![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
David Hay Fleming, one in a long line of gentlemen scholars, is remembered as an historian, antiquary, and critic. Yet upon his death in 1931 he left his library of nearly 13,000 volumes (together with his personal papers, letters, and notebooks) to the town of St Andrews, to form the nucleus of a public reference library. This paper seeks to place him firmly in the context of a book collector (and reader) through examining the subjects contained within his library, his motivation for acquiring books, and how his library was used both by himself and by others. Ultimately, new light will be shed upon the book-collecting habits of a middle-class individual, contributing to our understanding of how books were owned, read, and used in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scotland.
Notes
1. A Correspondent, ‘The Late Dr Hay Fleming’, Scotsman, 9 November 1931, p. 8.
2. The most complete study to date of Hay Fleming is that by Paton, published three years after Hay Fleming’s death, in 1934. It covered many aspects of Hay Fleming’s life and interests, including his passion for books, but no serious analysis of Hay Fleming as a book collector was included. H. M. Paton, David Hay Fleming: Historian and Antiquary (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1934).
3. This and subsequent figures for the number of volumes in Hay Fleming’s library are taken from the notebooks compiled by the University of St Andrews Library staff in 1932 and 1933 when cataloguing the collection. St Andrews University Library (hereafter SAUL), MS dep113/38/77–78, MS dep113/39/79–81, MS dep113/39/85–86. These give the most accurate record of Hay Fleming’s library at the time of his death, for not only has it subsequently been added to, but in 1977 some items were withdrawn and sold, three such works having come to light in the University of St Andrews Library. See SAUL, Typ SwG.B80LBA, Typ BE.C96MH, and r17 BX1779.G7C86, all bearing Hay Fleming’s ownership inscription together with a withdrawn stamp.
4. See, for example, A. N. L. Munby, Phillips Studies I–V (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951–60); M. E. Stanton, ‘Harvey Cushing: Book Collector’, Journal of the American Medical Association, 192.2 (1965), 141–44; The Library of Drummond of Hawthornden, ed. by R. MacDonald (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971); B. Carroll-Horrocks and G. Steinberg, ‘Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929): Passionate Book Collector’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 11.24 (2000), 45–47; E. Potten, ‘“A great number of Usefull books”: The Hidden Library of Henry Booth, 1st Earl of Warrington (1652–1694)’, Library & Information History, 25.1 (2009), 33–49; B. Hillyard, ‘Rosebery as Book Collector’, Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 7 (2012), 71–114.
5. The estate was that of Hay and Gosman, worth £35,000, of which Hay Fleming and his mother received one-third. See Paton, pp. 13–15.
6. Some exceptions are T. R. Harlow, ‘Thomas Robbins, Clergyman, Book Collector, and Librarian’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 61.1 (1967), 1–11; A. F. Westphall, ‘“Laboring in my Books”: A Religious Reader in Nineteenth Century New Hampshire’, The Library, 7th ser., 13.2 (2012), 185–204; V. Dunstan, ‘Professionals, their Private Libraries, and Wider Reading Habits in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland’, Library & Information History, 30.2 (2014), 110–28.
7. In his forthcoming article Potten not only calls for further research into the wider social and economic demographic of book collector in the nineteenth century in order ‘to produce a more holistic and enlightening picture of private book ownership and use’, but also advocates a reassessment of the libraries of noble bibliophiles, which may reveal that their interaction with their books may be more nuanced than previously suggested. E. Potten, ‘The Rest of the Iceberg: Reassessing Private Book Ownership in the Nineteenth Century’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 15.3 (forthcoming). With grateful thanks to Ed Potten for sending a preview of his paper.
8. SAUL, MS 36789.
9. Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland, SC70/4/666/314, p. 315. It was five years later, on 17 November 1936, that the Hay Fleming Reference Library at Kinburn House was inaugurated. ‘Dr Hay Fleming: St Andrews Ceremony’, Scotsman, 18 November 1936, p. 16. Moved to the St Andrews Branch of Fife County Library in 1962, the Hay Fleming Reference Library was deposited with the University of St Andrews in 2000, with formal ownership being transferred to the University on 1 August 2013.
