In all that subsequently appeared in the press,—and for days the appalling disaster was the one subject of discussion,—the name of Harry Elkins Widener appeared simply as the eldest son of George D. Widener. Few knew that, quite aside from the financial prominence of his father and the social distinction and charm of his mother, Harry had a reputation which was entirely of his own making. He was a born student of bibliography. Books were at once his work, his recreation, and his passion. To them he devoted all his time; but outside the circle of his intimate friends few understood the unique and lovable personality of the man to whom death came so suddenly on April 15, 1912, shortly after he had completed his twenty-seventh year.
His knowledge of books was truly remarkable. In the study of rare books, as in the study of an exact science, authority usually comes only with years. With Harry Widener it was different. He had been collecting only since he left college, but his intense enthusiasm, his painstaking care, his devotion to a single object, his wonderful memory, and, as he gracefully says in the introduction to the catalogue of some of the more important books in his library, “The interest and kindness of my grandfather and my parents,” had enabled him in a few years to secure a number of treasures of which any collector might be proud.
Harry Elkins Widener was born in Philadelphia on January 3, 1885. He received his early education at the Hill School, from which he was graduated in 1903. He then entered Harvard University, where he remained four years, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1907. It was while a student at Harvard that he first began to show an interest in book-collecting; but it was not until his college days were over that, as the son of a rich man, he found, as many another man has done, that the way to be happy is to have an occupation.
He lived with his parents and his grandfather in their palatial residence, Lynnewood Hall, just outside Philadelphia. He was proud of the distinction of his relatives, and used to say, “We are a family of collectors. My grandfather collects paintings, my mother collects silver and porcelains, Uncle Joe collects everything,”—which indeed he does,—“and I, books.”
Book-collecting soon became with him a very serious matter, a matter to which everything else was subordinated. He began, as all collectors do, with unimportant things at first; but how rapidly his taste developed may be seen from glancing over the pages of the catalogue of his library, which, strictly speaking, is not a library at all—he would have been the last to call it so. It is but a collection of perhaps three thousand volumes; but they were selected by a man of almost unlimited means, with rare judgment and an instinct for discovering the best. Money alone will not make a bibliophile, although, I confess, it develops one.
His first folio of Shakespeare was the Van Antwerp copy, formerly Locker Lampson’s, one of the finest copies known; and he rejoiced in a copy of “Poems Written by Wil. Shakespeare, Gent,” 1640, in the original sheepskin binding. His “Pickwick,” if possibly inferior in interest to the Harry B. Smith copy, is nevertheless superb: indeed he had two, one “in parts as published, with all the points,” another a presentation copy to Dickens’s friend, William Harrison Ainsworth. In addition he had several original drawings by Seymour, including the one in which the shad-bellied Mr. Pickwick, having with some difficulty mounted a chair, proceeds to address the Club. The discovery and acquisition of this drawing, perhaps the most famous illustration ever made for a book, is indicative of Harry’s taste as a collector.