Are U.S. Women Driving American Men To Hell By Baring Their Flesh?

by Stephen J. Gertz

“When women come here with knee length dresses and stoop to pick up apples, I think the men can see more that it is the Lord’s will for them to see.”

So sayeth Mrs. DeWitt Smith in Are We Dragging Our Men To Hell By Our Modern Dress? A four-page pamphlet, it was published without date in the 1940s. It was reprinted without date in the 1960s. It reads as if it were written without date during the 1800s.

Or yesterday in response to Miley Cyrus' recent performance during the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards and subsequent forced run through the media gauntlet.

The text of Are We Dragging Men To Hell By Our Manner Of Dress? reads in full:

The old sign of the harlot's den was a red light by night, and women sitting in front by day showing their legs. The Bible says to Christians:
 

"In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with broided hair or gold or pearls or costly array." I Timothy 2:9
 

A preacher said, "Only yesterday my manhood was insulted. Across from and facing me on a street car sat a 'something' -- a female picking her teeth. Her dress was above her knees with no effort to keep them together. Horrors! What are we coming to when a clean man must cover his face with a paper or turn his head the other way to keep from seeing entirely too much? It seems that many of these she animals have lost all modesty and are out for sale, offering all that is left - just leg! legs!! legs!!!"
 

A good lady said, "These knee-length dresses are not modest. The Holy Spirit showed me that at least half of the calf of the leg should be covered."
 

Hear what Dr. [Perry] Lichtenstein, Physician of Tombs Prison in New York City, who is able to speak authoritatively on the causes of crime, says: (He has seen, in 12 years, 170,000 prisoners pass over the 'Bridge of Sighs', and he ought to know.) "The so called crimes of passion are increasing alarmingly, and will continue to do so in my opinion until the principal cause is eliminated. This, it seems to me, is the present style of dress which, to say the least, is immodest. Rolled stockings and similar styles have a direct bearing on crime incitation no matter how innocent the wearer may be." It is safe to say that there would be much less crime today, far fewer homes whose happiness has been blasted forever by unfaithfulness, fewer divorce trials, less violations of maidenly honor, if everyone of these underworld styles could be thrown into the deepest Hell.
 

Dr. [Thomas De Witt] Talmadge said, "Thousands of men are in Hell, whose eternal damnation is due to the improper dress of women."
 

In a neighboring town lives a boy who was graduated from the State University with the highest honors. Later he had a fine position but acquired a venereal disease, went insane, and now is in the insane asylum part of the time--all because of lust.
 

Low necks, short dresses scarcely to the knees, bare arms, painted faces - in a word - everything to arouse passion and lust is the order of the day.
 

"Everybody does it!" I know - but do you belong to the 'everybodies' or are you a pilgrim?

I went to Bible school, and one day the teacher had a special meeting of the girls and told them if they would let the Lord talk to them, they would lengthen their dresses. When the school had a social gathering, one boy left the party when the girls were playing games, etc. He could see too much, he said.
 

When women come with knee length dresses, and stoop to pick up apples, I think the men can see more that it is the Lord's will for them to see.
 

I would rather wear my dresses a longer length and please the Lord, than to try to please a hard-to-please fickle world. We surely will never send men to Hell by wearing longer dresses.
 

D.L. Moody in his book, Prevailing Prayer, said, "Why is it that many of our children are going down to a dishonored grave? Many Godly parents find that their children are going astray. Does it arise from some secret sin clinging around the heart? I sometimes tremble when I hear people quote promises, and say that God is bound to fulfill those promises to them, when all the time there is something in their own lives which they are not willing to give up. It is well to search our hearts and find out why our prayers are not answered."
 

One saintly woman, who wore rather long dresses, said, when she put on a shorter dress, the Lord would not hear her prayers.

John Wesley said gay and costly apparel tends to influence lust.
 

During the first hundred years of her ministry, Methodism was the greatest power for righteousness of any movement since Pentecost. In those days of her glory, Methodism always insisted upon plainness of attire.
 

We may say if we wear our dresses a longer length we will look differently. What does Charles Finney (one of the most God-used evangelists of the all time) say? "I will confess that I was formerly myself in error. I believed the best way for Christians to pursue was to dress so as not to be noticed: to follow the fashions so as not to appear singular. But I have seen my error and now wonder greatly at my former blindness. It is your duty to dress so plain as to show the world that you place no sort of reliance in things of fashion.
 

If you wear immodest clothing that offers a suggestive appeal to sex, and stimulates those baser impulses which slumber in the human breast, do you think the Lord is so likely to protect your girl and boy in the wave of immorality among youth and others?
 

