Henry Howard Harper

“ In referring to this class of book-buyers, Roswell Field says, "The book-lover, so-called, who lacks any of the thrills that go with the establishment as well as the enjoyment of a library in all of its appointments has deprived himself of many of the most pleasurable literary and semi-literary emotions. That bibliophile never pats his horse or his dog. To him his books are merely tools of trade, accessories to knowledge, to be pawed over, thrown away and replaced by new copies when worn out. ”

“ Indeed, the high esteem in which they have come to be regarded offers a productive field for a few crafty publishers to ply their wily designs in. The audacity of these schemers carries them to such incredible measures that they sometimes buy sheet-stock from reputable publishing houses, change the name of the edition, and deliberately manufacture new titles [84] on which they print the name of some book club or society. These counterfeits are sold to the unsuspecting book-buyer, who often imagines he has landed a prize. ”

“ Look out for that man! He is not of us; he is not of the elect; there is as little of warmth and the genial glow of fellowship in his library as in the middle gallery of the catacombs in the Appian Way. His very books cry out against him; but he hears them not, for he is deaf as well as blind."
One of the busiest men in New York City, whose name is familiar in financial circles throughout the civilized world, is one of the most voracious collectors of the age. ”

“ What can possibly afford a more agreeable relaxation from the toils and perplexities of the day than to recline in an easy chair before an open grate fire in the library, surrounded by the silently reposing tomes which record and preserve the noblest thoughts of past and present generations? Surely no enjoyment in the home or office can be more delectable and unfailing in assuaging [59] the worry and solicitude of a strenuous life than the silent companionship of books. ”

“ People usually have a horror of insane persons, and one might well beware of indulging a taste for books, if there were any reasonable probability that this would lead to mental derangement. There could be furniture-maniacs, rug-maniacs, and china-maniacs just as well as book-maniacs, but people do not generally hesitate to purchase furniture, rugs, and china for fear of going crazy on the subject, and no more reason is there why rational persons should hesitate to make a collection of good books for a library, for fear of being called bibliomaniacs. ”

“ Most of us are disposed to idealize a besotted bibliomaniac as a harmless being whose companionship and favor are neither to be courted nor particularly avoided,—a sort of shellfish basking on the bank of life's flow in whatever sunshine it may absorb, and paying little heed to the thoughts or actions of others. ”

“ The injured club, or society, can sustain no claim for any special damage, because, as not offering its publications in the open market, it actually suffers no ascertainable loss of patronage. The principal damage results to those who are thus victimized in permitting themselves to be deluded into the belief that they are acquiring the valid editions of reputable clubs. When club publications come into the open market they are usually picked up with avidity by collectors, and they have thus grown into very general favor among book-lovers. ”

“ Such books as the Council has planned are an education to bibliophiles; the work is progressive, for each issue is finer than the one which preceded it. Can any book be finer than "André's Journal"? If so, I can't conceive it. Such noble types, the [95] pages so perfectly balanced; the margins so broad; the paper of such beautiful texture; the ink so brilliantly black; the maps so marvelously reproduced; the etchings so artistically conceived and executed and the title page so beautifully engraved; then the binding—real vellum—so rich, simple, and in such perfect taste ”

“ Balfour is no less eloquent in paying worthy tribute to his library: "The world may be kind or hostile; it may seem to us to be hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent millennium, or it may weigh [65] us down with the sense of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it may be, so long as we have good health and a library, it can never be dull." ”

“ She also observes that "strange as the anomaly may seem, there are still many persons of ample means, and some education, who, although they would be horrified at the very thought of admitting to the home a cheap rug or vase, to destroy the harmony and bring discord and confusion into the luxuriance of the furnishings, yet will nonchalantly tolerate the incongruity of a miserable fragment of a library made up of the cheapest and meanest editions to be found in the market, such as would be scorned by those of the most limited means and plebeian tastes. ”

“ I can readily appreciate how a collector would prize an author's inscribed copy of some choice edition, but why intelligent people should be [35] allured into the belief that an author's stereotyped autograph displayed upon a front page gives any added value to a set of subscription books, will to me, I fear, forever remain a disentangled enigma. I was once applied to by an agent representing a $6000 "Autograph Edition" of Jean Jacques Rousseau. ”

“ For literary scoffers and malcontents who find fault with everything and everybody, who even scold publishers because their own books bring but meagre royalties, who fuss and fume over the harmless foibles of the very ones upon whom they depend for their audience, and like an ungrateful dog fasten their teeth in the charitable hand that offers them food, there can be but small sympathy. ”

“ The collector of coins does not accumulate his treasures for the purpose of ultimately spending them in the marketplace. The lover of postage-stamps, small as his horizon may be, does not hoard his colored bits of paper with the intent to employ them in the mailing of letters. ”

“ Most book clubs print only such number of copies of each publication as are subscribed and paid for by members in advance, and the [85] funds thus advanced are used to pay the cost of the edition.
Notwithstanding the evils referred to, the book club is with us to stay, and the very fact that it is continually pestered by these hangers-on is conclusive proof of its potency and usefulness; features which insure its secure foundation in the community.
Very few people are able to appreciate the amount of gratuitous labor performed by the officers and committees of private book clubs. ”

“ For obviously an owner's interest in any work is increased many fold by the fact that he is a constituent part of the organization which produced the [88] same: the relationship to the book in such a case is akin to the love of a parent for a child; and the owner of a fine library will not unusually regard his Club publications and privately printed books as the objects therein which are entitled to his fondest consideration. ”

