Speaker 1: Pushkin, November nineteen sixteen. The world has gone mad. Over
Speaker 1: in northern France, the Battle of the Somme has been raging.
Speaker 1: But here in West London, an old man has been
Speaker 1: making his own crazy plans. If I am foolish, well
Speaker 1: what can be more foolish than the whole world? He
Speaker 1: writes in his journal. My folly is of a light kind.
Speaker 1: It's true that what he's doing isn't as bad as
Speaker 1: trench warfare, but that is the lowest of low bars.
Speaker 1: Here he is now limping through the fog and the
Speaker 1: darkness along the north bank of the River Thames, struggling
Speaker 1: with the weight of the wooden box he's carrying. Look
Speaker 1: at him. He's nervous, looking around, terrified that he might
Speaker 1: be stopped by a policeman, that they might ask him
Speaker 1: about his heavy burden. There are plenty of police around,
Speaker 1: after all, there's a war on. Imagine if he was caught,
Speaker 1: he'd imagined it himself many times. The police, the public,
Speaker 1: the newspapers. What a weird business it is, but set
Speaker 1: with perils and panics. I have to see that no
Speaker 1: one is near or looking. Yes, don't look too closely,
Speaker 1: or he'll get nervous, keep your distance, take your time.
Speaker 1: There he goes down the riverside walk towards Hammersmith Bridge,
Speaker 1: that elegant late Victorian suspension bridge across the river. Watch
Speaker 1: him heave that box up onto the railings. What's he doing?
Speaker 1: If you missed it, not to worry. He'll be back tomorrow,
Speaker 1: maybe even later tonight. This is not a moment of madness.
Speaker 1: It's a long term project. Hitherto I have escaped detection.
Speaker 1: But in the vista of coming nights, I see innumerable
Speaker 1: possibilities lurking in dark corners, and it will be a
Speaker 1: miracle if I escape them all. If anyone figures out
Speaker 1: what he's doing, it will ruin him. But what is
Speaker 1: he doing? I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary tales.
Speaker 1: To understand the old man and his folly, we need
Speaker 1: to go back almost three decades further, to a lecture
Speaker 1: given at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London
Speaker 1: in November eighteen eighty eight. The Arts and Crafts Exhibition
Speaker 1: Society was all about simple, beautiful design and above all
Speaker 1: respectful of the skill of the artisan. In the audience
Speaker 1: that evening were some of the greats of the Arts
Speaker 1: and Crafts Movement. The lecturer was nervous. His name was
Speaker 1: Emery Walker, and he wasn't used to public speaking, especially
Speaker 1: not in front of such a distinguished crowd. But his friend,
Speaker 1: Thomas Cobden Sanderson, the man who had given the Arts
Speaker 1: and Crafts movement its name, had urged him to speak,
Speaker 1: so Emory did. Thomas Cobden Sanderson and Emery Walker made
Speaker 1: an unlikely couple of friends. Thomas Cobden Sanderson had gone
Speaker 1: to Cambridge, trained to be a fancy lawyer, and married
Speaker 1: an heiress. Emery Walker was working class, the son of
Speaker 1: a coachmaker who dropped out of school at the age
Speaker 1: of thirteen because his family needed him to get a job.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderfully contrasting pair of portrait photographs of the two.
Speaker 1: Walker has a hard wearing tweed three piece suit. It
Speaker 1: looks as tough as barbed wire, and he looks like
Speaker 1: he sleeps in it. His face, with bushy mustache, is carelined,
Speaker 1: cheekbones prominent from under the brim of a black fedora.
