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A fascinating new acquisition to the Library’s collections…

Jul 14, 2025

When former Morrab Library President and Patron John le Carré passed away in 2020, his extensive book collection was donated or sold across various locations. The library made the decision to acquire one of these volumes, which holds a particular special link to the library, through two people who played important roles in its history and collections.

Richard Carew (1555 – 1620) was a Cornish scholar of antiquities and his Survey of Cornwall, first published in 1602 , is an important title in its own right. The volume details the geography, history, and culture of Cornwall at the time, and offers insights and observations that reflect Carew’s own personal experiences and knowledge of the region. Carew aimed to document the distinctiveness of Cornwall, its natural resources, and its people. This particular volume is the 1811 edition (held at: SPC 942.37).

 

While we’re not certain of the circumstances that led Mr le Carré to purchase this title, it is not beyond the realms of belief that its previous owner proved a significant influence. The book carries the bookplate of Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944), or ‘Q’, a Cornish novelist, scholar and literary critic. The library holds many of Q’s works, and in a speech to the library in 1919, said of the Morrab:

“There are some things in this world which the traveller, if he has eyes to see, can’t help but find just right. [It is not] fanciful to suppose …a guest at closing time, resting his strained eyes on the view across Mount’s Bay, with a sense that here was the real world scarcely less enchanting than the visionary sea of marvels, a city of God behind him, upon which the caretaker was closing the shutters for another night…”

Arthur Quiller-Couch

John le Carré was was a passionate supporter and friend of The Morrab Library for many years. As well as holding the role of President from 1997-2002, he later continued for many years as our Patron. His relationship with the Library stretched even further back to the 1970’s, giving his time to many events and meetings to support the library over the years. Mr le Carré supported the library in many ways, including establishing the Morrab Fellowship, which for a number of years provided a bursary to local sixth-formers to purchase books for their studies. He also commissioned the construction of a number of the mahogany reading tables located in our rooms upstairs, and he paid the insurance premium on our book collection throughout his tenure as President. Mr le Carré will be remembered for his vision for the library’s future, and his aim of encouraging young people to join and be inspired by this special place.

John le Carré pictured with Morrab Library colleagues in 1975

So Richard Carew’s important tome provides a special link to two of the library’s most interesting and important supporters.

At the back of the volume, there is a page of unattributed handwritten annotations on the subject of Cornish etymology. Intrigued by this, one of our brilliant library volunteers, Jane Prince, delved into the background of the provenance of Carew’s volume, exploring the possibilities of how it may have come into the hands of Arthur Quiller-Couch, before passing to John le Carré, and uncovering who may very likely have been  been responsible for the mysterious note. Her paper follows…

The mysterious, unattributed notes

“This volume, which contains Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s bookplate, was accompanied by a slip from the sales house mentioning the notes made by a former owner, suggesting that these may have been made by Q himself. However, a comparison with the facsimile of a letter in Q’s handwriting in Brittain’s biography shows that this is not the case. However, the cross-references in these notes to Halliwell (probably to his Rambles in Western Cornwall of 1861) indicate that the volume might, in fact, have been a survivor from the library of Q’s father, Dr Thomas Quiller Couch.[1] Most of his books were sold to pay debts on his death in 1884, when Q, still an undergraduate at Trinity, Oxford, was left the head of the family with a mother, two sisters and two much younger brothers to support. The reference in Q’s autobiography implies that he kept some of his father’s extensive library.[2] 

 Arthur Quiller-Couch’s bookplate in Carew’s 1811 volume

James Orchard Halliwell (later known as Halliwell-Phillips) was a contemporary of Thomas Couch and they had a common acquaintance in J. T. Blight, who was a friend of Thomas and who also illustrated Halliwell’s Life of Shakespeare (1848). A footnote referencing Halliwell’s Rambles accompanies the details of Chapel Uny Well taken from Thomas’s original notes for Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, which was published, with additional research, by Q’s sisters Mabel and Lilian.[3] The entry for Scarlet’s Well, Bodmin, quotes Thomas Couch’s manuscript in full in which he in turn quotes from Carew’s Survey.[4] A footnote to St Nun’s Well, Alternon also refers to Carew’s Survey but citing the 1769 edition, although it could have been the case that Mabel and Lilian just looked up the reference in that particular edition. Ancient and Holy Wells was published in 1894 by which time Q was living and working in Fowey, so his sisters would no longer have had access to their father’s copy of Carew.[5]  

The Morrab Library is fortunate in having an archive of J. T. Blight’s sketchbooks and diaries, including a letter to him from Thomas Couch. The annotations to Carew’s Survey are only rough notes and Thomas Couch’s letter is in formal handwriting but similarities between certain letters seem to support the proposal that the book originally belonged to Q’s father.[6]

The cross references to Halliwell are also of relevance to the Morrab Library in that Halliwell donated more than 2,000 volumes to the library after visiting it during his stay in Penzance. Halliwell lodged with Mrs Margery Cornish in Clarence Street and his explorations of the district resulted in Rambles in Western Cornwall By the Footsteps of the Giants published by John Russell Smith, London, in 1861. His obituary in the Cornishman of January 1889 described Halliwell’s donations of ‘rare and valuable books’ as making ‘one department richer than any other provincial library of its size in Elizabethan and Dramatic literature.’ [7] He was best known as a Shakespearian scholar. He was also educated at Jesus College, Cambridge where, co-incidentally, Q was granted a fellowship twenty years after Halliwell’s death.

