Judging Covers

They say that you should not judge a book by its cover, but as soon as I saw this one, I was immediately captured by its shiny yet simple gilt design relentlessly staring at me from across the room. The cover certainly does not say anything about the book's content, serving as an elegantly designed placeholder, attractive to the eye yet so functional that over a hundred years since it came off the press, a fool like me had his heart captured and his wallet out.

This latest conquest, "Sesame and Lillies" by John Ruskin, sat on an ever-growing pile of books of varying ages and provenances. At least until I worked my way towards it, stroked the dust off its precious front, and cradled its golden face in my hands. The sheer time I spend in pensive, enamored reflection with each of these enduring monuments leaves me questioning why, and it's in this book that I found the answer.

No matter what period a book is from, the cover, contents, and how a book is written form a portrait of the society that produced it. When I open these books, I find a mystery, and the historian within me emerges to search for whatever scraps of information I can find.

The stylised gilt roses on the cover that taunts me and the tangled curves and flowers of the endpapers were the first mystery to be solved. After an hour of searching, I found that they are the product of the prolific artist Talwin Morris, Art Director of the publishers of this book Blackie & Sons.

Flicking through the first few pieces of paper, sharp, elegant, yet indecipherable handwriting greets you. Many books this age give a clue to their original owners in the form of dedication written by the giver, allowing us to (attempt to) delve into their lives.

After some research with sparse returns, the stamp at the top, "Red Letter Library" seems to signify that it was part of a canon of books, a "Sainsbury's basics" range of literature produced by Blackie and Sons at the turn of the 20th Century, many of which had the same cover design. The real meat of this page is the hard-to-decipher inscription "Church of Christ Bible Class, 9 ????newton Street 5th Jan 1916, to Louisa Culfeather". Due to the handwriting, I could only make out the "newton" section of the street name, meaning it was time for some detective work.

In the hopes of tracking down the book's exact origins, I trawled for hours on Google to find the "Church of Christ" until I discovered it was a red herring. Church of Christ is not the name of a building but a religious movement that started in the 1840s that believed the bible alone should provide all doctrine and practice. After some deep research, I did manage to find out that there were 4 Churches of Christ active in Glasgow at this point¹, but unfortunately couldn't find a single address.

I then happened upon some information, Blackie and Sons published books in Scotland under their name but in London under their subsidiary, the Gresham Publishing Company. As it was probably sold in Scotland, and as Glasgow was one of the largest cities in the UK at the time, it would most likely have been there. I trawled through a list of Glaswegian streets until I found the one that fit the mystery letters, Overnewton.

I found it at last and confirmed that this was the place by looking up the address in the 1912 edition of the Glasgow Post Office Directory² to find that yes, a Church of Christ was operating out of that address on that date.

In 1916, Overnewton Street was an area of crowded solid stone tenements a few hundred metres from the docks in the beating heart of industrial Glasgow. Great chimneys rose from the banks of the Clyde, and looking out at all this stood 9 Overnewton street, not a church as I thought, but a Masonic Hall. The Bible class would not have been monastically silent, but like all life in that working-class suburb, instead been conducted to the rhythm of hammers and steel that would have risen from the adjacent engine works and foundries. To get there, perhaps Louisa would have had to cross Blackie Street, named for the founder of Blackie & Sons, John Blackie, whose City improvement act led to the building of those tenements.

Our final unanswered question is, who is Louisa Culfeather? From the surrounding evidence, it's clear she was a working-class woman, and like all working-class women, there is little record except what I can piece together. She was born in 1896 to Thomas & Euphemia Culfeather and named Euphemia Louise Culfeather. She grew up at 9 Arthur Street, just around the corner from Overnewton street. In 1916 at the age of 20, she went to a Bible class at 9 Overnewton street and was gifted a beautifully decorated book. In 1924 at the age of 28, she died.

Was she Louisa to friends? Perhaps she was Louisa to differentiate herself from her mother? Did everyone get the book, or was it just her? Was she given the book for being an excellent study? Will you please tell me she had a happy 28 years on this earth?

Will I ever be able to answer these questions? Perhaps not. Everyone who could answer them has long passed, and I'm left dreaming that dust could speak. The last article that can attest to her existence, this book that looks at me, came to me in a cherished and impeccable condition. Now there's only one thought on my mind. Will this attest to me?

References

1. M'Dowall, J., 1899. People's history of Glasgow. pg 12.
2. Scottish Post Office Annual Glasgow Directory 1911-1912