Speaker 1: His eyes stare almost haunted, and he's clutching a cat
Speaker 1: like he's about to crush its rib cage with his
Speaker 1: bare hands, and Thomas Copden Sanderson. He's wearing a big
Speaker 1: white floppy beret so huge it looks like somebody accidentally
Speaker 1: dropped the raw dove a pizza on his head. Instead
Speaker 1: of a tie, he has a ribbon at his throat,
Speaker 1: and he's wearing an artist's gown, like a preschooler heading
Speaker 1: for the paint box, and a feat artist and a
Speaker 1: hard man who's seen some hard times. That's how they
Speaker 1: seem Emery Walker may not have gone to Cambridge, but
Speaker 1: that evening at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, he
Speaker 1: knew what he was talking about. He'd made a career
Speaker 1: in printing and photography, with a particular expertise in reproducing
Speaker 1: images on the printed page. Despite his nerves, he was
Speaker 1: rising to the occasion. Emory's talk was a magisterial history
Speaker 1: of type design, printing and illustration from its very beginning
Speaker 1: in the fourteen hundreds. In a darkened room, he projected
Speaker 1: slides showing the printed page through the ages and highlighting
Speaker 1: the way in which early printing existed alongside and in
Speaker 1: harmony with manuscripts. Photographically enlarging the images, Emery was able
Speaker 1: to show the exquisite craft of fifteenth century type designers
Speaker 1: from Venice, the center 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 seventies, 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 Sarder,
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 something finer, more like the original. As one
Speaker 1: 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 Terraces,
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 pre ninted upside down, Cobden
Speaker 1: Sanderson gave it as a memento to Emery Walker, with
Speaker 1: the inscription to a perfect friend an imperfect souvenir, and
Speaker 1: the friends shared a political vision as well as an
Speaker 1: esthetic one. They saw each other regularly, not only at
Speaker 1: the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, but at the Hammersmith
Speaker 1: Socialist Society. They believed in the dignity of honest work,
Speaker 1: the fundamental quality of every person, on the importance of
Speaker 1: sharing prosperity. Their perfect partnership would be called the Dove's Press.
Speaker 1: It would produce some works of astonishing beauty and an
Speaker 1: act of incredible ugliness. Cautionary tales will be back after
Speaker 1: the break. What could be more fun than setting up
Speaker 1: a new creative enterprise with your closest friend. Late in
Speaker 1: October eighteen ninety nine, Cobden Sanderson was excitedly talking to
Speaker 1: his journal again. Today, Mother and I have been tidying
Speaker 1: upstairs in the attics, where in a few days we
Speaker 1: hope to begin as printers. By mother, he didn't mean
Speaker 1: his mother, He meant the mother of his children. Annie
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson had been a huge influence on Thomas. She
Speaker 1: gave him her family name Cobden, and her family inheritance,
Speaker 1: which was a solid source of funds. Most importantly, she
Speaker 1: urged him to quit being a lawyer and give himself
Speaker 1: over to his real passion arts and crafts. Annie was
Speaker 1: putting up all the money to pay for this new business.
Speaker 1: Emery and Thomas were supplying well their expertise and enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Together the three of them would create the Dove's Press,
Speaker 1: which we hope to make us famous as the Kelmscott Press.
Speaker 1: Won't it be fun? A few days later he added,
Speaker 1: soon mister Walker and myself, sitting on high stools, will
Speaker 1: begin printing. Isn't that fun? Quite a new business. We
Speaker 1: are wondering what great book we shall begin with. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it will be the Bible. Oh to be in love.
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson was in love, it seems, with Emery Walker
Speaker 1: and the book Beautiful and the Doves Press. But the
Speaker 1: first flush of love does not always last. The first
Speaker 1: page of The Dove's Bible hits like a divine thunderclap
Speaker 1: in the beginning fills the first line, big and red
Speaker 1: and bold, all caps, like a tabloid newspaper headline decades
Speaker 1: ahead of its time, even bolder. The eye of in
Speaker 1: the beginning runs all the way down the page, alongside
Speaker 1: the block of text, a strong red vertical line. Stunning, brave,
Speaker 1: so beautiful. It is one of the most celebrated pages
Speaker 1: in the history of printing. After the shock of that
Speaker 1: bold red eye. The deeper beauty emerges from the typeface,
Speaker 1: which was called simply Doves. Every Doves Press book was
Speaker 1: set in the same font, Doves Type sixteen point. There
Speaker 1: were no illustrations and only a few flourishes, such as
Speaker 1: that read vertical. The first volume of the Doves Bible
Speaker 1: was published in nineteen o three, but the effect is
Speaker 1: shockingly clear and modern. Like the Venetian masterpieces before them,
Speaker 1: Doves Press pages really were full of light. Doves Type
Speaker 1: was a collective effort. Thomas Cobden Sandersen gave esthetic direction,
Speaker 1: but Emery Walker had been the inspiration, as well as
Speaker 1: overseeing production and photographically enlarging the work of the Venetian masters, who,
Speaker 1: of course were themselves part of the collaboration. An employee
Speaker 1: of Walker's actually drew the design, and a brilliant craftsman
Speaker 1: cut the tiny type punches. And who paid for it
Speaker 1: all Annie Cobden Sanderson. The result of this collective effort,
Speaker 1: Doves is often said to be the most beautiful type
Speaker 1: in the world. It's elegant, with clean lines and subtle seriphs,
Speaker 1: and just the faintest suggestion of the human at work.
