We are pleased to announce that the cataloguing of the Van de Weyer albums of portraits, autographs and correspondence has been completed and is available to search online.  Jean-Sylvain Van de Weyer (1802-1874) served as Belgium’s prime minister from July 1845 to March 1846. However, he lived for the majority of his life in London and Windsor, and held the ambassadorial role of Belgian Minister at the Court of St. James’s under Queen Victoria. 

Van de Weyer was famous as a bibliophile in his day.  In addition to being a member of the Roxburghe Club, he was a founder member of the Philobiblon Society, the Vice President of the London Library, a Member of the Société des Bibliophiles de Belgique and the Head of the Royal Library of Brussels.[i]  Pierre Henri Laurent said of Van de Weyer, ‘His manners, taste, and savoir-faire brought him into the vital center of the intellectual, diplomatic, and financial communities. His home became the meeting place of writers, artists, and scientists’.[ii]

Van de Weyer’s connections through his professional and intellectual interests are apparent in the vast number portrait engravings and examples of correspondence in the collection, which is held in the Old Library of Magdalene College.  Many letters were obtained as a result of his responsibility for procuring passage to Belgium for notable UK citizens and his role at court. However, other items in the collection were likely to have been purchased by Van de Weyer, or given to him as gifts.  

Listed below are a few highlights from the collection:

^{Van de Wayer Album no. 5, ff.143-144. A portrait print of the Duke of Wellington; a letter from the Duke of Wellington to Jean-Sylvain Van de Weyer in French, dated 14 August 1835. This letter is one of two in the collection from the Duke to Van de Weyer.}

^{Van de Wayer Album no. 6, ff.20-21. A portrait print of the Venezuelan military leader Simón Bolívar; a letter from Bolívar to General Luque in Spanish, dated 27 November 1830.}

^{Van de Wayer Album no. 5, ff.143-144. A portrait print of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham; a letter from Bentham to Van de Weyer dated August 1830, inviting the recipient to dinner.}

Elizabeth Van de Weyer (1817-1878), Jean-Sylvain’s spouse and friend of Queen Victoria, accrued a portion of the material for the collection.  Some of the autograph letters in the albums are addressed solely to Elizabeth, and she collected prints in her own right.  This is evident from a letter addressed to her from the historian Jared Sparks (1789-1866), who enclosed portrait prints of George and Martha Washington and declared, ‘I hope they will not be thought unworthy of a place in your collection’.  Another letter written to Elizabeth is from the novelist Maria Edgeworth – one of several novelists appearing in the Van de Weyer albums, including Jane Porter and Lady Sydney Morgan.

^{Van de Wayer Album no. 5, ff.45-46. A portrait print of the novelist Maria Edgeworth; a letter from Edgeworth to Elizabeth Van de Weyer dated 12 May 1841, regretting that she could not see more of her and her husband in town due to her sister’s illness.}

The Van de Weyer albums of portraits and autograph letters were given to the Old Library by Van de Weyer’s descendants in the late 20^th century.  We hope that these albums will help to advance collective knowledge about Van de Weyer in conjunction with the primary collection of his archival material held at the State Archives of Belgium.

The Old Library predominantly contains printed books and manuscripts, but unique collections comprising several individual items, such as the Van de Weyer albums, pose cataloguing challenges.  With the implementation of AtoM, our new online platform for archival-type materials, we can now catalogue these treasures effectively to increase their ‘discoverability’.

By Catherine Sutherland

Special Collections Librarian

All images used in this blog are the copyright of the Master and Fellows of Magdalene College Cambridge. To reproduce these images in any format, including online, permission from the College must be sought. For further information please see the College website.

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[i] https://academieroyale.be/fr/la-biographie-nationale-personnalites-detail/personnalites/sylvain-van-de-weyer/Vrai/

[ii] Laurent, P. (1963). ‘The Belgian Archives and the Van de Weyer Papers’. The American Archivist, 26(2), 177-184.