 

Bookshelves in the Library honouring Halliwell   

 J.O. Halliwell-Phillips

If, however, Q did not inherit the volume of Carew from his father it is likely that he bought it from Gustave David, the antiquarian bookseller who kept a stall in the market in Cambridge and was much patronised by Q and his contemporaries. David attended book sales in London every week and his Cambridge stall (and later his shop) was well-known as a source of hidden treasures at reasonable prices. He used to put aside volumes which he thought would interest his regular customers. In 1925 Q and others gave a lunch at Cambridge in honour of David, and Q contributed to a small book produced as a memorial tribute in 1937, entitled David of Cambridge: Some Appreciations.[8]

 

  1. F. Brittain, Arthur Quiller-Couch: A biographical study of Q, (Cambridge, 1947), p. 117.
  2. Memories and opinions. An unfinished autobiography by Q, ed. S. C. Roberts, (Cambridge, 1944), p. 91.
  3. Mabel and Lilian Quiller-Couch, Ancient and Holy Wells of Cornwall, (London, 1894), p 28.
  4. Ibid pp. 211-212.
  5. Ibid p. 172
  6. Morrab Library Archive: MOR/BLI/1
  7. The Cornishman, Thursday, 10th January 1889, no. 549, p. 7.
  8. David’s son Hubert (1900-1990) continued the business and was also a designer of book-plates.

Reading List for Amy Gulick’s ‘Acqua Di San Giovanni: An Italian Midsummer Ritual’

Jul 10, 2025

We regularly host talks in the Reading Room for library members and non-members alike. The programme is as eclectic as the library’s collection – ranging from Dartmoor tin to the Scillies and the sea –  and meander through Literature, Poetry, Art, Geology and a host of other fascinating subjects in between. 

Often, the writers, academics, poets and artists that we invite to speak at the Library generously let us record their talk so we can share them with a wider audience online. You can browse the selection of recorded talks here. 

We really enjoyed hosting Amy Gulick in June 2025 for a talk about an Italian Midsummer Ritual – Acqua Di San Giovanni, or Saint John’s Water. On Saint John’s Eve, Italian women practice this fascinating ritual. An infusion of plants and flowers, selected for their curative properties and symbolic associations, is left out overnight on June 23 to selenare—to bask in the light of the moon and absorb its energies—and then used the following morning for bathing.

Amy’s recent talk contextualised the Acqua di San Giovanni ritual within a discussion of ancient and contemporary Italian Midsummer observances and greater European (including Cornish) folkloristic traditions around Saint John’s Eve: bonfires and fire-smoke purification, divination rituals, bonding rites, and worship of the Baptist.

 Amy made use of several titles from our collections as part of her supplementary research. She has kindly shared a “Reading List” to go with her talk, in case you would like to follow up on it by borrowing related titles from the Library.  All of these books can be found on the shelves of the Jenner Room and are available to borrow. 

Common Herbs and Their Uses: As Grown in the Hortyards at Gulval  by Lt. Col. G. R. Gayre – C 635.7

Bygone Days in Devon and Cornwall by Mrs Henry Pennell Whitcome C398.2094235

A Taste of Cornwall – Historical Remedies and Reminiscences edited by Kenneth Fraser Annard & Ann Butcher C398.242

The Folklore of Cornwall: The Oral Tradition of a Celtic Nation by Ronald M James C398.2094237

Fern Seeds and Fairy Rings by Rupert White C581.634

Ill-wished by Rupert White  C133.43

Cornish Feasts and Festivals by Liz Woods C641.54237

Library member Patricia Wilson Smith writes for us about J.T. Blight – part four

Jul 3, 2025

The fascinating and tragic story of J.T. Blight has captured the imagination of writers and artists over many years. Library member Patricia Wilson Smith has written the fourth instalment of a blog for us about how Blight‘s story has inspired her…

This is my final blog before I take a break to start work on my experimental film, and I thought it would be interesting to explore Blight’s story from the perspectives of two men who had such a formative influence over his life and work.

