Books and bidders

by A. S. W. Rosenbach

II

A MILLION DOLLAR BOOKSHELF

One of my early memories concerns a cold winter night in Philadelphia. I was a little boy of thirteen. Uncle Moses and I had been together undisturbed the entire evening, for the weather was so bitterly cold not one of his book-loving cronies dared venture out. With the shop door locked and the shutters tightly drawn, we sat close to the little wood stove, in the dim light of an oil lamp, while I listened, fascinated, to endless tales about books—how this one was lost and that one found. To this handsome old patriarch books were more vital than people; with ease he held my boyish imagination until I was almost afraid to glance back at the shadowed shelves.

He told me the story of a man in England, a collector, who heard of some Shakespeare folios in Spain; of how, after months of inquiries and exciting adventures, he at last journeyed to a castle in the Pyrenees. There he found an ancient Spanish grandee leaning forward before a great fireplace, feeding the fire with torn bits of paper on which, to his horror, he beheld English printing; how he tore them from the old man’s fingers—the remains of a second Shakespeare folio he had sought and found too late! As Uncle Moses spoke, he arose to throw casually some sheets of an old Pennsylvania Journal into the stove, while I watched, tense and frightened for fear they, too, might be of value!

At last, as the clock in Independence Hall struck midnight, we felt our way down the dark narrow stairs to the street. In his hand Uncle Moses clasped a cherished volume of the first edition of Fielding’s Tom Jones, to read when he reached home. The uneven sidewalks were dangerously glazed with ice; as we crept unsteadily toward the corner we were relieved to see a lonely carriage passing, and hailed it. The streets were even worse than the sidewalks, and the horse went his way skiddingly. We came to a bridge which shone like a polished mirror in the moonlight. We were halfway across when suddenly the horse lurched, and both Uncle Moses and I were thrown forward. In the confusion Uncle Moses dropped his precious book. Out it went, slithering along the icy way. I started to climb down after it, but was stopped by a firm hand.

Slowly Uncle Moses got out, walked uncertainly forward. He had not gone two steps before he lost his balance. As he fell I cried aloud in alarm and the driver turned, amazed. Up Uncle Moses got, and down he went again; yet with each fall he came nearer and nearer his book, which lay open face downward in the frozen gutter. At last he reached it and, after securely placing it in his overcoat pocket, started the perilous way back. But he had learned the trick; instead of trying to walk, he crouched down on all fours, and, dignified dean of booksellers that he was, crawled cautiously toward the carriage. Suddenly the sight of him there struck me as being the funniest thing I had ever seen! The glassy bridge, the unreal light, and statuesque Uncle Moses telescoping like a huge caterpillar toward me! I snickered, then burst out laughing. The old driver followed suit, and our rude guffaws echoed across the bridge, through the deserted streets. Uncle Moses’ dark eyes snapped as he reached the carriage.

“You should have let me get your book,” I said shamefacedly. “You might have broken your leg!”

“I would risk breaking two legs for this book,” he growled back, and we drove on.

In the years which followed I have known men to hazard their fortunes, go long journeys halfway about the world, forget friendship, even lie, cheat, and steal, all for the gain of a book. Improbable as it sounds, there was a man once who murdered so that he might possess a volume for which he had long yearned.

It was in the valuable library of the monastery at Poblet, near Tarragona, just a century ago, that Don Vincente, a Spanish monk, developed his unholy love for books. Years of religious training did not prevent him from seizing every chance to plunder his own and other monastery libraries which were thrown open in a political upheaval of the time. As confusion spread, he found opportunities to take the books he coveted most, and then he vanished. But sometime later he appeared in Barcelona, the proprietor of a bookshop. The one volume he had worshiped at a distance and longed to own was a work of Lamberto Palmart, published in Valencia in 1482. It had been in the collection of a Barcelona advocate for years, and at the dispersal of his estate was offered at auction. It was understood to be the only one of its kind known.

Don Vincente went to the sale and staked every cent he possessed on it; but a competitor, Augustino Paxtot, outbid him by fourteen pesetas. The ex-monk grew white with fury, threatening revenge as he left the room. When, a few nights later, Paxtot’s house burned to the ground and he perished with it, several friends recalled Don Vincente’s threats. He was reported to the police, his shop searched, and the rare Palmart volume found. Even when he was arrested, Don Vincente made no effort to deny his guilt. All he seemed interested in was the fate of the little book which had brought disgrace upon him. During the trial his lawyer, making a valiant effort to save him, announced that another copy of the Palmart volume had been found in a Paris library, a few days previous to the alleged crime. It could not be proved, he argued, that the copy in question was the one recently auctioned. But Don Vincente, hearing his book was not unique, burst into violent weeping and showed no further interest in the trial. Alone at night in his cell, and before the court during the final days of his trial, his only words of regret were, “Alas, alas! My copy is not unique!”

