The Amenities of Book-Collecting and Kindred Affections
A. Edward (Alfred Edward) Newton
[Illustration: CARICATURE OF TWO GREAT VICTORIANS W. M. THACKERAY AND CHARLES DICKENS]
The Amenities Of Book-Collecting And Kindred Affections
By A. Edward Newton
[Illustration: colophon]
With Illustrations
John Lane, The Bodley Head London MCMXX
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
_If, as Eugene Field suggests, womenfolk are few in that part of paradise especially reserved for book-lovers I do not care. One woman will be there, for I shall insist that eight and twenty years probation entitles her to share my biblio-bliss above as she has shared it here below. That woman is my wife._
A. Edward Newton
October, 1918
Essay Introductory
A man (or a woman) is the most interesting thing in the world; and next is a book, which enables one to get at the heart of the mystery; and although not many men can say why they are or what they are, any man who publishes a book can, if he is on good terms with his publisher, secure the use of a little space to tell how the book came to be what it is.
Some years ago a very learned friend of mine published a book, and in the introduction warned the "gentle reader" to skip the first chapter, and, as I have always maintained, by inference suggested that the rest was easy reading, which was not the case. In point of fact, the book was not intended for the "gentle reader" at all: it was a book written by a scholar for the scholar.
Now, I have worked on a different plan. My book is written for the "tired business man" (there are a goodly number of us), who flatters himself that he is fond of reading; and as it is my first book, I may be permitted to tell how it came to be published.
One day in the autumn of 1913, a friend, my partner, with whom it has been my privilege to be associated for so many years, remarked that it was time for me to take a holiday, and handed me a copy of the "Geographical Magazine." The number was devoted to Egypt; and, seduced by the charm of the illustrations, on the spur of the moment I decided on a trip up the Nile.
Things moved rapidly. In a few weeks my wife and I were in the Mediterranean, on a steamer headed for Alexandria. We had touched at Genoa and were soon to reach Naples, when I discovered a feeling of homesickness stealing over me. I have spent my happiest holidays in London. Already I had tired of Egypt. The Nile has been flowing for centuries and would continue to flow. There were books to be had in London, books which would not wait. Somewhat shamefacedly I put the matter up to my wife; and when I discovered that she had no insuperable objection to a change of plan, we left the steamer at Naples, and after a few weeks with friends in Rome, started _en grande vitesse_ toward London.
By this time it will have been discovered that I am not much of a traveler; but I have always loved London--London with its wealth of literary and historic association, with its countless miles of streets lined with inessential shops overflowing with things that I don't want, and its grimy old book-shops overflowing with things that I do.
One gloomy day I picked up in the Charing Cross Road, for a shilling, a delightful book by Richard Le Gallienne, "Travels in England." Like myself, Le Gallienne seems not to have been a great traveler--he seldom reached the place he started for; and losing his way or changing his mind, may be said to have arrived at his destination when he has reached a comfortable inn, where, after a simple meal, he lights his pipe and proceeds to read a book.
Exactly my idea of travel! The last time I read "Pickwick" was while making a tour in Northern Italy. It is wonderful how conducive to reading I found the stuffy smoking-rooms of the little steamers that dart like water-spiders from one landing to another on the Italian Lakes.
It was while I was poking about among the old book-shops that it occurred to me to write a little story about my books--when and where I had bought them, the prices I had paid, and the men I had bought them from, many of whom I knew well; and so, when my holiday was done, I lived over again its pleasant associations in writing a paper that I called "Book-Collecting Abroad." Subsequently I wrote another,--"Book-Collecting at Home,"--it being my purpose to print these papers in a little volume to be called "The Amenities of Book-Collecting." I intended this for distribution among my friends, who are very patient with me; and I sent my manuscript to a printer in the closing days of July, 1914. A few days later something happened in Europe, the end of which is not yet, and we all became panic-stricken. For a moment it seemed unlikely that one would care ever to open a book again. Acting upon impulse, I withdrew the order from my printer, put my manuscript aside, and devoted myself to my usual task--that of making a living.
Byron says, "The end of all scribblement is to amuse." For some years I have been possessed of an itch for "scribblement"; gradually this feeling reasserted itself, and I came to see that we must become accustomed to working in a world at war, and to realizing that life must be permitted to resume, at least to some extent, its regular course; and the idea of my little book recurred to me.
It had frequently been suggested by friends that my papers be published in the "Atlantic." What grudge they bore this excellent magazine I do not know, but they always said the "Atlantic"; and so, when one day I came across my manuscript, it occurred to me that it would cost only a few cents to lay it before the editor. At that time I did not know the editor of the "Atlantic" even by name. My pleasure then can be imagined when, a week or so later, I received the following letter:--
_Oct. 30, 1914._
Dear Mr. Newton:--
The enthusiasm of your pleasant paper is contagious, and I find myself in odd moments looking at the gaps in my own library with a feeling of dismay. I believe that very many readers of the "Atlantic" will feel as I do, and it gives me great pleasure to accept your paper.
Yours sincerely, ELLERY SEDGWICK.
Shortly afterward, a check for a substantial sum fluttered down upon my desk, and it was impossible that I should not remember how much Milton had received for his "Paradise Lost,"--the receipt for which is in the British Museum,--and draw conclusions therefrom entirely satisfactory to my self-esteem. My paper was published, and the magazine, having a hardy constitution, survived; I even received some praise. There was nothing important enough to justify criticism, and as a result of this chance publication I made a number of delightful acquaintances among readers and collectors, many of whom I might almost call friends although we have never met.
Not wishing to strain the rather precarious friendship with Mr. Sedgwick which was the outcome of my first venture, it was several years before I ventured to try him with another paper. This I called "A Ridiculous Philosopher." I enjoyed writing this paper immensely, and although it was the reverse of timely, I felt that it might pass editorial scrutiny. Again I received a letter from Mr. Sedgwick, in which he said:--
Two days ago I took your paper home with me and spent a delightful half-hour with it. Now, as any editor would tell you, there is no valid reason for a paper on Godwin at this time, but your essay is so capitally seasoned that I cannot find it in my heart to part with it. Indeed I have been gradually making the editorial discovery that, if a paper is sufficiently readable, it has some claim upon the public, regardless of what the plans of the editor are. And so the upshot of my deliberation is that we shall accept your paper with great pleasure and publish it when the opportunity occurs.
The paper appeared in due course, and several more followed. The favor with which these papers were received led the "Atlantic" editors to the consideration of their reprint in permanent form, together with several which now appear for the first time. All the illustrations have been made from items in my own collection. I am thus tying a string, as it were, around a parcel which contains the result of thirty-six years of collecting. It may not be much, but, as the Irishman said of his dog, "It's mine own." My volume might, with propriety, be called "Newton's Complete Recreations."
I have referred to my enjoyment in writing my "Ridiculous Philosopher." I might say the same of all my papers. I am aware that my friend, Dr. Johnson, once remarked that no man but a block-head writes a book except for money. At some risk, then, I admit that I have done so. I have written for fun, and my papers should be read, if read at all, for the same purpose, not that the reader will or is expected to laugh loud. The loud laugh, in Goldsmith's phrase, it may be remembered, bespeaks the vacant mind. But I venture to hope that the judicious will pass a not unpleasant hour in turning my pages.
One final word: I buy, I collect "Presentation Books"; and I trust my friends will not think me churlish when I say that it is not my intention to turn a single copy of this, my book, into a presentation volume. Whatever circulation it may have must be upon its own merits. Any one who sees this book in the hands of a reader, on the library table, or on the shelves of the collector, may be sure that some one, either wise or foolish as the event may prove, has paid a substantial sum for it, either in the current coin of the realm, or perchance in thrift stamps. It may, indeed, be that it has been secured from a lending library, in which case I would suggest that the book be returned instantly. "Go ye rather to them that sell and buy for yourselves." And having separated yourself from your money, in the event that you should feel vexed with your bargain, you are at liberty to communicate your grievance to the publisher, securing from him what redress you may; and in the event of failure there yet remains your inalienable right, which should afford some satisfaction, that of damning
The Author.
"OAK KNOLL," DAYLESFORD, PENNSYLVANIA, _April 7, 1918_.
Table Of Contents
I. Book-Collecting Abroad 1
II. Book-Collecting At Home 36
III. Old Catalogues And New Prices 65
IV. "Association" Books And First Editions 107
V. "What Might Have Been" 129
VI. James Boswell--His Book 145
VII. A Light-Blue Stocking 186
VIII. A Ridiculous Philosopher 226
IX. A Great Victorian 249
X. Temple Bar Then And Now 267
XI. A Macaroni Parson 292
XII. Oscar Wilde 318
XIII. A Word In Memory 343
List Of Illustrations
CARICATURE OF TWO GREAT VICTORIANS _Frontispiece in Color_ W. M. Thackeray and Charles Dickens
TITLE OF "PARADISE LOST." First Edition 6
Title Of Franklin'S Edition Of Cicero'S "Cato Major" 9
Letter Of Thomas Hardy To His First Publisher, "Old Tinsley" 12
Page Of Original Ms. Of Hardy'S "Far From The Madding Crowd" 14
Bernard Quaritch 14
Title Of Ms. Of "Lyford Redivivus" 16
Bernard Alfred Quaritch 16
SAMUEL JOHNSON 20 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds about 1770, for Johnson's Step-Daughter, Lucy Porter. Engraved by Watson
Page Of Prayer In Dr. Johnson'S Autograph 23
Title Of Keats'S Copy Of Spenser'S Works 24
Portrait Of Tennyson Reading "Maud" To The Brownings, By Rossetti 26
DR. JOHNSON'S CHURCH, ST. CLEMENT DANES 31 From a pen-and-ink sketch by Charles G. Osgood
Inscription To Mrs. Thrale In Dr. Johnson'S Hand 32
Inscription To General Sir A. Gordon In Queen Victoria'S Hand 35
GEORGE D. SMITH 36 Photographed by Genthe
Autograph Ms. Of Lamb'S Poem, "Elegy On A Quid Of Tobacco" 40
DR. A. S. W. ROSENBACH 42 Photographed by Genthe
TITLE OF "ROBINSON CRUSOE." First Edition 45
TITLE OF "OLIVER TWIST" 47 Presentation Copy to W. C. Macready
ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION FOR "VANITY FAIR" 48 Becky Sharp throwing Dr. Johnson's "Dixonary" out of the carriage window, as she leaves Miss Pinkerton's School
From the first pen-and-ink sketch, by Thackeray, afterwards elaborated
Specimen Proof-Sheet Of George Moore'S "Memoirs Of My Dead Life" 50
TITLE OF GEORGE MOORE'S "PAGAN POEMS" 51 Presentation Copy to Oscar Wilde
Title Of Blake'S "Marriage Of Heaven And Hell" 52
Charles Lamb'S House At Enfield 54
Inscription By Joseph Conrad In A Copy Of "The Nigger Of The 'Narcissus'" 56
The Author'S Book-Plate 60
Henry E. Huntington 72
STOKE POGES CHURCH 74 A fine example of fore-edge painting
Title Of Blake'S "Songs Of Innocence And Experience" 80
"A LEAF FROM AN UNOPENED VOLUME" 82 Specimen page of an unpublished manuscript of Charlotte Brontë
Title Of The Kilmarnock Edition Of Burns'S Poems 85
FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH MS. ON VELLUM: BOËTHIUS'S "DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIÆ" 90
TITLE OF GEORGE HERBERT'S "THE TEMPLE." First Edition 97
First Page Of A Rare Edition Of "Robinson Crusoe" 102
Autograph Ms. Of A Poem By Keats--"To The Misses M---- At Hastings" 105
Inscription To Swinburne From Dante Rossetti 106
Autograph Inscription By Stevenson, In A Copy Of His "Inland Voyage" 109
Title Of A Unique Copy Of Stevenson'S "Child'S Garden Of Verses" 110
New Building Of The Grolier Club 114
Inscription To Charles Dickens, Junior, From Charles Dickens 116
ILLUSTRATION, "THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS," BY JOHN LEECH FOR DICKENS'S "CHRISTMAS CAROL" 116 From the original water-color drawing
Autograph Dedication To Dickens'S "The Village Coquettes" 118
Title Of Meredith'S "Modern Love," With Autograph Inscription To Swinburne 121
Inscription By Dr. Johnson In A Copy Of "Rasselas" 125
INSCRIPTION BY WOODROW WILSON, IN A COPY OF HIS "CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES" 126
Inscription By James Whitcomb Riley 128
Charles Lamb 130
Frances Maria Kelly 132
Miss Kelly In Various Characters 136
Ms. Dedication Of Lamb'S Works To Miss Kelly 137
Autograph Letter Of Lamb To Miss Kelly 139
Charles And Mary Lamb 144
JAMES BOSWELL OF AUCHINLECK, ESQR. 146 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by John Jones
SAMUEL JOHNSON IN A TIE-WIG 150 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Zobel
Inscription To Rev. William J. Temple, From James Boswell 159
TITLE OF MASON'S "ELFRIDA." First Edition 163
MS. OF BOSWELL'S AGREEMENT WITH MR. DILLY, RECITING THE TERMS AGREED ON FOR THE PUBLICATION OF "CORSICA" 167
Ms. Indorsement By Boswell On The First Paper Drawn By Him As An Advocate 168
DR. JOHNSON IN TRAVELING DRESS, AS DESCRIBED IN BOSWELL'S "TOUR" 174 Engraved by Trotter
Inscription To James Boswell, Junior, From James Boswell 176
SAMUEL JOHNSON 184 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Heath
Inscription To Edmund Burke, By James Boswell 185
MRS. PIOZZI 186 Engraved by Ridley from a miniature
Extract From Ms. Letter Of Mrs. Thrale 191
TITLE OF MISS BURNEY'S "EVELINA." First Edition 199
Mrs. Thrale'S Breakfast-Table 200
SAMUEL JOHNSON. THE "STREATHAM PORTRAIT" 204 Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Doughty
Ms. Inscriptions By Mrs. Thrale 206
TITLE OF "THE PRINCE OF ABISSINIA" ("RASSELAS"). First Edition 207
Ms. Of The Last Page Of Mrs. Thrale'S "Journal Of A Tour In Wales" 219
Miss Amy Lowell, Of Boston 222
Samuel Johnson 225
William Godwin, The Ridiculous Philosopher 227
Charles Lamb'S Play-Bill Of Godwin'S "Antonio" 236
Ms. Letter From William Godwin 241
ANTHONY TROLLOPE 250 From a photograph by Elliot and Fry
Temple Bar As It Is To-Day 268
Old Temple Bar: Demolished In 1666 276
Temple Bar In Dr. Johnson'S Time 280
Temple Bar 291
First Page Of Dr. Johnson'S Petition To The King On Behalf Of Dr. Dodd 306
Mr. Allen'S Copy Of The Last Letter Dr. Dodd Sent Dr. Johnson 312
CARICATURE OF OSCAR WILDE 319 From an original drawing by Aubrey Beardsley
"OUR OSCAR" AS HE WAS WHEN WE LOANED HIM TO AMERICA 326 From a contemporary English caricature
Ms. Inscription To J. E. Dickinson, From Oscar Wilde 342
Harry Elkins Widener 344
TITLE OF STEVENSON'S "MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF" 349 Printed for private distribution only, by Mr. Widener
Beverly Chew 350
HENRY E. HUNTINGTON AMONG HIS BOOKS 352 Photographed by Genthe
Harry Elkins Widener'S Book-Plate 355
The Amenities Of Book-Collecting
And
Kindred Affections
I
Book-Collecting Abroad
If my early training has been correct, which I am much inclined to doubt, we were not designed to be happy in this world. We were simply placed here to be tried, and doubtless we are--it is a trying place. It is, however, the only world we are sure of; so, in spite of our training, we endeavor to make the best of it, and have invented a lot of little tricks with which to beguile the time.