10. ‘Honouring Dr Hay Fleming’, St Andrews Citizen, 29 April 1905, p. 5.
11. This was The Holy Bible (Glasgow, 1860), which bears the inscription ‘David Hay Fleming 171 South Street St Andrews 9th Jan. 1865’. SAUL, Hay BS185.E60G5.
12. Paton, p. 22.
13. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109 and MS dep113/40/126.
14. D. C. Stam, ‘Growing up with Books: Fanny Seward’s Book Collecting, Reading, and Writing in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York State’, Libraries and Culture, 41.2 (2006), 196.
15. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Dep171/24, letter dated 27 May 1929.
16. Paton, p. 89; SAUL, MS dep113/2/6/1–16.
17. Paton, p. 82.
18. The pamphlets are listed in a notebook entitled ‘Chronological List of 16th 17th and 18th Century Pamphlets in my possession’. SAUL, MS dep113/47. It is dated 8 April 1908, and some slight variations in ink suggest that some entries may have been added at a later date.
19. A. Rodden, ‘The Hay Fleming Reference Library, St Andrews’, SLA News, 122 (1974), 113.
20. SAUL, MS dep113/55, a Covenanter’s notebook; MS dep113/60/3–4.
21. Paton, p. 107.
22. D. Pearson, ‘Private Libraries and the Collecting Instinct’, in The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, iii: 1850–2000, ed. by A. Black and P. Hoare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 186–87.
23. SAUL, MS 36767.
24. SAUL, MS 36743/1.
25. P. R. Murray, ‘Antiquarianism’, in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, iii: Ambition and Industry 1800–80, ed. by B. Bell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), p. 278. For a reassessment of the strength of Scottish nationalism in the period 1830–60 and how it demanded equality with England within the Union of 1707, see G. Morton, Union-Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830–1860 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999).
26. Morton, p. 279. For the influence which Scott had on the study of Scottish history see M. Ash, The Strange Death of Scottish History (Edinburgh: The Ramsay Head Press, 1980), pp. 21–40.
27. Ash, p. 10.
28. Listed in Paton, pp. 117–36.
29. Ibid., pp. 80–82.
30. SAUL, MS dep113/2/8/1a–g. The editor responded by informing Hay Fleming that his letter was ‘too long and rather too polemical in style’, criticizing him for being too harsh upon the author, to which Hay Fleming responded, ‘I frankly admit that my reply to Mr. Preston was severe; but it was not one iota too severe’. SAUL, MS dep113/2/8/2; MS dep113/2/8/3.
31. Quoted in Paton, pp. 73–74.
32. Ibid., pp. 76, 36.
33. Ibid., pp. 46, 111.
34. Because of his views on Catholicism, some reviewers have discredited scholarly works in which Hay Fleming is cited as a source. R. G. Kyle and D. W. Johnson, John Knox: An Introduction to his Life and Works (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009), p. 192, n. 46.
35. Paton, pp. 43, 111.
36. Ibid., pp. 47, 48.
37. SAUL, MS 36755; MS dep113/22/26c.
38. SAUL, MS dep113/8/4/9. For the complete correspondence on this matter see SAUL, MS dep113/4/112.
39. These endeavours were again recognized in 1905; at a farewell banquet held in his honour before his departure for Edinburgh, it was noted that ‘The city […] owes more than can ever be repaid to the enthusiasm with which the Doctor has concerned himself in its antiquities and best interests’. ‘Honouring Dr Hay Fleming’, p. 5.
40. SAUL, MS 36741/1–2. Hay Fleming was to later gain some teaching experience, lecturing on the subject of Church History at New College, Edinburgh, in 1904–05. Paton, p. 31.
41. His first Stone Lectures were concerned with the Reformation, and were afterwards published as The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, and Consequences. The Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary for 1907–1908 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910). Hay Fleming’s second series focused upon Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston (1611–63), who assisted Alexander Henderson (c. 1583–1646) in writing the Scottish National Covenant in 1638. At this time Hay Fleming was engaged in editing the second volume of Johnston’s diary, published in 1919 for the Scottish History Society.
