed in black ink only, and when colored, they would have been colored by hand with stencils. Hand-coloring is featured in this print, you can see it in places of continuous tone with flat color such as the shoes in the detail above. But from the detail, you can also see that that color printing has been used extensively. At this time (and continuing today), color printing was applied to intaglio prints using a technique later called à la poupée. Meaning “with the doll” in French, the “doll” refers to a wad of cloth shaped like a ball used to apply color to different areas for printing. This was a time consuming process requiring additional labor costs and material costs for more expensive color inks.

A la poupée inking by Bridget Farmer for her print “Pleasant Pheasant”. https://bridgetfarmerprintmaker.com/

Further, the print makes use of no less than three different intaglio printing techniques: etching, stipple engraving, and line engraving. Etching, the predominant technique, can be seen in the ample curving and wavy lines. Stipple engraving is the technique which applied all the tiny dots to the print, detailing the blue of the sky and other subtle details. Line engraving can be made out as well, characterized by straight lines with pointed termini, used to touch up and improve on the shadows and tonal qualities of the etching (a typical embellishment to etchings). Each of these techniques requires different tools and skills, indicating that a talented printmaker (their initials “D. Mo N.” are inscribed at the bottom of the print) applied considerable time, skill, and cost to create this wonderful print.

Clearly then, this print is a wonderful example of rare and skillful printmaking; but not without its technical mistakes! Our particular print was perhaps destined to never become a fan due to poor placement on the sheet. That it went unmounted, however, may have been serendipitous since lack of use probably preserved this piece of ephemera and spared it being discarded after wear and tear. Cleverly printed and luckily preserved, this print is a rare glimpse into upper-middle class French life at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Party with the Parts of Speech: The Infant’s Grammar by Elizabeth Ham

In 1945 Eric Gillett published an unfinished manuscript of memoirs by Elizabeth Ham (1783-1859), the daughter of a yeoman, under the title Elizabeth Ham by Herself 1783-1820.   Gillett said somewhat condescendingly that the vivid account of the woman’s experiences was appealing because of “her struggles to make a life of her own, to be of use to someone.  Without training or business ability, but with educational and literary gifts above the average, ….and desperately conscious of her gentility, she was badly handicapped from the beginning.”

Ham made this all too clear in the stories she told on the mistresses of the dame and boarding schools she attended.  This horribly comic one underlines best just how irregular the quality of discipline and instruction for girls could be during this period:

The great punishment was to have a bow of black ribbon pinned on the sleeve.  I remember having a great dread of the “black knot,” and having one morning incurred the punishment, roared out most lustily.  As ill luck would have it, my cousin was strolling near and hearing the outcries of her darling, rushed in to the rescue.  She caught me under the arms to bear me away, but Aunt Sukey’s authority was not to be so condemned, she seized me by the heels whilst my cousin kept fast hold of my shoulders.  I really though I should be pulled to pieces between them.  I well remember the enflamed visages of the ladies as they tugged at me.  Their passion frightened me more than the black knot had done.”

It is to Elizabeth Ham’s credit that in spite of experiences like these (or perhaps because of them), she succeeded in composing an instructive poem for children that was informative, imaginative, and infused with gaiety: The Infant’s Grammar, or A Pic-nic Party of the Parts of Speech (1824).  She may have been familiar with the poems Donelle Ruwe has called “papillionades.”  They describe different kingdoms of creatures trying to outdo the others with splendid entertainments, which would so delight readers that they would be tricked into learning something about the range, classification, and character of the various costumed animals from the way they made their entrances, danced, and behaved at the midnight supper.  Famous examples are William Roscoe’s The Butterfly’s Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast (1806), or Catherine Ann Dorset’s 1807 companion pieces, The Peacock at Home  and The Lion’s Masquerade,Ham’s sociable parts of speech, who are not competing with rival concepts, throw a “pic-nic,” which then referred to what we would call a potluck, where all the guests contribute something to the feast.  However, Ham says nothing about the refreshments being a communal effort.  The event takes place indoors at Etymology Hall during the evening, not during the day in the open air, additional confirmation that the word’s meaning was in flux. Ham was not pleased with the liberties Harris’s illustrator (possibly Robert Branston) took here and there interpreting her verses.  Probably the most notable discrepancy is he changed the season from winter to summer and time of day from night to the day.  Yet the article “The” shown above  bears an entirely superflous  torch to light the guests way in.  While Ham conceded that the illustrator had improved her original drawings in some places, she did not approve of his having costumed her characters in “fancy dress” inspired by the current vogue for Elizabethan fashion. Another addition that might have irked her was the insertion of  a tragedy queen center stage between Harlequin and the graceful dancer, a complete fabrication.  She appears to have been modelled upon the actress Sarah Siddons as Lady Macbeth, one of her most celebrated roles.Ham speculated that the anonymously published poem, for which she received nothing,  sold well enough over thirty years to have made her financially independent. With a modest income, she would not have been obliged to earn her bread as a  governess or housekeeper employed by a wealthy family.  This could be either wishful thinking or anecdotal knowledge based on her having kept a sharp eye on the contents of booksellers’ shelves.   I have found an advertisement in an 1845 novel for an edition published by Harris’s successor, Grant and Griffith, that is later than anything found by Marjorie Moon, the bibliographer of Ham’s publisher John Harris.  It’s not idle speculation to imagine that the Infant’s Grammar of Ham might have been sold as a companion piece to the equally charming  Punctuation Personified; or Pointing Made Easy by Mr. Stops (below to the right), which was also first issued by Harris in 1824.

She surely would have been very angry to learn that another contemporary woman writer for children, Madame Leinstein, quickly produced plagiaries of both The Infant’s Grammar  and Punctuation Personified for Harris’s rivals, Dean & Munday and A. K. Newman and Co. later in 1824 to capitalize on their success.  Leinstein (about whom nothing is known)  dubbed her version of The Infant’s Grammar The Rudiments of Grammar  and only a page-by-page comparison of the two pamphlets can establish the literary theft.   In  Leinstein’s text, the school mistress Miss Syntax takes her scholars to a country fair, which seems quite different from Ham’s picnic of the parts of speech.  But the school’s facade and the two children in frontispiece to Leinstein have some suspicious similarities to the illustration of Etymology Hall in Ham..Is it a coincidence that Leinstein’s nouns are arrayed in Elizabethan finery and accompanied by an explanatory text very similar to Ham’s?  This is probably the most blatant of a series of borrowings:Leinstein’s page on the interjection is a clumsy adaptation of one of the best sections in the Infants Grammar .  Where Ham skillfully brings the party to a close with the poor housemaid  looking at the mess the merry parts of speech have left behind them,  Leinstein tacks on a superflous episode about Miss Syntax’s students relieving a poor girl.For Ham, who dreamed of independence,  Leinstein’s imitation surely would not been flattery, had she known about it.  Leinstein’s attempt to cut into her sales surely would have another bitter reminder of money she should have had. Well-a-day indeed…