The approved time-killer is work, and we do a lot of it. When it is quite unnecessary, we say it is in the interest of civilization; and occasionally work is done on so high a plane that it becomes sport, and we call these sportsmen, "Captains of Industry." One of them once told me that making money was the finest sport in the world. This was before the rules of the game were changed.
But for the relaxation of those whose life is spent in a persistent effort to make ends meet, games of skill, games of chance, and kissing games have been invented, and indoor and outdoor sports. These are all very well for those who can play them; but I am like the little boy who declined to play Old Maid because he was always "it." Having early discovered that I was always "it" in every game, I decided to take my recreation in another way. I read occasionally and have always been a collector.
Many years ago, in an effort to make conversation on a train,--a foolish thing to do,--I asked a man what he did with his leisure, and his reply was, "I play cards. I used to read a good deal but I wanted something to occupy my mind, so I took to cards." It was a disconcerting answer.
It may be admitted that not all of us can read all the time. For those who cannot and for those to whom sport in any form is a burden not to be endured, there is one remaining form of exercise, the riding of a hobby--collecting, it is called; and the world is so full of such wonderful things that we collectors should be as happy as kings. Horace Greeley once said, "Young man, go West." I give advice as valuable and more easily followed: I say, Young man, get a hobby; preferably get two, one for indoors and one for out; get a pair of hobby-horses that can safely be ridden in opposite directions.
We collectors strive to make converts; we want others to enjoy what we enjoy; and I may as well confess that the envy shown by our fellow collectors when we display our treasures is not annoying to us. But, speaking generally, we are a bearable lot, our hobbies are usually harmless, and if we loathe the subject of automobiles, and especially discussion relative to parts thereof, we try to show an intelligent interest in another's hobby, even if it happen to be a collection of postage-stamps. Our own hobby may be, probably is, ridiculous to some one else, but in all the wide range of human interest, from postage-stamps to paintings,--the sport of the millionaire,--there is nothing that begins so easily and takes us so far as the collecting of books.
And hear me. If you would know the delight of book-collecting, begin with something else, I care not what. Book-collecting has all the advantages of other hobbies without their drawbacks. The pleasure of acquisition is common to all--that's where the sport lies; but the strain of the possession of books is almost nothing; a tight, dry closet will serve to house them, if need be.
It is not so with flowers. They are a constant care. Some one once wrote a poem about "old books and fresh flowers." It lilted along very nicely; but I remark that books stay old, indeed get older, and flowers do not stay fresh: a little too much rain, a little too much sun, and it is all over.
Pets die too, in spite of constant care--perhaps by reason of it. To quiet a teething dog I once took him, her, it, to my room for the night and slept soundly. Next morning I found that the dog had committed suicide by jumping out of the window.
The joys of rugs are a delusion and a snare. They cannot be picked up here and there, tucked in a traveling-bag, and smuggled into the house; they are hard to transport, there are no auction records against them, and the rug market knows no bottom. I never yet heard a man admit paying a fair price for a rug, much less a high one. "Look at this Scherazak," a friend remarks; "I paid only nine dollars for it and it's worth five hundred if it's worth a penny." When he is compelled to sell his collection, owing to an unlucky turn in the market, it brings seventeen-fifty. And rugs are ever a loafing place for moths--But that's a chapter by itself.
Worst of all, there is no literature about them. I know very well that there are books about rugs; I own some. But as all books are not literature, so all literature is not in books. Can a rug-collector enjoy a catalogue? I sometimes think that for the over-worked business man a book-catalogue is the best reading there is. Did you ever see a rug-collector, pencil in hand, poring over a rug-catalogue?
Print-catalogues there are; and now I warm a little. They give descriptions that mean something; a scene may have a reminiscent value, a portrait suggests a study in biography. Then there are dimensions for those who are fond of figures and states and margins, and the most ignorant banker will tell you that a wide margin is always better than a narrow one. Prices, too, can be looked up and compared, and results, satisfactory or otherwise, recorded. Prints, too, can be snugly housed in portfolios. But for a lasting hobby give me books.
Book-collectors are constantly being ridiculed by scholars for the pains they take and the money they spend on first editions of their favorite authors; and it must be that they smart under the criticism, for they are always explaining, and attempting rather foolishly to justify their position. Would it not be better to say, as Leslie Stephen did of Dr. Johnson's rough sayings, that "it is quite useless to defend them to any one who cannot enjoy them without defense"?
I am not partial to the "books which no gentleman's library should be without," fashionable a generation or two ago. The works of Thomas Frognall Dibdin do not greatly interest me, and where will one find room to-day for Audubon's "Birds" or Roberts's "Holy Land" except on a billiard-table or under a bed?
The very great books of the past have become so rare, so high-priced, that it is almost useless for the ordinary collector to hope ever to own them, and fashion changes in book-collecting as in everything else. Aldines and Elzevirs are no longer sought. Our interest in the Classics being somewhat abated, we pass them over in favor of books which, we tell ourselves, we expect some day to read, the books written by men of whose lives we know something. I would rather have a "Paradise Lost" with the first title-page,[1] in contemporary binding, or an "Angler," than all the Aldines and Elzevirs ever printed.
[Illustration:
Paradise lost.
A Poem
Written in TEN BOOKS By _JOHN MILTON_.
Licensed and Entred according to Order.
_LONDON_ Printed, and are to be sold by _Peter Parker_ under _Creed,_ Church neer _Aldgate_; And by _Robert Boulter_ at the _Turks Head_ in _Bishopsgate-Street_; And _Matthias Walker_, under _St. Dunstons_ Church in _Fleet-Street_, 1667. ]
That this feeling is general, accounts, I take it, for the excessively high prices now being paid for first editions of modern authors like Shelley, Keats, Lamb, and, to come right down to our own day, Stevenson. Would not these authors be amazed could they know in what esteem they are held, and what fabulous prices are paid for volumes which, when they were published, fell almost stillborn from the press? We all know the story of Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat": how a "remainder" was sold by Quaritch at a penny the copy. It is now worth its weight in gold, and Keats's "Endymion," once a "remainder" bought by a London bookseller at fourpence, now commands several hundred dollars. I paid three hundred and sixty dollars for mine--but it was once Wordsworth's and has his name on the title-page.
But it is well in book-collecting, while not omitting the present, never to neglect the past. "Old books are best," says Beverly Chew, beloved of all collectors; and I recall Lowell's remark: "There is a sense of security in an old book which time has criticized for us." It was a recollection of these sayings that prompted me, if prompting was necessary, to pay a fabulous price the other day for a copy of "Hesperides, or the Works both Humane and Divine of Robert Herrick, Esq.," a beautiful copy of the first edition in the original sheep.
We collectors know the saying of Bacon: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested"; but the revised version is, Some books are to be read, others are to be collected. Mere reading books, the five-foot shelf, or the hundred best, every one knows at least by name. But at the moment I am concerned with collectors' books and the amenities of book-collecting; for, frankly,--
I am one of those who seek What Bibliomaniacs love.
Some subjects are not for me. Sydney Smith's question, "Who reads an American book?" has, I am sure, been answered; and I am equally sure that I do not know what the answer is. "Americana"--which was not what Sydney Smith meant--have never caught me, nor has "black letter." It is not necessary for me to study how to tell a Caxton. Caxtons do not fall in my way, except single leaves now and then, and these I take as Goldsmith took his religion, on faith.
Nor am I the rival of the man who buys all his books from Quaritch. Buying from Quaritch is rather too much like the German idea of hunting: namely, sitting in an easy chair near a breach in the wall through which game, big or little, is shooed within easy reach of your gun. No, my idea of collecting is "watchful waiting," in season and out, in places likely and unlikely, most of all in London. But one need not begin in London: one can begin wherever one has pitched one's tent.
I have long wanted Franklin's "Cato Major." A copy was found not long ago in a farmhouse garret in my own county; but, unluckily, I did not hear of it until its price, through successive hands, had reached three hundred dollars. But if one does not begin in London, one ends there. It is the great market of the world for collectors' books--the best market, not necessarily the cheapest.
[Illustration:
M. T. CICERO's _CATO MAJOR_ OR HIS DISCOURSE OF OLD-AGE: With Explanatory NOTES.
_PHILADELPHIA_: Printed and sold by B. FRANKLIN, MDCCXLIV. ]
My first purchase was a Bohn edition of Pope's Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey in two volumes--not a bad start for a boy; and under my youthful signature, with a fine flourish, is the date, 1882.
I read them with delight, and was sorry when I learned that Pope is by no means Homer. I have been a little chary about reading ever since. We collectors might just as well wait until scholars settle these questions.
I have always liked Pope. In reading him one has the sense of progress from idea to idea, not a mere floundering about in Arcady amid star-stuff. When Dr. Johnson was asked what poetry is, he replied, "It is much easier to say what it is not." He was sparring for time and finally remarked, "If Pope is not poetry it is useless to look for it."
Years later, when I learned from Oscar Wilde that there are two ways of disliking poetry,--one is to dislike it, and the other, to like Pope,--I found that I was not entirely prepared to change my mind about Pope.
In 1884 I went to London for the first time, and there I fell under the lure of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. After that, the deluge!
The London of 1884 was the London of Dickens. There have been greater changes since I first wandered in the purlieus of the Strand and Holborn than there were in the hundred years before. Dickens's London has vanished almost as completely as the London of Johnson. One landmark after another disappeared, until finally the County Council made one grand sweep with Aldwych and Kingsway. But never to be forgotten are the rambles I enjoyed with my first bookseller, Fred Hutt of Clement's Inn Passage, subsequently of Red Lion Passage, now no more. Poor fellow! when, early in 1914, I went to look him up, I found that he had passed away, and his shop was being dismantled. He was the last of three brothers, all booksellers.
From Hutt I received my first lesson in bibliography; from him I bought my first "Christmas Carol," with "Stave 1," not "Stave One," and with the green end-papers. I winced at the price: it was thirty shillings. I saw one marked twenty guineas not long ago. From Hutt, too, I got a copy of Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads," 1866, with the Moxon imprint, and had pointed out to me the curious eccentricity of type on page 222. I did not then take his advice and pay something over two pounds for a copy of "Desperate Remedies." It seemed wiser to wait until the price reached forty pounds, which I subsequently paid for it. But I did buy from him for five shillings an autograph letter of Thomas Hardy to his first publisher, "old Tinsley." As the details throw some light on the subject of Hardy's first book, I reproduce the letter, from which it will be seen that Hardy financed the publication himself.
When, thirty years ago, I picked up my Hardy letter for a few shillings, I never supposed that the time would come when I would own the complete manuscript of one of his most famous novels. Yet so it is. Not long since, quite unexpectedly, the original draft of "Far from the Madding Crowd" turned up in London. Its author, when informed of its discovery, wrote saying that he had "supposed the manuscript had been pulped ages ago." One page only was missing; Mr. Hardy supplied it. Then arose the question of ownership, which was gracefully settled by sending it to the auction-room, the proceeds of the sale to go to the British Red Cross. I cannot say that the bookseller who bought it gave it to me exactly, but we both agree that it is an item which does honor to any collection. Although it is the original draft, there are very few corrections or interlineations, the page reproduced (see next page) being fairly representative.
[Illustration: LETTER OF THOMAS HARDY TO HIS FIRST PUBLISHER, "OLD TINSLEY"
I paid five shillings for this letter many years ago, in London. Maggs, in his last catalogue, prices at fifteen guineas a much less interesting letter from Hardy to Arthur Symons, dated December 4, 1915, on the same subject.]
Only those who are trying to complete their sets of Hardy know how difficult it is to find "Desperate Remedies" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" "in cloth as issued."
My love for book-collecting and my love for London have gone hand in hand. From the first, London with its wealth of literary and historic interest has held me; there has never been a time, not even on that gloomy December day twenty years ago, when, with injuries subsequently diagnosed as a "compound comminuted tibia and fibula," I was picked out of an overturned cab and taken to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for repairs, that I could not say with Boswell, "There is a city called London for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress."
The book-shops of London have been the subject of many a song in prose and verse. Every taste and pocket can be satisfied, I have ransacked the wretched little shops to be found in the by-streets of Holborn one day, and the next have browsed in the artificially stimulated pastures of Grafton Street and Bond Street, and with as much delight in one as in the other.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF HARDY'S "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD," MUCH REDUCED IN SIZE]
[Illustration: BERNARD QUARITCH
"The extensive literature of catalogues is probably little known to most readers. I do not pretend to claim a thorough acquaintance with it but I know the luxury of reading good catalogues and such are those of Bernard Quaritch."--OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.]
I cannot say that "I was 'broke' in London in the fall of '89," for the simple reason that I was not in London that year; but I am never long in London without finding myself as light in heart and pocket as Eugene Field--the result of yielding to the same temptations.
I knew the elder Quaritch well, and over a cup of tea one winter afternoon years ago, in a cold, dingy little room filled with priceless volumes in the old shop in Piccadilly, he confided to me his fears for his son Alfred. This remarkable old man, who has well been called the Napoleon of booksellers, was certain that Alfred would never be able to carry on the business when he was gone. "He has no interest in books, he is not willing to work hard as he will have to, to maintain the standing I have secured as the greatest bookseller in the world." Quaritch was very proud, and justly, of his eminence.
How little the old man knew that this son, when the time came, would step into his father's shoes and stretch them. Alfred, when he inherited the business, assumed his father's first name and showed all his father's enthusiasm and shrewdness. He probably surprised himself, as he surprised the world, by adding lustre to the name of Bernard Quaritch, so that, when he died, the newspapers of the English-speaking world gave the details of his life and death as matters of general interest.
The book-lovers' happy hunting-ground is the Charing Cross Road. It is a dirty and sordid street, too new to be picturesque; but almost every other shop on both sides of the street is a bookshop, and the patient man is frequently rewarded by a find of peculiar interest.
