The Romance of Book-Collecting

by J. Herbert Slater

CHAPTER VI.

VAGARIES OF BOOK-HUNTERS.

Ten or fifteen years ago it was quite usual to meet with collections of title-pages formed by followers of the immortal Bagford. These were to be seen quoted in booksellers' catalogues and displayed in the auction rooms, and were commonly disposed of for small sums of money—small, that is to say, in comparison with what would have been realized for the books themselves had they been allowed to remain in that state of life to which the author and others had called them. Of late, collections of title-pages have not been very much in evidence anywhere, for it is universally felt that there is little or no romance surrounding the slaughter even of folios, to say nothing of smaller-sized victims, and for that reason these scrappy collections are huddled out of sight like family skeletons. The book-hunter of the present day has his foibles, it is true, but he has learned by experience and from the expostulatory remarks of others that wild freaks are completely out of place in a library, and so it has come to pass that books are treated in a different way from what they were only a couple of decades ago, and no one who has the smallest respect either for himself or his vocation would now either care or dare to form a collection of title-pages. Should he happen to own one either by purchase or under circumstances beyond his control, he will produce it, if at all, with apologies and sighs. It is abundantly manifest that the wicked man hath turned away from much of his wickedness.

The reason of this tremendous transformation must be put down to the credit of a rule which, though formulated and preached at one time by the elite only, has been insisted upon with such pertinacity that it has gradually become diffused throughout the whole world of collectors, no matter to what objects of interest they may direct their attention. This rule is, that taste and the pocket alike demand that be a book good, bad, or indifferent in its externals, it shall, nevertheless, be left untouched by its owner, who is but its temporary custodian, and a trustee for others who shall come after him. To rip out the title-page, no matter with what object, is an outrage on decency which, it is pleasant to find, is now appraised at its proper pitch of enormity. If the stamp-collector rejoice in the possession of a specimen with 'original gum,' and rate its interest and value higher on that account, shall the book-collector, who is the oldest, the most learned, and the most aristocratic of all collectors, give place in the matter of common-sense and discretion to the product of a frivolous age? Shall he cut initial letters from missals and other manuscripts, and insult the shades of Fust and Schoeffer by making a senseless collection of colophons? These things were in vogue at one time, but are now frowned down even by the most ignorant of mortals, since, to put the matter on no higher ground, the money value of old books has considerably increased of late years to his certain knowledge, and he believes that anything with curious type, the f's made so—ƒ, and villainous prints scattered about the text, must ex necessitate rei be worth its weight in gold, and perhaps more. What a contrast is this little false, but preventative, store of knowledge to the crass stupidity of the early years of the present century, as exemplified in the persons of the Bishops, Canons, and Chaplains of Lincoln Cathedral, who permitted the choir-boys to collect illuminated initials, and with that object to cut up with their pen-knives scores of vellum manuscripts. A good many of the Caxtons from this same Cathedral were purchased by Dibdin for the Althorpe collection, and will be found catalogued in 'A Lincolne Nosegaye.' The Dean and Chapter, knowing little about books, and caring less, had disposed of them all for a 'consideration,' and thus without thought stripped themselves of their choicest possessions next to the Cathedral itself.

Of a truth, books have only recently come to be regarded as possessing a sentimental value altogether distinct from considerations of utility, and it is only within the compass of a comparatively few years that collectors have sprung up from the very stones to cry aloud, and to protest against such wanton acts of mutilation or destruction as the records of past days almost choke themselves in the echoing of. Only a little while ago 'Grangerizing' was the favourite pastime of thousands of persons of elegant leisure, as Griswold called the lazy dullards of his generation, and what this involved would be whispered in corners but for the fact that it was for 200 years unblushingly shouted in the open day.

During all that period the teachings of the genuine bibliophiles had so passed from deed and truth into mere monotony of unbelieved phrase that no English was literal enough to convert the persons who went about seeking material, at vast expense, wherewith to extra-illustrate some inane book of polemics or proverbs.

Nicholas Ferrar, who kept the 'Protestant Nunnery' at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, was, I believe, the inventor of a system which was not fully developed until the publication of Granger's 'Biographical History of England,' but which is, nevertheless, directly or indirectly responsible for the condition of most of the imperfect volumes which are met with at every turn. The story of Nicholas Ferrar, assuming it to be true, which there is little reason to doubt, makes it clear that King Charles I. was as bad as or worse than anybody in this matter, for, had he not affected to admire the handiwork of this first and chief of sinners, the baneful practice of mutilating books for the sake of their illustrations, title-pages, or frontispieces, might never have become an aristocratic amusement, sanctified by tradition, and ennobled far beyond its deserts by kingly patronage. The Concordance which Ferrar showed the King escaped the wrath of the fanatic Hugh Peters and his crew, and, after many vicissitudes, is now safely lodged in the British Museum, a warning to all who may at any time seek to revive a practice which would, in these days of emulation and competition, burn with a white heat.

In Wordsworth's 'Ecclesiastical Biography' the story of Nicholas Ferrar is set out at length. There is no need to enter into minute details, as the tale has since become stereotyped, and is found reproduced in a dozen different places at least. Shortly, it appears that in June, 1634, King Charles I. was staying with the Earl of Westmorland at Apethorpe, and from thence sent one of his gentlemen to the home of Nicholas Ferrar, hard by, to 'intreat' a sight of a Concordance which he had heard had recently been completed. When Ferrar was on the Continent some time previously, he had bought up a great number of prints by the best masters, illustrative of historical passages of the Old and New Testaments, and these he afterwards used for ornamenting various compilations of the Scriptures, among them a 'full harmony or concordance of the four Evangelists, adorned with many beautiful pictures, which required more than a year for the composition, and was divided into 150 heads or chapters.'

This was the Concordance that King Charles was so anxious to look at, and which, indeed, he admired so much that he never rested until he had obtained one like it for his own library. Both books are now in the British Museum, the original having been acquired about three years ago, and the one in the King's Library from George II., who had inherited the royal collection of books and manuscripts.

From the point of view of Nicholas Ferrar, there was certainly no harm in this process of extra-illustrating. There is no reason to believe that he had gone about tearing out plates from books, or done anything else which in any respect, save one, could be regarded as objectionable in the slightest degree. There was, and is, however, one objection to his procedure, namely, the very bad example he set to unscrupulous people who, in after years, rose up in their thousands and commenced to rip and tear with diabolical enterprise. These were the days of Granger's 'Biographical History of England'—hence the verb to Grangerize—when people went about searching for portraits of celebrities mentioned in the text to paste between the leaves in their proper places. If Granger incidentally mentioned that someone had been conveyed to the Tower, and subsequently had the good fortune to escape out of a certain window, books would be ransacked and mutilated to provide illustrations of (1) the Tower of London from the N., S., E. or W., as the case might be; (2) portrait of the prisoner; (3) view of the window from which he let himself down; and finally, if, Laus Deo, a letter in his handwriting or a section of the rope which had made his escape possible could only be unearthed, great was the joy in the camp of the Philistine.