PAGE OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF WHITE’S
“NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE”
It seems a pity that some Americans give such enormous sums for library buildings and spend literally nothing upon the volumes themselves. Books, not edifices, make libraries. A friend of mine only fifteen years ago spent four million dollars on a superb library building; some are already complaining that it is no longer up-to-date! Buildings pass; they soon become obsolete. Books alone are everlasting. “Men may come and men may go, but books go on forever!” The late Mr. Huntington used to say: “The ownership of a fine library is the surest and swiftest way to immortality!”
I have to-day in my New York vault a collection of early English manuscripts unequaled in any library on this side of the Atlantic. It includes four manuscripts of Chaucer, two of Gower’s Confessio Amantis, several of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, and the famous manuscript of Occleve’s Poems with a contemporary portrait of Chaucer. It will be impossible ever to secure another assemblage like it, for it does not exist. They will be appreciated after the last building has tottered on its foundation.
The past fifty years has produced in this country a group of book collectors equal to any that has appeared in England or on the Continent, men well in advance of their time, like the greatest book lover of them all, Richard Heber. I always envied this bibliomaniac his two possessions; as Sir Walter Scott so neatly puts it, “Heber the magnificent, whose library and cellar are so superior to all others in the world!” Would that Americans could be as successful gathering old vintages as old books! In this, England has it all over us.
PAGE FROM A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY MANUSCRIPT OF
THOMAS OCCLEVE’S “POEMS,” SHOWING A PORTRAIT OF
CHAUCER
It is melancholy to record that in the last few months three of our most distinguished collectors have passed away, each one of them possessing in full measure the most extraordinary vision. I refer first to Mr. Edward E. Ayer of Chicago, who was one of the pioneers in making a serious collection of books relating to the American Indian, which he presented, before his death, to the Newberry Library in Chicago. The late Mr. William A. White of Brooklyn (of beloved memory) was among the earliest of our collectors to gather the choice and alluring volumes of the great Elizabethans. His judgment was excellent and he had a vivid understanding of this golden period, equaled by few scholars. He did not hesitate to lend his finest volumes to any student who showed an intelligent interest in English literature.
I cannot speak at length of Mr. Henry E. Huntington. I feel his loss too poignantly at the present time. He was, without doubt, the greatest collector of books the world has ever known. Without possessing a profound knowledge of literature or of history, his flair for fine books was remarkable. His taste was sure, impeccable. The library at San Gabriel, California, which houses his wonderful collections, will be the Mecca of students for all time. No gift to a nation or to a state can ever equal his. America does not appreciate it to-day, but, as time spins its web, and the world becomes better acquainted with the Huntington treasures, this fact will be adequately recognized.
I do not mean to imply that American collectors are forming great libraries and art galleries solely for patriotic reasons, or for the good of their generation. It is perhaps after all a secondary consideration with them. Certainly it is not the first. Neither is their motive the encouragement of scholarship or of the arts. It is something more human. The bump of acquisitiveness is strongly developed in our collectors, and perhaps I know this as well as anyone. They like to exhibit their treasures as other mortals do, to show them to their envious friends with a twinkle in their eyes and a certain amount of deviltry. American amateurs, who have built railroads and great suspension bridges, who have been financial giants and captains of industry, must surely possess the red blood that made them thus. Of course they like to flaunt a folio of Ben Jonson or a Keats’s Poems (with a presentation inscription!) before the eyes of other collectors. In these ecstatic moments they do not care a whit for the Nation or for the people. But with the passing of years, with the gradual oozing of the enthusiasm and candor of youth, they think of the ultimate disposal of their books. It is then, and then only, that the people of America come into their own.