Preachers, if you think these knee length dresses are not modest, and it is a sin for women to wear them, will you be faithful to the Lord to warn them? Can you expect the Lord to put a hedge around yours sons and daughters, and keep them moral in this immoral world, if you do not?
 

I am trusting the Lord to keep my three sons pure. Can the Lord protect young people? I know He can; because He has kept mine moral. I couldn't commit adultery if you would give me the whole world; neither can I get mixed up in an affair with some other woman's husband (which is so common these days). If He can keep me moral, He can keep your son and daughter moral. The power of the Devil is great; but, praise God, the Lord has more power.
 

I don't want Jesus to say to me some day, "By the exposure of your flesh you have dragged men to Hell." Do you?

There are plenty of antecedents to the above, not the least of which is Apropos of Women and Theatres, written by former actress and women's rights lecturer, Olive Logan (1839-1909), and published in 1869 by Carleton in New York.

Logan, who earned the scorn of Mark Twain, devotes two chapters to decrying the "coarse rage which [has] spread in our theatres, until it [has] come to be a ruling force in them," to wit: About The Leg Business, detailing the exposure of women's gams on the boards, and About Nudity In The Theatre, discussing the post-Civil War phenomenon of women appearing onstage scantily clad. (Interestingly, Logan makes one of the first references in a general circulation book to "a new theatrical term in use among 'professionals' which embraces all sorts of performances in its comprehensiveness, to wit: The Show Business").

As far as the business of show too much goes, Are We Dragging Our Men To Hell By Our Modern Dress? was not Mrs. DeWitt Smith's only exploration of the looming apocalypse on America's near horizon. Evidently a woman of few words, she wrote two other four-page only tracts, Christians Are Sleeping While Communists Work (Minneapolis: Osterhus Publishing Company, 195?) and Never Take Your First Drink, Never Spend Your First Nickel in Gambling, and Never Touch Tobacco (Randleman, NC: Pilgrim Tract Society, 194?).

To declare that Are Women Dragging Men Into Hell By Their Manner Of Dress is extremely scarce in any edition because there are no copies, according to OCLC, in institutional holdings worldwide sounds impressive but is sort of meaningless; libraries clearly felt it wasn't worth adding to their collections. But it is truly rare: I do not pretend to have seen every similarly themed book and pamphlet but I have seen quite a few over the last thirty years and this one is a first for me.

It does, however, make me feel all warm and fuzzy to report that OCLC records only one copy each of Mrs. Smith's Christians Are Sleeping While Communists Work and Never Take Your First Drink, Never Spend Your First Nickel in Gambling, and Never Touch Tobacco in institutional holdings worldwide. Acquisition librarians have apparently judged that loopy tracts on Communism, alcohol, gambling, and tobacco are of greater importance to our culture than a loopy anti-cheesecake jeremiad. 

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SMITH, Mrs. DeWitt. [caption title]. Are We Dragging Men To Hell By Our Modern Dress? (Randleman, N. C.: Pilgrim Tract Society, Inc.), n.d. [after 1948, c. 1960]. Unbound tract, approx. 5.25 x 3.5 inches, [4] pages on green stock. Illus. Later edition.

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Image courtesy of Garrett Scott, Bookseller, with our thanks.

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Kierkegaard's Silver Quill At Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's silver quill, finely wrought as an elegant feather, is being offered by Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers of Copenhagen in its International Paintings, Antiquities and Modern Art sale on September 18, 2013. It is estimated to sell for €10,000-€13,000 ($13,295 - $17,282).

The quill, 16.3 cm long (just shy of 6 1/2 inches), has passed down through the Høyernielsen family, descendants of Kierkegaard's sister, Nicoline. According to family tradition, it is the only pen he is known to have meticulously and diligently used to set down his thoughts, which flooded out of his head, poured down his arm, ran into his fingers through to pen and burst onto paper.

In 1955, this pen was exhibited at the Royal Library's Memorial Exhibition on Kierkegaard, and it was also depicted in the exhibition's catalog.

Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the father of existentialism who considered himself a Christian poet, was a compulsive, profound and prolific writer with a chronic itch. In 1838, he wrote in his journal, "Ingen dag uden en streg" ("No day without a line"). Later, in 1847, he noted, "Only when I'm writing do I feel well. I forget all unpleasantness and sufferings, I am with my thoughts and happy. If I stop for only a few days I feel immediately sick, overwhelmed, labored, my head heavy and weighed down."

