‘To Mr. —— ——, who is to the owner of the second volume of these Letters what this volume is to that: so delightful as to make one glad that there’s another equally as good, if not better.’
In volume two was the inscription to the wife, worded in this manner:—
‘To Mrs. —— ——, without whom the owner of the first volume of these Letters would be as that first volume without this one: interesting, but incomplete.’
Perhaps this will illustrate his quickness to seize upon ever so minute an occasion for the exercise of his humor. A young woman whom he admired, being brought up among brothers, had received the nickname, half affectionately and half patronizingly bestowed, of ‘the Kid.’ Among her holiday gifts for a certain year was a book from the Bibliotaph, a copy of Old-Fashioned Roses, with this dedication: ‘To a Kid, had Abraham possessed which, Isaac had been the burnt-offering.’
It is as a buyer and burier of books that the subject of this paper showed himself in most interesting light. He said that the time to make a library was when one was young. He held the foolish notion that a man does not purchase books after he is fifty; I shall expect to see him ransacking the shops after he is seventy, if he shall survive his eccentricities of diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer, picking up everything he could lay his hands upon. Yet he had a clearly defined motive for the acquisition of every volume. However absurd the purchase might seem to the bystander, he, at any rate, could have given six cogent reasons why he must have that particular book.
He bought according to the condition of his purse at a given time. If he had plenty of money, it would be expensive publications, like those issued by the Grolier Club. If he was financially depressed, he would hunt in the out-of-door shelves of well-known Philadelphia bookshops. It was marvelous to see what things, new and old, he was able to extract from a ten-cent alcove. Part of the secret lay in this idea: to be a good book-hunter one must not be too dainty; one must not be afraid of soiling one’s hands. He who observes the clouds shall not reap, and he who thinks of his cuffs is likely to lose many a bookish treasure. Our Bibliotaph generally parted company with his cuffs when he began hunting for books. How many times have I seen those cuffs with the patent fasteners sticking up in the air, as if reaching out helplessly for their owner; the owner in the mean time standing high upon a ladder which creaked under his weight, humming to himself as he industriously examined every volume within reach. This ability to live without cuffs made him prone to reject altogether that orthodox bit of finish to a toilet. I have known him to spend an entire day in New York between club, shops, and restaurant, with one cuff on, and the other cuff—its owner knew not where.
He differed from Heber in that he was not ‘a classical scholar of the old school,’ but there were many points in which he resembled the famous English collector. Heber would have acknowledged him as a son if only for his energy, his unquenchable enthusiasm, and the exactness of his knowledge concerning the books which he pretended to know at all. For not alone is it necessary that a collector should know precisely what book he wants; it is even more important that he should be able to know a book as the book he wants when he sees it. It is a lamentable thing to have fired in the dark, and then discover that you have shot a wandering mule, and not the noble game you were in pursuit of. One cannot take his reference library with him to the shops. The tests, the criteria, must be carried in the head. The last and most inappropriate moment for getting up bibliographical lore is that moment when the pressing question is, to buy or not to buy. Master Slender, in the play, learned the difficulties which beset a man whose knowledge is in a book, and whose book is at home upon a shelf. It is possible to sympathize with him when he exclaims, ‘I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here!’ In making love there are other resources; all wooers are not as ill equipped as Slender was. But in hunting rare books the time will be sure to come when a man may well cry, ‘I had rather than forty dollars I had my list of first editions with me!’
The Bibliotaph carried much accurate information in his head, but he never traveled without a thesaurus in his valise. It was a small volume containing printed lists of the first editions of rare books. The volume was interleaved; the leaves were crowded with manuscript notes. An appendix contained a hundred and more autograph letters from living authors, correcting, supplementing, or approving the printed bibliographies. Even these authors’ own lists were accurately corrected. They needed it in not a few instances. For it is a wise author who knows his own first edition. Men may write remarkable books, and understand but little the virtues of their books from the collector’s point of view. Men are seldom clever in more ways than one. Z. Jackson was a practical printer, and his knowledge as a printer enabled him to correct sundry errors in the first folio of Shakespeare. But Z. Jackson, as the Rev. George Dawson observes, ‘ventured beyond the composing-case, and, having corrected blunders made by the printers, corrected excellencies made by the poet.’
It was amusing to discover, by means of these autograph letters, how seldom a good author was an equally good bibliographer. And this is as it should be. The author’s business is, not to take account of first editions, but to make books of such virtue that bibliomaniacs shall be eager to possess the first editions thereof. It is proverbial that a poet is able to show a farmer things new to him about his own farm. Turn a bibliographer loose upon a poet’s works, and he will amaze the poet with an account of his own doings. The poet will straightway discover that while he supposed himself to be making ‘mere literature’ he was in reality contributing to an elaborate and exact science.
The Bibliotaph was not a blind enthusiast on the subject of first editions. He was one of the few men who understood the exceeding great virtues of second editions. He declared that a man who was so fortunate as to secure a second edition of Henry Crabb Robinson’s Diary was in better case than he who had bothered himself to obtain a first. When it fell in with his mood to argue against that which he himself most affected, he would quote the childish bit of doggerel beginning ‘The first the worst, the second the same,’ and then grow eloquent over the dainty Templeman Hazlitts which are chiefly third editions. He thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of Carlyle’s French Revolution if it were possible to buy at moderate price a copy of the third edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book, ‘good to the touch and grateful to the eye.’ But this lover of books grew fierce in his special mania if you hinted that it was also foolish to spend a large sum on an editio princeps of Paradise Lost or of Robinson Crusoe. There are certain authors concerning the desirability of whose first editions it must not be disputed.