To-day book collectors are less violent, although they have their moments when they seethe and writhe inwardly! Just go to any book sale and observe the expressions of competitive buyers—faces that are usually marvelous poker portraits become sharply distorted; eyes which ordinarily indulge in an almost studied innocence shoot sudden darts of fire. Whenever I attend an important sale I make it a point to look neither to the right nor to the left!

I have often been asked why collectors are so enamored of first editions. This is almost unanswerable, because the whole question of first editions hinges on a matter of sentiment, of feeling, almost of emotion. How can one explain the sentimental affections? A first edition is almost as much the original work of its author as the painting is of an artist. I suppose there are people—I’ve been told there are intelligent people—who would just as soon have an edition of Keats’s Poems, for example, well printed on good paper, in a handsome modern binding, as a first edition in its original boards! I only hope I shall never meet them.

Collectors are very ardent on the subject of association copies, or books inscribed or annotated by the authors themselves. To think that John Keats may have held in his slender white fingers your first edition of his poems; that his luminous eyes, already sunken from the inroads of his fatal illness, may have lingered over the very pages of the copy you possess—this is enough to thrill the Devil himself!

Miss Amy Lowell was, as all the world knows, devoted to Keats. She believed herself spiritually attuned to him. I shall never forget the last time I visited at her home near Boston. After a delightful dinner, we went into her library, where we lighted our cigars and talked. She told me of her colossal work on Keats, which, fortunately for her peace of mind, she lived to see published. Then followed a silence as the blue haze of smoke enveloped her. Suddenly she leaned toward me and, with an excited brightness in her eyes, said, “Doctor, there is a certain book I want more than anything in the world! Keats’s own copy of Shakespeare, with his notes through it.”

I put my hand in my pocket and smiled. By one of those unusual chances which really do make truth stranger than fiction, I had that very volume in my pocket. She caught her breath and grew quite pale with joy as I handed it to her.

At the Frederickson sale in New York, nearly thirty years ago, Mr. Harry B. Smith bought Shelley’s own copy of Queen Mab. The poet had presented this to his future wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, with the wooing inscription, “You see, Mary, I have not forgotten you.” When Mr. Smith was going out of the salesroom, an old gentleman whom he had never seen before stopped him. Brushing tears from his eyes, he asked if he might merely hold the book in his hands for a moment. The history of this same copy, I think, is interesting. General Brayton Ives bought it in 1888 from a London dealer for £20—less than $100. Three years afterward it was sold at the dispersal of the General’s library to Mr. Frederickson for not quite one hundred per cent gain—$190. But when Mr. Smith, the next possessor, bought it, the price jumped to $650. Sometime later I purchased his “Sentimental Library,” as he gracefully termed it, and I also trembled when first holding this Queen Mab in my hands. In 1914 I sold it to Mr. William K. Bixby of St. Louis for $12,500. Then it finally passed, as so many of the finest books did, into Mr. Huntington’s collection, where it will remain for all time.

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF KEATS’S FAMOUS
“SONNET TO HAYDON”

Buxton Forman’s copy of Queen Mab, the one Shelley had kept for himself and inestimably enriched by changes and additions for a later edition, is now in the remarkable collection of Mr. Jerome D. Kern of New York.

FROM A LETTER OF SHELLEY SPEAKING OF KEATS

Still another, also containing Shelley’s precious notes in his own hand, is in that treasure-house of rarities, the library of Mr. Thomas J. Wise. His catalogue, now wanting only the last volume, is more absorbingly interesting to book lovers than most works of fiction.

When I was in London in 1925 a friend told me a story which he thought something of a joke on me. As he browsed, one fine spring day, through some books in a bookstall, he noticed a young man also reading. Suddenly a clerk from inside the shop came out, exhibiting a cheap dog’s-eared copy of Margot Asquith’s autobiography.

“How much?” asked the young man cautiously. The clerk replied, “Fourpence.”

“Fourpence,” repeated the other, scandalized. “Who do you think I am—Dr. Rosenbach?”

A few days before, I had bought in London, at auction, a copy of Richard Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, at the Royal Society’s sale. I had to pay £6800, or about $34,000, for it. It was a beautiful copy, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1664, and the only one known. Translated into the Indian language, it was entitled Wehkomaonganoo Asquam Peantogig, and was the painstaking work of that picturesque early missionary, Apostle John Eliot, who a few years before had translated the Bible for the Indians’ use too. The auction price of this book—Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted—was quick to take hold of the public imagination; of course it was colorful news, and English editors made the most of it.