As a youth the prominent Danish literary and cultural critic, Georg Brandes (1842-1927), was witness to Kierkegaard's fervent urge to write. In his memoirs (1880) he recalled walking past Kierkegaard's apartment and catching sight of him through a window:

"The strange Thinker went back and forth during a silence that was only broken by pen scratching on paper [...] in all rooms lay pen, paper and ink [...] Never in all existence has ink played so great a role."

Note that the pen has no nib. By the 1830's, quill pens, which sucked up ink into their hollow via capillary action and required that the feather be often sliced at its point to maintain a sharp nib, had been replaced by dip pens with steel nibs (the pen itself) inserted into pen-holders, as here.  Steel nibs were sturdier, kept their sharpness, lasted longer, and had the added advantage of being a much neater implement, not spilling ink all over paper and fingers. The next step in the evolution of pens was the fountain pen. Had Kierkegaard lived long enough to enjoy their use, the fountain would have required the capacity of Niagara Falls to handle the rush of words that cascaded forth.

His pen in overdrive, Kierkegaard wrote seventy-three works during his lifetime, many under pseudonyms including Johannes Climacus, Nicolas Notabene, Vigilius Haufniensis, Frater Taciturnus, Johannes de Silentio, Constantin Constantius, Victor Eremita, and my personal favorite, Hilarius Bookbinder, who, I imagine, thinks that binding a book in infant-soiled publisher's diaper cloth glued with anti-bacterial zinc oxide paste and dusted with Johnson's Baby Powder is a laff-riot.

Philosophy being a notoriously low-paying gig, one wonders how Kierkegaard could afford such an  extravagant and expensive pen. He was, however, born into wealth and died in it, never held a job, and never, ever had to worry about paying bills, which tends to burn a lot of mental energy that Kierkegaard had the luxury to conserve for that other consuming preoccupation, the anxiety of existence.

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Images courtesy of Bruun Rasmussen auctions, with our thanks.
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The Glorious Future Of Detroit Under Glass, Including Television And The Hyperloop, In 1884

by Stephen J. Gertz

Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating Upon The Mistakes of the Church - The Mistakes of the Atheist Infidel and Materialist - God Not the Maker of the Universe - Progress the Evidence of a Merciful But Not All-Powerful God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of a Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter In Prose. Embellished with Nearly 200 Illustrations. Together with a Number of Fine Poems on Popular Subjects. Including Sketches of the City of the Straits - Past, Present and Future.

Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus (We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes”) - Motto of Detroit.

Current reports of Detroit's collapse are premature. Lyman E. Stowe, a citizen of pre-Motor City, saw the present in 1884, was pleased, and predicted a future for the metropolis that makes anything H.G. Wells ever wrote seem the product of a pedestrian mind completely lacking in imagination.

The first three of fifty-five stanzas to be recited to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

It's a future based upon electricity, chemistry, the abolition of ignorance, and the reconciliation of science and religion. It's a future told, for the most part, in poems that threaten the very existence of poetry. Scansion, smansion, who needs it? When you write fifty-five quatrains in praise of Detroit's present and direct that they be recited to the tune of Yankee Doodle, Erato sticks a feather in her cap, calls it macaroni, gets buried in poetical snowdrifts of thought and prays for a St. Bernard to find her beneath the avalanche.

Detroit in 1884.

Poetical Drifts of Thought is one of the many eccentric self-published works of American 19th-century imaginative writing yet it stands out from the usual crowd of crazy texts by sewing utopian literature, futurology, freethought, Swedenborg, Darwin, and social engineering into a crazy quilt that just won't quit. Lyman E. Stowe was a rugged individualist in the sea of rabid individualists that emerged during the Second Great Awakening in the United States, when the American ethos of individualism met evangelicalism and singular opinions and beliefs were tossed into a Christian fruit salad to present to the world a medley of motley ideas, many radical, in search of acceptance by someone, anyone - please listen!

The Flying Machine of the near Future.

Amongst the many visions Stowe has of Detroit in the year 2100 are air travel; television (“Seeing Distant Friends by Electricity’s Aid”); control of global weather patterns...

Elon Musk's Hyperloop.

...and travel by cars through underground pneumatic tubes. And you thought Elon Musk's Hyperloop was futuristic?  Late!

Food inhaled, not eaten, with acid-reflux vanquished.

Inhaling nutriment in gaseous form via electrical and chemical process.

How 'bout the replacement of solid foods with “nutritive gasses”? Combined with nitrous oxide for belly laughs?