One day, a few years ago, I picked up two square folio volumes of manuscript bound in old, soft morocco, grown shabby from knocking about. The title was "Lyford Redivivus, or A Grandame's Garrulity."
[Illustration: Title of MS. of "Lyford Redivivus"]
Examination showed me that it was a sort of dictionary of proper names. In one volume there were countless changes and erasures; the other was evidently a fair copy. Although there was no name in either volume to suggest the author, it needed no second glance to see that both were written in the clear, bold hand of Mrs. Piozzi. The price was but trifling, and I promptly paid it and carried the volumes home. Some months later, I was reading a little volume, "Piozziana," by Edward Mangin,--the first book about Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi,--when, to my surprise, my eye met the following:--
[Illustration: BERNARD ALFRED QUARITCH
"He probably surprised himself as he surprised the world by adding lustre to the name of Bernard Quaritch."]
Early in the year 1815, I called on her [Mrs. Piozzi] then resident in Bath, to examine a manuscript which she informed me she was preparing for the press. After a short conversation, we sat down to a table on which lay two manuscript volumes, one of them, the fair copy of her work, in her own incomparably fine hand-writing. The title was "Lyford Redivivus"; the idea being taken from a diminutive old volume, printed in 1657, and professing to be an alphabetical account of the names of men and women, and their derivations. Her work was somewhat on this plan: the Christian or first name given, Charity, for instance, followed by its etymology; anecdotes of the eminent or obscure, who have borne the appellation; applicable epigrams, biographical sketches, short poetical illustrations, &c.
I read over twelve or fourteen articles and found them exceedingly interesting; abounding in spirit, and novelty; and all supported by quotations in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Celtic, and Saxon. There was a learned air over all, and in every page, much information, ably compressed, and forming what I should have supposed, an excellent popular volume. She was now seventy-five; and I naturally complimented her, not only on the work in question, but on the amazing beauty and variety of her hand-writing. She seemed gratified and desired me to mention the MS. to some London publisher. This I afterwards did, and sent the work to one alike distinguished for discernment and liberality, but with whom we could not come to an agreement. I have heard no more of "Lyford Redivivus" since, and know not in whose hands the MS. may now be.
A moment later it was in mine, and I was examining it with renewed interest.
My secret is out. I collect, as I can, human-interest books--books with a _provenance_, as they are called; but as I object to foreign words, I once asked a Bryn Mawr professor, Dr. Holbrook, to give me an English equivalent. "I should have to make one," he said. "You know the word _whereabouts_, I suppose." I admitted that I did. "How would _whenceabouts_ do?" I thought it good.
In recent years, presentation, or association, books have become the rage, and the reason is plain. Every one is unique, though some are uniquer than others. My advice to any one who may be tempted by some volume with an inscription of the author on its fly-leaf or title-page is, "Yield with coy submission"--and at once. While such books make frightful inroads on one's bank account, I have regretted only my economies, never my extravagances.
I was glancing the other day over Arnold's "Record of Books and Letters." He paid in 1895 seventy-one dollars for a presentation Keats's "Poems," 1817, and sold it at auction in 1901 for five hundred.[2] A few years later I was offered a presentation copy of the work, with an inscription to Keats's intimate friends, Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, for a thousand dollars, and while I was doing some preliminary financing the book disappeared, and forever; and I have never ceased regretting that the dedication copy of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," to Sir Joshua Reynolds, passed into the collection of my lamented friend, Harry Widener, rather than into my own. "I shall not pass this way again" seems written in these volumes.
But my record is not all of defeats. The "whenceabouts" of my presentation "Vanity Fair" is not without interest--its story is told in Wilson's "Thackeray in the United States."
The great man took particular delight in schoolboys. When, during his lecturing tour, he visited Philadelphia, he presented one of these boys with a five-dollar gold-piece. The boy's mother objected to his pocketing the coin, and Thackeray vainly endeavored to convince her that this species of beneficence was a thing of course in England. After a discussion the coin was returned, but three months later the lad was made happy by the receipt of a copy of "Vanity Fair," across the title-page of which he saw written, in a curiously small and delicate hand, his name, Henry Reed, with W. M. Thackeray's kind regards, April, 1856.
One day, some years ago, while strolling through Piccadilly, my attention was attracted by a newspaper clipping posted on the window of a bookshop, which called attention to a holograph volume of Johnson-Dodd letters on exhibition within. I spent several hours in careful examination of it, and, although the price asked was not inconsiderable, it was not high in view of the unusual interest of the volume. I felt that I must own it.
When I am going to be extravagant I always like the encouragement of my wife, and I usually get it. I determined to talk over with her my proposed purchase. Her prophetic instinct in this instance was against it. She reminded me that the business outlook was not good when we left home, and that the reports received since were anything but encouraging. "That amount of money," she said, "may be very useful when you get home." The advice was good; indeed, her arguments were so unanswerable that I determined not to discuss it further, but to buy it anyhow and say nothing. Early the next morning I went back, and to my great disappointment found that some one more forehanded than I had secured the treasure. My regrets for a time were keen, but on my return to this country I found myself in the height of the 1907 panic. Securities seemed almost worthless and actual money unobtainable; then I congratulated my wife on her wisdom, and pointed out what a fine fellow I had been to follow her advice.
Six months later, to my great surprise, the collection was again offered me by a bookseller in New York at a price just fifty per cent in advance of the price I had been asked for it in London. The man who showed it to me was amazed when I told him just when he had bought it and where, and the price he had paid for it. I made a guess that it was ten per cent below the figure at which it had been offered to me. "I am prepared," I said, "to pay you the same price I was originally asked for it in London. You have doubtless shown it to many of your customers and have not found them as foolish in their enthusiasm over Johnson as I am. You have had your chance to make a big profit; why not accept a small one?" There was some discussion; but as I saw my man weakening, my firmness increased, and it finally ended by my handing him a check and carrying off the treasure.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DR. JOHNSON BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. PAINTED ABOUT 1770 FOR JOHNSON'S STEPDAUGHTER, LUCY PORTER
_Engraved by Watson_]
The collection consists of original manuscripts relating to the forgery of Dodd, twelve pieces being in Dr. Johnson's handwriting. In 1778 Dr. William Dodd, the "unfortunate" clergyman, as he came to be called, was condemned to death for forging the name of his pupil, Lord Chesterfield, to a bond for forty-two hundred pounds. Through their common friend Edmund Allen, Johnson worked hard to secure Dodd's pardon, writing letters, petitions, and addresses, to be presented by Dodd, in his own or his wife's name, to the King, the Queen, and other important persons, Johnson taking every care to conceal his own part in the matter. In all there are thirty-two manuscripts relating to the affair. They were evidently used by Sir John Hawkins in his "Life of Johnson," but it is doubtful whether Boswell, although he quotes them in part, ever saw the collection.[3]
Pearson, from his shop in Pall Mall Place, issues catalogues which for size, style, and beauty are unexcelled--they remind one more of publications _deluxe_ than of a bookseller's catalogue. It is almost vain to look for any item under a hundred pounds, and not infrequently they run to several thousand. A catalogue now on my writing table tells me of a Caxton: "Tully, His Treatises of Old Age and Friendship," one of four known copies, at twenty-five hundred pounds; and I'd gladly pay it did my means allow.
From Pearson I secured my holograph prayer of Dr. Johnson, of which Birkbeck Hill says: "Having passed into the cabinet of a collector it remains as yet unpublished." It is dated Ashbourne, September 5, 1784 (Johnson died on December 13 of that year), and reads:--
Almighty Lord and Merciful Father, to Thee be thanks, and praise for all thy mercies, for the awakening of my mind, the continuance of my life, the amendment of my health, and the opportunity now granted of commemorating the death of thy Son Jesus Christ, our Mediator and Redeemer. Enable me O Lord to repent truly of my sins--enable me by thy Holy Spirit to lead hereafter a better life. Strengthen my mind against useless perplexities, teach me to form good resolutions and assist me that I may bring them to effect, and when Thou shalt finally call me to another state, receive me to everlasting happiness, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Prayers in Dr. Johnson's hand are excessively rare. He wrote a large number, modeled evidently upon the beautiful Collects--prose sonnets--of the Church of England Prayer Book; but after publication by their first editor, Dr. George Strahan, in 1785, most of the originals were deposited in the Library of Pembroke College, Oxford; hence their scarcity.
[Illustration Page of Prayer in Dr. Johnson's Autograph]
From Pearson, too, came my beautiful uncut copy of "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," with a receipt for one hundred pounds in Johnson's handwriting on account of the copyright of the book, and, more interesting still, a brief note to Mrs. Horneck (the mother of Goldsmith's "Jessamy Bride"), reading: "Mr. Johnson sends Mrs. Horneck and the young ladies his best wishes for their health and pleasure in their journey, and hopes his Wife [Johnson's pet name for the young lady] will keep him in her mind. Wednesday, June 13." The date completes the story. Forster states that Goldsmith, in company with the Hornecks, started for Paris in the middle of July, 1770. This was the dear old Doctor's good-bye as the party was setting out.
To spend a morning with Mr. Sabin, the elder, in his shop in Bond Street is a delight never to be forgotten. The richest and rarest volumes are spread out before you as unaffectedly as if they were the last best-sellers. You are never importuned to buy; on the contrary, even when his treasures are within your reach, it is difficult to get him to part with them. One item which you particularly want is a part of a set held at a king's ransom; some one has the refusal of another. It is possible to do business, but not easy.
[Illustration: JOHN KEATS'S COPY OF SPENSER'S WORKS]
His son, Frank, occasionally takes advantage of his father's absence to part with a volume or two. He admits the necessity of selling a book sometimes in order that he may buy another. This, I take it, accounts for the fact that he consented to part with a copy of "The Works of that Famous English Poet, Mr. Edmond Spenser"--the fine old folio of 1679, with the beautiful title-page. A "name on title" ordinarily does not add to a book's value; but when that name is "John Keats" in the poet's hand, and in addition, "Severn's gift, 1818," one is justified in feeling elated.
John Keats! who in the realm of poetry stands next to the great Elizabethans. It was Spenser's "Fairy Queen" which first fired his ambition to write poetry, and his lines in imitation of Spenser are among the first he wrote. At the time of the presentation of this volume, Severn had recently made his acquaintance, and Keats and his friends were steeped in Elizabethan literature. The finest edition of the works of Spenser procurable was no doubt selected by Severn as a gift more likely than any other to be appreciated by the poet.
Remember that books from Keats's library, which was comparatively a small one, are at the present time practically non-existent; that among them there could hardly have been one with a more interesting association than this volume of Spenser. Remember too that Keats's poem,--
Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song,--
was addressed to my great-great-uncle, George Felton Mathew; and let me refer to the fact that on my first visit to England I had spent several days with his sister, who as a young girl had known Keats well, and it will be realized that the possession of this treasure made my heart thump.
Stimulated and encouraged by this purchase, I successfully angled for one of the rarest items of the recent Browning sale, the portrait of Tennyson reading "Maud," a drawing in pen and ink by Rossetti, with a signed inscription on the drawing in the artist's handwriting:--
I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood.
Browning's inscription is as follows:--
Tennyson read his poem of Maud to E.B.B., R.B., Arabel and Rossetti, on the evening of Thursday, Septr. 27, 1855, at 13 Dorset St., Manchester Square. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson as he sat reading to E.B.B., who occupied the other end of the sofa.
R.B. March 6, '74. 19 Warwick Crescent.
W. M. Rossetti and Miss Browning were also present on this famous evening, which is vivaciously described by Mrs. Browning in an autograph letter to Mrs. Martin inserted in the album.
One of the pleasantest things which has happened to us here is the coming down on us of the Laureate, who, being in London for three or four days from the Isle of Wight, spent two of them with us, dined with us, smoked with us, opened his heart to us (and the second bottle of port), and ended by reading "Maud" through from end to end, and going away at half-past two in the morning. If I had had a heart to spare, certainly he would have won mine. He is captivating with his frankness, confidingness, and unexampled naïveté! Think of his stopping in "Maud" every now and then--"There's a wonderful touch! That's very tender. How beautiful that is!" Yes, and it was wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music than speech.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF TENNYSON, READING "MAUD" TO ROBERT AND MRS. BROWNING, BY ROSSETTI]
Thus are linked indissolubly together the great Victorians: Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti, and Mrs. Browning. It would be difficult to procure a more interesting memento.
At 27 New Oxford Street, West, is a narrow, dingy little shop, which you would never take to be one of the most celebrated bookshops in London--Spencer's. How he does it, where he gets them, is his business, and an inquiry he answers only with a smile; but the fact is, there they are--just the books you have been looking for, presentation copies and others, in cloth and bound. Spencer owes it to book-collectors to issue catalogues. They would make delightful reading. He has always promised to do it, but he, as well as we, knows that he never will.
But he is kind in another way, if kindness it is: he leaves you alone for hours in that wonderful second-story room, subjected to temptation almost too great to be resisted. Autograph letters, first drafts of well-known poems, rare volumes filled with corrections and notes in the hand of the author, are scattered about; occasionally, such an invaluable item as the complete manuscript of "The Cricket on the Hearth."
It was from the table in this room that I picked up one day a rough folder of cardboard tied with red tape and labeled "Lamb." Opening it, I found a letter from Lamb to Taylor & Hessey, "acknowledging with thanks receit of thirty-two pounds" for the copyright of "Elias (Alas) of last year," signed and dated, June 9, 1824. I felt that it would look well in my presentation "Elia," in boards, uncut, and was not mistaken.
My acquaintance with Mr. Dobell I owe to a paragraph that I read many years ago in Labouchere's "Truth." One day this caught my eye:--
From the catalogue of a West End Bookseller I note this: "Garrick, David. 'Love in the Suds. A Town Eclogue,' first edition. 1772. Very rare. 5 guineas." The next post brought me a catalogue from Bertram Dobell, the well-known bookseller in the Charing Cross Road. There I read, "Garrick, David. 'Love in the Suds. A Town Eclogue,' first edition, 1772, boards, 18 pence." The purchaser of the former might do well to average by acquiring Mr. Dobell's copy.
Old Dobell is in a class by himself--scholar, antiquarian, poet, and bookseller.[4] He is just the type one would expect to find in a shop on the floor of which books are stacked in piles four or five feet high, leaving narrow tortuous paths through which one treads one's way with great drifts of books on either side. To reach the shelves is practically impossible, yet out of this confusion I have picked many a rare item.
Don't be discouraged if, on your asking for a certain volume, Mr. Dobell gently replies, "No, sorry." That means simply that he cannot put his mental eye on it at the moment. It, or something as interesting, will come along. Don't hurry; and let me observe that the prices of this eighteenth-century bookshop are of the period.
