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.
III
SOLD TO DR. R!
The gas lamps in Stan V. Henkels’s auction rooms in Philadelphia were being extinguished. An exciting sale of books had just ended, and I was left a rather bitter young man. The purchaser of the one book I had so eagerly hoped to secure was a thin, wiry man, with a face of rare charm. He was not an auction habitué, at least not at Henkels’s, or I should have recognized him. One gets used to the same old faces in an auction room. Earlier that evening I had noticed him two rows ahead of me, a distinguished-looking person; but once the auctioneer’s hammer had struck, giving him the final decision on his bid, I changed my opinion, and he now appeared highly distasteful to me.
As I went to open the street door I passed him. He stood showing the book to a group of other buyers. I would have died rather than ask his permission to look at that ancient missal, which I felt he had deliberately taken from me. And what a copy! As perfect as the day it came from the scriptorium in Touraine nearly four hundred years ago. More important still, it had belonged at one time to the exquisite and altogether enchanting Gabrielle d’Estrées. She may have treated her lovers negligently, but to her books she gave the gentlest care. If the truth were known, she had a more tender regard for her books than for Henry IV. Perhaps she abandoned him to find change and relaxation in looking at the pictures in this volume. I was nineteen; the ephemeral love affairs of great court beauties catch the imagination at that age as they never do in later years.