Speaker 1: One writer described it as slightly rickety, as though somebody
Speaker 1: had knocked into the compositor's plate and jiggled every letter
Speaker 1: almost imperceptibly. It is unique. Nobody really knows why Emery
Speaker 1: and Thomas fell out. A family friend later recalled of Walker,
Speaker 1: he was the kindest and gentlest of men, and I
Speaker 1: always found it hard to believe that he could have
Speaker 1: had a with anyone. Perhaps the problem was that the
Speaker 1: two men had different expectations. Emery Walker hadn't married into money.
Speaker 1: He had other businesses to run. He knew printing. He
Speaker 1: had sourced the machinery, found the right workers, dealt with
Speaker 1: the practicalities of setting up Dove's press, but then he
Speaker 1: trusted Thomas to handle the day to day printing. Thomas
Speaker 1: Copden Sanderson may have joyfully imagined Emory at his elbow
Speaker 1: as they sat together on high stools printing the book Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Emery Walker had other things to do. Walker was a
Speaker 1: professional printer. He thought it unnecessary to check every single sheet,
Speaker 1: explains Robert Green, a type designer. Copdon Sanderson was not
Speaker 1: a professional printer, but he was a perfectionist. This was
Speaker 1: the problem between the two men. Cobdin Sanderson seems to
Speaker 1: have resented Emery Walker's absence, but then again, when Walker
Speaker 1: did offer an opinion, Cobden Sanderson was outraged. In nineteen
Speaker 1: oh two, Cobden Sanderson set out his grievances in a
Speaker 1: letter to Walker. You objected to the adoption of the
Speaker 1: original edition of Paradise Lost for our edition. You objected
Speaker 1: to the spelling, and you objected to the capitals in
Speaker 1: the text, to my arranging of in the beginning, and
Speaker 1: to the long initial eye, and said it will never do.
Speaker 1: You objected to the position of the title of the
Speaker 1: First Book of Genesis on the left hand page, and
Speaker 1: said it was hateful. You objected to the table of contents,
Speaker 1: and only the other day you objected to my arrangement
Speaker 1: of Isaac's Address to his twelve Sons. He never sent
Speaker 1: the letter. Instead, he sat simmering with frustration, but determined
Speaker 1: to finish the work on the great Dove's Press books
Speaker 1: they had begun together. The small team of printers and
Speaker 1: typesetters at Dove's Press worked on nothing but the Bible
Speaker 1: for three years. The result, said one critic, was dangerously
Speaker 1: near to absolute perfection. While Dove's Press was winning plaudits
Speaker 1: from the critics, it wasn't making money. The Bible project
Speaker 1: was popular, all five hundred copies sold out in advance,
Speaker 1: but there was a limited market for incredibly beautiful, yet
Speaker 1: expensive books. The business only kept going because Annie was
Speaker 1: subsidizing it from her inheritance, but that inheritance couldn't last,
Speaker 1: and all three of them had reason to be frustrated.
