When it comes to devotional books, the Victorians knew a thing or two about sentimental feelings, emotionally loaded poetry and idealised botany! Amongst the books I recently rescued from threatened oblivion in Voltaire and Rousseau’s, is just such a devotional book.(V&R are the kind of second-hand booksellers, near Glasgow University, where there are heaps of books arranged in heaps- that teeter on the brink of avalanche – making a bookshop browse into a kind of outward bound course for booklovers). The book in question is called ‘Songs from Life’s Journey’; it’s a combination of well known Sankey type hymns, illustrated with scrapbook impossibly arranged flowers, thick gilt edged paper and all arranged in a highly stylised coffee-table format.
The front page announces the publisher as Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster Row, London, one of the publishers of quality productions from early in the 19th century. The picture I scanned shows the cover page, and gives an idea of the extravagant use of images on sepia paper, suggesting an impression of colourful profusion. It’s cheesy – ( but by the way, how will folk a hundred years from now judge our taste in praise songs, purpose driven paperbacks, and lack of emotional rootedness in vital doctrinally informed religious experience)? Hmmmmm.
Anyway, I love the way the Victorians were unembarassed about cheesiness – and there is something quite poignant about a book that who knows who, took trouble to buy, and use or give to someone – and for what occasion? Wedding? Bereavement? Conversion?
Don’t know – but enjoy one of the pages with its hymn, its pictures, and its connection with some unknown Christian from a hundred and something years ago. And if the hymn strikes you as sentimental – good – the sentiments of the hymn are timeless – and timely.
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