This gentleman, however, was in his best days as a collector a genuine enthusiast, and might have been occasionally seen at an early hour walking up and down on the pavement, awaiting the arrival of some bookseller, in whose brand-new catalogue had appeared a nugget to his taste. This phase of the book-fancier’s career, by the way, has its curious side. Such a thing has been known as for the publisher of a list of old books to lard and season it with a few excruciating rarities which had yet to be acquired, and to bring to his door fasting all the competitors for such matters within a radius or telegrams from the more remote—with a common result.
Locker’s Confidences, which he made almost a parade, in referring to their future appearance, in characterising as a publication of absolute necessity posthumous, was, if one may compare small things with great, as perfect a disappointment as the Talleyrand Memoirs, so anxiously looked for, and at last printed, only to create a murmur of surprise at the almost total absence of interest and point. The contents of the Locker volume might have been imparted to the public with the most complete immunity from consequences in the writer’s life-time—they are phenomenally mild and neutral. From my personal impression of the distinguished individuals with whom the author of London Lyrics was connected or associated, I should not have dreamed of him so thoroughly missing the mark, and leaving us a legacy so flat and commonplace.
CHAPTER V
Mr Henry Pyne—His Ideas as a Collector, and My Intercourse with Him—His Office One of My Regular Lounges—His Willingness to Part with Certain Books—I buy a Pig in a Poke, and It turns out well—Mr Pyne’s Sale—A Frost—I buy All the Best Lots for a Trifle—The Volume of Occasional Forms of Prayer and Its History—Pyne’s Personal Career and Relations—His Investigation of the Affairs of a Noble Family—The Booksellers—Joseph Lilly—His Sale—His Services to Mr Huth—The Daniel Books in 1864—Daniel’s Flyleaf Fibs—The Event an Extraordinary Coup—The Napier First Folio Shakespear knocked down and out at £151—Why some Books are Dear without being Very Rare—F. S. Ellis and the Corser Sale—My Successful Tactics—He lends me Sir F. Freeling’s Interleaved Bibliotheca Anglo-poetica.
At a lower level than the individuals above mentioned, yet still on a basis which made it possible for me to render them subservient to my all-engrossing design, were Mr Henry Pyne, Assistant Commissioner of Tithes, and two or three minor characters, with whom my contact was transient.
Mr Pyne entered far more conspicuously and materially into my bibliographical and personal history than any person save Mr Huth. I formed his acquaintance while the Handbook was on the stocks, and he assisted me to the extent of his power by placing at my disposal his collection of English books, printed not later than the year 1600. He had begun by adopting a wider range; but circumstances led him to restrict himself to the limit laid down by Maitland in his Lambeth Catalogue. I worked very hard at Mr Pyne’s office in St James’s Square, and at his private house, at the stores he had brought together on this rather hard-and-fast principle; to me, as a bibliographer, the extrinsic merits of the copies were immaterial, and I owed to my estimable and thenceforward life-long acquaintance the means of rendering my introductory experiment of 1867 less empirical and secondary than it would otherwise have been. I cannot turn over the leaves of the volume without identifying many and many an entry with Mr Pyne and his unwearied kindness and sympathy, and in all cases where the book was eminently rare I have cited him as the owner of the copy which I used.
Our relationship grew into intimacy, and as his official functions appeared to be light and unexacting, his spacious room at the Tithe Office was my habitual halting-place on my way home from town. He shewed me any fresh purchase, spoke of what he had seen or heard, and discussed with me points connected with my current literary affairs. I thoroughly appreciated our intercourse, which was less constrained and formal than that with Mr Huth, and I regarded Mr Pyne as my benefactor in his way to an equal extent. The financial strength of the former placed him in a position which was not altogether natural, although I am far from thinking that he failed to fill the rank, to which his wealth entitled him, with dignity and judgment. It was, indeed, due to Mr Huth’s half involuntary self-assertion, as a man of great fortune, that we at last fell out, as it was not my cue to yield even to him beyond a certain point, and I had had reason to complain of the mode in which he conducted the editorship of his catalogue, a proceeding whereby he was the sole loser. With Mr Pyne I was at my ease. We never had a word of difference or the shadow of a rupture all the years I knew him.
I have noticed Mr Pyne’s law made for himself in regard to his choice of books; but he had kept some of those which lay outside the strict chronological barrier, and they were long under the charge of a bookseller in King William Street, Strand. It was in the full flood of Mr Huth’s collecting fancy, and it occurred to me one day to ascertain from Mr Pyne, if possible, how it stood with the property. He said that he was meditating the sale of the boxful to someone. What did it contain? He could not recollect exactly, but there were Civil War tracts, some pieces of earlier date, and so on. How much did he propose to get for them? This he also could not resolve. I had no conception whatever of the nature and extent of the parcel, but I offered him at a venture £15, 15s., and he accepted the sum.