Manufacturing clothes by gathering the particles direct from
water, earth, and atmosphere by electricity and chemistry.

Clothes may make the man but in Detroit's future man doesn't make the clothes. In a stunning blow to the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, clothing will be manufactured using a combination of electricity and chemistry to process particles of water, earth, and atmosphere into a three-piece, custom-made 100% merino wool canvassed suit with structured waist, single vent, hand-rolled lapels, padded shoulders, and handsome silhouette.

Preface as excuse for the book.

Typical in books of this nature, the author has his own ideas about book format and punctuation. Since he believes that a preface is nothing more than an excuse for a writer to rev-up before mouthing off, he calls it like he sees it. Then makes his excuse for writing the book.

Super-sized quotations marks lest the author forget them,
to be inserted by the reader where appropriate.

Stowe makes every attempt to be scrupulous with crediting other writers "but for fear that I might sometimes miss, I place these large quotation marks, large enough for all to see, and ask the fastidious reader to place them where they belong." In short, he leaves the copy editing to the reader.

Eden on Lake Michigan in the year 2100.

Current denizens of Detroit will be pleased or piqued to learn that in the year 2100 they will become peasants under glass, sharing life with hothouse flowers and exotic fruits in a greenhouse gotham where it's sunny, warm, and wonderful all year 'round.

Detroit in the year 2100, the City covered in glass and iron for
20 square miles. Heated by the internal heats of the earth, lit up
with electricity, with perpetual summer days and tropical fruits and
flowers growing all year 'round.

La dolce far niete aside,

All have a certain work to do,
Yet all are gents and ladies too;
All free from strife and toil and care,
They float and breathe the perfumed air.
Sweet music's swelling chorus rings,
And soothing echoes outward flings,
From cheering bands, their sounds inspire
Like sweet Aeolian harp or lyre

Here, Stowe apparently references The Funk Brothers, the uncredited and largely unheralded studio musicians who were the house band hand-picked by Berry Gordy in 1959 for Detroit's Motown Records.

The Battle of the Future.
Detroit's favorite son, Ted Nugent, at upper far right
(of course), attacks those at left (naturally)
who would undermine the Bill of Rights.

You'd think that one who envisions a paradise city under glass would avoid war - the results would be shattering - but no. Aeriel ballets with bullets n' bombs will still have their place as long as man has an immortal soul.     

"The mind is but organized matter, there's no immortal soul.

In a blow, however, to Christianity as we know it, Christian Lyman E. Stowe asserts that "the mind is but organized matter, there's no immortal soul," a strange sentiment from an anti-materialist but "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" (Ralph Waldo Emerson).

"

Discovery of the Art of Renewing Life.

 

Then again, who needs an immortal soul when life can renewed as if a subscription to LIFE magazine? I see Ford's River Rouge factory repurposed, renewing life on an assembly line.

In what will be major news to the faithful of all monotheistic religions, Stowe asserts that God didn't make the universe and God's not All-Powerful. Then who, Henry Ford? (Ford thought so). 

Other books by Lyman E. Stone include: My Wife Nellie and I; a Poetical Sketch of Love and Fancy with Other Poems, Including Blank Lines for Autograph and Remarks (1895); What Is Coming is a Wonderful Exposition of the Prophecies and Comparison with Ancient and Modern Historical and Political Events Together with an Ample, Though Concise History of Money from King Solomon's Time to the Present (1896); Stowe's Bible Astrology: the Bible Founded on Astrology (1907); Astrological Periodicity: A Book of Instructions, Showing Man, Beast and Plant are Subject to the Influences of the Planets ... [which gives good and evil periods, which can be taken advantage of and be a benefit, not only to the individual, but to all classes of people (1907); Right Hours to Success (1907); Karmenia; or, What the Spirit Told Me, "Truth Stranger Than Fiction" a Series of Short Occult Stories, Real Experiences During the Life of a Man 72 Years of Age, Garnished in the Clothes of Fiction (1918).

All to be read to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

As for Poetical Drifts of Thought, "The book is what the title implies - 'Drifts of Thought.' You say you don't believe it or agree with it all. Well, I don't blame you, for I don't know as I do my self. Yet my theory is grounded upon logic that seems indisputable within the bounds of anything come-at-able.

"We all have a right to express our thoughts, and by free expression of our thoughts we learn from one another, but I must now say for the present, Good By. Good By."

See you later, alligator. Bankruptcy? Don't have a goiter, you Detroiter. This, too, shall pass - like that gaseous meal you just inhaled.

