Chapter M: T. CICERO's (1)

_CATO MAJOR_ OR HIS DISCOURSE OF OLD-AGE: With Explanatory NOTES.

_PHILADELPHIA_: Printed and sold by B. FRANKLIN, MDCCXLIV. ]

My first purchase was a Bohn edition of Pope's Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey in two volumes--not a bad start for a boy; and under my youthful signature, with a fine flourish, is the date, 1882.

I read them with delight, and was sorry when I learned that Pope is by no means Homer. I have been a little chary about reading ever since. We collectors might just as well wait until scholars settle these questions.

I have always liked Pope. In reading him one has the sense of progress from idea to idea, not a mere floundering about in Arcady amid star-stuff. When Dr. Johnson was asked what poetry is, he replied, "It is much easier to say what it is not." He was sparring for time and finally remarked, "If Pope is not poetry it is useless to look for it."

Years later, when I learned from Oscar Wilde that there are two ways of disliking poetry,--one is to dislike it, and the other, to like Pope,--I found that I was not entirely prepared to change my mind about Pope.

In 1884 I went to London for the first time, and there I fell under the lure of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. After that, the deluge!

The London of 1884 was the London of Dickens. There have been greater changes since I first wandered in the purlieus of the Strand and Holborn than there were in the hundred years before. Dickens's London has vanished almost as completely as the London of Johnson. One landmark after another disappeared, until finally the County Council made one grand sweep with Aldwych and Kingsway. But never to be forgotten are the rambles I enjoyed with my first bookseller, Fred Hutt of Clement's Inn Passage, subsequently of Red Lion Passage, now no more. Poor fellow! when, early in 1914, I went to look him up, I found that he had passed away, and his shop was being dismantled. He was the last of three brothers, all booksellers.

From Hutt I received my first lesson in bibliography; from him I bought my first "Christmas Carol," with "Stave 1," not "Stave One," and with the green end-papers. I winced at the price: it was thirty shillings. I saw one marked twenty guineas not long ago. From Hutt, too, I got a copy of Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads," 1866, with the Moxon imprint, and had pointed out to me the curious eccentricity of type on page 222. I did not then take his advice and pay something over two pounds for a copy of "Desperate Remedies." It seemed wiser to wait until the price reached forty pounds, which I subsequently paid for it. But I did buy from him for five shillings an autograph letter of Thomas Hardy to his first publisher, "old Tinsley." As the details throw some light on the subject of Hardy's first book, I reproduce the letter, from which it will be seen that Hardy financed the publication himself.

When, thirty years ago, I picked up my Hardy letter for a few shillings, I never supposed that the time would come when I would own the complete manuscript of one of his most famous novels. Yet so it is. Not long since, quite unexpectedly, the original draft of "Far from the Madding Crowd" turned up in London. Its author, when informed of its discovery, wrote saying that he had "supposed the manuscript had been pulped ages ago." One page only was missing; Mr. Hardy supplied it. Then arose the question of ownership, which was gracefully settled by sending it to the auction-room, the proceeds of the sale to go to the British Red Cross. I cannot say that the bookseller who bought it gave it to me exactly, but we both agree that it is an item which does honor to any collection. Although it is the original draft, there are very few corrections or interlineations, the page reproduced (see next page) being fairly representative.

I paid five shillings for this letter many years ago, in London. Maggs, in his last catalogue, prices at fifteen guineas a much less interesting letter from Hardy to Arthur Symons, dated December 4, 1915, on the same subject.]

Only those who are trying to complete their sets of Hardy know how difficult it is to find "Desperate Remedies" and "Under the Greenwood Tree" "in cloth as issued."

My love for book-collecting and my love for London have gone hand in hand. From the first, London with its wealth of literary and historic interest has held me; there has never been a time, not even on that gloomy December day twenty years ago, when, with injuries subsequently diagnosed as a "compound comminuted tibia and fibula," I was picked out of an overturned cab and taken to St. Bartholomew's Hospital for repairs, that I could not say with Boswell, "There is a city called London for which I have as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress."

The book-shops of London have been the subject of many a song in prose and verse. Every taste and pocket can be satisfied, I have ransacked the wretched little shops to be found in the by-streets of Holborn one day, and the next have browsed in the artificially stimulated pastures of Grafton Street and Bond Street, and with as much delight in one as in the other.

"The extensive literature of catalogues is probably little known to most readers. I do not pretend to claim a thorough acquaintance with it but I know the luxury of reading good catalogues and such are those of Bernard Quaritch."--OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.]

I cannot say that "I was 'broke' in London in the fall of '89," for the simple reason that I was not in London that year; but I am never long in London without finding myself as light in heart and pocket as Eugene Field--the result of yielding to the same temptations.

I knew the elder Quaritch well, and over a cup of tea one winter afternoon years ago, in a cold, dingy little room filled with priceless volumes in the old shop in Piccadilly, he confided to me his fears for his son Alfred. This remarkable old man, who has well been called the Napoleon of booksellers, was certain that Alfred would never be able to carry on the business when he was gone. "He has no interest in books, he is not willing to work hard as he will have to, to maintain the standing I have secured as the greatest bookseller in the world." Quaritch was very proud, and justly, of his eminence.

