Lenox Library

“ Another point to be observed in the purchase of very expensive and valuable works is, that none of the leaves have been fac-similed. These fac-similes are done by hand, and frequently so well that they cannot be detected without the aid of a strong glass. The late Henry Stevens tells a good story of a customer of his—Mr. Lenox, of New York, the founder of the Lenox Library, and a most indefatigable collector up to the last hour of his life. ”

“ In 1879, when the Lenox library was newly endowed he was invited to become the Librarian. He accepted and removed to New York city, but failing health compelled him to resign his position in 1888, and he died Sept. ”

“ In reality the Lenox is a museum of art rather than a library: its books are, with few exceptions, rarities, "first editions," illuminated manuscripts, specimens showing the advance of the typographic art from the beginning, books of artistic interest, and works not to be found in this country, and sometimes not in Europe. Its collection of paintings and sculpture is important as well as its literary treasures. ”

“ James Lenox, the great American book collector. I had the pleasure of listening to that address, but I have read it in its finished form with even greater delight. It is not often that he who pleases you as a speaker also pleases you as writer, but Mr. Stevens succeeds in both. If more bibliographers could write their reminiscences with the same spirit that he does, we [Pg 56] should hear less of the dullness of bibliography. I strongly recommend my readers to take an early opportunity of perusing this paper in the Liverpool volume of the Transactions of the Library Association. ”

“ On the east wall of the Gallery is a tablet with this inscription:
THE
ROBERT L. STUART
COLLECTION
THE GIFT OF HIS WIDOW,
MRS. MARY STUART.
BEQUEATHED TO THE
LENOX LIBRARY
1892.
Catalogues of the paintings are on sale for ten cents.
General Gallery. The next room to the north is the general gallery (No. 318) . (Sign reads "Picture Gallery.") The pictures in this room are largely from the collection of James Lenox. The catalogue, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, gives a list of them, and a brief description of many. Open 9 a. m. to 6 p. m. week days and 1 to 5 p. m. Sundays. ”

“ As early as 1835 Lenox began to attract summer residents. In the next decade began the creation of large estates, although the great holdings of the present day, and the villas scattered over the hills, are comparatively recent features. The height of the season is in the autumn, when there are horse-shows, golf, tennis, hunts and other outdoor amusements. The Lenox library (1855) contained about 20,000 volumes in 1908. Lenox was settled about 1750, was included in Richmond township in 1765, and became an independent township in 1767. ”

“ An eminent scholar, who was occupied for many weeks in consulting rare books not to be found elsewhere, failed to obtain access to the library of Mr. Lenox, who, however, assigned an apartment in his spacious mansion for his use, and to that apartment the works were sent in instalments without his ever penetrating into the hall containing the precious collection, or to the presence of its possessor. ”

“ A remarkable number of the free public libraries of the United States are the creations of private wealth, munificently employed for the common good. The greater institutions which have this origin are the Astor Library in New York, founded by John Jacob Astor and enriched by his descendants; the Lenox Library in New York, founded by James Lenox; the Peabody Institute, in Baltimore, founded by George Peabody; the Enoch Pratt Free Library, in Baltimore, founded by the gentleman whose name it bears ”

“ Lenox has now developed into so much wealth, fashion and luxury, that it is known as "the Newport of the Berkshires." Its one long village main street contains the Library and hotels, and in all directions pleasant roads lead out to the hills and vales around, which are developed in every way that wealth and art can master. The broad and charming grass-bordered main street, under its rows of stately overarching elms, leads southward down the hill among the villas. ”

“ Few old residents are aware of the literary wealth stored in these depositories, or of the extent to which they are consulted by scholars and by writers generally.
There are four large libraries in the city whose interest is almost purely literary,—the Society, the Astor, the Lenox, and the Historical Society's,—one both literary and popular,—the Mercantile,—one interesting as being the outcome of a great trades' guild,—the Apprentices',—and one purely popular,—the Free Circulating Library. ”