The story was cabled over here, and one afternoon soon after my return a man telephoned saying he had a book he must show me. His voice was shaking with excitement, so I could not refuse him. He soon called, a dignified elderly gentleman. Under his arm he held tightly an old book.

“What is this?” he demanded as he proudly waved the volume before my eyes. I glanced at it and answered, “It looks very much like a Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted.” I had hardly spoken when he gave a short gasp and pulled a newspaper clipping from his pocket. As I read, I understood this poor fellow’s hopes; he believed he had made a great find. The most significant fact about my purchase was not mentioned in the clipping. Its great value lay in that it was the only known copy of Eliot’s translation of Baxter’s work into the Indian language. When I told him this, and that editions in English were as common as blackberries, he suddenly grew pale and, as he turned away in disappointment, said in a dejected tone, “I feel $34,000 poorer than when I came in!”

It is extremely unfortunate that the price of first editions should occupy so predominant a place in the public mind. The true book lover gives the question of monetary value the last as well as the least important place in his passion for collecting. If the average reader finds it easier to remember books by their prices in lieu of other earmarks, he can look forward to a time in the near future when he must revalue his entire mental collection. Prices of fine books are rising to new heights. Old records show they have advanced continually since the middle of the seventeenth century. Prices are now bound to go much higher. The world is filled with books, but the number of desirable ones is limited.

BOOKROOM AT 1320 WALNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA

During the past decade many wonderful rarities have been taken off the market forever. They have found a final resting place in public institutions. Two of the greatest private collections in this country, those of Mr. Henry E. Huntington and the late Pierpont Morgan, have been dedicated forever to the people. These splendid gifts comprise, at a very rough estimate, more than one hundred thousand of the world’s choicest literary treasures. Mr. William L. Clements, of Bay City, Michigan, has donated his library of Americana to the University of Michigan, and Mr. William A. Clark, Jr., of Los Angeles, his splendid collection to the southern branch of the University of California, thus removing all possibility of their books ever being offered for sale. Mr. Clark is held in grateful esteem by scholars and lovers of books for his superb series of facsimiles of great English classics in his collection.

The magnificent gift of the library of Harry Elkins Widener to Harvard University is another case in point. Born in Philadelphia, Harry Elkins Widener spent his childhood on the large estate of his grandfather, the late P. A. B. Widener, in a home filled with treasures brought together from all parts of the world. The collector’s spirit was his through both inheritance and environment. When a young boy he showed an interest in books, and as he grew older proved himself a born student of bibliography. Books were his life work, his recreation, his passion.

I think if Harry Elkins Widener had lived he would have been the greatest collector the world has ever known. Of course he began as all collectors do, gathering rather unimportant works. But he weeded them out sooner than most enthusiasts, and by the time he was twenty-six had a library of three thousand volumes; each one of these showed a most fastidious, exacting, and exquisite taste, which he had found possible to gratify through the sympathy and generosity of his grandfather and his mother. When abroad attending various book sales, because of his youth and remarkable learning he attracted the attention of many older collectors. After the Huth sale in 1912 in London, he slipped a volume of Bacon’s Essays in his pocket—a second edition which is almost as rare as a first—and, turning to a friend, said, “I think I’ll take that little Bacon with me in my pocket, and if I am shipwrecked it will go down with me.” With what prophecy he spoke they little knew. A few days later he was one of the victims of the Titanic disaster. His books may be enjoyed by students forever, but they will never again be offered for sale.

To-day there are twice as many people collecting books in this country as there were five years ago. Every year they increase in numbers, and the competition is keener for the best things. Naturally, prices must go up. The much-maligned business man who collects books will at last come into his own. He has been held for many years responsible for musical-comedy successes, but nothing is said of his books and his collecting. It is restful to think of him in his library of an evening instead of in the first row of a crowded theatre.

A. EDWARD NEWTON

The increasing number of scholars in this country, with their insistent demands for the original sources of history and literature, is another cause for advancing prices. After all, contemporary documents are the only authentic tools for the student. The collector renders a real service to scholarship when he uncovers valuable unpublished material. A dear friend of mine has been also largely responsible for the modern esteem of old authors. A. Edward Newton, through his popular and appealing books about books, has inspired many to collect them. His Amenities of Book Collecting is the bibliophile’s Bible; and his unbounded enthusiasm for Doctor Johnson is so intense that it is now contagious. Everyone has become infected with it. A new Johnsonian interest has spread over the country, and a first edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, published in London in 1791, which used to sell for seventy-five dollars, now brings $450, and in its original covers twice this price.

