[Fine Binding | Hillbourne Farms Bindery] Esther: A Young Man's Tragedy

Blunt, Wilfred Scawen. Esther: A Young Man's Tragedy; Together with the Love Sonnets of Proteus. Boston: Copeland and Day, 1895. One of 500 copies on Dutch handmade paper, with title page, borders, and initial letters designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue.

Bound in full grey blue full grained morocco by the Hillbourne Farms Bindery (signed “Hillbourne” on the front turn-in). Covers with double fillet border enclosing a large floral spray of branching stems, leaves, and small blossoms. Spine with five raised bands, title and author to second and third compartments, the remaining compartments tooled with two small flowers and stems. Gilt ruled turn-ins, with small repeated leaf tools at the corners. Grey-blue paper endpapers, front pastedown with the bookplate of Samuel Treat Armstrong. All edges gilt.

Measures approx. 5.75" 7". Corners, spine tips, and bands with some light rubbing.

Hillbourne Farms, also known as Hillbourne Club, was the Katonah, New York, country establishment associated with Dr. Samuel Treat Armstrong, a physician, former U.S. Marine Hospital Service officer, and Spanish-American War army surgeon. A Town of Bedford preservation report lists “Hillbourne Club (Epilepsy) Sanitarium” among significant early Katonah sites, circa 1910 (Town of Bedford).

Contemporary references show Hillbourne as a club and activity setting as well as a medical one: Woman’s Who’s Who of America gives Hillbourne Farms as the address of Armstrong’s daughter Clairette Papin Armstrong and lists her recreations as music, athletics, tennis, squash, skating, and riding (Wikisource). Bookbinding was also taught at Hillbourne as part of its broader arts and crafts activity. Jane Lampton “Jean” Clemens, Mark Twain’s youngest daughter, spent fifteen months at Hillbourne Farms beginning in 1906; later documentation notes her decorative wood carving, a craft activity then considered therapeutic for epilepsy (Twain’s Geography; Center for Mark Twain Studies).