“ His many catalogues are notable for the varied learning embodied. He was a most intelligent and vigilant book collector for more than forty years, his early labors embracing towns in New York and New England, as purveyor for material for Peter Force, of Washington, whose American Archives were then in course of preparation. Among the library collectors who absorbed large portions of his gathered treasures, were James Lenox, Jared Sparks, George Livermore, John Carter Brown, Henry C. Murphy, George Brinley, the American Geographical Society, and many historical societies. ”

“ This suggestion came from an all-pervading odor of a heavy, languorously sweet, sensuous perfume—the same that Susan herself used. She had it made at a perfumer's in the faubourg St. Honoré by mixing in a certain proportion several of the heaviest and most clinging of the familiar perfumes. "You don't like my perfume?" she said to Brent one day.
He was in the library, was inspecting her selections of books. Instead of answering her question, he said:
"How did you find out so much about books? How did you find time to read so many?"
"One always finds time for what one likes." ”

“ When she suggested it, he promptly vetoed it. "That isn't the way business is done in the profession," said he. "The star—you're the star—keeps in the background, and her manager—that's me does the hustling."
She had every reason for believing this; but as the days passed with no results, sitting about waiting began to get upon her nerves. Mrs. Redding had the remnant of her dead husband's library, and he had been a man of broad taste in literature. But Susan, ardent reader though she was, could not often lose herself in books now. She was too impatient for realities, too anxious about them. ”

“ The freshness, the sweetness, the bright rich colouring of sky and water and land, the stillness, the strangeness, the novelty, all moved Mr. Lenox to say,
"I would not have missed this for a hundred dollars!"
"Missed what?" asked his wife.
"This whole afternoon."
"It's one way that people live, I suppose."
"Yes, for they really do live; there is no stagnation; that is one thing that strikes me."
"Don't you want to buy a farm here, and settle down?" asked Mrs. Lenox scornfully. "Live on hymns and long clams?"
Meanwhile the interior of the bathing-house was changing its aspect. ”

“ In India the thermometer supersedes the barometer; and in the hot weather it becomes an obsession. There is always a mild satisfaction in knowing exactly what one has endured.
Desmond was not yet back, and the study was empty; a friendly-looking room, its simple haphazard furniture unified by the rich colour harmonies of Indian carpets and curtains; while a liberal supply of books, unusual for the country, proclaimed it the room of a soldier who found time for study and thought.
Too weary to get out of uniform, Lenox laid aside his helmet and accoutrements ”

“ The whole world knows how delightful Lenox is. It even has a club where the men can take refuge from the exactions of society, as in the city. The town is old enough to have “histories”; there is a romance attached to nearly every estate, a tragedy of beauty, and money, and disappointment; great writers have lived here, families whose names were connected with our early politics and diplomacy; there is a tradition of a society of wit and letters, of women whose charms were enhanced by a spice of adventure, of men whose social brilliancy ended in misanthropy. ”

“ The manner in which the “Little Pretty Pocket-Book” is written is so characteristic of those who were the first to attempt to write for the younger generation in an amusing way, that it is worth while to examine briefly the topics treated. An American reprint of a later date, now in the Lenox Collection, will serve to show the method chosen to combine instruction with amusement. The book itself is miniature in size, about two by four inches, with embossed gilt paper covers—Newbery’s own specialty as a binding. ”

“ As this tragedy, like the rest of Shakespeare's, is, perhaps, overstocked with personages, it is not easy to assign a reason, why a nameless character should be introduced here, since nothing is said that might not, with equal propriety, have been put into the mouth of any other disaffected man. I believe, therefore, that in the original copy, it was written, with a very common form of contraction, Lenox and An. for which the transcriber, instead of Lenox and Angus, set down, Lenox and another Lord. ”

