A. S. W. Rosenbach

“ It is extremely gratifying to note the extraordinary love of books persisting in one American family for almost a century. In England the Huths and many others have shown the tendency, the collector’s instinct passed on from father to son for many generations. In this country it is rare. The remarkable exception, however, is evidenced by the Browns of Providence. The great library founded by John Carter Brown, with its glittering array of superb volumes—among the finest in the world—bears eloquent testimony to a continual devotion to books and learning. ”

“ It is true that books are my real love, but pamphlets flaunt a certain piquancy which I have never been able to resist. One might call them the flirtations of book collecting. I crossed to the corner, disturbed that I had not seen the volume earlier in the evening, that I had so little time to devote to it. But hurried as I felt,—it was almost time for the sale to begin,—I came upon a copy of Gray’s Odes. It was not only a first edition, but the first book from Horace Walpole’s famous Strawberry Hill Press, printed especially for him. ”

“ The past fifty years has produced in this country a group of book collectors equal to any that has appeared in England or on the Continent, men well in advance of their time, like the greatest book lover of them all, Richard Heber. I always envied this bibliomaniac his two possessions; as Sir Walter Scott so neatly puts it, “Heber the magnificent, whose library and cellar are so superior to all others in the world!” Would that Americans could be as successful gathering old vintages as old books! In this, England has it all over us. ”

“ He was, without doubt, the greatest collector of books the world has ever known. Without possessing a profound knowledge of literature or of history, his flair for fine books was remarkable. His taste was sure, impeccable. The library at San Gabriel, California, which houses his wonderful collections, will be the Mecca of students for all time. No gift to a nation or to a state can ever equal his. America does not appreciate it to-day, but, as time spins its web, and the world becomes better acquainted with the Huntington treasures, this fact will be adequately recognized. ”

“ An exciting sale of books had just ended, and I was left a rather bitter young man. The purchaser of the one book I had so eagerly hoped to secure was a thin, wiry man, with a face of rare charm. He was not an auction habitué, at least not at Henkels’s, or I should have recognized him. One gets used to the same old faces in an auction room. Earlier that evening I had noticed him two rows ahead of me, a distinguished-looking person; but once the auctioneer’s hammer had struck, giving him the final decision on his bid, I changed my opinion, and he now appeared highly distasteful to me. ”

“ The feel of the paper always fascinates me, so firm it is, so beautiful in appearance. It seems alive, yet there is something definitely final about it. It is as though the paper of the Gutenberg Bible had proudly indicated from its inception that nothing finer, nothing more perfect ever could be made. Nor is the vellum of any other old book of finer texture than that which Gutenberg, the master printer, used. The rarest vellum is from the thinnest, the most velvety part of the inner skin of the sheep. ”

“ If they were in Philadelphia, it was to the bookstalls along Second Street they went; in New York, to the drowsy old shops of lower Broadway. In these and other places serious-minded young collectors—can’t you see them in their stovepipe hats, their high, tight collars, and enormous black satin cravats?—searched in leisurely mood through the untouched treasure-hoards of Americana. Indeed, those were the days when you could pick up Smith’s History of Virginia for fifty dollars almost as easily as you can secure to-day the latest novel of a popular writer. ”

“ Of all the branches of the sport connected with book collecting, that of attending book auctions is the greatest, the most stirring. I presume some patient mathematician knows the number of facets of the Koh-i-nur diamond, but no one will ever be able to count the emotional reflections which take place during a book auction in the hearts and minds of men and women who are enamored of books. The book auction is an adventure. Other adventures may lose their glamour if you repeat them, but each experience at a sale of books brings a delightful thrill never to be duplicated. ”

“ During my frequent visits to England I have often been asked why Americans are so persistent, even voracious, in acquiring the great literary treasures of Great Britain. I have been accused in its public prints of being the greatest offender. I have been likened unto the ogre of ancient times. Perhaps it is pertinent, therefore, to know the reason why Americans are so anxious to obtain, at almost any price, not only the choicest English books and manuscripts, but the outstanding contemporary documents that chronicle so faithfully and so inexorably the political and literary history of England. ”