How little the old man knew that this son, when the time came, would step into his father's shoes and stretch them. Alfred, when he inherited the business, assumed his father's first name and showed all his father's enthusiasm and shrewdness. He probably surprised himself, as he surprised the world, by adding lustre to the name of Bernard Quaritch, so that, when he died, the newspapers of the English-speaking world gave the details of his life and death as matters of general interest.

The book-lovers' happy hunting-ground is the Charing Cross Road. It is a dirty and sordid street, too new to be picturesque; but almost every other shop on both sides of the street is a bookshop, and the patient man is frequently rewarded by a find of peculiar interest.

One day, a few years ago, I picked up two square folio volumes of manuscript bound in old, soft morocco, grown shabby from knocking about. The title was "Lyford Redivivus, or A Grandame's Garrulity."

Examination showed me that it was a sort of dictionary of proper names. In one volume there were countless changes and erasures; the other was evidently a fair copy. Although there was no name in either volume to suggest the author, it needed no second glance to see that both were written in the clear, bold hand of Mrs. Piozzi. The price was but trifling, and I promptly paid it and carried the volumes home. Some months later, I was reading a little volume, "Piozziana," by Edward Mangin,--the first book about Mrs. Thrale-Piozzi,--when, to my surprise, my eye met the following:--

"He probably surprised himself as he surprised the world by adding lustre to the name of Bernard Quaritch."]

Early in the year 1815, I called on her [Mrs. Piozzi] then resident
in Bath, to examine a manuscript which she informed me she was
preparing for the press. After a short conversation, we sat down to
a table on which lay two manuscript volumes, one of them, the fair
copy of her work, in her own incomparably fine hand-writing. The
title was "Lyford Redivivus"; the idea being taken from a
diminutive old volume, printed in 1657, and professing to be an
alphabetical account of the names of men and women, and their
derivations. Her work was somewhat on this plan: the Christian or
first name given, Charity, for instance, followed by its etymology;
anecdotes of the eminent or obscure, who have borne the
appellation; applicable epigrams, biographical sketches, short
poetical illustrations, &c.

I read over twelve or fourteen articles and found them exceedingly
interesting; abounding in spirit, and novelty; and all supported by
quotations in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Celtic, and
Saxon. There was a learned air over all, and in every page, much
information, ably compressed, and forming what I should have
supposed, an excellent popular volume. She was now seventy-five;
and I naturally complimented her, not only on the work in question,
but on the amazing beauty and variety of her hand-writing. She
seemed gratified and desired me to mention the MS. to some London
publisher. This I afterwards did, and sent the work to one alike
distinguished for discernment and liberality, but with whom we
could not come to an agreement. I have heard no more of "Lyford
Redivivus" since, and know not in whose hands the MS. may now be.

A moment later it was in mine, and I was examining it with renewed interest.

My secret is out. I collect, as I can, human-interest books--books with a _provenance_, as they are called; but as I object to foreign words, I once asked a Bryn Mawr professor, Dr. Holbrook, to give me an English equivalent. "I should have to make one," he said. "You know the word _whereabouts_, I suppose." I admitted that I did. "How would _whenceabouts_ do?" I thought it good.

In recent years, presentation, or association, books have become the rage, and the reason is plain. Every one is unique, though some are uniquer than others. My advice to any one who may be tempted by some volume with an inscription of the author on its fly-leaf or title-page is, "Yield with coy submission"--and at once. While such books make frightful inroads on one's bank account, I have regretted only my economies, never my extravagances.

I was glancing the other day over Arnold's "Record of Books and Letters." He paid in 1895 seventy-one dollars for a presentation Keats's "Poems," 1817, and sold it at auction in 1901 for five hundred.[2] A few years later I was offered a presentation copy of the work, with an inscription to Keats's intimate friends, Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, for a thousand dollars, and while I was doing some preliminary financing the book disappeared, and forever; and I have never ceased regretting that the dedication copy of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," to Sir Joshua Reynolds, passed into the collection of my lamented friend, Harry Widener, rather than into my own. "I shall not pass this way again" seems written in these volumes.

But my record is not all of defeats. The "whenceabouts" of my presentation "Vanity Fair" is not without interest--its story is told in Wilson's "Thackeray in the United States."

The great man took particular delight in schoolboys. When, during
his lecturing tour, he visited Philadelphia, he presented one of
these boys with a five-dollar gold-piece. The boy's mother objected
to his pocketing the coin, and Thackeray vainly endeavored to
convince her that this species of beneficence was a thing of course
in England. After a discussion the coin was returned, but three
months later the lad was made happy by the receipt of a copy of
"Vanity Fair," across the title-page of which he saw written, in a
curiously small and delicate hand, his name, Henry Reed, with W. M.
Thackeray's kind regards, April, 1856.