“ But a ballroom is no fit place for abstract meditation. The lust of eye and ear, the pride of life, challenge the sense at every turn, till mere thought seems a mighty bloodless affair.
Lenox moved back to the doorway, leaned against the woodwork, and folding his arms, surveyed the scene before him with the apathetic interest of the large and mystified. The long room was crowded with jumbled atoms of colour, like a damaged kaleidoscope; with talk and laughter ”

“ Perhaps it needs an artist, one who has felt the Divine breath stir a spark into a flame, rightly to understand and make allowance for such spiritual intoxication. Michael,—shallow-hearted egoist though he might be,—would have understood: because he was an artist. But Lenox, being simply a man and a soldier, found it difficult to distinguish between her absorption in the picture and in the subject of the picture ”

“ She expressed no surprise at seeing Lenox again so soon. Come when he might, his presence was accepted as a matter of course; the surest way to put a man at his ease.
"So sorry I kept you waiting," she said simply, and the hand she gave him was at once soft and strong,—an epitome of the woman. "Theo was lunching out with Colonel Mayhew—they are both very full of that book of his on the Hill Tribes—and I have been devoting most of my time to this very exacting person!" ”

“ In his esteem, then, nothing stood between him and his desire but a poor crop of scruples, readily trampled under foot; and by a fine stroke of irony Lenox himself completed the trampling process. He, who rarely took an active part in the random, unedifying talk congenial to after-dinner "pegs" and cigars, had one night been moved to administer advice to a rapturous subaltern, in the shape of a few trenchant cynicisms in respect of women and marriage, bidding him not be fool enough to run his misguided head into the noose; and the subaltern had collapsed like a pricked air-ball. ”

“ Dick, I have just been reading your last night’s speech at the Municipal Club and I’m quite effervescing with it. I want to put you up on a pedestal and call the attention of Mr. Frank Lenox to you. He is one of the innumerable excellent gentlemen, over the length and breadth of the land, who are so busy running everything else that they let city politics go to the place that I’m not allowed to mention. ”

“ These places I have pointed out in the notes to my translation of the narrative, and I have called attention also to the important errors and misconceptions in Ternaux's version. Diligent inquiry among the custodians of the large Spanish libraries at Simancas, Madrid, and at Seville where the Lenox manuscript was copied in 1596, has failed to bring me any information in regard to the original manuscript. The Lenox copy is the one used by Ternaux. ”

“ So many of the books and documents on which [Pg 267] history is based have been absorbed by public libraries and by historical societies that the available source material itself has dwindled. In the old days, when such friends of Moses Polock as James Lenox, Doctor Brinley, old Menzies, John Carter Brown, Brayton Ives, Henry C. Murphy, James Carson Brevoort, and countless others were enslaved by an inordinate passion for books, they did not have to go far afield to find the things that delighted their souls. ”

“ The Dream Compeller is no poison, Hazúr, but Allah's bountiful gift to man, bringing strength out of weakness, peace out of turmoil, even as the rain draweth grass from parched earth. Nevertheless, it is as your Honour wills."
And Lenox, still watching the man's movements with a strange mingling of indifference and triumph, saw the miracle-worker—of whose powers he knew far more than the Pathan—disappear unhindered into the folds of the man's kummerbund; saw himself once more a free man,—captain of the soul and body given into his charge. ”

“ Thus, stealthily, inexorably, a habit creeps upon a man; enclosing him mesh by mesh in a network imponderable as spun silk, tenacious as steel wire. A sudden movement, a break in the hypnotic influence of routine, and he wakes to find himself prisoned in a web of his own weaving.
Lenox pushed aside the jar impatiently, as though it were in some way to blame ”

“ After sitting for twenty minutes before a blank sheet of foolscap, Lenox gave up all further effort at mental concentration. A nostalgia of vast untenanted spaces was upon him,—of those great glacier regions where a man could stand alone with God and the universe, could shake himself free from the fret of personal desire. And he had agreed to forgo this—the one real rest and refreshment life afforded him,—to "suffer gladly" the insistent trivialities of hill-station life, merely, forsooth, because a woman had asked it of him. ”