One afternoon Austin Dobson and Richard Garnett, then Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, happened to come to my hotel in London for tea at the same time. On a table in the apartment was a two-volume quarto edition in French of Don Quixote, a prize I had unearthed at a bookstall on the Quai Voltaire in Paris. It was beautifully printed, the letterpress just biting into the paper, and making itself a part of the leaf, which is so characteristic of the best French presswork. The edition also contained the famous Doré illustrations. Dobson picked up one of the volumes and exclaimed over its beauty.
“This edition,” he said, “is absolutely perfect.”
“Not quite,” I qualified his statement. “It is lacking in one particular. It requires your Ode to Cervantes to make it complete.”
Dobson laughed. “Send the book to me,” he said, “and I will transcribe the lines on the fly leaf.”
When the volume was returned a few days later, a letter of apology came with it. “When I copied out the Ode on the fly leaf,” Dobson wrote, “it looked so lost on the great page that I ventured to add the poem which I composed for the tercentenary. I hope you won’t mind.”
My eleven-year-old son came into the reception room while our guests were drinking their tea. Dobson took him on his lap, and after quite winning his affection by his gentleness, he quietly called his attention to Garnett, who was conversing with my wife in another part of the room.
“Never forget that man, my boy,” Dobson said in a low voice. “We have never had in England, nor shall we ever have again, one who knows so much of English literature. If the record of every date and every fact were to be lost by fire, Garnett could reproduce them with absolute accuracy if his life were spared long enough.”
Within fifteen minutes the youngster found himself on Garnett’s knee. Without knowing what Dobson had said, the old man whispered in the child’s ear, “It is a privilege you will be glad to remember that you have met such a man as Austin Dobson. Except for Salisbury’s desire to demean the post of poet laureate, Dobson would hold that position today. Never forget that you have met Austin Dobson.”
A few months after our return to America, Garnett died, and Dobson sent me the following lines. I have never known of their publication:
RICHARD GARNETT