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.