CHAPTER VII
Mr John Pearson—Origin of Our Connection—His Appreciable Value to Me—He assists, through Me, in Completing the Huth Library—Lovelace’s Lucasta—The Turbervile—The Imperfect Chaucer—The Copy of Ruskin’s Poems at Reading—The Walton’s Angler—Locker and Pearson—James Toovey—Curious Incident in Connection with Sir Thomas Phillipps—Willis & Sotheran—Two Unique Cookery Books—Only Just in Time—The Caxton’s Game and Play of the Chess—A Valuable Haul from the West of England—A Reverend Gentleman’s MSS. Diaries of Travel—The Wallers—Lamb’s Tales from Shakespear, 1807—The Folio MS. of Edmond Waller’s Poems—An Unique Book of Verse—A Rare American Item—The Rimells—I take from Them and sell to Them—Some Notable Americana—The Walfords—An Unique Tract by Taylor the Water Poet—John Russell Smith and His Son—My Numerous Transactions with the Latter—Another Unknown Taylor—John Camden Hotten—I sift His Stores in Piccadilly—The Bunyan Volume from Cornwall—John Salkeld—My Expedition to His Shop on a Sunday Night, and Its Fruit—A Rather Ticklish Adventure or Two—Messrs Jarvis & Son—My Finds There—King James I.’s Copy of Charron, dedicated to Prince Henry—The Unknown Fishmongers’ Pageant for 1590—The Long-Lost English Version of Henryson’s Æsop, 1577.
I first met with John Pearson, if I remember rightly, when he had a room at Noble’s in the Strand. He had sent me his catalogue, and I went to buy a small London tract, for which he demanded £3, 3s., because it had all the three blank leaves; it was in fact a speech delivered to King James I. on his entry into the City in 1603 by Richard Martin of the Middle Temple. Mr Huth sent it to Bedford, who removed the leaves, which constituted the feature; but I did not see the mischief, till it fell to my lot to catalogue the piece years afterward. My good friend was very tiresome and difficult in these small matters, which in bibliography are apt to become great ones. I obtained for him a bipartite volume by Ben Jonson, comprising the description of James I.’s reception in London and his previous entertainment at Althorp, in 1603-4, at two different points, and explained to him the desirability of having them bound together, as the latter portion was named on the first title. They went to Bedford, I suppose, without a word, and were clothed in separate jackets.
Pearson became another of my coadjutors. His intelligence, energy, and good fortune did me excellent service. He dealt of course with many other persons, both here and in America; but a handsome proportion of his prizes passed through me to Mr Huth. The latter at that period—in the seventies—still lacked some of the most ordinary desiderata of a collection, which was beginning under my auspices to assume a more general character than it possessed, when I entered on the scene in 1866. Even Lovelace’s Lucasta, of which I purchased of Pearson George Daniel’s copy for £3, 3s., Carew’s Poems, 1640, of which I met with a beautiful specimen on thick paper in the original binding for 21s., and many others, were absent. It was Pearson’s object to come to the front, and I perhaps did my part in making him known to my patron, who eventually added his shop to his places of call, and inspected the articles, which the proprietor and I had agreed to lay before him as suitable and deficient.
The Turbervile above noticed was my most signal gain from this quarter. I shall never forget Pearson’s exultation, when I acceded to his proposal; he seemed, as he cried, ‘I have made £75 by it,’ as if he would have leapt over the counter.
His commercial transactions became sufficiently wide and lucrative, and all my purchases of him did not go to Mr Huth. A curious little piece of luck befel me in the case of a Chaucer wanting the end, which he had kept for years, and at length sold to me in despair. The next week Reeves & Turner obtained a second of the same impression by Thomas Petyt, wanting the commencement. Reeves let me take out the leaves I required for a trifle. I never experienced from Pearson any deficiency of straightforwardness, except that once Mrs Noseda and he had, I think, a joint hand in passing off a facsimile frontispiece of Taylor the Water-Poet’s Works, and I was the victim. I said nothing, but, like the Frenchman’s jackdaw, thought the more. He was an exceptionally shrewd and vigilant character, and nearly broke Lovejoy of Reading’s heart by getting from his assistant an uncut copy of Ruskin’s poems for a shilling during Lovejoy’s absence. But Pearson paid the price, which the fellow asked. I was in the shop, when he had just received through a third party a lovely copy of Walton’s Angler, 1653, in the pristine binding for £14 plus £3, 10s. to the bringer. The last copy in the market in precisely the same condition brought successively £310 and £415. Someone tells me that in both cases the buyer and the seller was one and the same party. Poor Walton! like Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, and our other Great Ones, he has been converted into bric-à-brac. To your millionaire amateur it does not signify whether it is a book or a tea-pot or a violin, if the price is high enough—better still, if it is higher than was ever given before. That is his intelligent seeing-point. In the present instance the holder of the Walton, if the above-named view be correct, did not meet with a customer so enthusiastic as himself. He was a trifle too much in excelsis.
Pearson was almost the introducer of those stupendous prices for really first-rate books or rarities in book-form, which have now gone on ascending, till it is hard to tell where they will stop. Frederic Locker told me that he had asked him fifty guineas for a prose tract by Southwell a few years anterior in date to any recorded. Why not five hundred? With Pearson’s successors I have had many years’ pleasant acquaintance. Verbum sap. The volumes, which have changed hands on that ground, would form a library and a fine one.
With the late James Toovey I never had a single transaction. But Mr Huth often spoke of him and of the Temple of Leather and Literature, as his place of business in Piccadilly was jocularly called from Toovey’s predilection for old morocco bindings. I do not pretend to know what was the exact nature of this business; but it must have been a very profitable one. Ordinary bookselling made only a small part of it. I always took Toovey to be a Jew, till I found that he was a Catholic; and it was a laughable circumstance that, when the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle-Hill had to be valued, he was the very person selected to perform the task, although Phillipps had laid down in his will that the house should never be entered, nor the books examined, by Mr Halliwell or a Papist.