May 1914: The Leipzig Exhibition

Any one who imagines that the English can, or at all events do, compete with the Germans in beauty of book-production had better go to Leipzig this summer and visit the Buchgewerbe und Graphik Exhibition—or “Bugra,” as it is universally called in Germany. The new railway station—the finest in the world—is also worth going to see; but that, presumably, will last after this year. In many respects the exhibition is like all other big exhibitions. It is much too enormous to be capable of thorough inspection. Leaving out of account the huge buildings devoted to the mechanics of printing and so on, there are a palace (“The Hall of Kultur,” of course), filled with engravings and photographs; a colossal structure containing the exhibits of German publishers of books and music; and pavilions for most of the other nations of the earth. Even Corea has a building—though I did not see it—and Siam is well to the fore. The exhibition grounds are very extensive; they contain (need I say?) a “Street of Nations,” many fountains, and countless cafés. There is a reproduction of Heidelberg Castle, full of drinking-cups and the weapons with which German students put a little interest into each other’s faces. There is a Bavarian Hall, where real peasant maidens bring your beer and the latest and cheapest musical-comedy tunes are played by real peasant musicians, with feathered hats and costume complete down to the bare knees that they insist on retaining in the face of a proclamation by the local Catholic hierarchs to the effect that such a display of naked charms is grossly indecent. There is no wiggle-woggle, but there is a waterchute and a shooting-gallery whose proprietors invite you to come in and try your skill at “live objects.” The man who was with me—he is a person who, like Mr. Galsworthy, would not touch a fly “save” (as the old verse has it) “in the way of kindness,”—refused to come in. Naïvely distrustful of aliens he was afraid, he said, that the targets might be dogs. But he need not have been alarmed, for we were afterwards informed that they were merely big game thrown on a screen by a cinematograph. When you hit an animal it did not drop, but a red light showed.

Naturally comparisons between the exhibits should be made very cautiously; the exhibition is being held on German soil and the German display is much larger than any other. In many respects England shows up very well. The English section in the Halle der Kultur is certainly as good as any, and the etchings shown by Mr. Muirhead Bone, Mr. Charles Shannon, Sir Charles Holroyd, and other British artists are possibly the very best things in the place. The main English exhibit is housed in a pleasant Tudor building with some beautiful rooms. The Shakespeare exhibit of editions and portraits is most interesting for those who like that sort of thing; a fine collection of original Beardsley drawings has been lent by Mr. Lane; the Caxtons are coming; there are admirable specimens of the works of the Kelmscott, Riccardi, Florence, and other presses; there is a gallery of Medici prints unsurpassed by any colour-reproductions in the exhibition (the print of the Dresden Van Eyck triptych is the most completely satisfying colour-print I have ever seen); and the elaborate bindings by Riviere’s, the Oxford Press, and other establishments are not inferior even to the exquisite leather bindings by Noulhac and R. Kieffer shown in the French building. Everything our officials could have done has been done to perfection; and the special exhibits have been very well chosen. Where we fall sadly short is in the ordinary book of commerce.

I cannot but think that the English publishers who have taken stalls—and, of course, the selection of exhibits here had to be left to the publishers themselves—could have brought together a more attractive-looking lot of books than they have done. Most of them—I mention no names—seem to have bundled together their books without any consideration either of the contents or of the appearance of the volumes. Of course there are English publishers who have no fine books and few decent-looking books on their lists; but some of the specimens at Leipzig look almost like remnants which it is hoped to sell off to visitors. But even if all the English publishers had shown all their best books, and none of their worst, they would still have been put in the shade by the Germans. Even the French publishers—whose achievements in typography and in illustration have been great—are not now fit to be mentioned in the same breath as the Germans.

The German exhibits are a revelation. The mid-Victorian tradition in print and design—which was so tenacious in Germany—has now been almost completely abandoned. I don’t suggest that all German books are more presentable than English ones. Scientific works, theology, and shilling fiction are equally ugly in both countries. But there are to-day in Berlin, Leipzig, and Munich at least a dozen firms publishing for the ordinary market books whose average of beauty is far higher than that reached by the books of any considerable English publishing firm. Many thousands of really beautiful new books are now being produced every year in Germany; and of what can be done, especially in the way of making cheap books look presentable, our own publishers have no idea. There is, of course, a much larger educated reading public in Germany than in England. In every bookshop you are confronted by volumes of Dehmel, Hofmannsthal, and other writers who, were they Englishmen, would never reach large circles of readers in their lifetimes. Anthologies of contemporary German poets sell literally by tens of thousands; and you can even get an infinite variety of doses of classical and modern authors by dropping pennies into automatic machines on the stations. This much may be admitted: that there is a larger literary public and more interest in contemporary art, literary and pictorial. But, even granting all that, the German publishers in meeting the market have shown a taste, and above all an enterprise (sometimes reaching audacity, no doubt), which most of our own publishers have never revealed in the slightest degree.

To give a full account of the show is beyond my ability, desire, and space. But in looking at the latest products of commercial colour-printing in the French pavilion I was struck by the extraordinary divorce between craftsmanship and taste in modern industry. Here were some of the vilest pictures (I don’t mean morally) ever moulded by the mind of man; yet the experts were raving over them as being the last word in their own kind of colour-process. Needless to say, the exhibition, not being half over, is not yet completely ready. The Italian pavilion, when I was at the exhibition, could not be entered at all, and there were other lacunæ all over the place. This is the kind of thing that makes the whole world kin.

Amongst the German authors whose portraits grace the walls of the exhibition is Mr. George Bernard Shaw. They have naturalized him, like Shakespeare, and the next thing will certainly be a statue at Weimar.