THE BALLANTYNE PRESSCHAPTER IORIGIN OF THE HOUSE
The History of the Art of Printing in Edinburgh shows periods of fluctuating progress—times of decadence and revival—at recurring intervals. These are found in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and towards the close of the eighteenth century another period of decadence seems to have arisen, although a few of the printers in the city strove to maintain the fairer traditions of the art and did good work. Among these it is interesting to note that the firms of Neill & Co., Pillans & Wilson, and Oliver & Boyd are survivors of that far-off time.
With the origin of the Ballantyne Press at Kelso in 1796, and its removal a few yearsafterwards to Paul’s Work in Edinburgh, a revival took place which inaugurated a new era for printing in Scotland. The advent of James Ballantyne was productive of great changes, as he helped to diffuse a taste for correct and elegant workmanship till then comparatively unknown. Curwen, in his “History of Booksellers,” referring to the high level of English typography, mentions the Ballantynes of Edinburgh as founding a press, the excellent work of which had gained the good-will of many authors and publishers both in Edinburgh and London.
KELSO IN 1797
KELSO IN 1797
KELSO IN 1797
James Ballantyne was the son of a merchant in the Border town of Kelso, and was born in 1772. He was educated at the grammar-school of that town, then kept by Lancelot Whale, an admirable scholar and teacher, who is said to have resembled Dominie Sampson in “Guy Mannering.” For a short time in 1783 James had as schoolfellow and companion the youthful Walter Scott, who was staying at Rosebank for the benefit of his health. The two became associated, perhaps to the neglect of their tasks during school hours, through the story-telling propensitiesof Scott.[1]After school they would wander along the banks of the Tweed, and these rambles had many pleasant associations—the one happy in drinking in the romantic stories and legendary lore which the other was equally happy in pouring out. This school friendship was never broken off, as Scott paid frequent visits to the Border town for some years afterwards; and when James Ballantyne went to Edinburgh to complete his legal training, after finishing his apprenticeship in Kelso, it is more than probable that he would meet Walter Scott, who was then attending the law-classes of the University. The intercourse would be renewed in the class-rooms and also in the monthly symposiums of the Teviotdale Club, to which they both belonged. On the conclusion of his legal studies, James Ballantyne commenced business as a lawyer in Edinburgh, but success proving slow he returned in 1795 to his native town; and here, whatever legalor other work he may have carried on, he seems, according to an advertisement in No. 1 of theKelso Mail, to have acted as agent for the Sun Fire Insurance Co. Being a young man of literary ability as well, he soon attracted the attention of the county people, who prevailed upon him, in 1796, to become the editor and manager of a new weekly newspaper, theKelso Mail, which they were promoting in opposition to theKelso Chronicle, a paper of advanced democratic principles, circulating in Roxburgh and the other Border counties. In this way he established his first practical connection with printing.
Transcriber’s Note: image is clickable for larger versionREDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE “KELSO MAIL”
Transcriber’s Note: image is clickable for larger version
REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE “KELSO MAIL”
REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE FIRST NUMBER OF THE “KELSO MAIL”
In the prospectus of the paper given in No. 1, April 13, 1797, there occurs this paragraph: “In the Miscellany we present to the Public, it shall be our endeavour to combine amusement with information. Literary speculations, poetical productions of merit, extracts from popular works, and interesting anecdotes, shall occasionally be called in to relieve the more important details, which they shall not, however, in any instance be suffered to supersede. In this department ofour undertaking, we hope from the arrangements we have made, to be able to furnish to the Public a species of entertainment, which will be a source of innocent and agreeable relaxation, while it will afford an opportunity for those of our young countrymen who are partial to the lighter species of literature, to indulge the excursions of their fancy, and ascertain, without abusing their time, how far they may be qualified to succeed in pleasing the Public.”
The somewhat lengthy Prospectus does not parade the usual phrase about “the felt want,” but it implies it all the same, and it is pleasant to record that theKelso Mailis still flourishing, having published its centenary number in April 1897. By the courtesy of the present proprietor, there is given here a reduced facsimile of the first page of No. 1.
For the purposes of the new paper James Ballantyne had to make several journeys—first to London, to arrange for correspondents, and also to Edinburgh and Glasgow, in order to obtain type and other printing appliances—Glasgow at that time having one of the best type-foundries in the country.
