I laughingly suggested that he write one, but he said it was no jesting matter. Then it came out that he thought he would establish a chair at Harvard for the study of bibliography in all its branches. He was much disturbed by the lack of interest which great scholars frequently evince toward his favorite subject.
With this he returned to his own room, and I went to sleep; but I have often thought of this conversation since I, with the rest of the world, learned that his mother was prepared, in his memory, to erect the great building at Harvard which is his monument. His ambition has been achieved. Associated with books, his name will ever be. The great library at Harvard is his memorial. In its sanctum sanctorum his collection will find a fitting place.
We lunched together the day before he sailed for Europe, and I happened to remark at parting, “This time next week you will be in London, probably, lunching at the Ritz.”
“Yes,” he said, “very likely with Quaritch.”
While in London Harry spent most of his time with that great bookseller, the second to bear the name of Quaritch, who knew all the great book-collectors the world over, and who once told me that he knew no man of his years who had the knowledge and taste of Harry Widener. “So many of your great American collectors refer to books in terms of steel rails; with Harry it is a genuine and all-absorbing passion, and he is so entirely devoid of side and affectation.” In this he but echoed what a friend once said to me at Lynnewood Hall, where we were spending the day: “The marvel is that Harry is so entirely unspoiled by his fortune.”
Harry was a constant attendant at the auction rooms at Sotheby’s in London, at Anderson’s in New York, or wherever else good books were going. He chanced to be in London when the first part of the Huth library was being disposed of, and he was anxious to get back to New York in time to attend the final Hoe sale, where he hoped to secure some books, and bring to the many friends he would find there the latest gossip of the London auction rooms.
Alas! Harry had bought his last book. It was an excessively rare copy of Bacon’s “Essaies,” the edition of 1598. Quaritch had secured it for him at the Huth sale, and as he dropped in to say good-bye and give his final instructions for the disposition of his purchases, he said: “I think I’ll take that little Bacon with me in my pocket, and if I am shipwrecked it will go with me.” And I know that it was so. In all the history of book-collecting this is the most touching story.
The death of Milton’s friend, Edward King, by drowning, inspired the poet to write the immortal elegy, “Lycidas.”