The Confessions of a Collector

by William Carew Hazlitt

At the Bodleian the late Dr Coxe and the Rev. Mr Madan have always done their best to help me, and at Cambridge the late Mr Henry Bradshaw was a host in himself. These relations, however, were purely bibliographical; while those with the Museum were of a more mingled yarn, and my connection with that institution, both as regarded printed literature and manuscripts, was in fact part of the system, which I have above fully explained.

I did a good deal con amore. A strange story reached me about a copy of Monstrelet’s Chronicles in French, printed on vellum, for which Mr Quaritch was not willing to give as much as the owner desired, in fact throwing discredit on the genuineness of the book. Whereupon it was carried to Great Russell Street, duly inspected, and as to the price—the authorities were prepared to hand over all the cash in hand, about £700. Mr Quaritch was stated to have been very wroth, when he found that he had missed the lot, and declared that his ground for scepticism was the fact that the only copy in the market or likely to occur for sale was in Russia; and he then learned for the first time, that the present one had been obtained at St Petersburg. I called on Mr Garnett, and inquired what were the actual circumstances, so far as the Museum was concerned; and it appeared that the book did come from Russia, and consisted only of vols. 2 and 3; but the library already possessed vol. 1 (wanting one leaf only) in an incomplete set formerly belonging to King Henry VII.; and the purchase was arranged. The keeper referred to the accounts, and found that the transaction took place in 1886, and that the sum given was £375.

My experiences of bookbinders have been tolerably manifold, and not exempt from the sorrows, with which the employers of this class of skilled labour are bound to become familiar. The earliest of my acquaintances was Mr Leighton, who executed a great deal of work for Sir William Stirling-Maxwell—in those days known as William Stirling of Keir. There was a stupendous copy of Maxwell’s Cloister-Life of Charles V., published at a few shillings, which I understood Leighton to say had cost with the illustrations and elaborate Spanish binding about £1000. I saw the book in Brewer Street, but not the value. Leighton’s speciality was Spanish calf, as Riviere’s was the tree-marbled pattern. I had a considerable amount of work done for me here, while I filled the rôle of a collector on my own account in a humble degree. But when I had occasion, at a later period, to put volumes into new liveries, and their condition demanded nice handling, I employed Riviere, whom I found very satisfactory and punctual. His place of business in Piccadilly adjoining Pickering’s shop was during years one of my not least agreeable resorts, and I profited, with the concurrence of the principal, by the constant presence on the premises of undescribed books or editions consigned for binding. Of Bedford I saw very little. He was a true artist, and a very unassuming, pleasant fellow, whom I occasionally visited at his address in or near York Street, Westminster. My first call was in consequence of Mr Huth having given me leave to take notes of some rare volumes, which were in course of treatment. Bedford was more reliable than Riviere, who could bind well, if he liked; but he sometimes left too much to subordinates. Pratt, who had been a workman at Bedford’s, was a respectable binder, but an indifferent cleaner and mender, two very essential features, where the slightest neglect or oversight may prove disastrous. It is trying to look in casually, and perceive that the tender title-page of a quarto Shakespear has parted with one of the letters of the poet’s name or a figure of the date, and that one of these is floating on the surface of a tub of water; and such thrilling episodes have occurred.

If it is in some cases an advantage to take your acquisitions to a binder, and have them separately clothed, it is in others, and perhaps for the most part, one to buy ready-bound. It saves expense, delay, and annoyance.

Of my publishers I am scarcely entitled to speak in a volume devoted to the collecting side beyond such works as directly arose from my pursuit as a book-lover pure and simple between 1857 and 1867. But, when I look closely at my professedly literary undertakings, I discern more or less in nearly all of them a bibliographical spirit and training. My Venetian labours included the formation of a fair representative collection of books relating to the subject and a study of the MSS. within my reach. My pronounced taste for method and minutiæ in early English literature extended to Italy, when I was endeavouring to concentrate on the history of the Republic all the direct and collateral light, which I was enabled to gather from various sources; and the same thing may be truly predicated of the commissions, which I executed for several publishers, beginning with Russell Smith and Reeves & Turner. Mine have been chiefly enterprises, where a knowledge of detail and a familiarity with extant or available material were apt to prove of eminent service; and such was especially the case with the Early Popular Poetry and the Dodsley. Disciples of the belles-lettres, who entertain less respect for the extrinsic side or part of their tasks, may be wiser than myself; but it strikes me, that it is difficult to do justice to a subject without surveying the entire ground occupied by it.