In October 1799, when Walter Scott was returning from a ballad-hunting raid through Ettrick Forest and Liddesdale, he stayed at Rosebank in Kelso for some days, and the school friends again met. Scott had recently published translations of the German ballads of Bürger—“Lenore” and “The Wild Huntsman,”—through the publishing house of Manners & Miller of Edinburgh. This little book had been well received in Scotland, but had gained no general acceptance in the south. It had led, however, to a correspondence with a few who were interested in ballad lore, especially with Matthew Gregory Lewis (known generally as “Monk” Lewis), who was then engaged upon a similar work called “Tales of Wonder,” but who had delayed its progress in such a way as to cause considerable annoyance to Scott and to others who had promised their aid.[2]In the meantime it happened that, while Scott was at Rosebank, James Ballantyne called one morning and asked him to supply a few paragraphs on some legal question of the day for his newspaper. Scott complied, and, carrying hismanuscript to the printing-office, took with him also some ballads of his own composition designed to appear in “Monk” Lewis’s collection of “Tales of Wonder.” “With these, especially the ‘Morlachian fragment after Goethe,’ Ballantyne was charmed. Scott talked of Lewis with rapture; and, after reciting some of his stanzas, said: ‘I ought to apologise to you for having troubled you with anything of my own, when I had things like this for your ear.’ ‘I felt at once,’ says Ballantyne, ‘that his own verses were far above what Lewis could ever do, and though, when I said this, he dissented, yet he seemed pleased with the warmth of my approbation.’”
On parting, Scott made a casual remark that he wondered his old friend did not try to get some work from the booksellers, “to keep his types in play” during the intervals of publication of the weeklyMail. Ballantyne replied that such an idea had not occurred to him, and that, moreover, he had little acquaintance with the Edinburgh publishers; but that his types were good, and he thought he could produce work equal to that of any of the town printers. “Scott, with his good-humouredsmile, said, ‘You had better try what you can do. You have been praising my little ballads; suppose you print off a dozen copies or so of as many as will make a pamphlet, sufficient to let my Edinburgh acquaintances judge of your skill for themselves.’ Ballantyne assented; and exactly twelve copies of ‘William and Helen,’ ‘The Fire King,’ ‘The Chase,’ and a few other pieces, not all Scott’s own, were thrown off accordingly, with the title (alluding to the long delay in the publication of Lewis’s collection) of ‘An Apology for Tales of Terror, 1799.’”[3]A reproduction of the title is given on the opposite page.
It happened also that Hughes, Ballantyne’s chief workman, had been trained in one of the foremost printing-houses of the time, and was capable of using his materials to the best advantage; and this, joined to James Ballantyne’s excellent taste in the selection of type, contributed to the production of the ballads in a style of typographical perfection worthy of the most eminent printers before him.
In the beginning of 1894 a copy of this very limited edition of the “Apology” was advertised at a moderate price by a bookseller in London. It was immediately purchased by an Edinburgh bookseller, who had a higher opinion of its value than his London brother. This copy bore an inscription in James Ballantyne’s handwriting, of which the following is a slightly reduced facsimile—
Evidently, however, John Murray had given it away some time after, as it shows the further enrichment of the poet Campbell’s book-plate pasted on the title-page. The book is rare, and, till this copy was discovered, the only one known to exist was that at Abbotsford. It consists of seventy-six pages and a title, and from a printer’s point of view deserves the high praise bestowed upon it—having meadows of margin, wide leading, good spacing and colour.
In chronological order another Kelso book falls to be noticed here, before we come to the important time of the association of Scott and Ballantyne with the “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.” The reproduced title shows it to be the life of Count Boruwlaski, a celebrated dwarf, who died in 1837 at Durham, in the ninety-ninth year of his age.[4]The book, a copy of which is at Paul’s Work, bears the date of 1801, and must of course have been issued during the dwarf’s lifetime. In a letter to Mr. Morritt, soon after the publication of “Waverley,” Scott has the following humorous reference to the Count:—“I am heartily glad you continued to like ‘Waverley’ to the end. The hero is a sneaking piece of imbecility; and if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece, as Count Boruwlaski’s wife used to do with him.”
In connection with this chapter on Kelso work, it is gratifying to be able to print here, besides the facsimile of the first page of No. 1 of theKelso Mail, a reduced facsimile of a playbill for the “New Theatre” at Kelso for Monday, November 16, 1801.[5]