The ruined abbeys of Yorkshire

First edition, published in London by Seeley, Jackson & Halliday in 1883. The work is illustrated with twelve large plates on Arches wove paper, comprising eleven etchings and one plate in wash manner by Alfred-Louis Brunet-Debaines and his pupil Henri Toussaint, together with thirty-three engraved illustrations in the text, including plans, architectural details and views. Text printed in double columns.

Contemporary full navy blue morocco. Spine with raised bands and gilt shell tools, title gilt; broad gilt border to the covers composed of ornamental plaques and shell tools, richly gilt inner dentelles, all edges gilt. Corners bumped, some rubbing. Scattered foxing to the margins of the text. A very handsome copy.

Manuscript presentation inscription: « Pour le Duc de Nemours de la part de la Reine. Noël 1883 » [For the Duke of Nemours, from the Queen. Christmas 1883], addressed to Louis d’Orléans (1814-1896), Duke of Nemours, second son of Louis-Philippe I. The volume subsequently bears the armorial bookplate of H.R.H. the Duchess of Vendôme, Princess Henriette of Belgium, followed by that of Antonio Barrette.

In its evocation of the great ruined monasteries of Yorkshire, the work brings together an English author and two French printmakers. William Chambers Lefroy’s chapters had first appeared in The Portfolio before being revised and expanded for this edition. Rievaulx, Byland, Fountains, Kirkstall, Jervaulx, Mount Grace, Bolton and Whitby are considered through their architecture and history, but also through their place in the surrounding landscape; in his preface, Lefroy himself observes that architect, antiquary and artist should not be separated when attempting to understand these ruins.

The author’s identity has long been obscured by bibliographical confusion with his namesake William Lefroy, later Dean of Norwich. William Chambers Lefroy (1849-1915) belonged to an entirely different world: trained as a lawyer, he served for a time as Assistant Keeper at the National Portrait Gallery before pursuing a career in public administration and education. His proximity to artistic institutions naturally helps explain the equal attention paid in the book to architectural form and to its interpretation through images.

Alfred-Louis Brunet-Debaines (1845-1939) was responsible for the greater part of this graphic interpretation, with Henri Toussaint (1849-1911) also contributing to the series. Both belonged to the generation of French etchers who found in England a particularly receptive audience for the revival of original etching. Weathered stone, vast open arcades and vegetation reclaiming the buildings were especially well suited to their medium; the plates do not merely document the monuments, but recover something of the presence that Lefroy himself sought to convey in his text.

This particular copy, however, has another history, recorded in a few words at the beginning of the volume. At Christmas 1883 it was intended for the Duke of Nemours « de la part de la Reine » [from the Queen]. Every indication points to Marie-Henriette of Austria, Queen of the Belgians and wife of Leopold II, although the inscription does not expressly name her. The gift recalled, fifty-two years later, a singular episode in Belgian history: on 3 February 1831, the National Congress had chosen the young Nemours as sovereign before Louis-Philippe declined the crown on his son’s behalf. It ultimately passed to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who the following year married Louise-Marie d’Orléans, Nemours’s own sister.

By 1883, Marie-Henriette was therefore the wife of Leopold II, the son of Louise-Marie: the queen who presented the book was married to the nephew of the prince for whom it was intended.

The bookplate of the Duchess of Vendôme carries this family history a stage further. In 1896 Henriette of Belgium married Emmanuel d’Orléans, Duke of Vendôme. Emmanuel was the son of Ferdinand d’Orléans, Duke of Alençon, himself a son of the Duke of Nemours; he was therefore the grandson of the volume’s first owner. A few years after Nemours’s death, the book thus entered the library of his grandson’s wife. The precise stages of its transmission cannot be documented, but the succession of provenance marks fits naturally within the continuity of the family.

A very handsome copy of this first edition illustrated by Brunet-Debaines and Toussaint, bound in contemporary full morocco, presented at Christmas 1883 to the Duke of Nemours from the Queen of the Belgians, and subsequently bearing the bookplate of the Duchess of Vendôme, wife of his grandson: a provenance linking, across two generations, the same branches of the Belgian and Orléans royal families.