The Revd. Robert Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, was in his mid-fifties when he took John Blight under his wing.  Best known in Cornwall today, for writing Trelawney, or The Song of the Western Men (the well-loved Cornish anthem), his reputation then was as poet and eccentric, as was his obsession with retrieving drowned mariners from the foot of the cliffs to give them a Christian burial. John Blight counted him a ‘great man’ and hoped for his help in producing and promoting a second volume of Ancient Crosses and Antiquities that he was planning, recording the antiquities of East Cornwall. Hawker was indeed very helpful to Blight, encouraging the development of his work, but he was not a disinterested mentor, and soon began to insist on inserting poems of his own, and other irrelevancies that Blight attempted to resist. Hawker was a man of strong passions, but not of lasting vindictiveness, and despite a serious ‘falling-out’ later, it seems the two men remained friends for many years. Hawker was instrumental in obtaining a royal declaration for this second volume of work, and for recruiting the subscribers that were needed to publish it. 

Robert Hawker as drawn by JTB in 1856

James Orchard Halliwell, in 1863

James Orchard Halliwell was a man of very different enthusiasms; coming from a privileged background as the son of a wealthy draper, he was educated at Cambridge and before the age of twenty had published many learned articles in the arts, science and literature journal, The Parthenon. He secured the friendship of a noted bibliophile, Sir Thomas Phillipps, and befriended his daughter Henrietta, later proposing marriage to her. He was then involved in a scandal in which he was suspected of having stolen valuable manuscripts from Trinity College. No prosecution could be made, but Halliwell was banned from the British Library, and Phillipps refused to give his consent to their marriage. The pair eloped in 1842. 

James Halliwell was in his early forties when he visited Penzance on a holiday with his wife and children. It was 1861, and Blight’s ‘A Week at the Lands End’ had just been published. Henrietta Halliwell referred to it constantly during their travels around West Penwith, and it’s likely that they also referred to his volumes on Ancient Crosses and Antiquities. Halliwell wrote and published his own ‘Rambles in Western Cornwall’ shortly after. It is interesting to compare the two ‘travelogues’, and easy to imagine Blight’s straightforward and informational little book being mined for information by the older, more worldly, Halliwell.  In comparison ‘Rambles’ seems decidedly quaint in appearance, but would have received a far wider, wealthier and influential audience at the time.

Preface page to A Week at the Lands End published by Blight in 1861

Preface page to Halliwell’s Rambles in Western Cornwall

Hearing of Halliwell’s visit, and desperate for the opportunity to better himself through his talents, Blight contacted him to offer his services as an illustrator. 

The following year brought John Blight the opportunity to work for this illustrious and successful client. He was neither an experienced negotiator nor a man of the world like his future employer, and entered into what, to our eyes today, appears to have been a one-sided arrangement in which Blight worked obsessively to record Shakespeare’s birthplace (Halliwell’s perennial project) in return for being an occasional guest on holiday trips and at the Halliwell’s home, and expenses incurred when working in Stratford.  Being a quiet and sensitive man, he was initially stimulated by the attention and genuine affection he received, and felt unable to demand what he was rightly due. The Shakespeare volumes materialised slowly, never repaying the amount of work Blight had put into over 600 drawings and etchings that he had, in his enthusiasm, given over directly to Halliwell. 

In successive years Blight’s reputation as an archaeologist grew, but it was not an occupation that attracted a regular income. Overwork and desperation about money contributed to John Blight’s breakdown which began in 1868, and his attachment to a local woman, Evelina Pidwell seems also to have contributed to his downfall. James Halliwell became aware of his friend’s struggles when he began to write desperate letters asking for commissions, but choosing to ignore the signs, Halliwell eventually threatened to ‘cut’ him. Only when Blight’s father wrote to him explaining the difficulties they were experiencing as a family, did Halliwell show any concern for the artist. It is significant that James Halliwell was among those responsible for setting up a fund to pay for Blight’s confinement at Bodmin asylum, and was undoubtedly one of those alluded to in this letter from the St Lawrence

Hospital Management Committee, dated 1968, to a Blight researcher:

 “…when he was admitted…the Form of Guarantee signed by Robert Blight and Thomas Cornish was for one month only…However, from the correspondence it would appear that interested people or relatives were making arrangements for a further Guarantee of a longer duration”. (Extract from letter to Miss M Ingleden, 12 February 1968)

Writer John Mitchell (A Short Life at Lands End, 1977), deeply sympathetic to John Blight’s story, concluded:

 “Blight’s ‘death to the world’, as Halliwell put it, took place with his committal to the Asylum when he was thirty-five, his active life was indeed a short one. Halliwell’s carefully ambiguous phrase, which occurs in the introduction to his Calendar*, printed in 1887, gives a clue to how matters stood at the time. He was surely aware that Blight lingered on at Bodmin, yet he said nothing. Evidently he, Parker, Boase and others were parties to an agreement, tacit or formal, that …Blight should be considered as not only dead to the world but dead and buried.“ 

*A Calender of the Shakespearean Rarities, Drawings and Engravings formerly preserved at Hollingbury Copse, near Brighton, 1887, refers to the work of Halliwell and Blight in recording architecture contemporary with Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon and elsewhere, with a long list of Blight’s drawings in Halliwell’s possession.

© patricia wilson smith 2025
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