The $7 Million Book and What Lady Isabella Hertford Did

I remember my brother owning an Evel Kneivel wind up motorbike, he loved it so of course he smashed it up a kerb. I had a gorgeous copy of The Swiss Family Robinson from 1897 and stupidly took it round to a (then) boyfriend’s house, he dumped me and kept the book! The beautiful things I wish I had kept safe yet have been lost to time and carelessness are numerous but at least they’re not quite as bad as what Lady Isabella Hertford did with her copy of John James Audubon’s ‘The Birds of America’.

Lady Isabella’s Temple Newsam House needed decorating, it was looking a bit dowdy and her Chinese Drawing Room was looking particularly tatty. Fortunately she had some rather gorgeous Chinese style wallpaper that had been given to her as a gift by her lover, the Prince of Wales (who would become King George IV) with whom she had a 12-year-long affair.

It still didn’t look quite right though something was missing. Not one to sit on her laurels and being a thoroughly Modern Millie, Lady Isabella decided she had just the thing to spruce up her walls; a book.

Out came the scissors and a (today’s estimated value) $7 million copy of The Birds of America succumbed to her vigorous DIY skills. She cut out and stuck 28 pictures of birds from the book onto her wallpaper before deciding she was happy with the result.

Admittedly it does look beautiful but with only 119 (complete) copies estimated to exist, surely she could have found something else to stick to her walls?

Even if it was 1827 when she did it.