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STOWE, Lyman E. Poetical Drifts of Thought or, Problems of Progress. Treating Upon The Mistakes of the Church - The Mistakes of the Atheist Infidel and Materialist - God Not the Maker of the Universe - Progress the Evidence of a Merciful But Not All-Powerful God. Reconciliation of Science and Christianity. The Formation of a Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter In Prose. Embellished with Nearly 200 Illustrations.. Together with a Number of Fine Poems on Popular Subjects. Including Sketches of the City of the Straits - Past, Present and Future. Detroit, Mich.: Lyman E. Stowe, Publisher, 1884.

First edition. Tall octavo. 319, [1] pp. Illustrated throughout with woodcuts. Publisher's gilt-pictorial green cloth over beveled boards.

Not in Negley, Utopian Literature, nor in Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature. 
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The Autobiography Of God

by Stephen J. Gertz

Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1937.

"The vast sweep of history from the days of Abraham down to Hitler and the coronation of George VI of England in 1937 is portrayed as seen by Yahweh himself, the chief actor in the episodes that have shaped the modern world...a novel of great audacity" (Dust jacket blurb).

Ai, ai, ai, I, Yahweh! Great audacity, indeed.

Now, you can call me Yah or you can call me El; you can call me Elah or you can call me Eloah; you can call me HaShem or you can call me Adoshem; you can call me Jah or you can call me Jehovah but you doesn't have to call me Yahweh! In fact, I find it annoying. Adonai will do just fine. Like James Baldwin, nobody knows my name. In my case let's keep it that way.

Addressing me by my first name is simply rude. Maybe it's an American thing, breaking down class distinctions by leveling the playing field with informality. But if you were introduced to George Washington would you say, "Hey, George, nice t'meet'cha. Waz happ'nin?'" followed by a fist-bump? Of course not; you'd be awestruck. But you don't hesitate to dis me, treating me like we're old pals. Jumpin' Jehosephat! Did anybody - besides his wife, in private - dare to call Don Corleone "Vito?"  So, what am I, chopped liver?

It's Mr. Yahweh to you. Better yet, I Am That I Am (אהיה אשר אהיה), but if you insist upon being a boor call me Big Daddy. Or, since we're in the 21st century, Big Data: the invisible know-it-all in the cloud with a host of servers to do my bidding.

First of all, I did not "write" this book nor did I will it into existence. It's a case of identity theft. The first paragraph is a dead giveaway.

"I know not whose prayer gave rise to my being. Who, indeed, can remember the circumstances of his begetting? I recall only the mighty solitude of the world wherein first I found myself There was a great plain which lay round about the city of Ur in ancient Chaldea. Thither do my earliest memories return."

What? Thither doth my displeasure begin, and, please, begone the stilted language. I needed mankind to pray me into existence? Gimme a break. I was here before, I'm here now, I'll be here later, long after humanity bites the dust and returns to it. And, what, I have no memories before humanity came on the scene? Skip the ontology; I AM, that's all you need to know, and I remember more than Sammy "the Bull" Gravano testifying against John "the Dapper Don" Gotti.

Check this out, from chapter seven: "From that time forth, forasmuch as I had entered somewhat into the temporal province, Constantine entered more freely into the spiritual. And I took it it not amiss until that day when he said unto me, 'Yahweh, it is made increasingly plain that we must have thee defined.'

"'Defined, sayest thou?' I queried." The nerveth of this guy! I refuse to be pigeonholed. Everybody says I'm unknowable, beyond comprehension - and I am - but that hasn't stopped anyone from determining what they think I want. I'm a mystery without a solution, a Raymond Chandler novel with plot that makes no sense. My challenge to mankind is not to feel secure but to be able to live with insecurity without going insane.

What do I want? I'm not talking; gotta keep you flesh and blood folks on your toes.

I'm pleased to report that this book, a  turkey in the form of an autobiography, has not received a single review on Library Thing, Good Reads, or Amazon. It is, apparently, considered to be one of the ten plagues of Egypt and something to avoid, a toss-up between boils and pestilence. It is forgotten and for good reason. "Friends will find much to ponder on in this book, which is told in the first person by no less than Jehovah, Yahweh, God of the Hebrews. The idea is more startling than the book." So sayeth T. Morris Longstreet in 1939, reviewing the book (two years after its publication, yet!) for the Bulletin of Friends' Historical Association. It needs all the friends it can get, Quaker or otherwise.

Need I add that I have nothing to do with Yahweh.com, the online House of Me? Talk about chutzpah! My Domain is mine and mine alone but try telling that to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). I complained. I said, "I'm Yahweh." Guy says to me, "Right, and I'm Dagon, don't bust my chops." Philistines.

