Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm looking forward to getting together with Nate Silver
Speaker 1: and Maria Konikova of the Risky Business podcast to answer
Speaker 1: your questions. Nate and Maria are both journalists who moonlight
Speaker 1: has high stakes poker players, so maybe you'd like to
Speaker 1: ask about that. Perhaps you have a burning question about
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Speaker 1: to Tales at Pushkin dot FM. November nineteen sixteen. The
Speaker 1: world has gone mad. Over in northern France, the Battle
Speaker 1: of the Psalm has been raging. But here in West London,
Speaker 1: an old man has been making his own crazy plans.
Speaker 1: If I'm well, what can be more foolish than the
Speaker 1: whole world? He writes in his journal, My folly is
Speaker 1: of a light kind. It's true that what he's doing
Speaker 1: isn't as bad as trench warfare, but that is the
Speaker 1: lowest of low bars. Here he is now limping through
Speaker 1: the fog and the darkness along the north bank of
Speaker 1: the River Thames, struggling with the weight of the wooden
Speaker 1: box he's carrying. Look at him. He's nervous, looking around,
Speaker 1: terrified that he might be stopped by a policeman that
Speaker 1: they might ask him about his heavy burden. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of police around, after all, there's a war on
Speaker 1: imagine if he was caught, he'd imagined it himself many times,
Speaker 1: the police, the public, the newspapers. What a weird business
Speaker 1: it is, but set with perils and panics. I have
Speaker 1: to see that no one is near or looking. Yes,
Speaker 1: don't look too closely or he'll get nervous. Keep your distance,
Speaker 1: take your time. There. He goes down the riverside walk
Speaker 1: towards Hammersmith Bridge, that elegant late Victorian suspension bridge across
Speaker 1: the river. Watch him heave that box up onto the railings.
Speaker 1: What's he doing? If you missed it, not to worry.
Speaker 1: He'll be back tomorrow, maybe even later tonight. This is
Speaker 1: not a moment of madness. It's a long term project.
Speaker 1: Hitherto I have escaped detection, But in the vista of
Speaker 1: coming nights, I see innumerable possibilities lurking in dark corners,
Speaker 1: and it will be a miracle if I escape them all.
Speaker 1: If anyone figures out what he's doing, it will ruin him.
Speaker 1: But what is he doing? I'm Tim Harford and you're
Speaker 1: listening to cautionary tales. To understand the old man and
Speaker 1: his folly, we need to go back almost three decades further,
Speaker 1: to a lecture given the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society
Speaker 1: in London in November eighteen eighty eight. The Arts and
Speaker 1: Crafts Exhibition Society was all about simple, beautiful design and
Speaker 1: above all respectful of the skill of the artisan. In
Speaker 1: the audience that evening were some of the greats of
Speaker 1: the Arts and Crafts movement. The lecturer was nervous. His
Speaker 1: name was Emery Walker, and he wasn't used to public speaking,
Speaker 1: especially not in front of such a distinguished crowd. But
Speaker 1: his friend, Thomas Cobden Sanderson, the man who had given
Speaker 1: the Arts and Crafts movement its name, had urged him
Speaker 1: to speak, so Emory did. Thomas Cobden Sanderson and Emery
Speaker 1: Walker made an unlikely couple of friends. Thomas Cobden Sanderson
Speaker 1: had gone to Cambridge, trained to be a fancy lawyer
Speaker 1: and married an heiress. Emery Walker was working class, the
Speaker 1: son of a coachmaker, who dropped out of school at
Speaker 1: the age of thirteen because his family needed him to
Speaker 1: get a job. There's a wonderfully contrasting pair of portrait
Speaker 1: photographs of the two. Walker has a hardware wearing tweed
Speaker 1: three piece suit. It looks as tough as barbed wire,
Speaker 1: and he looks like he sleeps in it. His face,
Speaker 1: with bushy mustache, is carelined, cheekbones prominent from under the
Speaker 1: brim of a black fedora. His eyes stare almost haunted,
Speaker 1: and he's clutching a cat like he's about to crush
Speaker 1: its rib cage with his bare hands. And Thomas Copden Sanderson,
Speaker 1: he's wearing a big, white floppy beret so huge it
Speaker 1: looks like somebody accidentally dropped the raw dove a pizza
Speaker 1: on his head. Instead of a tie, he has a
Speaker 1: ribbon at his throat, and he's wearing an artist's gown
Speaker 1: like a preschooler heading for the paint box, and a
Speaker 1: feat artist and a hard man who's seen some hard times.
