I.2.a Preparation, printing and binding

Having consulted with his Employers in London in the autumn of 1836, Borrow returned to Madrid on 26 December 1836 with the assignment of printing a New Testament in Spanish, for which he had received his ‘verbal permission’ from the Spanish government in the first week of the previous July. He set briskly about the task.

The first two weeks of January 1837 were spent in preparation of the printing process; and it may be said that Borrow left nothing to chance. On the recommendation of such an impressive collection of worthies as Prime Minister Isturitz, Henry O’Shea (the Bible Society’s Madrid banker), and Sir George Villiers (the English Ambassador) he chose to entrust the work to the Compañia Tipográfica, a print-shop located in Madrid’s Calle de Leon nº 21 and owned by the formidable Andrés Borrego [L 14.1.1837; APP; BiBo 2 verso]5. It was, without a doubt, the best choice. Borrego, who worked with hyper-modern, state-of-the-art, steam-driven printing presses which he had personally imported from England [L 14.1.1837; BiBo 2 verso], was not only the ‘most fashionable printer at Madrid’ [APP], but also by far the safest for the job in hand. A militant liberal of old and proven loyalties (he had begun his political career at age 17 helping out in the 1820 Riego rising, and had spent most of the next 15 years in French and English exile), Borrego counted as one of the most prominent supporters of the present regime, was the government’s official and ‘confidential’ printer, and could therefore be trusted ‘to keep the matter secret’, as Prime Minister Isturitz himself brazenly stated to Borrow during an interview [L 7.7.1836]. On top of that, the hyper-active entrepreneur was willing to keep his prices low [L 14.1.1837], work fast, and take upon himself a major part of the distribution to booksellers in the country at large [BiBo 1; BiBo 2]. To this effect, a regular contract containing seven articles was drawn up and signed by the two parties on 14 January 1837 [Knapp, Life, I : 266], after approval by O’Shea [Acc 4].

For the printing, Borrow had been authorised by the Bible Society to purchase 600 reams of paper at 60 reales per ream, i.e. to a total cost of 36,000 reales [L 14.1.1837]6. However, having learned a good deal about logistics and acquisition from his previous assignment in St Petersburg (where under very adverse circumstances he printed a New Testament in Manchu), he decided to look around for a better deal. Knowing that his banker, Henry O’Shea had in the past ‘been connected with the paper-manufactories of the south’ and to the paper-mills of Catalonia, he asked that gentleman if he could not perhaps get him better paper at a lower price. O’Shea was glad to be of service to a good customer, and a few days later showed Borrow ‘paper at 45 reals, better than what I could have purchased at 70’. Borrow jumped at the chance, so that he could triumphantly report to his employers that ‘in paper alone 9000 reals will have been saved to the funds of the Society, and at the same time a superior article have been procured’ [L 31.12.1836; L 14.1.1837]. In the end, this turned out to be something of an overstatement, since not 600 but 670 reams were ultimately used in the printing, with an additional 3 reams spoiled, so that the total cost of paper came to 673 x 45 = 30,285 reales, saving the Society 5,715 reales [Acc 4].

Back in England, Borrow had been given an example book, most probably the 1826 London version of the New Testament printed by T.C. Hansard [Knapp, Life, I : 255 and 263]. Once in Madrid he resolved to print his own edition in practically the same shape and size, except that he used a single column of text instead of the customary double one7 [L 14.1.1837; L 27.2.1837]. As a copy-text, he kept to the Spanish translation made from the Vulgate by Father Phelipe Scio de San Miguel, first published in 1793, and at the time the standard text for all Scriptural editions in Spanish [Collie & Fraser, Bibliography, 110; Knapp. Life, I : 247]. This use of a translation from the Latin was already something of a concession for the British and Foreign Bible Society to make, since they much preferred to print faithful renderings from the original Hebrew and Greek. The choice was inspired by the hope that printing the translation by an uncontroversial Spanish scholar – and a Roman Catholic bishop at that – would dispose the ruling hierarchy somewhat in favour of the edition. This was however a forlorn hope, since Borrow, in order to bring the publication into line with Bible Society criteria, left out all of Father Scio’s many explicatory notes, thus rendering the work absolutely unacceptable to the Catholic Church.

To ensure the greatest possible accuracy of the text and avoid typographical errors, Borrow next engaged the services of the great Hebraist Doctor Luis Usoz y Rio, ‘the first scholar in Spain’ as Borrow styled him [APP], who for a modest remuneration of 732 reales [Acc 4] agreed to proofread each page once Borrow himself had done so first [L 14.1.1837: L 16.3.1837; APP].

Printing started a few days after the 14th of January 1837, and was to last some ten weeks [L 14.1.1837]. This planning was kept beautifully, for on March 16, a mere eight weeks later, Borrow informed his employers ‘that the New Testament in Castilian will be ready in a few days’ [L 16.3.1837; L 27.2.1837].