42. The Register of the Privy Seal of Scotland, iii: A.D. 1542–1548, ed. by the late D. Hay Fleming and J. Beveridge (Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1936), p. v.
43. John Scott was a shipbuilder and engineer who had a love of books, forming one of the finest private libraries in Scotland; with literature relating to his profession, the library also contained works which reflected his interest in Scotland and the Stuarts, as well as rare first editions and early manuscripts. W. F. Spear, ‘Scott, John (1830–1903)’, rev. by A. McConnell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35990> [accessed 9 November 2014].
44. SAUL, MS dep113/60/7. For all of Hay Fleming’s tirade against the auctioning of Laing’s library, he seems to be forgetting that it was actually the wish of Laing that his library be auctioned after his death. M. C. T. Simpson, ‘Laing, David (1793–1878)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15886> [accessed 9 November 2014]. Sadly for Hay Fleming, Scott’s collection was auctioned at Sotheby’s from 27 March to 3 April 1905.
45. His father may also have had an interest, some volumes having an acquisition date prior to 1865, when Hay Fleming purchased his first book.
46. SAUL, Hay BT300.A85. Rodden notes that Hay Fleming’s library contained two incunabula, but only this one was recorded by the St Andrews’ librarians in 1932 and 1933. Rodden, p. 111; SAUL, MS dep113/39/80, no. 7311.
47. SAUL, Hay BX9420; Hay BX9420.I6; Hay DA775.
48. SAUL, Hay DA385.
49. SAUL, Hay f DA452.
50. SAUL, MS dep113/60/7
51. SAUL, MS dep113/40/131.
52. SAUL, MS 36710.
53. Both SAUL, Hay BX9071.
54. SAUL, Hay PA8575.S3B74; Hay B785.L4.
55. Both at SAUL, Hay BX8915.R9. The majority of Rutherford’s works owned by Hay Fleming are listed in SAUL, MS dep113/39/85, nos. 6116–65, most of which are various editions of his letters.
56. SAUL, MS 36710. The two works were Elements of Plane Geometry (1833) and Elements of Solid Geometry (1834). Thomas Duncan (1777–1858) not only studied at St Andrews, but was also Professor of Mathematics at the University from 1820 until his death.
57. SAUL, Hay BR778.E3C8L7, letter tipped to front free endpaper.
58. SAUL, Hay DA890.S1L1.
59. A. Cameron, ‘The Late Dr Hay Fleming’, Scotsman, 10 November 1931, p. 13.
60. D. Hay Fleming, Critical Reviews Relating Chiefly to Scotland (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912), p. vii.
61. SAUL, Hay BX4665.G7B8.
62. D. Hay Fleming, ‘St. Andrews’, The Bookman, 5.29 (February 1894), 147.
63. SAUL, Hay DA890.S1L1.
64. W. Roberts, ‘Bookworms of Yesterday and To-Day: The Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, M.P.’, The Bookworm: An Illustrated Treasury of Old-Time Literature (January 1890), p. 162; F. Stimpson, ‘“I have spent my morning reading Greek”: The Marginalia of Sir George Otto Trevelyan’, Library History, 23.3 (2007), 245; G. P. Landow and E. Chew, ‘Anthony Trollope’s Marginalia in Macaulay’s Critical and Historical Essays’, Notes and Queries, 48.2 (2001), 153, 154.
65. SAUL, Hay BR789.D6, p. 208.
66. SAUL, Hay BR33.B2;1899, p. 78.
67. SAUL, Hay BR789.D6, p. 35. The reference appears to refer to a manuscript of John Law, canon of St Andrews, which was at that time preserved in the Library of Edinburgh University.
68. Paton, p. 73.
69. SAUL, Hay BR778.E3C8L7.
70. SAUL, Hay BX9081.F6S3, p. 7.
71. Ibid., p. 9.
72. SAUL, Hay BX9178.W3.
73. SAUL, MS dep113/60/5.
74. SAUL, Hay BR784.G7, vol. i. For examples of contents lists in works bound together, see SAUL, Hay AC911.47(SR) (four tracts bound together) and Hay AC911.79 (fourteen pamphlets bound together). He would also write more detailed contents lists in volumes already containing a handwritten one. See SAUL, Hay AC911.46 (seven pamphlets bound together).