Speaker 1: That's how they seem emery. Walker may not have gone
Speaker 1: to Cambridge, but that evening at the Arts and Crafts
Speaker 1: Exhibition Society, he knew what he was talking about. He'd
Speaker 1: made a career in printing and photography, with a particular
Speaker 1: expertise in reproducing images on the printed page. Despite his
Speaker 1: nerves he was rising to the occasion. Emory's talk was
Speaker 1: a magisterial history of type design, printing, and illustration from
Speaker 1: its very beginning in the fourteen hundreds. In a darkened room,
Speaker 1: he projected slides showing the printed page through the ages
Speaker 1: and highlighting the way in which early printing existed alongside
Speaker 1: and in harmony with manuscripts. Photographically enlarging the images, Emery
Speaker 1: was able to show the exquisite craft of fifteenth century
Speaker 1: type designers from venice of the new printing industry in
Speaker 1: the fourteen seventies. Then, Emory showed a sad decline. After
Speaker 1: just a few decades, the quality of printing started to
Speaker 1: fall apart. The printed page could be beautiful, but it
Speaker 1: could also be cheap and mass produced, and printers increasingly
Speaker 1: favored the cheap over the beautiful. Nobody had ever seen
Speaker 1: such images projected in a lecture, and the content was
Speaker 1: as important as the format. Emery Walker was telling the
Speaker 1: great arts and crafts masters a story that echoed their
Speaker 1: deepest convictions, a story about crude mass production crowding out
Speaker 1: elegance and honest craft. With his enchanting slides and the
Speaker 1: tragic tale they told Emery Walker cast a spell. The
Speaker 1: most prominent member of the audience fell under that enchantment.
Speaker 1: He was William Morris, Oxford educated, wealthy, the creator of
Speaker 1: gorgeous floral textiles and wallpapers that are the epitome of
Speaker 1: arts and crafts. Inspired, William Morris himself decided to set
Speaker 1: up a printing press, a printing press that would reclaim
Speaker 1: the book itself as a work of art. Morris established
Speaker 1: what became known as Kelmscott Press, and he did nothing
Speaker 1: without first asking the advice of Emery Walker. Kelmscott Press
Speaker 1: books were collector's items as soon as they were made.
Speaker 1: One of Emory's contributions had been to help with the typeface,
Speaker 1: based on a Venetian type. Emery photographed the Venetian Book
Speaker 1: from the fourteen seventy, enlarging the letters so they could
Speaker 1: form the basis for a beautiful, dense black type called
Speaker 1: Golden type. It looked almost medieval, and it was undoubtedly beautiful.
Speaker 1: But then William Morris died. What now Thomas Cobden Sanderson,
Speaker 1: like William Morris, had fallen in love with the idea
Speaker 1: of making beautiful books, but he had a different vision
Speaker 1: for what a beautiful book could be. While Morris was
Speaker 1: HARKing back to medieval manuscripts, Cobden Sanderson wanted something with
Speaker 1: more space on the page, a simpler layout, and a
Speaker 1: lighter typeface. He thought William Morris had made a mistake
Speaker 1: in making a blacker, heavier version of Venetian type. Better
Speaker 1: to get some thing finer, more like the original. As
Speaker 1: one critic put it, William Morris's books were full of wine.
Speaker 1: Early Venetian pages were full of light. Cobden Sanderson wanted
Speaker 1: to make books that were full of light. Cobden Sanderson
Speaker 1: shared his dreams with his journal, I must, before I
Speaker 1: die create the type for today of the book beautiful
Speaker 1: and actualize it paper ink, writing, printing, ornamant, and binding.
Speaker 1: I will learn to write, to print, and to decorate.