Certain books have sold for too little in the past. They remind me of people who plod along for years, then, through actual worth or a turn of the wheel, suddenly blossom out, much to their friends’ astonishment. As material as it may sound, the increasing wealth in this country is bringing about a new appreciation not only of books but of old prints, paintings, and antique furniture. Books are the final appeal; when the collector is through with the things that decorate his house, he turns to the things that decorate his mind—and these last forever.

LETTER OF DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON TO DAVID GARRICK, SUGGESTING
AN EPITAPH FOR HOGARTH WHICH LATER, WITH
CHANGES, WAS ENGRAVED ON HOGARTH’S TOMB

The formation of university libraries and historical societies also adds to the value of books. They take them out of reach of the individual collector and place them in their ultimate home. No wonder these libraries are considered tombs by the ardent gatherer of books. New seats of learning, such as Duke University at Durham, North Carolina, will certainly need adequate libraries. Book clubs, too, are adding fuel to the flames. The Grolier Club of New York has a fine library; the Elizabethan Club at Yale is the enviable possessor of a tiny volume that ranks among the great books of the world. It is a first edition of Bacon’s Essays, printed in London in 1597. Fifteen years ago, at the Huth sale, it brought £1950—more than $9000. If it were offered for sale to-day it would bring at least $25,000. There are only about five copies of this edition known. One is in the British Museum, Cambridge University has two, and a fourth is in the Huntington Library. Thus, no private collector has the good fortune to own a single copy.

Even though many rare volumes have retired permanently from the salesrooms, it has always been a peculiarity of the collector that he lives in hope. Just as there has always been a great search for ancient manuscripts, so there always will be an endless hunt for important early books. If there were wonderful discoveries in the past, why not others of equal importance in the future? Within twenty years after the invention of printing—about 1475—books became so accessible that even the poorest scholars could afford them. Tracts of various kinds were marketed for a few pennies which at first had sold for pounds. There was so much printing done that some printers were ruined because the supply quickly outgrew the demand. The best printers in Germany perfected their craft and went southward into Italy, where their work took on an added beauty. The city of Venice became a regular hotbed of printing.

When, in the latter part of the fifteenth century, Italian noblemen saw how common printing had become, they regarded it as vulgar. Although they had at first been the patrons of printing, now some of them ignored it and endowed scriptoriums, in the hope that printing would fall into disfavor. In these scriptoriums men worked tediously on illuminated manuscripts, trying to make them finer than printed books. But of course printing went on, continuing its tremendous strides. Hope springs eternal in the book collector’s breast. He will never allow himself to believe that the wonderful old volumes of hundreds of years ago have all been found. To-day, to-morrow, or next week, he must surely unearth some unrecorded book.

What is known among book lovers as the greatest little find in history occurred at Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire, England, in 1867. Charles Edmunds, a London bookseller, while visiting Lamport Hall, the ancient seat of the Isham family, accidentally came upon the old lumber room. His curiosity was immediately aroused, for among the piles of wood and discarded furniture he beheld stacks and stacks of dust-covered books. There were hundreds of them of various sizes and dates; some were chewed to bits, having furnished banquets for generations of mice, descendants of which scampered about as Edmunds searched and hoped for something interesting. Just as he was beginning to believe that they all were valueless, he chanced upon a copy of Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Imagine his surprise when he found it to be a hitherto unknown edition dated 1599, and “Imprinted at London for William Leake, dwelling in Paule’s Churchyard at the signe of the Greyhound.” Inclosed within the same vellum cover were The Passionate Pilgrim and Davies’s and Marlowe’s Epigrams and Elegies. The only other copy known of the former is in the Capell collection at Trinity College, Cambridge. The third tract in this volume was also an entirely unrecorded edition.

This Venus and Adonis was a fourth edition. It sold at the Britwell Court sale at Sotheby’s, in 1919, for £15,100—about $75,000. George D. Smith bought it for Mr. Huntington, and it was the highest price ever paid for a book up to that time. Whenever a great sale such as this one is held, prices reverberate throughout the world. Immediately there follows a cleaning out of old attics, a thorough brushing of odd closets; cupboards and lumber rooms are scoured; and a general sorting over of places where odd things have been relegated for years takes place. Naturally, the enormous price of the Venus and Adonis caused a sensation when it was sold in London. News of this sale quickly appeared in every paper in England.