So, enough of this phoney-baloney autobiography of Me. Oy, Yahweh! It's a hoax.

So say I, Clifford Irving.

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GREY, Robert Munson. I, Yahweh. Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1937. First edition. Octavo. [8], 352 pp. Cloth.. Dust jacket.

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Common Prayers, Uncommon Binding

by Stephen J. Gertz

This stunning, c. 1853, binding by Hayday of London of an 1840 edition of The Book of Common Prayer is in full brown smooth-grained Turkey morocco over beveled boards, with a single fillet framing an eye-catching panel of onlaid red, green (the quadrants, their color not, alas, fully visible due to lighting), and black morocco with gilt tooling and central cross of gilt-tooled inlaid orange morocco to both sides.

The spine compartments possess deep crimson and orange labels and are decorated in gilt with inlaid red and orange calf crosses. Fine details include extravagantly gilt-tooled dentelles, gilt-tooled edges, and all edges gilt and gauffered.

A cross is not an unusual decorative binding design for finely bound copies of The Book of Common Prayer, yet the design, while based upon earlier  ecclesiastical bindings, is a particularly handsome and contemporary mosaic. It suggests that it was bound for a man of means.

One of the most distinctive and unusual aspects of this binding is the tortoise shell effect to the Turkey morocco most visible along the top edge of the upper board. It's unclear whether the pattern is an attractive blemish in the skin itself or the result of a chemical wash. I've seen countless bindings in calf with various stain-effects (mottled, tree, rainbow, etc.) but I've never seen  morocco  leather quite like this with such a fine grain and unusual varigration.

James Hayday, (1796–1872), "bookbinder, was born in London. Of his parents, nothing is known. He was apprenticed to Charles Marchant, vellum binder, 12 Old Gloucester Street, Queen Square, London, and then for some time worked as a journeyman commencing business in a very humble way. In 1825 he became one of the auditors of the Journeymen Bookbinders' Trade Society. In 1833 he rented premises at 31 Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he continued until his retirement in 1861…

Gauffered fore-edge.

"Constant opening of traditionally bound books disfigured the grain of the leather, and to obviate this Hayday introduced the cross or pin-headed grain known as Turkey morocco. In his own binding he sewed the books fully along every sheet, a technique that caused extra thickness that Hayday remedied by sewing with silk, rather than thread. Also, in order to equalize the thickness he rounded the fore edges more than was customary. To make the back tight he dispensed with the ordinary backing of paper, and fastened the leather cover down to the back.

"Works bound by Hayday became famous and increased in monetary value. Edward Gardner of the Oxford Warehouse, 7 Paternoster Row, London, secured Hayday's services for the Oxford University Press. William Pickering, bookseller, of 57 Chancery Lane, also introduced him to many wealthy patrons…A number of his bindings are in the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London" (Oxford Online Dictionary of National Biography).

Between 1837-and 1838 the Hayday bindery employed between thirty and forty people including ten finishers. James Hayday's retirement in 1861 had nothing to do with a desire for a life of ease after a life of toil. He went bankrupt. He then partnered with William Mansell until he finally retired in 1869.

Close-up of gauffering, with gilt-tooled edge.

The first manual of worship in English for any religion. The Book of Common Prayer is the key and most important volume of the Church of England, uniting all Churchgoers within a common liturgy in English, and was so prior to the publication of the Church's King James translation of the Bible in 1611. It has been in print without interruption since its introduction in 1549. It was revised in 1552 and mildly amended a hundred years later, in 1662, 350 years ago.

Dentelle.

It is, for the most part, the work and language of Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Archbishop of Canterbury 1533-1556 and a leader of the Reformation in England, who based it upon the centuries old Latin liturgy of the English Catholic Church and gracefully simplified the language so that it would be understood by all no matter their degree of literacy. It is, what the Oxford historian and author of A History of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch, has called, “one of a handful of texts to have decided the future of a world language.”

Here bound in a  masterful manner suitable for worship.

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[HAYDAY, bindery]. [CHURCH OF ENGLAND]. The Book of Common Prayer, And Administration of the Sacraments. And Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the United Church of England and Ireland; Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, Pointed as They are to be Sung or Said in Churches; and the Form and Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Oxford: Printed at the University Press by Samuel Collingwood and Co., 1840.

Small octavo (5 1/2 x 3 1/4 in; 140 x 80 mm). Unpaginated.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Magnificent 17th Century Maps To The Stars' Homes

by Stephen J. Gertz

 Unidentified Los Angeles rare book dealer offering celestial maps.