Speaker 1: Annie because she was effectively bankrolling Thomas's hobby, Thomas because
Speaker 1: he was doing most of the work, and Emery because
Speaker 1: he could see so much potential in the Dove's style
Speaker 1: and the Dove's typeface, if only they could use it
Speaker 1: for longer print runs of more affordable books. Four years
Speaker 1: after his unsent rant, Thomas Cobden Sanderson finally wrote to
Speaker 1: Emery Walker to explain that the relationship was over. My
Speaker 1: dear Walker, Now that the Bible are a great work
Speaker 1: is finished, and as moreover, the whole work of the
Speaker 1: press does in fact fall upon me, I should like
Speaker 1: to dissolve our partnership and to become solely responsible for
Speaker 1: the press. It was agreed in the event of dissolution
Speaker 1: you would be entitled to a fount of type for
Speaker 1: your own use. This I would ask you to exchange
Speaker 1: for some equivalent, because I do not think that either
Speaker 1: of us would like to see two presses at work
Speaker 1: 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 Emory 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 Copden 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 doves
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, Dove's type would
Speaker 1: never die. Take the punches and matrices out of storage,
Speaker 1: wrote Cobden Sanderson, and send them to me. Cautionary tales
Speaker 1: will be back after the break. Thomas Cobden 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 again saw the
Speaker 1: leather off the board and cut it, and cut it
Speaker 1: and slashed it with a knife. Then I was quite calm.
Speaker 1: Again that was a fit of white hot rage. But
Speaker 1: now Cobden Sanderson would act in cold blood. His plan
Speaker 1: was simple. He had promised that after he died, Emory
Speaker 1: Walker would get the Dove's type, but he never had
Speaker 1: any intention of fulfilling that promise. Instead, he would destroy
Speaker 1: the type utterly. That was no easy task. When Walker
Speaker 1: 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 copy peers of punctuation
Speaker 1: marks and other symbols. All things considered, a font of
Speaker 1: type was a serious assemblage of heavy metal, and Thomas
Speaker 1: Copden Sardison planned to bequeath that heavy metal to the
Speaker 1: River Thames. So there we are, in the freezing fog
Speaker 1: of November nineteen sixteen, watching a stubborn, stubborn old man
Speaker 1: shuffling from the Dove's Press bindery the half mile or
Speaker 1: so to the Green and Gold Towers of Hammersmith Bridge.
Speaker 1: He's convinced that the police will stop him, that there
Speaker 1: will be a national scandal. Of course, nobody has any
Speaker 1: particular reason to stop an old man with a heavy burden.
Speaker 1: And if they did stop him and find that his
Speaker 1: wooden toolbox was packed not with tools, but with slugs
Speaker 1: of metal type, then so what. Copden Sardarsan had been
Speaker 1: planning this for years. The week before Easter nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: he had made several trips to the bridge carrying some
Speaker 1: of the punches and matrices that would let Emery Walker
Speaker 1: make his own font of the Dove's type. At the
Speaker 1: end of each trip the same scene, Cobden Sanderson looked
Speaker 1: west 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: One night, I'd nearly cast my type into a boat,
Speaker 1: another danger, which unexpectedly shot from under the bridge. He
Speaker 1: perfected the project, however, adapting his toolbox to the task.
Speaker 1: At the bridge, I crossed the other side, take a
Speaker 1: stealthy look round, and if no one is in sight,
Speaker 1: I heave up the box to the parapet, release the
Speaker 1: sliding lid, and let the type fall sheer into the river.
Speaker 1: At work at a moment, he had plenty of opportunity
Speaker 1: to practice. Marianne Titcomb, who wrote the definitive History of
Speaker 1: Dove's Press, estimates that the old man could not have
Speaker 1: carried more than fifteen pounds of type on each half
Speaker 1: mile journey to the bridge. To carry the full ton
Speaker 1: and more of metal would have taken at least one
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy furtive trips. In any case, his journals
Speaker 1: show that the whole business took almost six months. He
Speaker 1: had plenty of time to stop and reconsider. He never did.
Speaker 1: At the end of it all, the most beautiful type
Speaker 1: in the world was gone, just so an old man
Speaker 1: could be sure that nobody else would ever be able
Speaker 1: to use it. The final publication of the Dove's Press
Speaker 1: was a catalog of all the books the press had
Speaker 1: published over its sixteen years of operation. On the last page,
Speaker 1: the last page ever printed by Dove's Press, Thomas Cobden
Speaker 1: Sanderson boasted of his deed to the bed of the
Speaker 1: River Thames, the river on whose banks I have printed
Speaker 1: all my printed books. I the Doves Press, bequeath the
Speaker 1: Dove's Press, fount of type, the punches, matrices, and the
Speaker 1: type in use at the Dove's Press at the time
Speaker 1: of my death. Was he serious? It wasn't clear, but
Speaker 1: their mutual friend, Sidney Cockrell feared the worst. He wrote
Speaker 1: to Cobden Sanderson, telling him that it made made a
Speaker 1: terrible mistake. I believe that you will come to see
Speaker 1: that your sacrifice to the River Thames was neither a
Speaker 1: worthy nor an honorable one. Cockrell was wrong. The historian
Speaker 1: Marion Tidcomb wrote, Cobden Sanderson never regretted it. Indeed, he
Speaker 1: 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 years
Speaker 1: after destroying the Dove's type, Thomas Cobden Sanderson died. Emery
Speaker 1: Walker asked Annie to hand over the type, and when
Speaker 1: she could not, he sued it wasn't so much for compensation.
