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.