I once sought, for years, a little book of no particular value; but I wanted it to complete a set. I had about given up all hope of securing a copy when I finally found it in a fashionable shop on Piccadilly. It was marked five guineas, an awful price; but I paid it and put the volume in my pocket. That very day I stumbled across a copy in a better condition at Dobell's, marked two and six. I bethought me of Labby's advice and "averaged."
From Dobell came Wordsworth's copy of "Endymion"; likewise a first edition of the old-fashioned love-story, "Henrietta Temple," by Disraeli, inscribed, "To William Beckford with the author's compliments," with many pages of useless notes in Beckford's hand; he seems to have read the volumes with unnecessary care. Nor should I forget a beautiful copy of Thomson's "Seasons," presented by Byron "To the Hon'ble Frances Wedderburne Webster," with this signed impromptu:--
Go!--volume of the Wintry Blast, The yellow Autumn and the virgin Spring. Go!--ere the Summer's zephyr's past And lend to loveliness thy lovely Wing.
The morning's mail of a busy man, marked "personal," takes a wide scope, ranging all the way from polite requests for a loan to brief statements that "a prompt remittance will oblige"; but at the bottom of the pile are the welcome catalogues of the second-hand booksellers--for books, to be interesting, must at least be second-hand. Indeed, as with notes offered for discount, the greater the number of good indorsers the better. In books, indorsements frequently take the form of bookplates. I am always interested in such a note as this: "From the library of Charles B. Foote, with his bookplate."
Auction catalogues come, too. These also must be scanned, but they lack the element which makes the dealers' catalogues so interesting--the prices. With prices omitted, book-auction catalogues are too stimulating. The mind at once begins to range. Doubt takes the place of certainty.
The arrival of a catalogue from the Sign of the Caxton Head, Mr. James Tregaskis's shop in High Holborn, in the parish of St.-Giles's-in-the-Fields, always suspends business in my office for half an hour; and while I glance rapidly through its pages in search of nuggets, I paraphrase a line out of Boswell, that "Jimmie hath a very pretty wife." Why shouldn't a book merchant have a pretty wife? The answer is simple: he has, nor are good-looking wives peculiar to this generation of booksellers.
Tom Davies, it will be remembered, who, in the back parlor of his little bookshop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, first introduced Boswell to Johnson, had a wife who, we are told, caused the great Doctor to interrupt himself in the Lord's Prayer at the point, "Lead us not into temptation," and whisper to her, with waggish and gallant good humor, "You, my dear, are the cause of this." Like causes still produce like effects.
[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S CHURCH, ST. CLEMENT DANES
_From a pen-and-ink sketch by Charles G. Osgood_]
From Tregaskis I secured my "Memoirs of George Psalmanazar," 1764, an interesting book in itself; but its chief value is the signature and note, "Given to H. L. Thrale by Dr. Sam Johnson," I suppose about 1770. Following Mrs. Thrale's usual practice, there are scattered through the volume a number of notes and criticisms in her handwriting. It was Psalmanazar, afterwards discovered to be a notorious old scamp, whose apparent piety so impressed Dr. Johnson that he "sought" his company; and of whom he said, "Sir, contradict Psalmanazar! I should as soon think of contradicting a Bishop."
[Illustration: Inscription to Mrs. Thrale in Dr. Johnson's Hand]
Side by side with this volume on my shelves stands the "Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa," a work of sheer imagination if ever there was one.
My "Haunch of Venison," 1776, in wrappers, uncut, with the rare portrait of Goldsmith drawn by Bunbury (he married Goldsmith's Little Comedy, it will be remembered), also came from him, as did my "London, A poem in imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal," and the first edition of the first book on London, Stow's "Survay," 1598.
From another source came one of the last books on London, "Our House." This book, delightful in itself, is especially interesting to me by reason of the personal inscription of its charming and witty writer: "To A.E.N., a welcome visitor to 'Our House,' from Elizabeth Robins Pennell."
Continuing along Holborn citywards, one comes to (and usually passes) the Great Turnstile, a narrow court leading into Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here is another bookshop that I frequent,--Hollings's,--not for the rarest things, but for the choice little bits which seem almost commonplace when you are buying them, and give so much pleasure when you get them safely on your shelves at home. I never spend a few hours with Mr. Redway, the manager, without thinking of the saying of one of our most delightful essayists, Augustine Birrell, who, to our loss, seems to have forsaken literature for politics: "Second-hand booksellers are a race of men for whom I have the greatest respect; ... their catalogues are the true textbooks of literature."
One sometimes has the pleasure of running across some reference in a catalogue to a book of which one has a better or more interesting copy at half the price. For example, I saw quoted in a catalogue the other day at eighty pounds a "Set of the Life of the Prince Consort, in _five_ volumes, with an inscription in each volume in the autograph of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The first volume being published before Her Majesty was proclaimed Empress of India, she signed as Queen; the other four volumes Her Majesty signed as Queen-Empress."
In my collection there are _seven_ volumes, the five mentioned above and two additional volumes, the "Speeches and Addresses" and the "Biography of the Prince Consort." My copies also are signed, but note: the volume of "Speeches and Addresses" has this intensely personal inscription:--
To Major General, the Hon. A. Gordon, in recollection of his great, & good master from the beloved Prince's broken hearted Widow
Victoria R.
OSBORNE _Jan: 12. 1863_.
The "Biography" has this:--
To Major General, The Hon. Alexander Gordon, C.B. in recollection of his dear Master from the great Prince's affectionate and sorrowing Widow,
Victoria R.
_April, 1867._
Volume one of the "Life" is inscribed:--
To Lieutenant General, The Hon. Sir Alexander Gordon, K.C.B., in recollection of his dear Master, from
Victoria R.
_January 1875_.
Volume two:--
To Lieut. General, The Hon. Sir Alexander Hamilton Gordon, K.C.B., from
Victoria R.
_Dec. 1876_.
Volume three:--
To General, The Hon. Sir Alex. H. Gordon, K.C.B., from
Victoria R.I.
_Dec. 1877_.
The inscriptions in the last three volumes are identical, except for the dates. All are written in the large, flowing hand with which we are familiar, and indicate a declining scale of grief. Time heals all wounds, and as these volumes appear at intervals, grief is finally assuaged and Majesty asserts itself.
[Illustration: Inscription to General Sir A. Gordon in Queen Victoria's Hand]
II
Book-Collecting At Home
In the preceding chapter I wrote of the amenities of book-collecting in London, of my adventures in the shops of Bond Street and Piccadilly, of Holborn and the Strand--almost as though this paradise of the book-collector were his only happy hunting-ground. But all the good hunting is not found in London: New York has a number of attractive shops, Philadelphia at least two, while there are several in Chicago and in unexpected places in the West.
Where in all the world will you find so free a buyer, always ready to take a chance to turn a volume at a profit, as George D. Smith? He holds the record for having paid the highest price ever paid for a book at auction: fifty thousand dollars for a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, purchased for Mr. Henry E. Huntington at the Hoe sale; and not only did he pay the highest price--he also bought more than any other purchaser of the fine books disposed of at that sale.
I have heard Smith's rivals complain that he is not a bookseller in the proper sense of the word--that he buys without discretion and without exact knowledge. Such criticism, I take it, is simply the natural result of jealousy. George D. Smith has sold more fine books than perhaps any two of his rivals.
[Illustration: GEORGE D. SMITH
"G. D. S." as he is known in the New York Auction Rooms. Like "G. B. S." of London, he is something of an enigma. What are the qualities which have made him, as he undoubtedly is, the greatest bookseller in the world?
_From a photograph by Arnold Genthe_]
There is no affectation of dignity or of knowledge about him, and it is well that there is not. No one knows all there is to know about books; a man might know much more than he--such men there are--and yet lack the qualities which have enabled him to secure and retain the confidence and commissions of his patrons. He is practically the main support of the auction-rooms in this country, and I have frequently seen him leave a sale at which he had purchased every important book that came up. He had knowledge and confidence enough for that, and I cannot see why his frankness and lack of affectation should be counted against him. It takes all kinds of men to make a world, and George is several kinds in himself.
Twenty-five years ago, in London, early in my book-collecting days, I came across a bundle of dusty volumes in an old book-shop in the Strand,--the shop and that part of the Strand have long since disappeared,--and bought the lot for, as I remember, two guineas. Subsequently, upon going through the contents carefully, I found that I had acquired what appeared to be quite a valuable little parcel. There were the following:--
"Tales from Shakespeare": Baldwin and Cradock, fifth edition, 1831.
Lamb's "Prose Works": 3 volumes, Moxon, 1836.
"The Letters of Charles Lamb": 2 volumes, Moxon, 1837; with the inscription, "To J. P. Collier, Esq. from his friend H. C. Robinson."
Talfourd's "Final Memorials of Charles Lamb": 2 volumes, Moxon, 1848.
By the way, the last was Wordsworth's copy, with his signature on the title-page of each volume; and I observed for the first time that the book was dedicated to him. Loosely inserted in several of the volumes were newspaper clippings, a number of pages of manuscript in John Payne Collier's handwriting, a part of a letter from Mary Lamb addressed to Jane Collier, his mother, and in several of the volumes were notes in Collier's handwriting referring to matters in the text: as where, against a reference to Lamb's "Essay on Roast Pig," Collier says, in pencil, "My mother sent the pig to Lamb." Again, where Talfourd, referring to an evening with Lamb, says, "We mounted to the top story and were soon seated beside a cheerful fire: hot water and its better adjuncts were soon before us," Collier writes, "Both Lamb and Talfourd died of the 'Better Adjuncts.'"
There was a large number of such pencil notes. The pages of manuscript in Collier's heavy and, as he calls it, "infirm" hand begin:--
In relation to C. Lamb and Southey, Mr. Cosens possesses as interesting a MS. as I know. It is bound as a small quarto, but the writing of Lamb, and chiefly by Southey is post 8vo. They seem to have been contributions to an "Annual Anthology" published by Cottle of Bristol.
The MS. begins with an "Advertisement" in the handwriting of Southey, and it is followed immediately by a poem in Lamb's handwriting headed "Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco," in ten stanzas rhiming alternately thus:--
It lay before me on the close grazed grass Beside my path, an old tobacco quid: And shall I by the mute adviser pass Without one serious thought? now Heaven forbid![5]
The next day, Collier copied more of the poem, for on another sheet he remarks, "As my hand is steadier to-day I have copied the remaining stanzas."
On still another sheet, referring to the Cosens MS., Collier writes:--
The whole consists of about sixty leaves chiefly in the handwriting of Southey and it contains ... productions by Lamb, one a sort of _jeu d'esprit_ called "The Rhedycinian Barbers" on the hair-dressing of twelve young men of Christ Church College, and the other headed, "Dirge for Him Who Shall Deserve It." This has no signature but the whole is in Lamb's clear young hand, and it shows very plainly that he partook not only of the poetical but of the political feeling of the time.
The signatures are various, Erthuryo, Ryalto, Walter, and so forth, and at the end are four Love Elegies and a serious poem by Charles Lamb, entitled, "Living without God in the World."
How many of these were printed elsewhere, or in Cottle's "Anthology," I do not know. I would willingly copy more did not my hand fail me.
J. P. C.
[Illustration: Autograph MS. of Lamb's Poem, "Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco"]
Twenty years later, in New York one day, George D. Smith asked me if I would care to buy an interesting volume of Southey MSS., and to my great surprise handed me the identical little quarto which Collier had many years before found so interesting that he had made excerpts from it. It might not have made such instant appeal to my recollection of my purchase in London had it not been for an inserted note, almost identical with the one on the loose slip in my Lamb volume, obviously in Collier's "infirm" hand, repeating briefly what he had said on the loose sheets in my volumes at home.
Mr. Cosens, the former owner of the manuscripts, had added a note: "In 1798 or 1799 Charles Lamb contributed to the 'Annual Anthology' which a Mr. Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol, published jointly with Coleridge and Southey. This manuscript is partly in the handwriting of Southey and was formerly the property of Cottle of Bristol."
Upon investigation I ascertained that the little volume of manuscript verse had passed from Mr. Cosens's possession into that of Augustin Daly, at whose sale it had been catalogued as a Southey MS., with small reference to its Lamb interest. Although the price was high, the temptation to buy was too strong to be resisted; so after many years the small quarto of original poems by Lamb, Southey, and others, and Collier's description of it, stand side by side in my library. For me the three poems by Lamb outweigh in interest and value all others. The volume is labeled, "Southey Manuscripts, a long time since the property of a Mr. Cottle of Bristol."
The most scholarly bookseller in this country to-day is Dr. Rosenbach--"Rosy" as we who know him well call him. It was not his original intention to deal in rare books, but to become a professor of English, a calling for which few have a finer appreciation; but mere scholars abound. He must have felt that we collectors needed some one to guide our tastes and deplete our bank accounts. In both he is unequaled.
His spacious second-floor room in Walnut Street is filled with the rarest volumes. "Ask and it shall be given you"--with a bill at the end of the month. It is a delightful place to spend a rainy morning, and you are certain to depart a wiser if a poorer man. I once spent some hours with the doctor in company with my friend Tinker--not the great Tinker who plays ball for a bank president's wage, but the less famous Tinker, Professor of English at Yale. We had been looking at Shakespeare folios and quartos, and Spenser's and Herrick's and Milton's priceless volumes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when, looking out of the window, Rosy remarked, "There goes John G. Johnson." "Oh!" said my friend, "I thought you were going to say John Dryden. It would not have surprised me in the least."
[Illustration: DR. A. S. W. ROSENBACH
_Photograph by Arnold Genthe_]
Don't expect ever to "discover" anything at Rosenbach's, except how ignorant you are. Rosy does all the discovering himself, as when, a few years ago, he found in a volume of old pamphlets a copy of the first edition of Dr. Johnson's famous "Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane." It will be remembered that this Prologue contains several of the Doctor's most famous lines: criticisms of the stage, as true to-day as when they were uttered; as where he says,--
The Drama's Laws, the Drama's patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live.
It has also the line in which, speaking of Shakespeare, he says, "And panting Time toil'd after him in vain." Garrick having criticized this line, Johnson remarked, "Sir, Garrick is a prosaical rogue. The next time I write I will make both Time and Space pant."
The discovery by Dr. Rosenbach of this Prologue shows that the days of romance in book-hunting are not over. It is not to be found in the British Museum. So far as we know, it is the only copy in existence. Rosy has declined to sell it, though tempting offers have been made, for he is a booklover as well as a bookseller.
That he is a rare judge of human nature, too, is evidenced by a little card over his desk on which is printed the text,--
"It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he hath gone his way then he boasteth."--PROVERBS XX. 14.