A pretty story is told of how, one afternoon, two young Englishmen were playing archery on an estate near Shrewsbury. Perhaps they didn’t have a target, or if they did they mislaid it. Anyway, they picked up an old book they found somewhere in one of the buildings on the place, and stuck it against the lower branches of a tree to use for a bull’s-eye. About to draw his bow, one of them was not quite satisfied with the angle at which they had placed their target. So he walked forward and turned it around. As he did so, some of the pages fell back, and he read the magic name, “Venus.” Looking at the volume further, he exclaimed to his companion, “I believe this old thing is similar to that book which sold for £15,100 yesterday!” It soon sold privately for more than £10,000, or about $50,000. Mr. H. C. Folger of New York, the greatest collector of Shakespeareana, was the buyer.

With these stories indelibly impressed on my mind, my delight was unbounded when I espied on the library shelves of Dorchester House, London, the residence of Sir George Holford, a matchless copy of Venus in the second edition, 1594, five years earlier than these famous “fourths.” Only three other copies were known. Be assured that this was one of the first volumes I selected when, the following year, I purchased the greater part of his collection. From a monetary point of view this is the most valuable book that has ever been sold.

To bring these stories down to date, an almost equally interesting find was made after the sale of a signature of Button Gwinnett, at the Anderson Galleries in New York last winter, for which I paid $22,500. Gwinnett was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia. His signature is very rare, as his life was snuffed out suddenly in a duel with General Lachlan MacIntosh in 1777, when he was still young. There are but thirty-three of these signatures known. I bought my first Gwinnett, incidentally the first to be sold in many years, in Philadelphia two years ago for $14,000. Some wag figured, at the time, that it was worth exactly $1000 per letter. Mrs. Arthur W. Swann, of New York, happened to read about my purchase in a morning paper, and began to think over the various items of a collection of autograph letters which her grandfather, Theodore Sedgwick, had made, and which she inherited. The more she thought about it, the more significant a hazy remembrance became; she believed her grandfather had secured a Button Gwinnett similar to the one I bought. After carefully searching through the collection she found, much to her surprise and delight, a most beautiful example of Gwinnett’s signature. In November, 1926, she sold the entire collection, and I bought the Button Gwinnett for $28,500. This was then a record price for any signature in the world’s history, the young signer’s autograph having jumped to $2000 per letter! After a while, selling a famous man’s handwriting by the letter will be as common as selling antique silver by the ounce.

About four years ago a firm of auctioneers in London was requested to sell a great mass of ordinary music belonging to the estate of a late English noblewoman. The manager and his assistants were not very keen about it, as the music was unsorted and on its face almost worthless. But they finally agreed to do it on the condition it should not require sorting. During the sale a dealer bought one of the bundles. Later he sold some of it to other dealers, saving several sheets for himself to take home. Some time passed and one night he chanced to glance over the titles of these songs, catches, and other musical compositions. As he turned one of the pages he fairly started from his seat. He could hardly believe his eyes. A quarto pamphlet it was, and most probably had been placed there years and years before—perhaps as a bookmark—by someone who did not realize its worth. It was a copy of Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson by Shelley! The author’s name was not mentioned, but it was edited by “Fitzvictor,” one of Shelley’s pen names. Here it lay before him, in the original wrappers in which it was first published. Of course, the news of the discovery spread like wildfire. Later, this work sold for £1210, approximately $6000.

Propagandist pamphlets written by Shelley are extremely rare, and have turned up in the most extraordinary places. They were generally of an inflammatory or seditious nature, and he and Harriet had the habit of throwing them from the windows wherever they might be staying at the time, in the hope of hitting sympathetic targets. I should like to be struck by one of those missiles!

Shortly after the War began I was informed of a letter written by Amerigo Vespucci, to be offered in the Morrison sale in London. It was the only known letter written by the man who gave his name to two continents. Previous to its finding, the only record of Vespucci’s own writing was a receipt bearing his signature. Now, the early stages of the Great War were not exactly propitious times for auctions or any other sales. The buying public of England, as well as auctioneers, dealers, and collectors, all found their minds preoccupied with but one subject—war. Objets d’art, books, and manuscripts were put aside as playthings of a leisured hour; nor were they to be considered when relatives and friends were fast becoming a part of the war machinery daily departing for France. So prices did the logical thing—tumbled.

Although I was aware of the situation, I believed it impossible that this Vespucci letter could go for a low figure. Here was an unusual, magnificent autograph more than four centuries old. War? Why, it had known a hundred wars! With little hope and less expectation, I cabled a bid of £2500—about $12,500. The arrival of a reply a few hours later caused me pangs of fear. I tortured myself a few moments with delectable suspense. Was the letter mine or not? A momentous question! At last I gathered courage and read words which were too curt, too few, to seem true. Not only was I the possessor of this most precious historical letter, but at what a price—a measly £395! It was almost impossible to realize that I had secured for less than $2000 one of the greatest bargains in history.