Here in Los Angeles you can't throw a rock without hitting a star. They're all over the place, a galaxy of celestial bodies drawn into the black hole that is The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where red giants, white dwarfs, red dwarfs, neutrons, and super giants orbit around lox and bagels, alfalfa spouts, and baby carrots. Some have exhausted their hydrogen core and their careers slowly extinguish; others remain Main Sequence and still pack a punch, astrofusion-wise.

Withal, there are so many stars that you need maps to know just where they rest in the firmament and what region of the universe they call home.

CELLARIUS, Andreas. [The sizes of the celestial bodies]
Corporum coelestum magnitudines.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
'The sizes of the celestial bodies, with borders filled with putti.

Fortunately, a collection of star maps from Andreas Cellarius' Atlas Coelestis; seu Harmonia Macrocosmica, the only celestial atlas to be produced in the Netherlands before the nineteenth century, has just come into the marketplace.

CELLARIUS, Andreas. Scenographia Systematis Copernicani.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
'The Scenography of the Copernican world system', showing a human-faced
Sun at the centre of the Solar System, lighting the sides of 'Earths', positioned
at each equinox, three of which show California as an island. The four corners
are filled with angels, putti and allegorical figures.

A compilation of maps of the Ptolemaic universe and the more modern theories of Copernicus and Brahe, the Atlas Coelestis remains the finest and most highly decorative celestial atlas ever produced. Engraved by Jan van Loon, a mathematician and engraver who contributed charts and maps to various pilot books and sea atlases by Jacobsz, and Robijn, and originally published by Jan Jansson in 1660, these plates come from Schenk & Valk's reissue of 1708.

CELLARIUS, Andreas. [Southern Celestial Sphere]
Haemisphaerium Stellatum Australe aequali spahaerum propotrione.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A celestial chart showing 'The southern stellar hemisphere with equally
 proportioned spheres'. It shows the classical constellations superimposed
over a globe on which can be seen the Americas.

"The highpoint of celestial atlas production…and the volume that ranks with Blaeu's Atlas Maior and Goo's Ze Atlas is Harmonica Macrocosmica…by Andreas Cellarius.

CELLARIUS, Andreas.
Haemisphaerium scenographicum australe coeli stellati et terrae.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A beautiful chart of the southern skies with the classical constellations
superimposed over a globe showing South America, southern Africa
and 'Terra Australis Incognita'. The title banners are held aloft by grotesques
and in the bottom corners are astronomers surrounded by instruments
including an astronomical telescope.

"Published by Jan Janson in Amsterdam in 1660, the atlas comprises some 29 star charts and diagrams which portray varying celestial and planetary systems, orbits, and theories.

CELLARIUS, Andreas.
Haemisphaerium Stellatum Borealecum Subiecto Haemisphaeio Terrestri.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original colour with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A beautiful chart of the Northern skies, depicted on a globe held up by
Atlas and Hercules. The constellations are superimposed over a globe
on which much of the Northern Hemisphere can be seen, including
the British Isles, Arabia, Borneo, Japan and parts of Canada.
In the top corners the title is on banners under trumpets blown by angels.
In the background are figures representing classical astronomers.

"Little is known of Cellarius besides the information provided within the atlas, that he was a Rector of the Latin School at Hoorn, 20 miles north of Amsterdam..

CELLARIUS, Andreas. [Celestial chart of Tycho Brahe's theories of the Universe]
Planisphaerium Braheum, sive structura Mundi Totius, ex hpyothesi
Tychonis Brahei in plano delinieata.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A beautiful celestial chart depicting the planisphere of Brahe, or the structure
of the universe following the hypothesis of Tycho Brahe drawn in a planar view.

"The format of most engravings is similar - a sphere occupying the sheet top to bottom within which the diagram or chart is positioned, allowing up and down each side, decoration of an instructional, symbolic or purely aesthetic nature.

CELLARIUS, Andreas. [Celestial chart showing the Phases of the Moon]
Typus selenographicus lunae phases et aspectus varios adumbrans.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original colour with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A celestial chart showing a 'Selenographic diagram depicting the varying
phases and appearances of the Moon by shading.' At the centre is the earth,
surrounded by the different phases of the Moon.

"The Cellarius charts, issued in 1660, 1661, 1666, and 1708 (as here), occasionally appear on the market and can be found in superb, bright, original colour, highlighted with gold, making them highly decorative items.

