Love and power combined made him look on these dilapidated, slow-wasting abodes of human thought and delight with healing compassion—indeed, with the passion of healing. The worse gnawed by the tooth of insect-time, the farther down any choice book in the steep decline of years, the more intent was Richard on having it. More and more skilful he grew, not only in rebinding, but in restoring the very tone of their constitution. Through love he passed from artisan to artist.

And in his passage into the manhood of his craft, Richard was blessed with a master who loved both him and the trade.

John Tuke and his family lived on the bank of the Thames, in a poor part of a populous, busy, thriving London suburb—far from fashionable, yet not without inhabitants of refinement. Had not art and literature sent out a few shoots into it, the quarter would have kept no hold on John Tuke. He liked his trade and used his talent to the satisfaction of known customers, of whom he now had many, and his reputation had spread far beyond the immediate neighbourhood. But while he worked more cheaply, quality considered, than many binders—even carefully superintending that most important yet most neglected part of the handicraft, the sewing—he never undertook cheap work.

John Tuke would never consent to half-bind a book, but always did a thorough job. Hence, when carte blanche was given to him, he would often expend upon the book a labour and value of material quite out of proportion to the importance of the book itself. Still, being a thoroughly conscientious workman who never hurried the forwarding, never cut from a margin a hairsbreadth more than necessary, and hated finger marks on the whiteness of a page, he was well known and had plenty of work. He had so much, in fact, that he often had to refuse what was offered him. At leisure, then, he declined any job that would give him no pleasure, and as he grew older he grew more fastidious in regard to the quality of the work he would undertake.

As the boy Richard grew, his chief pleasure was to be in the shop with and watch the elder Tuke at his varying work. His knowledge of books as physical things led him the sooner to desire them as realities. Near enough for Richard to attend, and with fees within his father’s means, a good day-school presented the boy with the opportunity to discover those realities. When he was old enough for school, John Tuke spared nothing he could spend to prepare the lad for his future—a future, he hoped, of greater consequence, if not greater happiness and contentment, than his own.

Richard proved to be a fair student and a voracious reader. In addition, he took such an intelligent and practical interest in the work going on at home that he began, while still a child, to experiment with paper and paste on his own. First he made manuscript books for his work at school and for the copying of favourite poems and passages from his reading. Then inside the covers of these he would make pockets for papers, and so he advanced to making small portfolios and pocket books which he would give to his friends, and sometimes—when more ambitiously successful—to a teacher. In this construction he used bits of coloured paper and scraps of leather, chiefly morocco, which John willingly gave him, watching his progress with paternal interest and showing him various workman’s techniques a little at a time. He would never come to his aid except in a real difficulty—as, for instance, when he first struggled with a piece of leather too thick for the bonds of paste and had to be shown how to pare it to the necessary flexibility and compliance.