That is exactly what I did when I secured from him my "Robinson Crusoe," the first edition in two volumes, with the third, which may not be Defoe's. It lacks one "point" perhaps: the word "apply," the last word on page 1 of the preface, is correctly spelled, not spelled "apyly," as in some copies I have seen. The matter, I believe, is not clear. The type may have been correctly set at first and have become corrupted in process of printing, or a few copies may have been so printed before the error, being noted, was corrected.[6] After page 304, of Volume 1, the paper is of thinner and poorer quality than in the pages preceding it. The three volumes are clean, the binding contemporary calf, the folding maps immaculate, and the first two volumes were once the property of "Mr. William Congreve." Altogether it is a book of which this collector "boasteth."
For some unexplained reason I have never been able to buy as many books from Walter Hill of Chicago as I should like. He is one of the most amiable and reliable men in the business. His catalogues issued from time to time are delightful. He once put me under an obligation which I have not yet repaid and which I want to record.
Several years ago I met him in the streets of Philadelphia and said to him, "Hello! what are you doing here? Are you buying or selling?"
"Both," said he; "I bought some nice books only a few minutes ago at Sessler's."
"Don't tell me," I cried, "that 'Oliver Twist,' that presentation copy to Macready, was among them."
"It was," said he; "why, did you want it?"
"Want it!" said I; "I have just been waiting for my bank account to recover from a capital operation, to buy it."
[Illustration: Title of "Robinson Crusoe." First Edition]
"All right," said he, "I'll turn it over at just what I paid for it, and you can send me your check when you are ready."
I was mean enough to accept his offer, and the book is to-day worth at least twice what I paid.
Yet, come to think of it, several nice volumes, "collated and perfect," came from him. There is my "Vicar," not the first edition, with the misprints in volume 2, page 159, paged 165; and page 95, "Waekcfield" for "Wakefield,"--that came from North,--but the one with Rowlandson plates. And "Evelina," _embellished with engravings_, and wretchedly printed on vile paper; and "She Stoops to Conquer," with all the errors just as they should be--a printer's carnival; and I have no doubt there are many more.
Sessler has some unexpectedly fine things from time to time. He goes abroad every year with his pocket full of money, and comes back with a lot of things that quickly empty ours. Dickens is one of his specialties, and from him I have secured at least five of the twenty-one presentation Dickenses that I boast of. A few years ago quite a number came on the market at prices which to-day seem very low. In my last book-hunting experience in London I saw only one presentation Dickens; but as the price was about three times what I had accustomed myself to pay Sessler, I let it pass.
[Illustration: Title of "Oliver Twist"]
Sessler studies his customer's weaknesses--that's where his strength lies. When I came back from Europe some years ago, I discovered that he had bought for me, in my absence, at the Lambert sale, one item which he knew I could not resist. It was a little pen-and-ink drawing by Thackeray, the first sketch, afterwards more fully elaborated, illustrating "Vanity Fair," where, at the end of the first chapter, the immortal Becky, driving away from Miss Pinkerton's school, throws Dr. Johnson's "Dixonary" out of the window of the carriage as it drives off.
I think that all who knew him will agree with me that Luther S. Livingston was too much of a gentleman, too much of a scholar,--perhaps I should add, too much of an invalid,--to take high rank as a bookseller.
His knowledge was profound. He was an appreciative bibliographer, witness the work he did on Lamb for Mr. J. A. Spoor of Chicago; but I always felt a trifle embarrassed when I asked him the _price_ of anything he had to sell; one could ask him anything else, but to offer money to Livingston seemed rather like offering money to your host after an excellent dinner.
[Illustration: BECKY SHARP THROWING DR. JOHNSON'S "DIXONARY" OUT OF THE CARRIAGE WINDOW, AS SHE LEAVES MISS PINKERTON'S SCHOOL
_From the first pen-and-ink sketch, by Thackeray, afterwards elaborated_]
He enjoyed the love and respect of all book-collectors and we all congratulated him when he graduated from the bookshop to the library. For many years in charge of the rare-book department of Dodd, Mead & Company, and subsequently a partner of Robert Dodd, he was the first custodian of the choice collection of books formed by the late Harry Elkins Widener and bequeathed by the latter's mother to Harvard. A more admirable selection could not have been made. A scholar and a gentleman, he brought to that position just the qualities needed for a post of such distinction, but, unhappily, he lived hardly long enough to take possession of it. He died at Christmas, 1914, after a long and painful illness.
James F. Drake, in New York, specializes in association books and in first editions of nineteenth-century authors. His stock I have frequently laid under contribution. My Surtees and many other colored-plate books came from him, and first editions innumerable of authors now becoming "collected."
I know of no bibliography of George Moore, but my set is, I think, complete. Many are presentation copies. George Moore's many admirers will remember that his volume, "Memoirs of My Dead Life," is much sought in the first English edition. I have the proof sheets of the entire volume, showing many corrections, as in the specimen on page 50. My "Literature at Nurse,"--a pamphlet attacking the censorship of the novel established by Mudie,--which was published at threepence, and now commands forty dollars, is inscribed to Willie Wilde; while "Pagan Poems" was a suitable gift "To Oscar Wilde with the author's compliments."
[Illustration: Specimen Proof-Sheet of George Moore's "Memoirs of My Dead Life"]
There is no halt in the constantly advancing value of first editions of Oscar Wilde. That interest in the man still continues, is evidenced by the steady stream of books about him. Ransome's "Oscar Wilde," immediately suppressed; "Oscar Wilde Three Times Tried," and "The First Stone," privately printed by the "Unspeakable Scot," already difficult to procure, are among the latest.
[Illustration: Title of George Moore's "Pagan Poems"]
For books of the moment, published in small editions which almost immediately become scarce, Drake's shop in Fortieth Street is headquarters; and as my club in New York is near by, I find myself frequently dropping in for a book and a bit of gossip.
There are drawbacks as well as compensations to living in the country. "Gossip about Book Collecting" has its charms, as William Loring Andrews has taught us. It is sometimes difficult to get it, living as I do "twelve miles from a lemon"; and so, when I am in New York and have absorbed what I can at Drake's, who is very exact in the information he imparts, I usually call on Gabriel Wells. How Wells receives you with open arms and a good cigar, in his lofty rooms on the Avenue overlooking the Library, is known to most collectors. Books in sets are,--perhaps I should say, were,--his specialty; recently he has gone in for very choice items, which, when offered, must be secured, or anguish is one's portion thereafter. My last interview with him resulted in my separating myself from a bunch of Liberty Bonds, which I had intended as a solace for my old age; but a few words from Wells convinced me that Dr. Johnson was right when he said, "It is better to live rich than die rich"; and so I walked away with a copy of Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which is about as rare a book as one can hope to find at the end of a busy day.
It was, if I remember correctly, Ernest Dressel North who first aroused my interest in Lamb, bibliographically. I had learned to love him in a dumpy little green cloth volume, "Elia and Eliana," published by Moxon, which I had picked up at Leary's, and which bears upon its title-page the glaring inaccuracy,--"The Only Complete Edition." I have this worthless little volume among my first editions; to me it is one, and it is certainly the last volume of Lamb I would part with.
It must be all of thirty years ago that I went to London with a list of books by and about Charles Lamb--some twenty volumes in all--which North had prepared for me. I came across this list not long ago, and was amused at the prices that he suggested I might safely pay. Guineas where his list gives shillings would not to-day separate the books from their owners.
[Illustration: Title of Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"]
It was at this time, too, that I made my first Lamb pilgrimage, going to every place of interest I could find, from Christ's Hospital, then in Newgate Street, where I saw the Blue-Coat boys at dinner, to the neglected grave in Edmonton Churchyard, where Charles and Mary Lamb lie buried side by side. The illustration facing page 54 is made from a negative I procured in 1890, of the house at Enfield in which Lamb lived from October, 1829, until May, 1833.
A good story is told of my friend, Edmund D. Brooks, the bookseller of far-off Minneapolis. Brooks, who knows his way about London and is as much at home with the talent there as any other man, set out one day to make a "quick turn," in stock-market parlance. Armed with a large sum of money, the sinews of book-buying as well as of war, he casually dropped in on Walter Spencer, who was offering for sale the manuscript of Dickens's "Cricket." The price was known to be pretty steep, but Brooks was prepared to pay it. What he did not know was that, in an upper room over Spencer's shop, another bookseller, also with a large sum in pocket, was debating the price of this very item, raising his offer by slow degrees. But it did not take Brooks long to discover that negotiations were progressing and that quick action was necessary. Calling Spencer aside, he inquired the price, paid the money, and took the invaluable manuscript away in a taxi. The whole transaction had occupied only a couple of minutes. Spencer then returned to his first customer, who continued the attack until, to close the argument, Spencer quietly remarked that the manuscript had been sold, paid for, and had passed out of his possession.
It reminds one of the story of how the late A. J. Cassatt, the master mind of the railroad presidents of his time, bought the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railway right under the nose of President Garrett of the Baltimore & Ohio. There were loud cries of anguish from the defeated parties on both occasions, but the book-selling story is not over yet, for a few hours later Sabin, the bookseller _de luxe_, had the Dickens manuscript displayed in his shop-window in Bond Street, and Brooks had a sheaf of crisp Bank of England notes in his pocket, with which to advance negotiations in other directions.
I take little or no interest in bindings; I want the book as originally published, in boards uncut, in old sheep, or in cloth, and as clean and fair as may be.
I am not without a sense for color, and the backs of books bound in various colored leathers, suitably gilt, placed with some eye for arrangement on the shelves, are to me as beautiful and suggestive as any picture; yet, as one cannot have everything, I yield the beauty and fragrance of leather for the fascination of the "original state as issued."
[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB'S HOUSE AT ENFIELD]
Nor am I unmindful how invariably in binding a book, in trimming, be it ever so little, and gilding its edges, one lops off no small part of its value. This fact should be pointed out to all young collectors. They should learn to let their books alone, and if they must patronize a binder, have slip-cases or pull-cases made. They serve every purpose. The book will be protected if it is falling apart and unpresentable, and one's craving for color and gilt will be satisfied. As Eckel says in his "Bibliography of Dickens," "The tendency of the modern collector has steadily moved toward books in their original state,--books as they were when created,--and it is doubtful if there will be much deviation from this taste in the future."
Only the very immature book-buyer will deprive himself of the pleasure of "collecting," and buy a complete set of some author he much esteems, in first editions, assembled and bound without care or thought other than to produce a piece of merchandise and sell it for as much as it will fetch. The rich and ignorant buyer should be made to confine his attention to the purchase of "subscription" books. These are produced in quantity especially for his benefit, and he should leave our books alone. The present combination of many rich men and relatively few fine books is slowly working my ruin; I know it is. We live in a law-full age, an age in which it seems to be every one's idea to pass laws. I would have a law for the protection of old books, and our legislators in Washington might do much worse than consider this suggestion.
[Illustration: INSCRIPTION IN A COPY OF "THE NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS'"]
One other form of book the collector should be warned against--the extra-illustrated volume. The extra-illustration of a favorite author is a tedious and expensive method of wasting money, and mutilating other books the while. I confess to having a few, but I have bought them at a very small part of what they cost to produce, and I do not encourage their production.
I know something of the art of inlaying prints. I had a distinguished and venerable teacher, the late Ferdinand J. Dreer of Philadelphia, who formed a priceless collection of autographs, which at his death he bequeathed to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Mr. Dreer was a collector of the old school. He was a friend of John Allan, one of the earliest book-collectors in this country, of whom a "Memorial" was published by the Bradford Club in 1864. Mr. Dreer spent the leisure of years and a small fortune in inlaying plates and pages of text of such books as he fancied. I remember well as a lad being allowed to pore over his sumptuous extra-illustrated books, filled with autograph letters, portraits, and views, for hours at a time. Little did I think that these volumes, the object of such loving care, would be sold at auction.
Many years after his death the family decided to dispose of a portion of his library. Stan. Henkels conducted the sale. When the well-known volumes came up, I was all in a tremble. It seemed hardly possible that any of the famous Dreer books were to come within my grasp. But alas! fashions change, as I have said before. A "History of the Bank of North America," our oldest national bank, which enjoys the unique distinction of not calling itself a national bank, went, not to an officer or director of that sound old Philadelphia institution, but to George D. Smith of New York, for a song--in a high key, but a song nevertheless.
An "Oration in Carpenter's Hall" in Philadelphia brought close to a thousand dollars; but, in addition to the rare portraits and views, there were fifty-seven autograph letters in it. Sold separately, they would have brought several times as much. Smith was the buyer. Then there came a "History of Christ Church," full of most interesting material, as "old Christ Church" is the most beautiful and interesting colonial church in America. Where was the rector, where were the wardens and the vestry thereof? No sign of them. Smith was the buyer.
The books were going and for almost nothing, in every case to "Smith." At last came the "Memoirs of Nicholas Biddle," of the famous old Bank of the United States. Hear! ye Biddles, if any Biddles there be. There are, in plenty, but not here. Smith, having bought all the rest, stopped when he saw me bidding; the hammer fell, and I was the owner of the most interesting volume in the whole Dreer collection,--the volume I had so often coveted as a boy, with the letters and portraits of Penn, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, and so forth,--in all twenty-eight of them, and mine for ten dollars apiece, book, portraits, and binding thrown in. It is painful to witness the slaughter of another's possessions; it makes one wonder--But that is not what we collect books for.
In the last analysis pretty much everything, including poetry, is merchandise, and every important book sooner or later turns up in the auction rooms. The dozen or fifty men present represent the bookbuyers of the world--you are buying against them. When you sell a book at auction the whole world is your market. This refers, of course, only to important sales. At other times books are frequently disposed of at much less than their real value. These sales it pays the book-collector to attend, personally, if he can; or, better still, to entrust his bid to the auctioneer or to some representative in whom he has confidence. Most profitable of all for the buyer are the sales where furniture, pictures, and rugs are disposed of, with, finally, a few books knocked down by one who knows nothing of their value.
Many are the volumes in my library which have been picked up on such occasions for a very few dollars, and which are worth infinitely more than I paid for them. I have in mind my copy of the first edition of Boswell's "Corsica," in fine old calf, with the inscription "To the Right Honourable, the Earl Marischal of Scotland, as a mark of sincere regard and affection, from the Author, James Boswell." This stands me only a few dollars. In London I should have been asked--and would have paid--twenty pounds for it.
Some men haunt the auction rooms all the time. I do not. I have a living to make and I am not quick in making it; moreover, the spirit of competition invariably leads me astray, and I never come away without finding myself the owner of at least one book, usually a large one, which should properly be entitled, "What Will He Do With It?"
* * * * *
No book-collector should be without a book-plate, and a book-plate once inserted in a volume should never be removed. When the plate is that of a good collector, it constitutes an indorsement, and adds a certain interest and value to the volume.
I was once going through the collection of a friend, and observing the absence of a book-plate, I asked him why it was. He replied, "The selection of a book-plate is such a serious matter." It is; and I should never have been able to get one to suit me entirely had not my good friend, Osgood of Princeton, come to my rescue.