BOOKROOM AT 273 MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK

I was under a constant nervous tension until its arrival. When it finally came I went with it into my library, locked the door, and settled down to decipher the old and decorative handwriting. Vespucci had written in Latin a somewhat grave and formal filial epistle to his father. He was in Trivio Mugelli at the time, October 18, 1476. He comments on a commonplace book, belonging to his uncle, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci. These commonplace books were frequently kept in the fifteenth century. They were used to note down Greek and Latin quotations, the common information of the period. I had hardly finished reading this before some mental click went off in my mind. I left my comfortable chair and walked suddenly to a corner of my bookcase. Quickly I picked out an old manuscript in a fifteenth-century binding. I held in my hands an ancient commonplace book. There on the title page was the written name—Giorgio Antonio Vespucci!

Side by side in my library were Amerigo’s only letter and Uncle Giorgio’s commonplace book! I was thrilled by it all. In something of a daze I placed the two on the table before me. Separated for nearly five hundred years, they were again together. Where had they been those five centuries? What had they seen and heard? If someone had thrown a diamond into the middle of the ocean, to recover it years later, it could not have been a greater miracle than this almost impossible literary remating. Now the letter and the volume are in the Pierpont Morgan library, united forever.

Some collectors, to my eternal amazement, are completely satisfied with small libraries. This desire for a limited number of exquisite books originated in France centuries ago. Many of the wealthiest and most meticulous book lovers went in for what is known as cabinet collecting. They liked small books which they could handle easily, and found no interest in the first edition of even an important classic if it were large. Diane de Poitiers was one of the first cabinet collectors. The beloved of Henry II, she would doubtless be forgotten by collectors to-day if she had not, like Cardinal Wolsey, loved her books more than her king. When she became a widow, Diane immediately stamped her volumes with a laurel springing from a tomb, with the motto, “I live alone in grief.” But when she began her friendship with Henry she suppressed both the tomb and the legend.

In her boudoir in the Château d’Anet, just outside of Paris, long after her death a small case was found filled with the most precious volumes, all in beautiful bindings of red and citron morocco, decorated with the crescents of Diana the book huntress. This little nest of bookish nuggets was not found until 1723, but was in perfect condition. The diversity of its contents was amusing. The fathers of the Church nestled close to some of the most risqué stories of that time, and the poets stood side by side with treatises on medicine and the management of the household. It has always been of interest to me that in the small collection of Diane de Poitiers were two books relating to this country, thus making her one of the earliest collectors of Americana. The first was Servete’s edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, dated 1541, and the other, Les Singularitez de la France Antartique autrement nommée Amerique, brought out seventeen years later.

Perhaps the man who makes a covenant with himself to buy only a small number of books, imitating the French collectors, is the happiest and wisest of us all. He knows in his mind the location of every volume on his shelves. At least he runs little chance of finding himself in the position which was forced upon me several years ago. I had purchased a first edition of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, for which I paid $2500. Along with thousands of other volumes on my shelves, I had not thought for months of poor old Crusoe and his man Friday.

One day, however, a stranger came to see me, announcing with a great air of assurance he had a really fine book which he knew would delight me. Just how much, neither of us realized until it was removed from its brown-paper wrapping. Then I recognized the binding, and that it was my own Robinson Crusoe! I concealed my surprise as I asked for its history and how he had come by it. With charming facility he explained that it was left by his father-in-law to his wife, and I became furious when he wound up with the worn tale of its having been in his family “for over one hundred years.”

After he had finished his finely embroidered story I excused myself from the room for a moment to telephone police headquarters. Returning, I directly accused him of having acquired the book dishonestly. Looking me in the eye, more in sorrow than in anger, he stood by his guns. But when he heard the echo of heavy footsteps beyond my study door he broke down, and told me a sordid hard-luck story which made me feel rather sorry for him. I learned then that he had also bought other volumes from a man who had been employed by me some months before. He paid a few dollars for each book—I asked him for the names of the others, and was relieved that they did not compare in value to the Robinson Crusoe—and they were delivered to his junk shop. There was some wistful quality about this fellow; aside from his dishonesty, he spoke of books as though he loved them. I could not prosecute him. Again I left the room, this time to tell the two detectives who were waiting that I would not press the charge. And it did seem most unfortunate for him that he came to me, of all people in the world, with that Robinson Crusoe!

