Books and Bookmen [43]
possessed the most devout and pious books, and whole collections of
prayers copied out by the pen, and decorated with miniatures.
Marguerite's library was bound in morocco, stamped with a crowned M
in interlacs sown with daisies, or, at least, with conventional
flowers which may have been meant for daisies. If one could choose,
perhaps the most desirable of the specimens extant is 'Le Premier
Livre du Prince des Poetes, Homere,' in Salel's translation. For
this translation Ronsard writes a prologue, addressed to the manes
of Salel, in which he complains that he is ridiculed for his poetry.
He draws a characteristic picture of Homer and Salel in Elysium,
among the learned lovers:
qui parmi les fleurs devisent
Au giron de leur dame.
Marguerite's manuscript copy of the First Book of the Iliad is a
small quarto, adorned with daisies, fleurs de-lis, and the crowned
M. It is in the Duc d'Aumale's collection at Chantilly. The books
of Diane de Poitiers are more numerous and more famous. When first
a widow she stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb,
and the motto, "Sola vivit in illo." But when she consoled herself
with Henri II. she suppressed the tomb, and made the motto
meaningless. Her crescent shone not only on her books, but on the
palace walls of France, in the Louvre, Fontainebleau, and Anet, and
her initial D. is inextricably interlaced with the H. of her royal
lover. Indeed, Henri added the D to his own cypher, and this must
have been so embarrassing for his wife Catherine, that people have
good-naturedly tried to read the curves of the D's as C's. The D's,
and the crescents, and the bows of his Diana are impressed even on
the covers of Henri's Book of Hours. Catherine's own cypher is a
double C enlaced with an H, or double K's (Katherine) combined in
the same manner. These, unlike the D.H., are surmounted with a
crown--the one advantage which the wife possessed over the
favourite. Among Diane's books are various treatises on medicines
and on surgery, and plenty of poetry and Italian novels. Among the
books exhibited at the British Museum in glass cases is Diane's copy
of Bembo's 'History of Venice.' An American collector, Mr. Barlow,
of New York, is happy enough to possess her 'Singularitez de la
France Antarctique' (Antwerp, 1558).
Catherine de Medicis got splendid books on the same terms as foreign
pirates procure English novels--she stole them. The Marshal
Strozzi, dying in the French service, left a noble collection, on
which Catherine laid her hands. Brantome says that Strozzi's son
often expressed to him a candid opinion about this transaction.
What with her own collection and what with the Marshal's, Catherine
possessed about four thousand volumes. On her death they were in
peril of being seized by her creditors, but her almoner carried them
to his own house, and De Thou had them placed in the royal library.
Unluckily it was thought wiser to strip the books of the coats with
Catherine's compromising device, lest her creditors should single
them out, and take them away in their pockets. Hence, books with
her arms and cypher are exceedingly rare. At the sale of the
collections of the Duchesse de Berry, a Book of Hours of Catherine's
was sold for 2,400 pounds.
Mary Stuart of Scotland was one of the lady book-lovers whose taste
was more than a mere following of the fashion. Some of her books,
like one of Marie Antoinette's, were the companions of her
captivity, and still bear the sad complaints which she entrusted to
these last friends of fallen royalty. Her note-book, in which she
wrote her Latin prose exercises when a girl, still survives, bound
in red morocco, with the arms of France. In a Book of Hours, now
the property of the Czar, may be partly deciphered the quatrains
which she composed in her sorrowful years, but many of them are
mutilated by the binder's shears. The Queen used the volume as a
kind of album: it contains the signatures of the "Countess of
Schrewsbury" (as M. Bauchart has it),