Borrego printed the whole of the edition in two batches: a first lot of 1,000 copies, in whose price were to be included the costs for the type-setting of the sheets; and a second lot of 4,000 copies at less than half the earlier price [Acc 4]. Each of the 5,000 copies of the Scio New Testament needed 67 sheets of paper to print its 534 pages of text, plus a blank front- and end-paper [Acc 4]. From this we learn not only that the reams delivered to Borrow counted a ‘modern’ 500 sheets of paper each (67 sheets x 5,000 copies being equal to 670 reams x 500 sheets), but also that the sheets in question were of rather small size and modest weight. Nowadays, the Scio New Testament is always entered in the library catalogues as a large ‘octavo’, due to its dimensions of 18.5 x 11 cm8. Yet, in purely technical terms, it was produced in ‘quarto’, since each sheet was folded only twice, to produce 4 leaves and hence 8 pages (67 x 8 = 536 pages). Consequently, the sheet in question measured around 2 x 18.5 = 37 cm by 2 x 11 = 22 cm (not counting the margin cut off from the top or bottom of the gatherings to separate the pages9, and the small loss of width caused by the stitching). For comparison: a modern standard A4 page measures 29.7 x 21.0 cm.

A finished copy of the Scio New Testament – including its binding and covers! – weighs 472.3 grams. This means that each of the 67 sheets used weighed in the neighbourhood of 7 grams (this without subtracting the weight of the covers, which cannot be established without tearing a valuable old book to pieces). The sheet having a surface of some 814 cm² (37 x 22 cm), Borrow’s ‘superior article’ of paper can be calculated to have weighed, in modern terms, around 75–85 grams per m², which is not uncommon in Bible printing.

Already in February, Borrow arranged for the Compañia Tipográfica also to bind the books, since Borrego was ‘about to unite bookbinding with printing’ [L 27.2.1837]. The original ‘very reasonable terms’ for this job, 3 reales a volume bound in calf [L 27.2.1837], ultimately were not maintained, since the bill over the process states explicitly that each copy was bound for 4.5 reales [Acc 4]. The covers consist of ‘leather covered boards which are fairly substantial’, each some 4 mm thick [personal message from David Mount, 4 January 2008]. The entire book, with covers, is 3.6 cm thick.

A few obscure sides of the printing and binding may here be mentioned. First of all, two copies received a special ‘encuadernacion de lujo’, or luxury binding, for the considerable sum of 80 reales each [BiBo 1]. What these show-pieces were, and where they ended up, is unknown. Since the Committee of the Bible Society frowned on extravagance, it is unlikely that they were meant for them. What is more: no such specially bound copy is at present found in the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (deposited with the Cambridge University Library), which only contains two Scio New Testaments in simple, plain binding10. Possibly these were special ‘memorial’ copies for Borrow and Borrego himself? Until they are located we shall not know.

Then, sources also occasionally mention ‘gilded copies’, to the number of 800 [BiBo 1]. It is none too clear whether this means that the pages of these copies were gilt-edged or if perhaps the lettering on the binding was in gold-leaf. Next to their appearance in a bill of Borrego’s, in which Borrow gets charged an extra 1 real a piece for the ‘esceso de precio’ over this operation [BiBo 1], such gilded volumes only pop up twice in expense accounts, where 2 and 14 copies respectively are being sold for 11 reales a piece, i.e. 1 real more than the customary price of ordinary copies at this time [Acc 7; Acc 8]. Since they are never seen again beyond these three occasions, and were clearly treated just like ordinary, ungilded copies from an early moment on, their existence may and must be ignored for the present study.11

In late March or early April 1837, the edition was ready, and Borrow was justly proud of it. On various occasions, when he got to speak of it, he pointed out that it ‘was printed on excellent English paper and well bound’ [APP], that it was an ‘exceedingly favourable specimen of typography’ [L 25.12.1837]; that it would have been ‘utterly impossible to bring out a work of the size of the New Testament, handsomely and creditably in Spain’ at a cheaper price [L 27.2.1837]; but ‘principally and above’ all this, that it was ‘one of the most correct works that have ever issued from the press in Spain’ [L 25.12.1837], since ‘no pains have been spared, at least on my part, to render it as correct as possible’ [L 16.3.1837], so that it showed ‘scarcely one typographical error, every proof having been read thrice by myself and once or more times by’ Usoz [APP]12.

The full title given to the book was: ‘El Nuevo Testamento, traducido al Español de la Vulgata Latina, por el Rmo. P. Phelipe Scio de S. Miguel, de las escuelas pias, obispo electo de Segovia. Madrid: Imprenta a cargo de D. Joaquin de la Barrera. 1837.’ The last line shows how very aware Borrow and Borrego must have been that they were playing with legal fire; for the ascription of the printing to a fictitious publisher13 must have been one of the ‘measures’ which could be taken to protect the printer from consequences [L 30.6.1836]. This act was an outright and shameless snubbing of the law, which prescribed unconditionally that works of a religious or political nature carry the full and precise name of the printer on their title page. One of Borrow’s later biographers made fun of the fact that his adversaries, in May 1838, produced documents demonstrating ‘that the imprint on the title-page of the Scio New Testament was false, as at the time it was printed no such printer as Andreas Borrego (who by the way was the Government printer and at one time a candidate for cabinet rank) lived in Madrid’ [Jenkins, Life, ch 16]. But as the above shows: Borrow’s adversaries were perfectly right, for the title page made no mention of Borrego at all; and no such person as Don Joaquin de la Barrera could be located, in spite of the fact that the Civil Governor of Madrid himself ordered that person to come forward by formal summons in the Diario de Madrid of May 1838 [Giménez, Prensa, 377, nº 22]. Borrow, quite simply, printed a lie on the title-page; and it would be silly not to admit so.