The modern book lover who gratifies his taste with a small collection usually starts off with what he calls a logical reason for his fixed policy. Some men will collect everything they can find which has been written by or associated with an author they love, generally some writer who has had a definite influence upon their lives. Thus there are men who gather every edition, pamphlet, manuscript, autograph, or personal relic of Burns, Shelley, Thackeray, or Dickens, to mention only a few. Other sentimentalists must have every line of verse by the poet whose rhythmic genius has struck sparks of music or passion in their own souls. On the other hand, a practical person, such as an Arctic explorer, will hunt out every known document mentioning the Arctic, while his colleague, the African explorer, follows suit with his desires for all works concerning his favorite quarter of the globe.

For years I have had a charming customer who is a romanticist if ever there was one. Her enthusiasm is for books on those idealistic lands beyond the mountains or behind the moon about which English writers of all centuries have delighted to weave strange fantastic tales, such as Sir Thomas More’s Utopia and Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. Then there is another customer, with his vivid remembrance of old vintages, whose standing order since the passing of the Volstead Act has kept us busy gathering all editions and early works mentioning ardent spirits. He smacks his lips with gusto when he obtains a particularly rare one. Another great amateur’s favorite subject is everything relating to tobacco. English authors from Ben Jonson to Charles Lamb allowed their love of tobacco to permeate their works, and it is therefore a delightful task, especially to an inveterate smoker, to pick up, here and there, old books in which the authors endearingly mention perique and “cigars of the Havana.” I recently owned a rare little volume on which Charles Lamb had spilled some ale, and in which were found remnants of tobacco. This might have caused a battle royal between the two friends above mentioned, and, as I could not divide the volume, I, like King Solomon on a more famous occasion, sold it to a collector who was interested in gentle Elia for his dear self alone.

Very often these specialists have a change of heart. Their tastes broaden and they develop into the maddest collectors of all. Perhaps they suddenly realize the limited span of even a collector’s life, and find they are missing many enchanting bypaths along the highroad of books. When Richard Heber, the greatest bibliomaniac who ever lived, began his library, he was interested only in purely classical works. This English gentleman, although he has been dead for nearly one hundred years, still survives, enshrined in every true bookman’s heart. To recognize in oneself the symptoms of becoming “the fiercest and strongest of all bibliomaniacs”—so Heber is described—what secret joy and satisfaction! Heber’s library grew to enormous proportions, and when he died he left more than one hundred and fifty thousand volumes. Like Earl Spencer, it was necessary for him to have many houses, just to hold his books. Eight establishments there were, on the Continent and in England, each overrun with books. It was he who started the craze for duplicate copies, explaining that no one could afford to be without three copies of a book: one for show, the second for use, and the third for borrowers!

Everybody knows it is never quite safe to lend an umbrella, even to one’s dearest friend; the very act of lending seems to demoralize the borrower, who thinks not of the rainy days to come. If there is scant hope of ever seeing the umbrella again, how much less is there for a borrowed book—unless it happens to be a rare one! In that case it may be discovered several generations later, when the worried and loving owner, who by this time is reclining in some bookish Nirvana, cares little for earthly treasures. How many great literary finds have been made as a result of careless borrowers, I wonder!

PAGE FROM ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF CHARLES LAMB’S
“THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE”

There is the case of a certain Englishman who, several years ago, “borrowed” some early English books, printed by Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde, from the libraries of Lincoln and Peterborough Cathedrals. Lest they should be missed immediately, he left behind him the covers of the books, stuffed with newspapers and replaced on the shelves; the contents he carried away in his pockets. But one day someone browsing about chanced to take down these skeleton books. The fraud was discovered and reported to all book dealers and collectors in England, so they should be on the lookout. Some of the volumes, minus bindings, have already turned up at various sales, but where they all are no one knows. They may be discovered again somewhere, some day.

One day before the War a stranger called on Quaritch, one of the most celebrated and astute booksellers in London, to whose shop many rare books, in those days, naturally drifted. This man said he had an old book, but didn’t know its value. Quaritch looked at it, and immediately recognized it as the long-lost and valuable edition of the laws of Massachusetts, known to collectors as The General Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, collected out of the Records of the General Courts, and printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1648. Inquiring of the owner what he thought he should receive for it, the man would not say; he desired Quaritch to make him an offer.

Quaritch was known far and wide for his fair dealing. Now he took into consideration various facts, the most important of which was that he might have to keep the volume for some years before reselling it. He therefore offered what he felt to be a perfectly fair price—£2500. The man looked at him in “wild surmise,” then gasped. He would have accepted fifty pounds for it! But now, he said, as he put on his hat, with the layman’s suspicious look in his eye, he would have to think it over. He was too frightened to make up his mind just then. He never went back to Quaritch, but shopped around a long time, selling it eventually for £5000—a little less than $25,000. Alfred Quaritch told me that it was this experience which cured him forever of making offers on books.