Two very mortifying illustrations of the soundness of this view occurred to me at different times. In my collected edition of Randolph, I collated everything with the original editions except the Aristippus and had the satisfaction of discovering, when it was too late, that all but the first issue were incomplete in many places, in one to the extent of omitting a line. In my reconstructed and enlarged Dodsley, in fifteen thick octavo volumes, containing eighty-four dramas, I have a table of errata of thirty-six items, many very trivial and even dubious; and of this total five-and-twenty occur in one play, which I neglected to compare with the old copy deposited in an inconvenient locality, and gave from the Shakespear Society’s text. I attach greater blame to myself, that I should have forgotten, when I reprinted in 1892 my Suckling of 1874, to set right the stupid mistake in the song from ‘The Sad One,’ of dawn for down.

I shall remain highly pleased, that I succeeded, in the volume entitled Tales and Legends, in putting in type my long-cherished ideas about Robin Hood and Faustus; and I adopted a sort of old-fashioned, vernacular style throughout the book, apparently not unsuitable to the nature of the topics treated. Both the stories just mentioned were there for the first time presented in an English form and text agreeably to my view and estimate of the facts relative to two of the most remarkable characters in romance. The accumulation of absurdities round those heroes of the closet and the stage prompted me, years and years since, to endeavour to reduce the legends to a shape more compatible with evidence and probability. Yet I am informed that some of the critics wondered, what the aim of the volume was. It struck others, as well as myself, as fairly clear; indeed the undertaking was strictly on recognised lines. But I had unfortunately omitted to graduate as a specialist and to add myself to the roll of the faithful.

Another venture, which involved the writer in a slight temporary imbroglio, was the monograph on the Livery Companies of London. I was most unhappy in the season and circumstances of launching this work. It was a tolerably hard six months’ task, and I hurried it forward, inasmuch as I knew that a rival scheme was on the stocks. Considering that it is a big book with numerous illustrations supplied by the editor, it is perhaps not much worse than it might have been, had it proceeded from a pen writing superiorum approbatione. The rumour arose that, as soon as the real work on the subject appeared, the attempt of an outsider would sink into merited oblivion; but the real work did not appear, and its proposed author had to content himself, in the presence of his disappointment, with sending me an anonymous communication, based on erroneous intelligence, that the word Gild ought to be spelled with a U, as it is in Guildhall, Gild signifying to face with gold.

A far more serious misadventure, however, was occasioned by an unlucky clerical oversight. In the account of the Cutlers’ Company I stated that there had been, many years before, a defalcation by the Clerk, whereas I should have said ‘by a clerk;’ the wrong article and the capital letter drew down on me the ire of the party, who still occupied the position of Clerk to the Gild, and who pleaded damage to his reputation by the misprint, pointed out to him by the frustrated compiler aforesaid. There could be no sustainable plea of injury, and the large amount lost rendered it obvious that there must have been neglect by superiors; but the publishers thought it better to agree to cancel the leaf, which was done in all copies unsold or recoverable. The Clerk was in fact the responsible officer, and although he might have had no hand in the misappropriation, he must have exercised a very imperfect control over the accounts, to render such a thing possible.

Owing to the unlucky retention in my agreement for the Livery Companies’ book of certain clauses, I involved myself in an unpleasantness, which made me anxious to get rid of the entire business. Accordingly, the moment that I was advised by the firm, that they had (without previous consultation with me as a royalty-holder) converted themselves into a limited company, I solicited a cheque in settlement of all claims, and obtained it. I have very possibly set a precedent, by which others might not do ill to profit.