75. SAUL, Hay f BX9223.R3, front free endpaper.
76. SAUL, Hay BR33.B2;1899, p. 122.
77. SAUL, MS 36743/1.
78. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, L.C.1276.5, p. 308. This answer appeared in the Scottish Historical Review, 17 (October 1919), 46–49.
79. Stimpson, p. 245; J. Snart, ‘Recentering Blake’s Marginalia’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 66.1–2 (2003), 137; Westphall, esp. pp. 194–99; SAUL, MS dep113/5/17/11.
80. SAUL, Hay BX9083.O8S4.
81. J. A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 236. One exception can be found in Lyon’s History of St Andrews, where the left margin on p. 140 and the bottom margin on p. 144 of vol. i contain lengthy annotations. SAUL, Hay DA890.S1L9.
82. Westphall, p. 198.
83. SAUL, Hay BR788.N4C3, letter tipped to half-title page.
84. SAUL, Hay BR789.D6, loose sheet between pp. 266 and 267.
85. Ibid., loose letter between pp. 364 and 365 and letter tipped in at p. 418.
86. Hay Fleming records at the front: ‘From the extract from the Session Records, at the end of this volume, regarding Martine’s seat in the Town Church, it appears that the author of the Reliquiae was a grandson of Doctor George Martine, Provost of St. Salvators College’. SAUL, MS dep113/60/5.
87. SAUL, Hay BR788.N4C3, Hay GV964.M8.
88. H. Guppy, ‘Copinger, Walter Arthur (1847–1910)’, rev. by C. Pease-Watkin, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32559> [accessed 9 November 2014].
89. Cameron, p. 13.
90. SAUL, MS 36735.
91. SAUL, MS 36761.
92. SAUL, MS dep113/2/11/5.
93. SAUL, MS 36787.
94. SAUL, MS 36724, MS 36754.
95. Paton, p. 102.
96. Ibid.
97. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109. It seems that the entries were not made straight into this notebook. In SAUL, MS dep113/1/10 is a list of books lent to Andrew Lang between 26 and 31 December 1900, which then appear in MS dep113/40/109 in a more complete form. Hay Fleming clearly lent material after 1909 (see, for instance, SAUL, MS dep113/22/28g, MS dep113/2/6/3a), but no notebook recording this survives.
98. Crawford’s borrowers included magistrates, clergymen, writers, and physicians, as well as a schoolmaster, carpenter, wigmaker, and barber. M. R. M. Towsey, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and their Readers in Provincial Scotland, 1750–1820 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 51.
99. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109.
100. SAUL, MS dep113/9/1/3/4.
101. SAUL, MS dep113/9/2/41/2.
102. SAUL, MS 36719.
103. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109.
104. SAUL, MS dep113/9/2/41/2. He was true to his word, Hay Fleming marking it as returned on 25 June 1909. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109.
105. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109; SAUL, MS dep113/38/63, letter pasted in at front. Hay Fleming, too, was guilty of retaining borrowed items for a long time, writing to Craigie that he was anxious to return an engraving ‘having kept it too long’. SAUL, MS 36754.
106. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109.
107. SAUL, MS dep113/22/40.
108. Quoted in Towsey, p. 47. Elizabeth Grant was a significant figure in Scottish literature, writing many articles and short stories (often published anonymously), although she is remembered largely for her posthumously published journal.
109. SAUL, MS dep113/9/2/17.
110. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109.
111. The copy of E. Taylor’s The Braemar Highlands (Edinburgh, 1873) now in Hay Fleming’s library bears the acquisition date 16 March 1922, indicating that a replacement was purchased many years later. SAUL, Hay DA880.H7.
112. SAUL, MS 36784.
113. SAUL, MS dep113/2/6/8a–c.
114. Ibid.
115. SAUL, MS dep113/9/2/14.
116. SAUL, MS dep113/40/109.
117. Ibid.