Speaker 1: An awe inspiring, daunting project, a project perhaps best undertaken
Speaker 1: in company. And so Cobden Sanderson approached Emery Walker, the
Speaker 1: man who he had inspired and who had inspired him
Speaker 1: in turn. But Walker was more than a colleague, he
Speaker 1: was a dear friend. Walker's family lived at three Hammersmith Terrats,
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson's at seven Hammersmith Terraces. Their families became so
Speaker 1: close that they rented a pair of summer cottages in
Speaker 1: the country so that when they went on summer holidays
Speaker 1: they'd still be together. When one of his early experiments
Speaker 1: went awrye with an element printed upside down, Cobden Sanderson
Speaker 1: gave it as a memento to Emery Walker, with the
Speaker 1: inscription to a perfect friend, an imperfect souvenir, and the
Speaker 1: friends shared a political vision as well as an esthetic one.
Speaker 1: They saw each other regularly, not only at the Arts
Speaker 1: and Crafts Exhibition Society, but at the Hammersmith Socialist Society.
Speaker 1: They believed in the dignity of honest work, the fundamental
Speaker 1: quality of every person, on the import autance of sharing prosperity.
Speaker 1: Their perfect partnership would be called the Doves Press. It
Speaker 1: would produce some works of astonishing beauty and an act
Speaker 1: of incredible ugliness. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
Speaker 1: What could be more fun than setting up a new
Speaker 1: creative enterprise with your closest friend. Late in October eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, Cobden Sanderson was excitedly talking to his journal again. Today,
Speaker 1: Mother and I have been tidying up stairs in the
Speaker 1: attics where in a few days, we hope to begin
Speaker 1: as printers by mother. He didn't mean his mother, he
Speaker 1: meant the mother of his children. Annie Cobden Sanderson had
Speaker 1: been a huge influence on Thomas. She gave him her
Speaker 1: family name Cobden, and her family inheritance, which was a
Speaker 1: solid source of funds. Most importantly, she urged him to
Speaker 1: quit being a lawyer and give himself over to his
Speaker 1: real passion, arts and crafts. Annie was putting up all
Speaker 1: the money to pay for this new business. Emery and
Speaker 1: Thomas were supplying well their expertise and enthusiasm. Together the
Speaker 1: three of them would create the Doves Press, which we
Speaker 1: hope to make us famous as the Kelmscott Press. Won't
Speaker 1: it be fun? A few days later he added, soon
Speaker 1: mister Walker and myself, sitting on high stools, will begin printing.
Speaker 1: Isn't that fun? Quite a new business. We are wondering
Speaker 1: what great book we shall begin with. Perhaps it will
Speaker 1: be the Bible O to be in love. Cobden Sanderson
Speaker 1: was in love, it seems, with Emery Walker and the
Speaker 1: book Beautiful and the Dove's Press. But the first flush
Speaker 1: of love does not always last. The first page of
Speaker 1: The Dove's Bible hits like a divine thunderclap in the
Speaker 1: beginning fills the first line, big and red and bald
Speaker 1: all caps, like a tabloid newspaper headline, decades ahead of
Speaker 1: its time. Even bolder. The eye of in the beginning
Speaker 1: runs all the way down the page, alongside the block
Speaker 1: of text, a strong red vertical line. Stunning, brave, so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It is one of the most celebrated pages in the
Speaker 1: history of printing. After the shock of that bold read eye,
Speaker 1: the deeper beauty emerges from the typeface, which was called
Speaker 1: simply Doves. Every Dove's Press book was set in the
Speaker 1: same font Dove's type sixteen point. There were no illustrations
Speaker 1: and only a few flourishes, such as that read vertical.
Speaker 1: The first volume of the Doves Bible was published in
Speaker 1: nineteen o three, but the effect is shockingly clear and modern.
Speaker 1: Like the Venetian masterpieces before them, Dove's Press pages really
Speaker 1: full of light. Doves type was a collective effort. Thomas
Speaker 1: Cobden Sandersen gave esthetic direction, but Emery Walker had been
Speaker 1: the inspiration, as well as overseeing production and photographically enlarging
Speaker 1: the work of the Venetian masters who of course, were
Speaker 1: themselves part of the collaboration. An employee of Walkers actually
Speaker 1: drew the design, and a brilliant craftsman cut the tiny
Speaker 1: type punches. And who paid for it all Annie Cobden Sandersen.
Speaker 1: The result of this collective effort, Doves, is often said
Speaker 1: to be the most beautiful type in the world. It's elegant,
Speaker 1: with clean lines and subtle serifs, and just the faintest
Speaker 1: suggestion of the human at work. One writer described it
Speaker 1: as slightly rickety, as though somebody had knocked into the
Speaker 1: compositor's plate and jiggled every letter almost imperceptibly. It is unique.