[Illustration: The book-plate illustrates an incident described in Boswell. Johnson and Goldsmith were walking one day in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. Looking at the graves, Johnson solemnly repeated a line from a Latin poet, which might be freely translated, "Perchance some day our _names_ will mingle with these." As they strolled home through the Strand, Goldsmith's eye lighted upon the heads of two traitors rotting on the spikes over Temple Bar. Remembering that Johnson and he were rather Jacobitic in sentiment, pointing to the heads and giving Johnson's quotation a twist, Goldsmith remarked, "Perhaps some day our _heads_ will mingle with those."]
He was working in my library some years ago on an exquisite appreciation of Johnson, when, noticing on my writing-table a pen-and-ink sketch, he asked, "What's this?" I replied with a sigh that it was a suggestion for a book-plate which I had just received from London. I had described in a letter exactly what I wanted--an association plate strictly in eighteenth-century style. Fleet Street was to be indicated, with Temple Bar in the background. It was to be plain and dignified in treatment. What came was indeed a sketch of Fleet Street and very much more. There were scrolls and flourishes, eggs and darts and _fleurs-de-lis_--a little of everything. In a word it was impossible. "Let me see what I can do," said Osgood.
When I returned home that evening there was waiting for me an exquisite pencil sketch, every detail faultless: Fleet Street with its tavern signs, in the background Temple Bar with Johnson and Goldsmith, the latter pointing to it and remarking slyly, "_Forsitan et nomen nostrum miscebitur istis_." I was delighted, as I had reason to be. In due course, after discussions as to the selection of a suitable motto, we finally agreed on a line out of Boswell: "Sir, the biographical part of literature is what I love most"; and the sketch went off to Sidney Smith of Boston, the distinguished book-plate engraver.
I have a fondness for college professors. I must have inherited it from a rich old uncle, from whom I unluckily inherited nothing else, who had a similar weakness for preachers. Let a man, however stupid, once get a license to wear his collar backwards, and the door was flung wide and the table spread. I have often thought what an ecstasy of delight he would have been thrown into had he met a churchman whose rank permitted him to wear his entire ecclesiastical panoply backwards.
My weakness for scholars is just such a whimsy. As a rule they are not so indulgent to collectors as they should be. They write books that we buy and read--when we can. My lifelong friend, Felix Schelling (in England he would be Sir Felix) is more lenient than most. My copy of his "Elizabethan Drama," which has made him famous among students, is uncut and, I am afraid, to some extent unopened. Frankly, it is too scholarly to read with enjoyment. Indeed, I sometimes think that it was my protest that led him to adopt the easier and smoother style apparent in his later books, "English Literature during the Lifetime of Shakespeare," and "The English Lyric." Be this as it may, he has shown that he can use the scholarly and the familiar style with equal facility; and when he chooses, he can turn a compliment like one of his own sixteenth-century courtiers.
I had always doubted that famous book-index story, "Mill, J. S., 'On Liberty'; Ditto, 'On the Floss,'" until one day my friend Tinker sent me a dedication copy of his "Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney," in which I read--and knew that he was poking fun at me for my bookish weakness--this:--
This copy is a genuine specimen of the first edition, uncut and unopened, signed and certified by the editor.
Chauncey Brewster Tinker.
No copy is now known to exist of the suppressed first state of the first edition--that in which, instead of the present entry in the index, under Pope, Alexander, page 111, occurred the words, "Pope Alexander 111."
How much more valuable this copy would have been if this blunder--"point," the judicious would call it--had not been corrected until the second edition!
The work of my office was interrupted one summer morning several years ago by the receipt of a cable from London, apparently in code, which, I was advised, would not translate. Upon its being submitted to me I found that it did not require translating, but I was not surprised that it was somewhat bewildering to others. It read, "_Johnson Piazza Dictionary Pounds Forty Hut_." To me it was perfectly clear that Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi's copy of Johnson's Dictionary in two volumes folio was to be had from my friend Hutt for forty pounds. I dispatched the money and in due course received the volumes. Inserted in one of them was a long holograph letter to the Thrales, giving them some excellent advice on the management of their affairs.
I think it very probably in your power to lay up eight thousand pounds a year for every year to come, increasing all the time, what needs not be increased, the splendour of all external appearance, and surely such a state is not to be put in yearly hazard for the pleasure of keeping the house full, or the ambition of outbrewing Whitbread. Stop now and you are safe--stop a few years and you may go safely on thereafter, if to go on shall seem worth the while.
Johnson's letters, like his talks, are compact with wisdom, and many of them are as easy as the proverbial old shoe. Fancy Sam Johnson, the great lexicographer, writing to Mrs. Thrale and telling her to come home and take care of him and, as he says, to
Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a good will, or come not at all.
I own thirty or forty Johnson letters, including the one in which he describes what she called his "menagerie"--dependents too old, too poor, or too peevish to find asylum elsewhere. He writes, "We have tolerable concord at home, but no love. Williams hates everybody. Levet hates Desmoulines, and does not love Williams. Desmoulines hates them both. Poll loves none of them."
But I must be careful. I had firmly resolved not to say anything which would lead any one to suspect that I am Johnson-mad, but I admit that such is the case. I am never without a copy of Boswell. What edition? Any edition. I have them all--the first in boards uncut, for my personal satisfaction; an extra-illustrated copy of the same, for display; Birkbeck Hill's, for reference, and the cheap old Bohn copy which thirty years ago I first read, because I know it by heart. Yes, I can truly say with Leslie Stephen, "My enjoyment of books began and will end with Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.'"
+-----------------------------------------------+ | "Thou fool! to seek companions in a crowd! | | Into thy room and there upon thy knees, | | Before thy bookshelves, humbly thank thy God, | | That thou hast friends like these!" | +-----------------------------------------------+
III
Old Catalogues And New Prices
The true book-lover is usually loath to destroy an old book-catalogue. It would not be easy to give a reason for this, unless it is that no sooner has he done so than he has occasion to refer to it. Such catalogues reach me by almost every mail, and I while away many hours in turning over their leaves. Anatole France in his charming story, "The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard," makes his dear old book-collector say, "There is no reading more easy, more fascinating, and more delightful than that of a catalogue"; and it is so, for the most part; but some catalogues annoy me exceedingly: those which contain long lists of books that are not books; genealogies; county (and especially town) histories, illustrated with portraits; obsolete medical and scientific books; books on agriculture and diseases of the horse. How it is that any one can make a living by vending such merchandise is beyond me--but so are most things.
Living, however, in the country, and going to town every day, I spend much time on the trains, and must have something to read besides newspapers,--who was it who said that reading newspapers is a nervous habit?--and it is not always convenient to carry a book; so I usually have a few catalogues which I mark industriously, thus presenting a fine imitation of a busy man. One check means a book that I own, and I note with interest the prices; another, a book that I would like to have; while yet another indicates a book to which under no circumstances would I give a place on my shelves. When my library calls for a ridding up, these slim pamphlets are not discarded as they should be, but are stored in a closet, to be referred to when needed, until at last something must be done to make room for those that came to-day and those that will come to-morrow.
On one of these occasional house-clearings I came across a bundle of old catalogues which I have never had it in me to destroy. One of them was published in 1886, by a man I knew well years ago, Charles Hutt, of Clement's Inn Gateway, Strand. Hutt himself has long since passed away; so has his shop, the Gateway; and, indeed, the Strand itself--his part of it, that is. I sometimes think that the best part of old London has disappeared. Need I say that I refer to Holywell Street and the Clare Market district which lay between the Strand and Lincoln's Inn Fields, which Dickens knew and described so well? Hutt in his day was a man of considerable importance. He was the first London bookseller to realize the direction and value of the American market. Had he lived, my friends Sabin and Spencer and Maggs would have had a serious rival.
All the old catalogues before me are alike in one important respect, namely, the uniformly low prices. From the standpoint of to-day the prices were absurdly low--or are those of to-day absurdly high? I, for one, do not think so. When a man puts pen to paper on the subject of the prices of rare books, he feels--at least I feel--that it is a silly thing to do,--and yet we collectors have been doing it always, or almost always,--to point out that prices have about reached top notch, and that the wise man will wait for the inevitable decline before he separates himself from his money.
Now, it is my belief that books, in spite of the high prices that they are bringing in the shops and at auction, have only just begun their advance, and that there is no limit to the prices they will bring as time goes on. The only way to guess the future is to study the past; and such study as I have been able to make leads me to believe that for the really great books the sky is the limit.
"The really great books!" What are they, and where are they? I am not sure that I know; they do not often come my way, nor, when they do, am I in a position to compete for them; but as I can be perfectly happy without an ocean-going yacht, contenting myself with a motor-boat, so can I make shift to get along without a Gutenberg Bible, without a first folio of Shakespeare, or any of the quartos, in short, _sans_ any of those books which no millionaire's library can be without. But this I will say, that if I could afford to buy them, I would pay any price for the privilege of owning them.
A man may be possessed of relatively small means and yet indulge himself in all the joys of collecting, if he will deny himself other things not so important to his happiness. It is a problem in selection, as Elia points out in his essay "Old China," when a weighing for and against and a wearing of old clothes is recommended by his sister Bridget, if the twelve or sixteen shillings saved is to enable one to bring home in triumph an old folio. As a book-collector, Lamb would not take high rank; but he was a true book-lover, and the books he liked to read he liked to buy. And just here I may be permitted to record how I came across a little poem, in the manuscript of the author, which exactly voices his sentiments--and mine.
I was visiting Princeton not long ago, that beautiful little city, with its lovely halls and towers; and interested in libraries as I always am, had secured permission to browse at will among the collections formed by the late Laurence Hutton. After an inspection of his "Portraits in Plaster,"--a collection of death-masks, unique in this country or elsewhere,--I turned my attention to his association books. It is a difficult lot to classify, and not of overwhelming interest; not to be compared with the Richard Waln Meirs collection of Cruikshank, which has just been bequeathed to the Library; but nothing which is a book is entirely alien to me, and the Hutton books, with their inscriptions from their authors, testifying to their regard for him and to his love of books, are well worth examination.
I had opened many volumes at random, and finally chanced upon Brander Matthews's "Ballads of Books," a little anthology of bookish poems, for many years a favorite of mine. Turning to the inscription, I found--what I found; but what interested me particularly was a letter from an English admirer, one Thomas Hutchinson, inclosing some verses, of which I made a copy without the permission of any one. I did not ask the librarian, for he might have referred the question to the trustees, or something; but I did turn to a speaking likeness of "Larry" that hung right over the bookcase and seemed to say, "Why, sure, fellow book-lover; pass on the torch, print anything you please." And these are the verses:--
Ballade Of A Poor Book-Lover
I
Though in its stern vagaries Fate A poor book-lover me decreed, Perchance mine is a happy state-- The books I buy I like to read: To me dear friends they are indeed, But, howe'er enviously I sigh, Of others take I little heed-- The books I read I like to buy.
II
My depth of purse is not so great Nor yet my bibliophilic greed, That merely buying doth elate: The books I buy I like to read: Still e'en when dawdling in a mead, Beneath a cloudless summer sky, By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed, The books I read--I like to buy.
III
Some books tho' tooled in style ornate, Yet worms upon their contents feed, Some men about their bindings prate-- The books I buy I like to read: Yet some day may my fancy breed My ruin--it may now be nigh-- They reap, we know, who sow the seed: The books I read I like to buy.
Envoy
Tho' frequently to stall I speed, The books I buy I like to read; Yet wealth to me will never hie-- The books I read I like to buy.
Two things there are which go to make the price of a book--first the book itself, its scarcity, together with the urgency of the demand for it (a book may be unique and yet practically valueless, because of the fact that no one much cares to have it); and second, the plentifulness of money, or the ease with which its owner may have acquired his fortune. No one will suppose that, at the famous auction in London something over a hundred years ago, when Earl Spencer bid two thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds for the famous Boccaccio, and the Marquis of Blandford added, imperturbedly, "ten," and secured the prize--no one will suppose that either of the gentlemen had a scanty rent-roll.
In England, the days of the great private libraries are over. For generations, indeed for centuries, the English have had the leisure, the inclination, and the means to gratify their taste. They once searched the Continent for books and works of art, very much as we now go to England for them. They formed their libraries when books were plentiful and prices low. Moreover, there were fewer collectors than there are to-day. We are paying big prices,--the English never sell except at a profit,--but, all things considered, we are not paying more for the books than they are worth. There are probably now in England as many collectors as there ever were, but nevertheless the books are coming to this country; and while we may never be able to rival the treasures of the British Museum and the Bodleian, outside the great public libraries the important collections are now in this country, and will remain here.
And I am not sure how much longer the London dealers are going to retain their preëminence. We hear of New York becoming the centre of the financial world. It will in time become the centre of the bookselling world as well, the best market in which to buy and in which to sell. With the possible exception of Quaritch, George D. Smith has probably sold as many rare books as any man in the world; while Dr. Rosenbach, on the second floor of his shop in Philadelphia, has a stock of rare books unequaled by any other dealer in this country.
Ask any expert where the great books are, and you will be told, if you do not know already, of the wonders of Mr. Morgan's collections; of how Mr. Huntington has bought one library after another until he has practically everything obtainable; of Mr. William K. Bixby's manuscripts, of Mr. White's collection of the Elizabethans, and of Mr. Folger's Shakespeares.
There are as many tastes as there are collectors. Caxtons and incunabula of any sort are highly regarded; even the possession of a set of the Shakespeare folios makes a man a marked man, in spite of the fact that Henrietta Bartlett says they are not rare; but then, Miss Bartlett has been browsing on books rarer still, namely, the first quartos, of which there are of "Hamlet" two copies only, one in this country with a title-page, but lacking the last leaf, while the other copy, in the British Museum, has the last leaf but lacks the title-page; and "Venus and Adonis," of the first eight editions of which only thirteen copies are known to exist. All of these are as yet in England, except one copy of the second edition, which is owned by the Elizabethan Club of Yale University. Of "Titus Andronicus" there is only one copy of the first printing, this in the library of H. C. Folger of New York. Surely no one will dispute Miss Bartlett's statement that the quartos are rare indeed.
[Illustration: HENRY E. HUNTINGTON OF NEW YORK
A few years ago he conceived the idea of forming the greatest private library in the world. With the help of "G. D. S." and assisted by a staff of able librarians, he has accomplished what he set out to do.]
But why continue? Enough has been said: the point I want to make is that fifty years from now someone will be regretting that he was not present when a faultless first folio could have been had for the trifling sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, at which figure a dealer is now offering one. Or, glancing over a copy of "Book Prices Current" for 1918, bewail the time when presentation copies of Dickens could have been had for the trifling sum of a thousand dollars. Hush! I feel the spirit of prophecy upon me.
