It is rather curious that the United States, which is now to the fore in all questions of bibliography, should have produced in former times many singularly bad catalogues. There is one classified catalogue which may be mentioned as a typical specimen of bad work. There is an index of authors, with such vague references that in some cases you have to turn over as many as seventy pages to find the book to which you are referred.[8]
The oddities of catalogue-making would form a prolific subject, and we cannot enter into it at the end of this chapter; but space may be found for two odd catalogues which owe their origin to the Secretary of the old Record Commission.
The sale catalogue of portions of Mr. Charles Purton Cooper's library[9] is a literary curiosity. It contains two hundred and fourteen pages, but only one hundred and eighteen of these are devoted to the catalogue of books for sale, and the remaining pages are filled with appendixes which contain many amusing notes. The first appendix consists of a "Catalogue of Books mostly in English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh History and Biography now at Autun, which will be included in the sale of further portions of Mr. Purton Cooper's Library unless previously disposed of by private agreement." On page 159 is this note to a catalogue of a collection of grammars and dictionaries "now at Louvain": "My passion for languages (a very unwise one) ceased many years ago." Mr. Cooper notes on page 167, in relation to some books of miscellaneous antiquities "now at Brussels," that "the most expensive of the following works are presents from Foreign Sovereigns, Universities, Cities, and Towns, principally in the period 1831-1840." To the catalogue of miscellaneous books on page 182 is appended this queer autobiographical note: "These books, formerly kept in the house in New Boswell Court, so long used by me as chambers (1816-1850), and from whence all my correspondence as Secretary of Records was dated (1831-1838), are now in chests waiting some place of deposit. What will be their destination I know not. Grove End Road is let. Denton Court (near Canterbury, my new residence) has undergone such changes in the hands of its last literary owner (the late Sir Egerton Brydges) that it will hardly afford convenient space for a schoolboy's collection." Mr. Cooper goes on to say: "Indifferent as I am become to the mere possession of books, still the selection was a task with which (having no check but my own will) I dared not trust myself."
The notes to this list are very comical. This book was given to him by a duke, that by a regius professor, another was bought at Fontainebleau, and still another "of a soldier in an English regiment, badly wounded at the disastrous assault upon Bergen-op-Zoom, and then in hospital at Breda." An edition of Aristophanes was bought at Frankfort for nine shillings, and "Lord Harrowby (then Lord Sandon, fresh from Oxford) observed that so cheap a purchase must be a piece of luck rarely occurring." An Edinburgh edition of Livy cost Mr. Cooper five shillings in 1810, "and," he adds, "not a bad bargain, considering the purchaser had not attained his seventeenth year." One of the notes said to be copied from a French book of prayers (1789), is interesting; but its substance would be said to be incredible if we did not know of the rampant villainy of the times. "In the summer of 1794 (it was somewhat late in the day) two travellers stopped at a chateau in a southeastern department of France, one of them having a slight acquaintance with the owner of the chateau, who had the misfortune to belong to the ancient noblesse of the country. Both were invited to partake of the family dinner. A dinner which in those circumstances might be considered sumptuous was served up; and the conversation, as generally happens on such occasions, became more than usually gay. When, however, the dessert was placed on the table, the conversation was suddenly interrupted by one of the travellers taking from his pocket a paper constituting himself and his companion Commissioners of the Convention, and authorizing them to seize the chateau and its contents, and forthwith to guillotine the 'aristocrat,' its proprietor. The reading of this paper was immediately followed by an intimation that a guillotine with the usual assistants had during dinner arrived in the courtyard of the chateau. The repast was discontinued for a few minutes, whilst the two guests hurried their host to the courtyard of his chateau and saw him guillotined; it was then resumed." This curious catalogue has at the end a folding coloured plate of Mr. Cooper's library at Grove End Road, with this note: "The view of the library is here introduced for the purpose of mentioning that Mr. Cooper wishes to dispose, by private agreement, of eight mahogany book-cases of the kind there represented."
In 1856 a sale catalogue of a further portion of Mr. Cooper's library was issued.[10] It consisted of a hundred and fifty-one pages, only thirty-four of which are occupied by the list of books for sale by auction. The rest of the pages are filled with lists of books to be disposed of at some future time in some other manner, but there are not notes of the same amusing character as in the former catalogue.