Speaker 1: Nobody really knows why Emory and Thomas fell out. A
Speaker 1: family friend later recalled of Walker, he was the kindest
Speaker 1: and gentlest of men, and I always found it hard
Speaker 1: to believe that he could have had a row with anyone.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the problem was that the two men had different expectations.
Speaker 1: Emory Walker hadn't married into money, He had other businesses
Speaker 1: to run. He knew printing, he had sourced the machinery,
Speaker 1: found the right workers, dealt with the practicalities of setting
Speaker 1: up Dove's press, but then he trusted Thomas to handle
Speaker 1: the day to day printing. Thomas Cobden Sanderson may have
Speaker 1: joyfully imagined Emory at his elbow as they sat together
Speaker 1: on high stools printing the book Beautiful. Emery Walker had
Speaker 1: other things to do. Walker was a professional printer. He
Speaker 1: thought it unnecessary to check every single sheet, explains Robert Green,
Speaker 1: a type designer. Cobden Sanderson was not a professional printer,
Speaker 1: but he was a perfectionist. This was the problem between
Speaker 1: the two men. Cobden Sanderson seems to have resented Emery
Speaker 1: Walker's absence, but then again, when Walker did offer an opinion,
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson was outraged. In nineteen oh two, Cobden Sanderson
Speaker 1: set out his grievances in a letter to Walker. You
Speaker 1: objected to the adoption of the original edition of Paradise
Speaker 1: Lost for our addition. You objected to the spelling, and
Speaker 1: you objected to the capitals in the text, to my
Speaker 1: arranging of in the beginning, and to the long initial eye,
Speaker 1: and said it will never do. You objected to the
Speaker 1: position of the title of the First Book of Genesis
Speaker 1: on the left hand page, and said it was hateful.
Speaker 1: You objected to the table of contents, and only the
Speaker 1: other day you objected to my arrangement of Isaac's address
Speaker 1: to his twelve sons. He never sent the letter. Instead,
Speaker 1: he sat simmering with frustration, but determined to finish the
Speaker 1: work on the Great Doves Press books they had begun together.
Speaker 1: The small team of printers and typesetters at Dove's Press
Speaker 1: worked on nothing but the Bible for three years. The result,
Speaker 1: said one critic, was dangerously near to absolute perfection. While
Speaker 1: Dove's Press was winning plaudits from the critics, it wasn't
Speaker 1: making money. The Bible project was popular, all five hundred
Speaker 1: is sold out in advance, but there was a limited
Speaker 1: market for incredibly beautiful, yet expensive books. The business only
Speaker 1: kept going because Annie was subsidizing it from her inheritance,
Speaker 1: But that inheritance couldn't last, and all three of them
Speaker 1: had reason to be frustrated. Annie because she was effectively
Speaker 1: bankrolling Thomas's hobby, Thomas because he was doing most of
Speaker 1: the work, and Emery because he could see so much
Speaker 1: potential in the Dove's style and the Dove's typeface, if
Speaker 1: only they could use it for longer print runs of
Speaker 1: more affordable books. Four years after his unsent rant Thomas
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson finally wrote to Emery Walker to explain that
Speaker 1: the relationship was over. My dear Walker, now that the Bible,
Speaker 1: a great work, is finished, and as moreover, the whole
Speaker 1: work of the press does in fact fall upon me,
Speaker 1: I should like to dissolve our partnership and to become
Speaker 1: solely responsible for the press. It was agreed in the
Speaker 1: event of dissolution you would be entitled to a fount
Speaker 1: of type for your own use. This I would ask
Speaker 1: you to exchange for some equivalent, because I do not
Speaker 1: think that either of us would like to see two
Speaker 1: presses at work with the type which has been hitherto unique. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was a sticking point. Cobden Sanderson touched Dove's type
Speaker 1: every day, obsessed over the perfection of the books he
Speaker 1: was typesetting and printing, and hated the idea that Walker
Speaker 1: might take the Dove's typeface and use it to make
Speaker 1: something unworthy. He might print advertisements or use it for
Speaker 1: product packaging. Who knew, in truth, Walker had done as
Speaker 1: much as anyone to champion the book beautiful and as
Speaker 1: much as anyone to create Dove's type. It seemed most
Speaker 1: likely that he would use Dove's type to print elegant
Speaker 1: but affordable books. There was no technical reason why both
Speaker 1: men couldn't have a copy of the type, but Cobden
Speaker 1: Sanderson couldn't bear the thought of Emery Walker using it,
Speaker 1: and Emery Walker insisted that he had every right to
Speaker 1: do so. Walker may have been the kindest and gentlest
Speaker 1: of men, but he wasn't a pushover if he didn't fight,
Speaker 1: He wrote to a friend in nineteen oh nine, the
Speaker 1: only alternative is to be a passive resistor and allow
Speaker 1: him to despoil me, and that I don't like a
Speaker 1: few weeks later, he sued Cobden Sanderson. Copden Sanderson shared
Speaker 1: his reaction to that news with his journal. He wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid of being fined or even imprisoned for nothing on
Speaker 1: earth will now induce me to part with the type.