I sat with Harry Widener at Anderson's auction rooms a few years ago, on the evening when George D. Smith, acting for Mr. Huntington, paid fifty thousand dollars for a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. No book had ever sold for so great a price, yet I feel sure that Mr. Huntington secured a bargain, and I told him so; but for the average collector such great books as these are mere names, as far above the ordinary man as the moon; and the wise among us never cry for them; we content ourselves with--something else.
In collecting, as in everything else, experience is the best teacher. Before we can gain our footing we must make our mistakes and have them pointed out to us, or, by reading, discover them for ourselves. I have a confession to make. Forty years ago I thought that I had the makings of a numismatist in me, and was for a time diligent in collecting coins. In order that they might be readily fastened to a panel covered with velvet, I pierced each one with a small hole, and was much chagrined when I was told that I had absolutely ruined the lot, which was worth, perhaps, ten dollars. This was not a high price to pay for the discovery I then made and noted, that it is the height of wisdom to leave alone anything of value which may come my way; to repair, inlay, insert, mount, frame, or bind as little as possible.
This is not to suggest that my library is entirely devoid of books in bindings. A few specimens of the good binders I have, but what I value most is a sound bit of straight-grained crimson morocco covering the "Poems of Mr. Gray" with one of the finest examples of fore-edge painting I have ever seen, representing Stoke Poges Church Yard, the scene of the immortal "Elegy." I was much pleased when I discovered that this binding bore the stamp of Taylor & Hessey, a name I had always associated with first editions of Charles Lamb.
How many people have clipped signatures from old letters and documents, under the mistaken notion that they were collecting autographs. I happen to own the receipt for the copyright of the "Essays of Elia." It was signed by Lamb twice, originally; one signature has been cut away. It is a precious possession as it is, but I could wish that the "collector" in whose hands it once was had not removed one signature for his "scrapbook"--properly so called. Nor is the race yet dead of those who, indulging a vicious taste for subscription books, think that they are forming a library. My coins I have kept as an ever-present reminder of the mistake of my early days. Luckily I escaped the subscription-book stage.
[Illustration: STOKE POGES CHURCH
A fine example of fore-edge painting]
What we collect depends as well upon our taste as upon our means, for, given zeal and intelligence, it is surprising how soon one acquires a collection of--whatever it may be--which becomes a source of relaxation and instruction; and after a little one becomes, if not exactly expert, at least wise enough to escape obvious pitfalls. When experience directs our efforts the chief danger is past. But how much there is to know! I never leave the company of a man like Dr. Rosenbach, or A. J. Bowden, or the late Luther Livingston, without feeling a sense of hopelessness coming over me. What wonderful memories these men have! how many minute "points" about books they must have indexed, so to speak, in their minds! And there are collectors whose knowledge is equally bewildering. Mr. White, or Beverly Chew, for example; and Harry Widener, who, had he lived, would have set a new and, I fear, hopeless standard for us.
Not knowing much myself, I have found it wise not to try to beat the expert; it is like trying to beat Wall Street--it cannot be done. How can an outsider with the corner of his mind compete with one who is playing the game ever and always? The answer is simple--he can't; and he will do well not to try. It is better to confess ignorance and rely upon the word of a reliable dealer, than to endeavor to put one over on him. This method may enable a novice to buy a good horse, although such has not been my experience. I think it was Trollope who remarked that not even a bishop could sell a horse without forgetting that he was a bishop. I think I would rather trust a bookseller than a bishop.
And speaking of booksellers, they should be regarded as Hamlet did his players, as the abstract and brief chronicles of the time; and it would be well to remember that their ill report of you while you live is much worse than a bad epitaph after you are dead. Their stock in trade consists, not only in the books they have for sale, but in their knowledge. This may be at your disposal, if you use them after your own honor and dignity; but to live, they must sell books at a profit, and the delightful talk about books which you so much enjoy must, at least occasionally, result in a sale. Go to them for information as a possible customer, and you will find them, as Dr. Johnson said, generous and liberal-minded men; but use them solely as walking encyclopædias, and you may come to grief.
I have on the shelves over yonder a set of Foxe's "Martyrs" in three ponderous volumes, which I seldom have occasion to refer to; but in one volume is pasted a clipping from an old newspaper, telling a story of the elder Quaritch. A young lady once entered his shop in Piccadilly and requested to see the great man. She wanted to know all that is to be known of this once famous book, all about editions and prices and "points," of which there are many. Finally, after he had answered questions readily enough for some time, the old man became wise, and remarked, "Now, my dear, if you want to know anything else about this book, my fee will be five guineas." The transaction was at an end. Had Quaritch been a lawyer and the young lady a stranger, her first question would have resulted in a request for a retainer.
But I am a long time in coming to my old catalogues. Let me take one at random, and opening it at the first page, pick out the first item which meets my eye. Here it is:--
ALKEN, HENRY--Analysis of the Hunting Field. Woodcuts and colored illustrations. First edition, royal 8vo. original cloth, uncut. Ackerman, 1846. £2.
It was the last work but one of a man who is now "collected" by many who, like myself, would as soon think of riding a zebra as a hunter. My copy cost me $100, while my "Life of Mytton," third edition, I regarded as a bargain at $50. Had I been wise enough to buy it five and thirty years ago, I would have paid about as many shillings for it.
With sporting books in mind it is quite natural to turn to Surtees. His "Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities" is missing from this catalogue, but here are a lot of them. "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour" in full levant morocco, extra, by Tout, for three guineas, and "Ask Mamma" in cloth, uncut, for £2 15_s._ "Handley Cross" is priced at fifty shillings, and "Facey Romford's Hounds" at two pounds--all first editions, mind you, and for the most part just as you want them, in the original cloth, uncut. My advice would be to forget these prices of yesteryear, and if you want a set of the best sporting novels ever written (I know a charming woman who has read every one of them) go at once to them that sell.
But while we are thinking of colored-plate books, let us see what it would have cost us to secure a copy of À Beckett's "Comic History of Rome." Here it is, "complete in numbers as originally published," four guineas; while a "Comic History of England," two volumes, bound by Riviere from the original parts, in full red levant morocco, extra, cost five guineas. I have tried to read these histories--it cannot be done. It is like reading the not very funny book of an old-time comic opera (always excepting Gilbert's), which depended for its success on the music and the acting--as these books depend on their illustrations by Leech. It is on account of the humor of their wonderfully caricatured portraits of historic personages, in anachronistic surroundings, that these books live and deserve to live. What could be better than the landing of Julius Cæsar on the shores of Albion, from the deck of a channel steamer of Leech's own time?
Did you observe that the "History of Rome" was bound up from the original parts? This, according to modern notions, is a mistake. Parts should be left alone--severely alone, I should say. I have no love for books "in parts," and as this is admitted heresy, I should perhaps explain. As is well known, some of the most desired of modern books, "Pickwick" and "Vanity Fair" for example, were so published, and particulars as to one will indicate the reason for my prejudice against all books "in parts."
In April, 1916, in New York, the Coggeshall Dickens collection was dispersed, and a copy of "Pickwick" in parts was advertised, no doubt correctly, as the most nearly perfect copy ever offered at a public sale. Two full pages of the catalogue were taken up in a painstaking description of the birthmarks of this famous book. It was, like most of the other great novels, brought out "twenty parts in nineteen,"--that is, the last number was a double number,--and with a page of the original manuscript, it brought $5350. When a novel published less than a century ago brings such a price, it must be of extraordinary interest and rarity. Was the price high? Decidedly not! There are said to be not ten such copies in existence. It was in superb condition, and manuscript pages of "Pickwick" do not grow on trees. All the details which go to make up a perfect set can be found in Eckel's "First Editions of Charles Dickens."
Briefly, in order to take high rank it is necessary that each part should be clean and perfect and should have the correct imprint and date; it should have the proper number of illustrations by the right artist; and these plates must be original and not reëtched, and almost every plate has certain peculiarities which will mislead the unwary. But this is not all. Each part carried certain announcements and advertisements. These must be carefully looked to, for they are of the utmost value in determining whether it be an early or a later issue of the first edition. An advertisement of "Rowland and Son's Toilet Preparations" where "Simpson's Pills" should be, might lead to painful discussion.
But it is difficult to say whether the possession of a copy of "Pickwick" like the Coggeshall copy is an asset or a liability. It must be handled with gloves; the pea-green paper wrappers are very tender, and not everyone who insists on seeing your treasures knows how to treat such a pamphlet; and, horror of horrors! a "part" might get stacked up with a pile of "Outlooks" on the library table, or get mislaid altogether. So on the whole I am inclined to leave such books to those whose knowledge of bibliography is more exact than mine, and who would not regard the loss of a "part" as an irretrievable disaster. My preference is to get, when I can, books bound in cloth or boards "as issued." They are sufficiently expensive and can be handled with greater freedom. My library is, in a sense, a circulating library: my books move around with me, and a bound book, in some measure at least, takes care of itself. Having said all of which, I looked upon that Coggeshall "Pickwick," and lusted after it.
There is, however, an even greater copy awaiting a purchaser at Rosenbach's. It is a presentation copy in parts, the only one known to exist. Each of the first fourteen parts has Dickens's autograph inscription, "Mary Hogarth from hers most affectionately," variously signed--in full, "Charles Dickens," with initials, or "The Editor." After the publication of the fourteenth part Miss Hogarth, his sister-in-law, a young girl in her eighteenth year, died suddenly, and the shock of her death was so great that Dickens was obliged to discontinue work upon "Pickwick" for two months. No doubt this is the finest "Pickwick" in the world. It has all the "points" and to spare--and the price, well, only a very rich or a very wise man could buy it.
[Illustration: "Blake being unable to find a publisher for his songs, Mrs. Blake went out with half a crown, all the money they had in the world, and of that laid out 1s. 10d. on the simple materials necessary for setting in practice the new revelation. Upon that investment of 1s. 10d. he started what was to prove a principal means of support through his future life.... The poet and his wife did everything in making the book,--writing, designing, printing, engraving, everything except manufacturing the paper. The very ink, or color rather, they did make."--GILCHRIST.]
But to return to my catalogue. Here is Pierce Egan's "Boxiana," five volumes, 8vo, as clean as new, in the original boards, uncut,--that's my style,--and the price, twelve pounds; three hundred and fifty dollars would be a fair price to-day. And here is the "Anecdotes of the Life and Transactions of Mrs. Margaret Rudd," a notorious woman who just escaped hanging for forgery, of whom Dr. Johnson once said that he would have gone to see her, but that he was prevented from such a frolic by his fear that it would get into the newspapers. I have been looking for it in vain for years; here it is, in new calf, price nine shillings, and Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," first edition, in contemporary calf, for thirty.
Let us turn to poetry. Arnold, Matthew, not interesting; nothing, it chances, by Blake; his "Poetical Sketches," 1783, has always been excessively rare, only a dozen or so copies are known, and "Songs of Innocence and of Experience," while not so scarce, is much more desired. This lovely book was originally "Songs of Innocence" only; "Experience" came later, as it always does. Of all the books I know, this is the most interesting. It is in very deed "W. Blake, his book," the author being as well the designer, engraver, printer, and illuminator of it.
To attempt in a paragraph any bibliographical account of the "Songs" is as impossible as to give the genealogy of a fairy. In the ordinary sense the book was never published. Blake sold it to such of his friends as would buy, at prices ranging from thirty shillings to two guineas. Later, to help him over a difficulty (and his life was full of difficulties), they paid him perhaps as much as twenty pounds and in return got a copy glowing with colors and gold. Hence no two copies are exactly alike. It is one of the few books of which a man fortunate enough to own any copy may say, "I like mine best." The price to-day for an average copy is about two thousand dollars.
I can see clearly now that in order to be up to date there must be a new edition of this book every minute. I had just suggested $2000 as the probable price of the "Songs" when a priced copy of the Linnell Catalogue of his Blake Collection reached me. This, the last and greatest Blake collection in England, was sold at auction on March 15, 1918, and accustomed as I am to high prices I was bewildered as I turned its pages. There were two copies of the "Songs"; each brought £735. The "Poetical Sketches" was conspicuous by its absence, while the "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" was knocked down for £756. The drawings for Dante's "Divina Commedia," sixty-eight in all, brought the amazing price of £7665. And these prices will be materially advanced before the booksellers are done with them, as we shall see when their catalogues arrive. We come back to earth with a thud after this lofty flight, in the course of which we seem to have been seeing visions and dreaming dreams, much as Blake himself did.
[Illustration: "A LEAF FROM AN UNOPENED VOLUME"
An unpublished manuscript in the autograph of Charlotte Brontë, written in microscopical characters on sixteen pages measuring 3-1/2 by 4-1/2 inches; in a wrapper of druggist's blue paper]
Continuing to "beat the track of the alphabet," we reach Brontë and note that now scarce item, "Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell," the genuine first edition printed by Hasler in 1846, for Aylott & Jones, before the title-page bore the Smith-Elder imprint; price two pounds five. Walter Hill's last catalogue has a Smith-Elder copy at $12.50, but the right imprint now makes a difference of several hundred dollars. About a year ago Edmund D. Brooks, of Minneapolis, was offering Charlotte Brontë's own copy of the book, with the Aylott and Jones imprint, with some manuscript notes which made it especially interesting to Brontë collectors, the most important of whom, by the way, is my lifelong friend, H. H. Bonnell of Philadelphia, whose unrivaled Brontë collection is not unworthy of an honored place in the Brontë Museum at Haworth. I called his attention to it, but he already had a presentation copy to Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-Law rhymer.
Burns: the first Edinburgh edition, for a song; no Kilmarnock edition--that fine old item which every collector wants has always been excessively scarce; and in this connection let me disinter a good story of how one collector secured a copy. The story is told of John Allan, from whom, as a collector, I am descended by the process of clasping hands. My old friend, Ferdinand Dreer, for more than sixty years a distinguished collector in Philadelphia, was an intimate friend of Allan's, and passed on to me the collecting legends he had received from him. Allan was an old Scotchman, living in New York when the story begins, who by his industry had acquired a small fortune, much of which he spent in the purchase of books. He collected the books of his period and extra-illustrated them. Lives of Mary Queen of Scots, and Byron; Dibdin, of course, and Americana; but Burns was his ruling passion. He had the first Edinburgh edition, and longed for the Kilmarnock--as who does not? He had a standing order for a copy up to seven guineas, which in those days was considered a fair price, and finally one was reported to him from London at eight. He ordered it out, but it was sold before his letter arrived, and he was greatly disappointed. Some time afterward a friend from the old country visited him, and as he was sailing, asked if he could do anything for him at home. "Yes," said Allan, "get me, if you possibly can, the Kilmarnock edition of Burns." His friend was instructed as to its scarcity and the price he might have to pay for it. On his return his friend, engaged as usual in his affairs, discovered that one of his workmen was drunk. In those days it was not considered good form to get drunk except on Saturday night. How could he get drunk in the middle of the week? Where did he get the money? The answer was that by pawning some books ten shillings had been raised. "And what books had you?" "Oh, Burns and some others; every Scotchman has a copy of Burns." Then, suddenly remembering his old friend in New York, he asked, "What sort of a copy was it?" "The old Kilmarnock," was the reply. Not to make the story too long, the pawn-ticket was secured for a guinea, the books redeemed, and the Kilmarnock Burns passed into Allan's possession.