Speaker 1: What compensation could there be but over the principle that
Speaker 1: Cobden Sanderson did not create the Dove's type by himself,
Speaker 1: and the Dove's type was not his to story, Annie
Speaker 1: had to pay money that after years of subsidizing the press.
Speaker 1: She could hardly afford both she and Walker, and indeed
Speaker 1: the whole world had been impoverished by the stubbornness of
Speaker 1: a man who was now beyond atonement. Annie died a
Speaker 1: few years later, and her ashes were placed next to
Speaker 1: his in an urn in the garden wall of the
Speaker 1: house where they lived together and where the Dove's Press
Speaker 1: had operated, next door to Emery Walker. Soon after the
Speaker 1: River Thames burst its banks. The floodwaters carried both Annie
Speaker 1: and Thomas away. Obsession is a strange thing. Almost a
Speaker 1: century after Thomas sacrificed Dove's time to the spirit of
Speaker 1: the River Thames, another type designer, Robert Green, went down
Speaker 1: to the foreshore at low tide underneath Hammersmith Bridge and
Speaker 1: poked around in the shingle. Cobden Sanderson had become obsessed
Speaker 1: with destroying the Dove's type. Robert Green had become obsessed
Speaker 1: with resurrecting it. At first, he did what Emery Walker
Speaker 1: had done all those years before, photographing and enlarging the
Speaker 1: printed pages and trying to discern the shape of the
Speaker 1: metal that had produced those inked characters. In digital form,
Speaker 1: Green drew and redrew Doves over one hundred and twenty times.
Speaker 1: The obsession with the type has caused a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: When you're up all night trying to get the right
Speaker 1: curve in the leg of an r and you're spending
Speaker 1: three and a half hours on it, it doesn't go
Speaker 1: down too well with your wife. Annie Copped Sanderson would
Speaker 1: have known the feeling. I'm not really sure why I
Speaker 1: got started. In the end, it took over my life,
Speaker 1: but perhaps there's no mystery. Green couldn't get over the
Speaker 1: contrast between the beauty of the type and the ugliness
Speaker 1: of Cobden Sanderson's long act of destruction. As Green says,
Speaker 1: he claimed to believe in beauty, claimed to be a socialist,
Speaker 1: Yet the most beautiful thing he created he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to share, and he decides to throw it in the
Speaker 1: river rather than share it with the world. There's only
Speaker 1: so far you can get by copying the inked letters
Speaker 1: on a page. Though everyone told Green that the Doves
Speaker 1: type had never been found, but he wondered had anyone
Speaker 1: really ever looked for it, which is why he found
Speaker 1: himself turning over pebbles under Hammersmith Bridge, and there it
Speaker 1: was a letter V still in good shape despite ninety
Speaker 1: eight years being tossed around underwater. He found two more
Speaker 1: pieces within twenty minutes with the help of professional divers.
Speaker 1: Green has recovered a total of one one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pieces based on the recovered type and his own
Speaker 1: obsessive redraftings. Robert Green has now issued a digital version
Speaker 1: of Dove's type, something that anyone can use for a
Speaker 1: modest fee. He's donating half of the profits to the
Speaker 1: Emery Walker Museum. Marion Titcomb's book The Doves Press is
Speaker 1: the definitive scholarly history of the affair. For a full
Speaker 1: list of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford
Speaker 1: dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim Harford
Speaker 1: with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and
Speaker 1: original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound
Speaker 1: design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio. Bend
Speaker 1: A Daphaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice
Speaker 1: 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: Retta Cohne, 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 Barrin. 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