Speaker 1: I am what he does not appear to realize, A
Speaker 1: visionary and a fanatic, And against a visionary and a fanatic,
Speaker 1: he will beat himself in vain. Their mutual friends despaired
Speaker 1: at the situation, but eventually one of them, Sidney Cockrell,
Speaker 1: managed to broker a compromise. Thomas Cobden Sanderson was sixty
Speaker 1: eight years old. Emery Walker was over a decade younger.
Speaker 1: What if Cobden Sanderson had exclusive use of the dove's
Speaker 1: type until he died, and then the metal type and
Speaker 1: the right to use it would pass to Emery Walker.
Speaker 1: Cockrell's idea was a fudge, and it was not what
Speaker 1: Walker had been promised, but reluctantly Walker agreed. He might
Speaker 1: not have done so had he realized what Thomas Cobden
Speaker 1: Sanderson was planning. Thomas had already written to the company
Speaker 1: who had manufactured the font a decade before. They had
Speaker 1: in their storerooms up in Edinburgh the punches and matrices
Speaker 1: for doves. The matrices were molds to make more copies
Speaker 1: of the doves type. The punches were tools to make
Speaker 1: more matrices. As long as they existed, doves type would
Speaker 1: never die. Take the punches and matrices out of storage,
Speaker 1: wrote Copden Sanderson, and send them to me. Cautionary tales
Speaker 1: will be back after the break. Thomas Copton's Sanderson was
Speaker 1: capable of enraged outbursts of destruction. One day, for example,
Speaker 1: he was binding a book and realized the leather for
Speaker 1: the binding didn't fit. Here's what happened next in his
Speaker 1: own words. In a burst of rage, I took the
Speaker 1: knife and cut the slips, and tore the covers and
Speaker 1: boards off and tossed them to one side. Then, in
Speaker 1: a very ecstasy of rage, seized one side again, tore
Speaker 1: the leather off the board and cut it, and cut
Speaker 1: it and slashed it with a knife. Then I was
Speaker 1: quite calm. Again that was a fit of white hot rage.
Speaker 1: But now Cobden Sanderson would act in cold blood. His
Speaker 1: plan was simple. He had promised that after he died,
Speaker 1: Emory Walker would get the Dove's type, but he never
Speaker 1: had any intention of fulfilling that promise. Instead, he would
Speaker 1: destroy the type utterly. That was no easy task. When
Speaker 1: Walker and Cobden Sanderson referred to a fount of Dove's type,
Speaker 1: or what we'd call a font, they were referring to
Speaker 1: a set of metal letter slugs sufficient to typeset pages
Speaker 1: of print. That meant several copies of each letter, perhaps
Speaker 1: dozens of copies, as well as copies of punctuation marks
Speaker 1: and other symbols. All things considered, a font of type
Speaker 1: was a serious assemblage of heavy metal, and Thomas Cobden
Speaker 1: Sanderson planned to bequeath that heavy metal to the River Thames.