CELLARIUS, Andreas.
Haemisphaerium Stellatum Australe antiquum.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A beautiful celestial chart of the stars as known to the Ancients,
with the classical constellations.
The borders contain the titles on banners and several putti.

"The later edition of 1708 has the imprint of of the publishers Valk and Schenk on each engraving..

CELLARIUS, Andreas.
Coeli Stellati Christiani Haemisphaerium Prius.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights.  440 x 515mm.
A beautiful celestial chart of the constellations, depicting them not in the
traditional Greco-Roman figures but in Christian imagery as envisaged
by Julius Schiller in 1627 in an attempt to make the iconography of the
stars more relevant to his day. Thus the Zodiac is represented by the
Twelve Apostles and Pegasus has become Gabriel. All the figures are
shown face on, because Schiller thought it would be an indignity to have
them show their backsides. His changes did not catch on, causing him
often to be ridiculed, but when they were published his charts were the
most accurate available.

"...The elegant title page represents fully the contents of the book. each of the charts is well-designed, well-engraved, and often…is in fine original colour heightened  in  gold" (Potter, Collecting Antique Maps, pp. 173-74).

CELLARIUS, Andreas. [The Universe according to Ptolemy]
Situs Terrae Circulis Coelestibus Circundatae.
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A beautiful chart representing the Ptolemaic notion of the static Earth
at the center of the rotating universe.

On the title page, "The Muse of Astronomy, Urania, is surrounded by scientists, mathematicians and astronomers and celestial globes and observation equipment. At lower right a bound volume is typical of the fine red morocco binding with gold embossing, used in Amsterdam at the time.

CELLARIUS, Andreas. [Scenography of the Ptolemaic cosmography]
Scenographia systematis mundani Ptolemaici
Amsterdam, Schenk & Valk, 1708.
Original color with additions, including gold highlights. 440 x 515mm.
A beautiful celestial chart showing Ptolemy's theory of the Universe.
At the centre is the Earth, showing its eastern hemisphere, being circles
by the sun and planets, with the Zodiac.

"Two cherbus hold aloft the book's title on a banner whilst another couple, using cross-staffs, study the zodiacal signs of Libra and Virgo" (ibid).

It's highly unlikely that, while driving on Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills or Bel Air, you will encounter a rare bookseller hawking Andreas Cellarius's magnificent star maps from the curb. But if falling star Sylvester Stallone's career finally lands with a thud, you may see him on the corner of Sunset and Beverly Drive spinning a sign offering these star maps as if hustling apartment rentals or discount income tax preparation.

Twinkle, twinkle.

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Title-page to 1660 first edition.

CELLARIUS, Andreas. Harmonia macrocosmica: seu, Atlas universalis et novus : totius universi creati cosmographiam generalem et novam exhibens : in quâ omnium totius mundi orbium harmonica constructio, secundum diversas diversorum authorum opiniones, ut & Vranometria, seu totus orbis coelestis, ac planetarum theoriæ, & terrestris globus, tam planis & scenographicis iconibus, quam descriptionibus novis ab oculos ponuntur : opus novum, antehac nunquam visum, cujuscunque conditionis hominibus utilissimum, jucundissimum, maxime necessarium, & adornatum. Amstelodami: Apud Gerardum Valk & Petrum Schenk, 1708.

Fourth edition. Folio. 29 double hand-colored engraved plates.

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Chart images courtesy of Altea Gallery Antique Maps of London, currently offering these splendid charts, with our thanks. Today's header image is most certainly not of its proprietor, Massimo De Martini.

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Jack Kerouac, Painter

by Stephen J. Gertz

An original, untitled drawing of Jesus' crucifixion executed in colored crayons by Beat novelist Jack Kerouac recently came to market, went on the road and onto a collector's wall, lickety-split, for $7,500.

The scene depicts the shadow of Christ on the cross with three figures in the foreground attending to his body as an angel descends from heaven. In the background, a man, presumably, Judas, hangs from a gallows as the sun shines over distant hills. Kerouac boldly signed his name in the lower left corner.

Kerouac made the drawing for a favorite niece, using her crayons and sketch paper. Catholicism, which played such a strong, if subtly understated and misunderstood role in his novels and cosmology, is overt here.

Though a spontaneous work, this untitled painting is a rich, fully realized piece on a par with some of Kerouac's best art as found in his Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings (2004).

The appearance of this painting for public sale was something of an event: Kerouac's visual art is held mostly by institutions and examples are exceedingly scarce in the marketplace.

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Image courtesy of Royal Books, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

When Kerouac Met Dostoyevsky.
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