"Victorian Blood Book"
from the Library of Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh, whose manuscripts and 3,500-volume library are now at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, was an inveterate collector of things Victorian (and well ahead of most of his contemporaries in this regard). Undoubtedly the most curious object in the Waugh library is a large oblong folio decoupage book known affectionately as the "Victorian Blood Book."
All forty-one plates from the original book, which has been rebound in red buckram, have been scanned and are now available for viewing on the Ransom Center website. Since it arrived here in the late 1960s, the "Blood Book" has fascinated everyone who has seen it. Its decoupage was assembled from several hundred engravings, many taken from books of etchings by William Blake. The principal motifs are natural (birds, animals, and especially snakes) and Christian (images of the cross, scenes from the Bible, and crusaders). Drops of red india ink and extensive commentary have been added to many of the images. The craftsmanship is exquisite, and the adhesion of the decoupages is still perfect. The book bears an inscription by one John Bingley Garland to his daughter Amy dated September 1, 1854.
In the summer of 2008, I noticed an entry in a Maggs Brothers catalog for a group of decoupages formerly thought to be in the possession of the Edward Burne-Jones family. The style and content, described as "weird" and "rather elegant but very scary," are unmistakably the same as those of the Waugh book.
Dürnstein Castle, Austria. "Durenstein!" is the
"Blood Book's" actual title. Photo by Conna Oram.
The existence of other such items suggests mass production, yet internal evidence indicates otherwise. John Bingley Garland was a prosperous Victorian businessman who moved to Newfoundland, went on to become speaker of its first Parliament, and returned to England to end his days. A document still in the Garland family bears the same sanguinary ornamentation along with his signature. Most importantly, the inscriptions in the dedication and the text are in the same hand. It is altogether likely that this Victorian paterfamilias, who is known to have had an artistic bent, was the principal, if not the only, begetter of the Blood Book, and he must have spent hundreds of hours at the task.
How does one "read" such an enigmatic and disturbing object? The first plate contains a short table of contents and the title "Durenstein!" (the castle in which Richard the Lionhearted was held captive as well as the site of a battle in the Napoleonic Wars). The title and the theme of many of the plates may thus relate to the spiritual battles encountered by Christians along the path of life and the "blood" to Christian sacrifice.
—Richard Oram, Associate Director and Hobby Foundation Librarian
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