Speaker 1: So there we are, in the freezing fog of November
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, watching a stubborn, stubborn old man shuffling from
Speaker 1: the Dove's Press bindery the half mile or so to
Speaker 1: the green and gold towers of Hammersmith Bridge. He's convinced
Speaker 1: that the police will stop him, that there will be
Speaker 1: a national scandal. Of course, nobody has any particular reason
Speaker 1: to stop an old man with a heavy burden. And
Speaker 1: if they did stop him and find that his wooden
Speaker 1: toolbox was packed not with tools but with slugs of
Speaker 1: metal type, then so what. Cobden Sanderson had been planning
Speaker 1: this for years. The week before Easter nineteen thirteen, he
Speaker 1: had made several trips to the bridge carrying some of
Speaker 1: the punches and matrices that would let Emery Walker make
Speaker 1: his own font of the Dove's type. At the end
Speaker 1: of each trip, the same scene, Cobden Sanderson looked west
Speaker 1: towards the Dove's Press building itself and the setting sun.
Speaker 1: Then he hurled the matrices into the river. He thus
Speaker 1: controlled the only font of Dove's type that would ever exist,
Speaker 1: and would use it to print the last few Doves
Speaker 1: Press books. Now late in nineteen sixteen, he would finish
Speaker 1: what had started by destroying that font. But the sheer
Speaker 1: scale of the task was incredible. There was over a
Speaker 1: ton of metal type at Dove's Press, and Thomas Cobden Sanderson,
Speaker 1: now seventy six years old, had to carry every ounce
Speaker 1: of it to the bridge and throw it into the river.
Speaker 1: His journals vividly record the act and give no hint
Speaker 1: that he ever had doubts. I have to see that
Speaker 1: no one is near or looking. Then over the parapet
Speaker 1: a box full, and then the audible and visible splash.
Speaker 1: I'd nearly cast my type into a boat, another danger,
Speaker 1: which unexpectedly shot from under the bridge. He perfected the project, however,
Speaker 1: adapting his toolbox to the task. At the bridge, I
Speaker 1: crossed the other side, take a stealthy look round, and
Speaker 1: if no one is in sight, I heave up the
Speaker 1: box to the parapet, release the sliding lid, and let
Speaker 1: the type fall sheer into the river. At work at
Speaker 1: a moment, he had plenty of opportunity to practice. Marianne Titcomb,
Speaker 1: who wrote the Definitive History of Dove's Press, estimates that
Speaker 1: the old man could not have carried more than fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds of type on each half mile journey to the
Speaker 1: bridge to carry the full ton and more of metal
Speaker 1: would have taken at least one hundred and seventy furtive trips.
Speaker 1: In any case, his journals show that the whole business
Speaker 1: took almost six months. He had plenty of time to
Speaker 1: stop and reconsider. He never did. At the end of
Speaker 1: it all, the most beautiful type in the world was gone,
Speaker 1: just so an old man could be sure that nobody
Speaker 1: else would ever be able to use it. The final
Speaker 1: publication of the Doves Press was a catalog of all
Speaker 1: the books the press had published over its sixteen years
Speaker 1: of operation. On the last page, the last page ever
Speaker 1: printed by Dove's Press, Thomas Cobden Sanderson boasted of his
Speaker 1: deed to the bed of the River Thames, the river
Speaker 1: on whose banks I have printed all my printed books.
Speaker 1: I the Dove's Press, bequeath the Dove's Press, fount of type,
Speaker 1: the punches, matrices, and the type in use at the
Speaker 1: Dove's Press at the time of my death. Was he serious?
Speaker 1: It wasn't clear, but their mutual friend, Sidney Cockrel feared
Speaker 1: the worst. He wrote to Cobden Sanderson telling him that
Speaker 1: it made a terrible mistake. I believe that you will
Speaker 1: come to see that your sacrifice to the River Thames
Speaker 1: was neither a worthy nor an honorable one. Cockrel was wrong.
Speaker 1: The historian Marion Tidcomb wrote, Cobden Sanderson never regretted it. Indeed,
Speaker 1: he took delight in it and found comedy in the tragedy.
Speaker 1: Emery Walker eventually became Sir Emery Walker, a pillar of
Speaker 1: the art and design community. His house has been preserved
Speaker 1: as a museum of arts and crafts. The playwright George
Speaker 1: Bernard Shaw called him an almost reprehensibly amiable man. The
Speaker 1: architect Philip Webb called him the universal Samaritan whose services
Speaker 1: were laid on like water. The chief compositor at Dove's
Speaker 1: Press said that he carried everywhere with him an atmosphere
Speaker 1: of genial friendliness. Thomas Cobden Sanderson had a different description.
