"Here was my library on the wall..."

For the last few weeks I've been working in the Petherick Room of the National Library of Australia in Canberra. It really is a great library, one that I've loved at many different points of my life from high school to now.  The café, which didn't exist when I first started coming here years ago, is named with a groan-inducing pun, Bookplate. On its walls are, as you can probably guess, framed Ex Libris from the library's collection. The other day I noticed one belonging to the Australian prime minister Robert Menzies, who declared the country at war with Germany on 3rd September 1939.

At the front is a parchment on which is written Declaration of War. Behind is other expressions of Menzies personality: one of the parliamentary dispatch box that stand sin the Australian parliament (of course), a lawyer's wig (he was a noted lawyer), a caraffe and glass (he was frequently accused of drunkeness by some, sometimes with good reason), bookshelf and a spray of wattle. It was done by the printmaker Sir Lionel Lindsay, brother of Norman Linsday. He was a friend of Menzies who enjoyed his "divine and disordered conversation" and was responsible for his knighthood in 1941, around the time that these bookplates were commissioned.

Lindsay produced a great number of Ex Libris, a genre that enjoyed a widespread popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, when they became less to do with the armorial bearings of book owners and more depictions of their personal interests and traits. Whereas many contemporary artists produced them to supplement their income, Lindsay saw them as personal gifts to friends and family and an escape from his more serious art. (Sir Lionel Linsday Ex Libris, 4-5.)

This Ex Libris for Menzies is fairly similar to some of his other bookplates produced around the same time. In 1940 he made one for the Chief Justice Sir Frederick Jordan, which featured a forground of an open book in front of a decanter and glass, a judge’s wig and a bookshelf. In 1945 he made one for the doctor Clive Fitts with similar themes, although with a lit cigar on an ashtray and without the wig. In the same year Lindsay designed one for the chief  librarian of the NSW Library, John Quinn, which had similar themes arranged in a more casual way. A dog peers from behind a bottle of whiskey; a pile of books is to the right; one is open in the foreground with a paper knife on top of it.

My immediate reaction when I saw this plate was that it was odd for a bookplate to commemorate war. On reflection, I’m not sure why that is. Looking into it briefly, most of the plates I found that mentioned war were, in fact, criticisms of war, such as these two examples from 1914 by Louis Titz (above) and Alan Robbida (below) found here. I particularly like Titz's, with its inscription "Here was my library on the wall" written in the middle of the ruins. This seems to back up my initial suspicion that war is conventionally depicted as destroying books and knowledge and peace as cultivating the arts. 

I did find some other, brief references to war in the bookplates of soldiers: In bello quies (Calm in Action or Peace achieved through war) was the motto of General Birdwood commander at ANZAC and  used in his bookplates; Monty’s bookplate has two soldiers either side of his coat of arms, one dressed as a modern solider, the other as a medieval knight. 

This may be why Lindsay produced a second Ex libris for Menzies in 1942, depicting a boy sitting beside a stream, trying to fish a sceptre out of the water. There's something else beneath the water's surface, too, but I can't quite make it out (the hilt of a sword? An orb? A lobster...?) I can't quite place these themes to any established allegory I know, although if the boy was fishing (unlikely, I know), it would be close to Erasmus' Aureo pisci hamo - To fish with a golden hook, which warns of using something as bait that is more valuable than what you hope to catch. Once again the theme Lindsay chose, that of lost political power, was timely as  Menzies resigned the prime ministership in the previous year.

 

A final note. My favourite of all Lindsay's plates has to be the one he made for the bookdealer John Preece in 1928. In this, an archer aims a bow at flying books, a satchel full of them at his side. A report from that year of teh Ex Libris Society of Australia suggests 'It shows an archer launching his darts not at birds on the wing, but books in their flight from the publisher to the market, and is a charming woodcut.' I'm still not sure whether the archer is meant to be a bookdealer or a critic. I think it's a beautiful illustration that reminds me of something from Rabelais.