“ But the book auction, which includes the sale of literary manuscripts and letters, continues to offer those very elements which first fascinated you. Don’t be surprised when you find yourself one of the habitual adventurers. Unsympathetic, misunderstanding friends may accuse you of being a book-auction fiend, but you will listen indulgently and let it go at that.
Most of the great books of the world have found their way to the auction room at one time or another. Bibliophiles of renown have sat restlessly out front bidding against one another. ”

“ Yet he gained local attention, not as a book collector but as a publisher, when with a certain amount of initiative he brought out the works of the first American novelist, Charles Brockden Brown. But I early had my suspicions of him as a publisher. It seemed to me that he used the publishing business as a literary cat’s-paw by which he might conceal his real interest and love—searching for, finding, and treasuring rare books.
After all, if one is in a trade, certain expectations are held by the public; and the older Uncle Moses grew the less willing he became to meet these expectations. ”

“ Two specially made miniature bookcases house my whole collection of children’s books. On either side of a large sixteenth-century Spanish bookcase they hang against the wall, and visitors to my Philadelphia home take delight in looking at their quaint illustrations and the still quainter text. But alas, my library is now like a nursery without children. The whole family—eight hundred—have traveled to New York and are on exhibition in the New York Public Library, where they may be seen by all who are interested. ”

“ The Bible is a book which has touched the hearts of us all at one time or another. When it does not appeal as a religious work its fascination is felt in the inexhaustible fund of stories and anecdotes which have never been matched by the contents of any secular book ever written. Such tales as those of Joseph and his brethren, David and Goliath, Solomon and the two mothers, will never be excelled.
A very old Bible is valuable because of its age only if it was printed between the time of the Gutenberg edition, 1455, and the year 1476. ”

“ Not a day passes that some man or woman does not appear in my library, either in Philadelphia or in New York, to offer me some curious and interesting book, tract, or letter relating to the history of this country. Very often I have to pay heavily for certain desirable documents. But, like my uncle Moses, I don’t give a tinker’s dam about the money value. I hope I am a cheerful giver when, as a result of my purchase, I discover material hitherto unknown to the historians of our country. ”

“ Of course, the collector himself is in a sense morally responsible for the forger. The collector’s overdeveloped sense of acquisitiveness leads him to pay extravagant prices for his favorites; he will search out and buy every available pen scratch of some great writer.
A poor wretch in an attic reads in the newspapers that a capitalist has just paid $2000 for an autograph letter of Robert Burns. He then begins to “discover” other letters and documents by the same author. This is the launching of a career that is usually full of excitement and gives full scope to the imagination. ”

“ He often said he believed I had all the necessary requisites for collecting, an excellent memory, perseverance, taste, and a fair knowledge of literature. Alas, all requisites but one—money! He thought if I were fortunate enough to acquire that, I would also have the other virtue—courage: the courage to pay a high price for a good book and to refuse a poor one at any price. ”

“ If anything could enhance to me the value of this representation of our national ensign, so elegantly executed and so gracefully bestowed, it would be the consideration that its price has been devoted to the comfort and restoration of those heroic men who have suffered and bled in our flag’s defense. We never should, and I am sure, never shall be niggard of gratitude and benefaction to the soldiers who have endured toil, privations and wounds, that the nation may live. ”

“ Think of the many wise graybeards who spent their lives searching for knowledge in the vast libraries of Vienna, of Berlin, of Göttingen, of Prague, and at Oxford and Cambridge, those centuries ago; men who saw and read these volumes and yet did not question their strange peculiarity. For although the Gutenberg Bible gives the effect of a fastidiously written manuscript, it is not only the earliest but actually the most beautiful work of printing the world has ever known. It was the first work to come from any press using movable types. ”

“ Men to be successful in either must have an entirely different cosmos. Both are indispensable. It is paradoxical, but true, that not a single great library in the world has been formed by a great scholar.
Every year our collectors pitch their tents on the fair and hospitable shores of Great Britain, where they exchange their useless gold for ancient and modern English books. The pleasant bookshops all over England, Ireland, and Scotland welcome the American visitors, who take home with them such ingratiating little volumes as Herrick’s Hesperides and Lovelace’s Lucasta. ”

“ It is these latter that give book auctions their zest. And the auction houses, if they only knew it, benefit also by the chance bargain, for it is this very thing that attracts the public.
On the other hand, the most experienced buyer never knows when he will have to pay a really high price. It is the average, after all, that counts. Yet here is a phenomenon which has always seemed peculiar to me. When times are bad and prices in Wall Street are tumbling, when Steel sells far below its worth and the oils go begging, rare volumes continue to command an ever-increasing price. ”

