V Vellum

Vellum

Undoubtedly one of the most visually rich and poignant books at Marlborough is a hand-calligraphed poem dating from 1907 executed in Indian ink and vermilion paint on 24 leaves of vellum, or parchment.

It is a rendering of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of a famous Persian poem which had first appeared in 1859, and which appealed strongly to Victorian Orientalist taste. What makes the book special to Marlburians is its provenance: it was presented to the College as a memorial to Allen Wedgwood, a boy enrolled in Cotton between 1906 and 1911 and who subsequently enlisted in the Northumberland Fusiliers in 1914. He went missing in action at Gallipoli on 19th August 1915 when he was 22 years old, and his body was never recovered. The gift was made to the College by his mother, Mary Louisa Wedgwood, in May 1930. In a letter to the Master, George Turner, she explains how she had shown the volume to some London booksellers, who advised her that she ‘over-valued it’. ‘No doubt I do,’ she adds.

The manuscript was Mrs Wedgwood’s Christmas present to Allen in 1907. To carry out the work, she engaged the services of Edward Johnston (1872–1944), ‘the father of modern calligraphy’ and a man still revered as inspiring ‘the greatest revolution in letterdesign since the Renaissance’. Perhaps he is best remembered for developing the red circle and blue band motif for London Transport, as well as the iconic Sans Serif Johnston font used in all TfL branding. He received the CBE in 1939 for his contribution to British design, and among his many students were Graily Hewitt and Eric Gill. It is likely that Mrs Wedgwood approached Johnston in the light of the publication of his Writing and Illuminating and Lettering, the classic text on 20th-century calligraphy and font design, which had appeared in 1906. He carried out his work for her in 11 days (‘about 3 too many’, as he tells us in a self-deprecating postscript), using a turkey quill.

Mary Wedgwood (née Bell, 1854–1953) instilled in Allen a passion for botany, an interest perhaps strengthened by his father’s familial ties to the Darwins. In the years before the War, mother and son spent happy times gathering botanical specimens and pressing them in so-called drying volumes. After Allen’s loss, Mrs Wedgwood embarked upon a remarkable personal mission: to collect a sample of every species, variety and hybrid listed in the London Catalogue of British Plants (1853) as a memorial to her son. This vast undertaking led her all over the British Isles in her chauffeur-driven limousine on seasonal expeditions. She completed the task in 1934, and two years later presented to the College the entire Wedgwood Herbarium housed in a wooden cabinet and accompanied with a catalogue. In 1932 a species of rose, the Rubus Wedgwoodiae, was named after her in recognition of her services to botany. Mrs Wedgwood moved to Marlborough to escape the Blitz, and died here aged 99. She is remembered not just as a great benefactress to the College, but as a woman of science, a council member of the Botanical Society of the British Isles and an imperious figure on the London intellectual scene.