Books and bidders

by A. S. W. Rosenbach

HENRY E. HUNTINGTON

It is a wonderful and magnificent thing that the gathering of books in this country is in the hands of leaders of her industries, the so-called business kings, and not in the hands of college professors and great scholars. The latter, generally, in forming a collection make a sad mess of it. The instinct of the collector, the heluo librorum of Cicero, is entirely different from that of the scholar. They are two distinct and separate faculties: the acquisition of knowledge and the gathering of books. Men to be successful in either must have an entirely different cosmos. Both are indispensable. It is paradoxical, but true, that not a single great library in the world has been formed by a great scholar.

Every year our collectors pitch their tents on the fair and hospitable shores of Great Britain, where they exchange their useless gold for ancient and modern English books. The pleasant bookshops all over England, Ireland, and Scotland welcome the American visitors, who take home with them such ingratiating little volumes as Herrick’s Hesperides and Lovelace’s Lucasta. The supply of such charming volumes has become well-nigh exhausted. Nowhere can this migration be more clearly seen than in the Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1475-1640 issued by The Bibliographical Society. This monumental work has been compiled by A. W. Pollard, G. R. Redgrave, and a host of the ablest English scholars. A glance at its pages reveals the fact that there are many important books of English dramatic poetry of which no copy now remains in England. Take, for instance, the second edition of Hamlet, published in London, in 1604. It is really the first edition containing the true text, as the first, of 1603, was a pirated one, with inferior readings. Twenty-five years ago three copies, all that exist, were in important private libraries in England. To-day all three are in America—in the Huntington Library, in the Elizabethan Club at Yale University, and in the private collection of Mr. H. C. Folger of New York. The check-list shows that of many of the most exquisite volumes of poetry and romance not a single copy remains in the great country that saw its birth. On the other hand, there are thousands of books remaining in the British Museum, at the Universities and Colleges, at Lambeth, at Edinburgh, in the Patent Office, at Peterborough, at Winchester, of which not a single example exists in any library in the United States.

The situation, for England’s scholars, has certain compensations. The books are really accessible in this country. Following the procedure of the members of the old Roxburghe Club, beautiful reprints have been made by American collectors of various great rarities and distributed to the libraries of Great Britain. Heywood’s King Edward the Fourth, 1599, which exists in a single copy in the library of Mr. C. W. Clark, has now been made in facsimile by the courtesy of the owner and issued for the use of students. Wager’s unique Interlude, Enough is as good as a Feast (about 1565), has also been reprinted. It was in Lord Mostyn’s library for many, many years, quite out of the reach of most scholars. I trust no one will infer from this that the great English collectors bury their things and are niggardly in offering their books and manuscripts to the learned. On the contrary, the Duke of Devonshire, Sir R. L. Harmsworth, and Mr. Thomas J. Wise have always opened their doors to worthy scholars.

A CHAUCER MANUSCRIPT IN ORIGINAL BINDING

It is a great mistake for England to think that America is willing to pay mad prices for every English book. When bidding around the board at Sotheby’s the trade have often smiled when they dropped a “hot one” on me. I shall never forget when I bought a book for £640 in the Britwell sale and someone kindly remarked, “Why, Richard Heber gave two shillings for that very copy in 1826.” Needless to say it made not the slightest difference to me what he paid for it, I only knew that I was getting a great book and that no price was too high for it. Books of intrinsic worth, that exist in one or two copies, cannot be measured in terms of shillings and pence, or dollars and cents. Occasionally, however, when bidding, for moral (or immoral!) effect, I have dropped a common rarity on my competitors, and they have paid twice what I thought the book was worth. And I might have been mistaken at that! It’s all in the game. It is also a great mistake to think that when a book is knocked down to an English bookseller it will remain within the British Isles. There is nothing more fallacious than that. At least fifty per cent of the purchases of British dealers eventually wend their way to this country.

Once I had a serious qualm when relieving Great Britain of her cherished belongings. That was when I purchased privately the Battle Abbey Cartularies, the original documents of those valiant men who came over with William the Conqueror. There were hundreds of deeds and legal documents dating from the Battle of Hastings in 1066, bound in ninety-nine volumes. They were the very foundation of English history. It was with a feeling of genuine regret that I saw them leave England forever. I hope in their home in the New World they will have the tender attention and respect they received in their former abode in the west of England.