“ There are hundreds of types of books to collect: volumes as yet unnoticed in the auction room, which lie neglected year in, year out, upon the bookseller’s shelf, and which are disregarded by the conventional collector. They are waiting for the man with imagination to discover them. And many of them will eventually come into their own. My uncle and others of his day could not foresee the slavish manner in which some collectors would in later years pursue, with neither rhyme nor reason, every volume on any arbitrary list. Imagine buying books other than those of your own taste and inclination! ”

“ This London house happens to have a large and wonderful collection of old papers, taken chiefly from the flyleaves of early volumes. There are many unscrupulous dealers in the world, even in New York, who do not acknowledge to their customers that a book which they offer as genuine is made up in this manner. Any reputable firm would immediately call attention to it. One not quite so particular, with the naïveté of a child, always pleads, when caught, that he was ignorant of the guilty leaf, not being an expert himself. ”

“ It is a wonderful and magnificent thing that the gathering of books in this country is in the hands of leaders of her industries, the so-called business kings, and not in the hands of college professors and great scholars. The latter, generally, in forming a collection make a sad mess of it. The instinct of the collector, the heluo librorum of Cicero, is entirely different from that of the scholar. ”

“ What good had come of my hoarding every cent to purchase it? Wasn’t it unfair of wealthy men who attend auctions never to give the poor student a chance? I had gone to that sale with fifty-seven dollars in my pocket. It was an enormous sum for me to invest in one book, and I really doubted that anyone would want this particular volume badly enough to pay more than fifty dollars for it. Imagine my surprise when this stranger overbid me by three dollars! ”

“ It is something more human. The bump of acquisitiveness is strongly developed in our collectors, and perhaps I know this as well as anyone. They like to exhibit their treasures as other mortals do, to show them to their envious friends with a twinkle in their eyes and a certain amount of deviltry. American amateurs, who have built railroads and great suspension bridges, who have been financial giants and captains of industry, must surely possess the red blood that made them thus. Of course they like to flaunt a folio of Ben Jonson or a Keats’s Poems (with a presentation inscription!) ”

“ Everybody knows it is never quite safe to lend an umbrella, even to one’s dearest friend; the very act of lending seems to demoralize the borrower, who thinks not of the rainy days to come. If there is scant hope of ever seeing the umbrella again, how much less is there for a borrowed book—unless it happens to be a rare one! In that case it may be discovered several generations later, when the worried and loving owner, who by this time is reclining in some bookish Nirvana, cares little for earthly treasures. ”

“ One is in the British Museum, Cambridge University has two, and a fourth is in the Huntington Library. Thus, no private collector has the good fortune to own a single copy.
Even though many rare volumes have retired permanently from the salesrooms, it has always been a peculiarity of the collector that he lives in hope. Just as there has always been a great search for ancient manuscripts, so there always will be an endless hunt for important early books. If there were wonderful discoveries in the past, why not others of equal importance in the future? ”

“ I know a gentleman in London who is so expert in detecting forgeries that he goes on a scent like a setter after a bird. But the real safeguard for the collector is to buy his books, not from the transient individual who has two or three bargains to offer, but from the man who is known first of all for his reputable dealing. Then collecting is sheer delight. ”

“ We Americans have the enthusiasm of youth. Perhaps the traditional Englishman has been so accustomed to seeing about him the finest things of art and literature that in the course of years he becomes a trifle bored. Perhaps we shall also, in the fullness of time, experience this, but at present we are eager to fill the great libraries and edifices in America with the rarest and most precious books. In the East, and in the West as well, there are enormous library buildings of the finest architectural types. ”

“ I know many a captain of industry who quietly hides away in the [Pg 80] secrecy of his strong box rare little volumes, such as Shakespeare quartos, small pamphlets by Shelley, and even first editions of Joseph Conrad. These rich men realize—and rightly, too—that such treasures will always sell at a premium, even though the market is tumbling and Wall Street is in a panic. Owners of precious books always find they do not have to wait for the chance buyer. Their volumes can be sent to the auction mart at any time, where they will realize, as a rule, their full value. ”