Speaker 1: In a letter to his lawyers, he once wrote, mister
Speaker 1: Emery Walker is and always has been, perhaps must be
Speaker 1: a tradesman. It's a line that says more about Cobden
Speaker 1: Sanderson than about Walker. In nineteen twenty two, five year
Speaker 1: years after destroying the Dove's Type Thomas Cobden Sanderson died.
Speaker 1: Emery Walker asked Annie to hand over the type, and
Speaker 1: when she could not, he sued it wasn't so much
Speaker 1: for compensation. What compensation could there be but over the
Speaker 1: principle that Cobden Sanderson did not create the Dove's type
Speaker 1: by himself, and the Dove's Type was not his to destroy.
Speaker 1: Annie had to pay money that after years of subsidizing
Speaker 1: the press, she could hardly afford both she and Walker,
Speaker 1: and indeed the whole world had been impoverished by the
Speaker 1: stubbornness of a man who was now beyond atonement. Annie
Speaker 1: died a few years later, and her ashes were placed
Speaker 1: next to his in an urn in the garden wall
Speaker 1: of the house where they lived together and where the
Speaker 1: Dove's Press had operated, next door to Emery Walker. Soon after,
Speaker 1: the River Thames burst its banks. The floodwaters carried both
Speaker 1: Annie and Thomas away. Obsession is a strange thing. Almost
Speaker 1: a century after Thomas sacrificed Dove's Type to the spirit
Speaker 1: of the River Thames, another type designer, Robert Green, went
Speaker 1: down to the foreshore at low tide underneath Hammersmith Bridge
Speaker 1: and poked around in the shingle. Cobden Sanderson had become
Speaker 1: obsessed with destroying the Dove's type, Robert Green had become
Speaker 1: obsessed with resurrecting it. At first, he did what Emery
Speaker 1: Walker had done all those years before, photographing and enlarging
Speaker 1: the printed pages and trying to discern the shape of
Speaker 1: the metal that had produced those inked characters. In digital form,
Speaker 1: Green drew and re drew Doves over one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty times. The obsession with the type has caused a
Speaker 1: lot of problems. When you're up all night trying to
Speaker 1: get the right curve in the leg of an R
Speaker 1: and you're spending three and a half hours on it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go down too well with your wife. Annie.
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson would have known the feeling. I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure why I got started. In the end, it took
Speaker 1: over my life, but perhaps there's no mystery. Green couldn't
Speaker 1: get over the contrast between the beauty of the type
Speaker 1: and the ugliness of Cobden Sanderson's long act of destruction.
Speaker 1: As Green says, he claimed to believe in beauty, claimed
Speaker 1: to be a socialist, Yet the most beautiful thing he created,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to share, and he decides to throw
Speaker 1: it in the river rather than share it with the world.
Speaker 1: There's only so far you can get by copying the
Speaker 1: inked letters on a page. Though everyone told Green that
Speaker 1: the doves type had never been found, but he wondered
Speaker 1: had anyone really ever looked for it, which is why
Speaker 1: he found himself turning over pebbles under Hammersmith Bridge, and
Speaker 1: there it was a letter V, still in good shape
Speaker 1: despite ninety eight years being tossed around under water. He
Speaker 1: found two more pieces within twenty minutes. With the help
Speaker 1: of professional divers. Green has recovered a total of one
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty pieces based on the recovered type
Speaker 1: and his own obsessive redraftings. Robert Green has now issued
Speaker 1: a digital verse version of Dove's type, something that anyone
Speaker 1: can use for a modest fee. He's donating half of
Speaker 1: the prophets to the Emery Walker Museum. Marion Titcomb's book
Speaker 1: The Doves Press is the definitive scholarly history of the affair.
Speaker 1: For a full list of our sources, see the show
Speaker 1: notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by
Speaker 1: me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Vines and Ryan Dilly.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound
Speaker 1: as I and original music are the work of Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio.
Speaker 1: Bend A Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
Speaker 1: voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
Speaker 1: the Sam Monroe, Jamal Westman and rufus Wright. The show
Speaker 1: also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Gretta Cohene, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Kira Posey and Cohen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
Speaker 1: to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
Speaker 1: to us and if you want to hear the show,
Speaker 1: add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
Speaker 1: page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash
Speaker 1: plus