It is amazing how many of these first American editions have been found across the Atlantic. Several years ago, while in England, I was invited by a noted collector to inspect his library. We had been talking books for hours, and as the twilight approached, did not think to turn on the lights. I got up to leave and stumbled against a folio volume which someone had carelessly left on the floor. I carried it quickly to the window to see what it was. Opening the old calf binding in the fading light, I read the written inscription on the title page: “This book was used in the Trial of the Earl of Bellomont, Governor of New York.” It was, to my astonishment, my uncle Moses’ old bête-noir, the very rare First Laws of New York, printed by William Bradford in 1694. I was extremely pleased with this volume, and suggested to the owner that inasmuch as it was a New York book, and not particularly interesting to him, he might care to part with it, which to my joy he gracefully did.

Printer Bradford has the distinction of being the first in both Philadelphia and New York. His earlier works, published in Philadelphia, loudly proclaim the hatred he had for some of the Quakers of his day. He was constantly bringing out tracts against them. When they threatened to jail him he found it necessary to leave the City of Brotherly Love, and settled in New York. Several years ago I attended a sale in Philadelphia and came across a book which no one seemed to know anything about. I showed it to several other collectors, who pushed it aside, believing it worthless, merely an old book. The name of the printer or the place was not upon the title page; I recognized it, however, as coming from Bradford’s famous press.

It was a scurrilous attack on one Samuel Jennings, Quaker, printed by Bradford in New York in 1693. Entirely composed in rhyme, by John Philley, it was lengthily titled: A Paraphrastical Exposition in a Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia to his Friend in Boston concerning a certain Person who compared himself to Mordecai. I could not remember ever having seen an earlier-dated book published in New York. Here, then, was a first, which was valuable from three standpoints. It was the only copy known; it was probably the first book printed in New York; it was the earliest poetical production of the New York press. I am having a reprint made, so that it will be accessible to all students of history.

I am sometimes given credit for discoveries which I am not in the least entitled to. There are many old bookmen, true ferrets, who are always on the lookout for unusual things. They often bring their finds to me. In Paris there is a whole tribe of book seekers who infest the quays along the Seine, where quaint volumes are occasionally found. Collectors do not often have the good fortune to find great rarities there, but my friend Mitchell Kennerley has the distinction of making one of the greatest finds in bookish history. Many years ago, while walking on the left bank of the Seine, he picked up, for a few sous, Champlain’s first book on the Indians of Canada, entitled Des Sauvages, issued in Paris in 1603. He kept it in his box at the Lotos Club in New York for more than two years. The whole matter was forgotten until someone, accidentally mentioning old books on the American Indians, recalled to his attention the little volume resting so quietly in its solitary nook. Mr. Kennerley put it into an auction sale in 1907, and no one was more greatly surprised and elated than he when it sold for $2900.

This leads me to remember one of the most colorful incidents of my collecting career, an experience brought about through the consideration of a fellow bookman. It happened when I was in Boston, attending the dedication of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library in 1914. I had arrived on an early train, so I decided to spend several pleasant hours on Park Street with my friend Charles Goodspeed. As I entered his shop he came forward with the exclamation, “I have a manuscript in which you will be interested, I am sure!” He disappeared into the back of his shop, and I waited, filled with curiosity. After a few moments he returned and handed me a small piece of paper. As I read it I could hardly believe that this was the first draft of Benjamin Franklin’s famous epitaph, which is so dear to every lover of old books. At first I was suspicious that it might be a clever forgery. But when Goodspeed explained that it came from the old and noted Aspinwall collection, I needed no further assurance. It was absolutely authentic, and eagerly I purchased it.

This was Franklin’s first attempt at writing his epitaph, dated 1728, and differed slightly in the wording from the fair copy which has been for many years in the Library of Congress in Washington. I brought it back to Philadelphia in great glee and showed it to Eddie Newton. In an ill-starred moment for him, and to his everlasting regret, he refused it. This is the only time—with one exception, which is another story—that I knew him to fall down. This epitaph has found its resting place in the magnificent Franklin collection of William S. Mason, of Evanston, Illinois.

Nothing better reveals the great American, the man whose sayings have helped the destinies of the New World, than this faded sheet of paper, where the master printer gives, in the parlance of his trade, this noble colophon:—

The Body of B. Franklin,
Printer,
Like the Cover of an Old Book,
Its Contents torn out
And
Stript of its Lettering & Gilding
Lies here
Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be lost;
For it will, as he believ’d
appear once more
In a new and more elegant Edition
Revised and corrected
By the Author.