“ It is an indisputable fact that among the agencies that have contributed to the advancement and ennobling of the bookmaker's art in the past twenty years, the legitimate Book Club has been one of the most potential. ”

“ These may perhaps more appropriately be called biblio-spongers, and are of all ranks in the community, many even owning beautiful homes, and having ample resources at command; but while enjoying the congenial atmosphere of a well-furnished library, and the delights of caressing the precious and wisely selected tomes of others, they are still of such temperaments that they would no more think of buying books than would another of buying an opera-house in order to satisfy theatre-going propensities. ”

“ A few years ago, there were only two or three publishers in this country who "specialized" in fine editions, while at present there are no less than thirty publishing houses, large and small, and as many more "private presses" engaged in the production of beautiful books to appease the demands of book-buyers. Many of these are well established and conducted upon thoroughly honest business principles; some, unfortunately, are not. The publication and sale of books—especially the so-called "de luxe" editions—is, like some other branches of industry, beset with numerous evils ”

“ Women rarely appear in the book auction-room, but leave their orders to be executed through a trusted broker, and many a collector has found himself suddenly obliged to soar aloft to dizzy heights in quest of some prize, on being thus lifted and pursued by one of the representatives of an unseen and unknown member of the gentler sex.
Many people suppose the term "uncut," characteristic of Dibdin's second "symptom," to signify that the leaves of such volume as may be concerned have never been severed, whether for convenience of reading or otherwise. ”

“ And it is a common practice for these insidious sharks further to prey upon unsuspecting book-buyers by obtaining publications of reputable houses and falsifying them by the insertion of spurious titles calculated to delude the buyer into the belief that there are "only fifty copies issued." Many of them are ostracized [51] book-salesmen who have at some previous time enjoyed the confidence of their employers, but have been ex-communicated by all honest publishers and booksellers on account of dishonest proclivities. ”

“ Many of the most delightful persons, well read and competent to discourse intelligently upon the merits of books and authors, have never experienced a single pulsation of true bibliophilism; they have never known the joy of possessing and admiring a beautiful book, and that the attachment one bears for such a treasure is wholly reciprocal. They have not learned that fine books, like human beings, are capable of mutual affection, and that it is not necessary to devour them in order to value their charms. "We do not gather books to read them, my Bœotian friend," says Mr. ”

“ I sometimes think that we are upon the edge of some new era in which the art of beautifying books with [11] pictures shall suddenly be uplifted into a higher and a different plane of excellence; when ornate printed colour and perfect reproduction shall truly depict the labour of the patient draughtsman who strives so earnestly to beautify the world in which he lives, and to lend a grace to the living therein. ”

“ Book-buyers, however, can in a measure help the situation and protect themselves by not dealing with such people; they should particularly remember that creditable book clubs never employ soliciting agents, and rarely, if ever, offer their publications for sale outside of the membership. Any one, therefore, representing himself as an authorized agent of a book club may usually be branded as an impostor. ”

“ Many of our great scholars as well as leading publishers are members of these book clubs, and serve on the councils and various committees; so it must not be supposed by skeptics that their publications are in the slightest degree amateurish. They employ the best talent and materials; the councils and publication committees, as well, being composed of persons of unquestioned integrity, who possess an intelligent understanding of bookmaking. ”

“ Unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's Image; but Hee who destroys a good Booke, kills reason itselfe, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye."
In the garnering of book-treasures, some collectors are prompted wholly by mercenary motives—most of them, fortunately, are not. There are biblio-mercenaries [66] of such sordid inclinations that they would readily part with almost any book in their possession,—even inscribed presentation copies!—if lightly tempted with money considerations. ”

“ In Sesame and Lilies Ruskin says: "If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But you never [15] call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books."
This is preëminently the age of collectors, and scarcely a week passes without the discovery of some new dementia in this direction. Only a few days ago I read of a new delirium which threatens disaster to the feline progeny ”

“ A single rug to adorn the floor, or a single vase resting on a mantle, will often be found to have cost [61] ten times as much as the whole home library. And yet the intellects of these people have been nurtured and trained in their youth by the brilliant thoughts of ancient and modern writers! ”

“ It is incomprehensible that any one could imagine that our paper currency system is fraudulent because there are a few "green-goods" men in the country, or because counterfeit bills appear every now and then. ”

“ Nor is the situation injured by a slight tinge of friendly rivalry among clubs, to lend an additional zest to their labors, and to whet the praiseworthy ambition of each to make every succeeding issue a little better than the last. There are many zealous bibliophiles who belong to two or three book clubs at once, finding it interesting to collect and compare the works produced by the several clubs. ”

“ It would be far more sensible to have your secretary select your friends, because if you should happen not to like these, you could abandon them without ceremony or expense. Why not also attend the opera and your various social functions by proxy, through your secretary? If he were as good a courtier as he is "literary adviser," he might succeed in getting as much enjoyment out of the receptions and dinners as you would, if you were to attend in person. Then, think of the time you would save! We frequently hear [56] the remark: "I have no time to devote to my library. ”

“ It is worthy of remark, however, that the enormously increased demand of late for beautiful books evinces the fact that cultured and wealthy people are growing to appreciate the importance not only of having a good library, but that its quality should embody a degree of estheticism to correspond with the surroundings. ”