[Illustration: Title of the Kilmarnock Edition of Burns's Poems]
After his death his books were sold at auction (1864). This was during our Civil War, and several times the sale was suspended owing to the noise of a passing regiment in the street. Notwithstanding that times were not propitious for book-sales, his friends were astonished at the prices realized: the Burns fetched $106. It was probably a poor copy. A generation or two ago not as much care was paid to condition as now. Very few uncut copies are known. One is owned by a man as shouldn't. Another is in the Burns Museum in Ayrshire, which cost the Museum Trustees a thousand pounds; the Canfield, which was purchased by Harry Widener for six thousand dollars, and the Van Antwerp copy, which, at the sale of his collection in London in 1907, brought seven hundred pounds; but much bibliographical water has gone over the dam since 1907, and for some reason the Van Antwerp books, with the exception of one or two items, did not bring as good prices as they should have done. They were sold at an unfortunate moment and perhaps at the wrong place. In Walter Hill's current catalogue there is a Kilmarnock Burns, in an old binding, which looks very cheap to me at $2600. At the Allan sale an Eliot Bible brought the then enormous sum of $825. Supposing an Eliot Bible were obtainable to-day, it would bring, no doubt, five thousand dollars, perhaps more.
This is a long digression. There are other desired volumes besides Burns. Here is a "Paradise Lost," perhaps not so fine a copy as Sabin is now offering for four hundred pounds; but the price is only thirty pounds; and this reminds me that in Beverly Chew's copy, an exceptionally fine one, as all the books of that fastidious collector are, there is an interesting note made by a former owner to this effect: "This is the first edition of this book and has the first title-page. It is worth nearly ten pounds and is rising in value. 1857."
Alphabetically speaking, it is only a step from Milton to Moore, George. Here is his "Flowers of Passion," for which I paid fifteen dollars ten or more years ago--priced at half a crown.
But let us take up another catalogue, one which issued from the world-famous shop in Piccadilly, Quaritch's. Forty years ago Quaritch thought it almost beneath his dignity as a bookseller to offer for sale any except the very rarest books in English; very much as, up to within the last few years, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge did not think it worth their while to refer more than casually to the glories of English literature. When we open an old Quaritch catalogue, we step out of this age into another, which leads me to observe how remarkable is the change in taste which has come over the collecting world in the last fifty years. Formerly it was the fashion to collect extensively books of which few among us now know anything: books in learned or painful languages, on Philosophy or Religion, as well as those which, for the want of a better name, we call "Classics"; books frequently spoken of, but seldom read.
Such books, unless very valuable indeed, no longer find ready buyers. We have come into our great inheritance. We now dip deep in our "well of English undefyled"; Aldines and Elzevirs have gone out of fashion. Even one of the rarest of them, "Le Pastissier François," is not greatly desired; and I take it that the reason for this change is chiefly due to the difference in the type of men who are prominent among the buyers of fine books to-day. Formerly the collector was a man, not necessarily with a liberal education, but with an education entirely different from that which the best educated among us now receive. I doubt if there are in this country to-day half a dozen important bookbuyers who can read Latin with ease, let alone Greek. Of French, German, and Italian some of us have a working knowledge, but most of us prefer to buy books which we can enjoy without constant reference to a dictionary.
The world is the college of the book-collector of to-day. Many of us are busy men of affairs, familiar, it may be, with the price of oil, or steel, or copper, or coal, or cotton, or, it may be, with the price of the "shares" of all of these and more. Books are our relaxation. We make it a rule not to buy what we cannot read. Some of us indulge the vain hope that time will bring us leisure to acquaint ourselves fully with the contents of all our books. We want books written in our own tongue, and most of us have some pet author or group of authors, or period, it may be, in which we love to lose ourselves and forget the cares of the present. One man may have a collection of Pope, another of Goldsmith, another of Lamb, and so on. The drama has its votaries who are never seen in a theatre; but look into their libraries and you will find everything, from "Ralph Roister Doister" to the "Importance of Being Earnest." And note that these collections are formed by men who are not students in the accepted sense of the word, but who, in the course of years, have accumulated an immense amount of learning. Clarence S. Bement is a fine example of the collector of to-day, a man of large affairs with the tastes and learning of a scholar. It has always seemed to me that professors of literature and collectors do not intermingle as they should. They might learn much from each other. I yield to no professor in my passion for English literature. My knowledge is deficient and inexact, but what I lack in learning I make up in love.
But we are neglecting the Quaritch catalogue. Let us open it at random, as old people used to open their Bibles, and govern their conduct by the first text which met their eyes. Here we are: "Grammatica Graeca," Milan, 1476; the first edition of the first book printed in Greek; one of six known copies. So it is possible for only six busy men to recreate themselves after a hard day's work with a first Greek Grammar. Too bad! Here is another: Macrobius, "The Saturnalia"--"a miscellany of criticism and antiquities, full of erudition and very useful, similar in their plan to the 'Noctes Atticæ' of Aulus Gellius." No doubt, but as dead as counterfeit money. Here is another: Boethius, "De Consolatione Philosophiæ." Boethius! I seem to have heard of him. Who was he? Not in "Who's Who," obviously. Let us look elsewhere. Ah! "Famous philosopher and official in the Court of Theodoric, born about 475 A.D., put to death without trial about 524." They had a short way with philosophers in those days. If William the Second to None in Germany had adopted this method with his philosophers, the world might not now be in such a plight.
_Note_: A college professor to whom I was in confidence showing these notes the other day, remarked, "I suggest that you soft-pedal that Boethius business, my boy." (How we middle-aged men love to call each other boys; very much as young boys flatter themselves with the phrase, "old man.") "The 'Consolation of Philosophy' was the best seller for a thousand years or so. Boethius's reputation is not in the making, as yours is, and when yours is made, it will in all probability not last as long." I thought I detected a slight note of sarcasm in this, but I may have been mistaken.
[Illustration: Fifteenth-century English manuscript on vellum, "De Consolatione Philosophiæ." Rubricated throughout. Its chief interest is the contemporary binding, consisting of the usual oak boards covered with pink deerskin, let into another piece of deerskin which completely surrounds it and terminates in a large knot. A clasp fastens the outer cover. It was evidently intended to be worn at the girdle. The British Museum possesses very few bindings of this character and these service books. Lay books are of even greater rarity.]
Let us look further. Here we are: "Coryat's Crudities, hastily gobbled up in five Moneths Trauells." Tom Coryat was a buffoon and a beggar and a braggart, who wrote what has come to be regarded as the first handbook on travel. Browning thought very highly of it, as I remember, and Walter Hill is at this very minute offering his copy of the "Crudities" for five hundred dollars. The catalogues say there are very few perfect copies in existence, in which case I should like to content myself with Browning's imperfect copy. I love these old books, written by frail human beings for human beings frail as myself. Clowns are the true philosophers, and all vagabonds are beloved, most of all, Locke's. Don't confuse my Locke with the fellow who wrote on the "Human Understanding," a century or two ago.
Here is the "Ship of Fools," another best seller of a bygone age. The original work, by Sebastian Brandt, was published not long after the invention of printing, in 1494. Edition followed edition, not only in its original Swabian dialect, but also in Latin, French, and Dutch. In 1509 an English version,--it could hardly be called a translation,--by Alexander Barclay, appeared from the press of Pynson--he who called Caxton "worshipful master." For quite two hundred years it was the rage of the reading world. In it the vices and weaknesses of all classes of society were satirized in a manner which gave great delight; and those who could not read were able to enjoy the fine, bold woodcuts with which the work was embellished. No form of folly escaped. Even the mediæval book-collector is made to say:--
Still am I busy bookes assemblynge, For to have plentie it is a pleasaunt thynge, In my conceyt and to have them ay in hande, But what they mene do I not understande.
This is one of the books which can usually be found in a Quaritch catalogue, if it can be found anywhere. At the Hoe sale a copy brought $1825; but the average collector will make shift to get along with an excellent reprint which was published in Edinburgh forty years or so ago, and which can be had for a few shillings, when he chances to come across it.
Here is a great book! The first folio of Shakespeare, the cornerstone of every great Library. What's in a name? Did Shakespeare of Stratford write the plays? The late Dr. Furness declined to be led into a discussion of this point, wisely remarking, "We have the plays; what difference does it make who wrote them?" But the question will not down. The latest theory is that Bacon wrote the Psalms of David also, and to disguise the fact tucked in a cryptogram, another name. If you have at hand a King James's version of the Bible, and will turn to the forty-sixth Psalm and count the words from the beginning to the forty-sixth word, and will then count the words from the end until you again come to the forty-sixth word, you may learn something to your advantage.
But, whoever wrote them, the first folio--the plays collected by Heming and Condell, and printed in 1623, at the charges of Isaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount--is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, volume in all literature. In it not less than twenty dramas, many of which rank among the literary masterpieces of the world, were brought together for the first time. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the first folio of Shakespeare, Shakespeare! "not our poet, but the world's," is so highly regarded? The condition and location of practically every copy in the world is known and recorded. Originally the price is supposed to have been a guinea, and a century passed before collectors and scholars realized that it, like its author, was not for an age, but for all time. In 1792 a copy brought £30, and in 1818 "an original copy in a genuine state" changed hands at £121; but what shall be said of the price it fetches to-day?
When, a few years ago, a Philadelphia collector paid the record price of almost twenty thousand dollars, people unlearned in the lore of books expressed amazement that a book should bring so large a sum; but he secured one of the finest copies in existence, known to collectors as the Locker-Lampson copy, which had been for a short time in the possession of William C. Van Antwerp, of New York, who, unluckily for himself and for the book-collecting world, stopped collecting almost as soon as he began. This splendid folio has now found a permanent resting place in the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard. It is no doubt inevitable that these notable books should at last come to occupy honored niches in great mausoleums, as public libraries really are, but I cannot escape the conviction that Edmond de Goncourt was right when he said in his will:--
"My wish is that my drawings, my prints, my curiosities, my books--in a word these things of art which have been the joy of my life--shall not be consigned to the cold tomb of a museum, and subjected to the stupid glance of the careless passer-by; but I require that they shall all be dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer, so that the pleasure which the acquiring of each one of them has given me shall be given again, in each case, to some inheritor of my own tastes."
I wish that my friends, the Pennells, had followed this course when they gave up their London apartments in the Adelphi and disposed of their valuable Whistler collection. But no, with characteristic generosity the whole collection goes to the nation as a gift--the Library of Congress at Washington is to be its resting-place. The demand for Whistler is ever increasing with his fame which, the Pennells say, will live forever. Those who have a lot of Whistler material smile--the value of their collections is enhanced. Those of us who, like the writer, have to be content with two butterflies, or at most three, sigh and turn aside.
Possession is the grave of bliss. No sooner do we own some great book than we want another. The appetite grows by what it feeds on. The Shakespeare folio is a book for show and to be proud of, but we want a book to love. Here it is: Walton's "Compleat Angler," beloved by gentle men, such as all collectors are. We welcome the peace and contentment which it suggests, "especially," as its author says, "in such days and times as I have laid aside business and gone a-fishing."
Therein lies the charm of this book, for those of us who are wise enough occasionally to lay aside business and go a-fishing or a-hunting, albeit only book-hunting; for it is the spirit of sport rather than the sport itself that is important. Old Isaak Walton counted fishermen as honest men. I wonder did he call them truthful? If so, there has been a sad falling off since his day, for I seem to remember words to this effect: "The fisherman riseth up early in the morning and disturbeth the whole household. Mighty are his preparations. He goeth forth full of hope. When the day is far spent, he returneth, smelling of strong drink, and the truth is not in him."
I wish that some day I might discover an "Angler," not on the banks of a stream, but all unsuspected on some book-stall. It is most unlikely; those days are past. I shall never own a first "Angler." This little book has been thumbed out of existence almost, by generations of readers with coarse, wet hands who carried the book in their pockets or left it lying by the river in the excitement of landing a trout. Five impressions, all rare, were made before the author died in his "neintyeth" year, and was buried in the South Transept of the Cathedral of William of Wykeham.
But Walton wrote of Fishers of Men as well as of fishing. His lives of John Donne, the Dean of St. Paul's; of Richard Hooker, the "Judicious," as he is usually called, when called at all; of George Herbert, and several other men, honorable in their generation, are quaint and charming. These lives, published originally at intervals of many years, are not rare, nor is the volume of 1670, the first collected edition of the Lives, unless it is a presentation copy. Such a copy sold twenty years ago for fifteen pounds. Some years ago I paid just three times this sum for a copy inscribed by Walton to the Lord Bishop of Oxford. I did not then know that the Bishop of Oxford was also the famous Dr. John Fell, the hero of the well-known epigram:--
I do not like you Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know and know full well, I do not like you Dr. Fell,--
or I would willingly have paid more for it.
But I am wandering from my text. To return to the "Angler." Fifty pounds was a fair price for a fine copy fifty years ago. George D. Smith sold a copy a few weeks since for five thousand dollars, and the Heckscher copy a few years ago brought thirty-nine hundred dollars; but the record price appears to have been paid for the Van Antwerp copy, which is generally believed to be the finest in existence. It is bound in original sheepskin, and was formerly in the library of Frederick Locker-Lampson. It was sold in London some ten years ago and was purchased by Quaritch for "an American," which was a sort of _nom de guerre_ of the late J. P. Morgan, for £1290.
[Illustration: The rare first edition, and, according to Mr. Livingston in "The Bibliophile," the earlier issue of the two printed in that year. A very large copy. From the Hagen collection. Said to be the finest copy in existence. It is bound in contemporary vellum, and measures 3-1/2 × 6-1/8 inches.]
When "Anglers" could be had for fifty pounds, "Vicars" brought ten, or fifteen if in exceptionally fine condition, and the man who then spent this sum for a "Vicar" chose as wisely as did the Vicar's wife her wedding gown, "not for a fine glossy surface, but for qualities as would wear well." These two little volumes, with the Salisbury imprint and a required blunder or two, will soon be worth a thousand dollars. When I paid £120 for mine some years ago, I felt that I was courting ruin, especially when I recalled that Dr. Johnson thought rather well of himself for having secured for Goldsmith just half this sum for the copyright of it. Boswell's story of the sale of the manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," as Johnson related it to him, is as pretty a bit of bibliographical history as we have. Those who know it will pardon the intrusion of the story for the sake of the pleasure it may give others.
"I received," said Johnson, "one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begged that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was drest, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I bro
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