One day, some years ago, while strolling through Piccadilly, my attention was attracted by a newspaper clipping posted on the window of a bookshop, which called attention to a holograph volume of Johnson-Dodd letters on exhibition within. I spent several hours in careful examination of it, and, although the price asked was not inconsiderable, it was not high in view of the unusual interest of the volume. I felt that I must own it.

When I am going to be extravagant I always like the encouragement of my wife, and I usually get it. I determined to talk over with her my proposed purchase. Her prophetic instinct in this instance was against it. She reminded me that the business outlook was not good when we left home, and that the reports received since were anything but encouraging. "That amount of money," she said, "may be very useful when you get home." The advice was good; indeed, her arguments were so unanswerable that I determined not to discuss it further, but to buy it anyhow and say nothing. Early the next morning I went back, and to my great disappointment found that some one more forehanded than I had secured the treasure. My regrets for a time were keen, but on my return to this country I found myself in the height of the 1907 panic. Securities seemed almost worthless and actual money unobtainable; then I congratulated my wife on her wisdom, and pointed out what a fine fellow I had been to follow her advice.

Six months later, to my great surprise, the collection was again offered me by a bookseller in New York at a price just fifty per cent in advance of the price I had been asked for it in London. The man who showed it to me was amazed when I told him just when he had bought it and where, and the price he had paid for it. I made a guess that it was ten per cent below the figure at which it had been offered to me. "I am prepared," I said, "to pay you the same price I was originally asked for it in London. You have doubtless shown it to many of your customers and have not found them as foolish in their enthusiasm over Johnson as I am. You have had your chance to make a big profit; why not accept a small one?" There was some discussion; but as I saw my man weakening, my firmness increased, and it finally ended by my handing him a check and carrying off the treasure.

_Engraved by Watson_]

The collection consists of original manuscripts relating to the forgery of Dodd, twelve pieces being in Dr. Johnson's handwriting. In 1778 Dr. William Dodd, the "unfortunate" clergyman, as he came to be called, was condemned to death for forging the name of his pupil, Lord Chesterfield, to a bond for forty-two hundred pounds. Through their common friend Edmund Allen, Johnson worked hard to secure Dodd's pardon, writing letters, petitions, and addresses, to be presented by Dodd, in his own or his wife's name, to the King, the Queen, and other important persons, Johnson taking every care to conceal his own part in the matter. In all there are thirty-two manuscripts relating to the affair. They were evidently used by Sir John Hawkins in his "Life of Johnson," but it is doubtful whether Boswell, although he quotes them in part, ever saw the collection.[3]

Pearson, from his shop in Pall Mall Place, issues catalogues which for size, style, and beauty are unexcelled--they remind one more of publications _deluxe_ than of a bookseller's catalogue. It is almost vain to look for any item under a hundred pounds, and not infrequently they run to several thousand. A catalogue now on my writing table tells me of a Caxton: "Tully, His Treatises of Old Age and Friendship," one of four known copies, at twenty-five hundred pounds; and I'd gladly pay it did my means allow.

From Pearson I secured my holograph prayer of Dr. Johnson, of which Birkbeck Hill says: "Having passed into the cabinet of a collector it remains as yet unpublished." It is dated Ashbourne, September 5, 1784 (Johnson died on December 13 of that year), and reads:--

Almighty Lord and Merciful Father, to Thee be thanks, and praise
for all thy mercies, for the awakening of my mind, the continuance
of my life, the amendment of my health, and the opportunity now
granted of commemorating the death of thy Son Jesus Christ, our
Mediator and Redeemer. Enable me O Lord to repent truly of my
sins--enable me by thy Holy Spirit to lead hereafter a better life.
Strengthen my mind against useless perplexities, teach me to form
good resolutions and assist me that I may bring them to effect, and
when Thou shalt finally call me to another state, receive me to
everlasting happiness, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

Prayers in Dr. Johnson's hand are excessively rare. He wrote a large number, modeled evidently upon the beautiful Collects--prose sonnets--of the Church of England Prayer Book; but after publication by their first editor, Dr. George Strahan, in 1785, most of the originals were deposited in the Library of Pembroke College, Oxford; hence their scarcity.

From Pearson, too, came my beautiful uncut copy of "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," with a receipt for one hundred pounds in Johnson's handwriting on account of the copyright of the book, and, more interesting still, a brief note to Mrs. Horneck (the mother of Goldsmith's "Jessamy Bride"), reading: "Mr. Johnson sends Mrs. Horneck and the young ladies his best wishes for their health and pleasure in their journey, and hopes his Wife [Johnson's pet name for the young lady] will keep him in her mind. Wednesday, June 13." The date completes the story. Forster states that Goldsmith, in company with the Hornecks, started for Paris in the middle of July, 1770. This was the dear old Doctor's good-bye as the party was setting out.

To spend a morning with Mr. Sabin, the elder, in his shop in Bond Street is a delight never to be forgotten. The richest and rarest volumes are spread out before you as unaffectedly as if they were the last best-sellers. You are never importuned to buy; on the contrary, even when his treasures are within your reach, it is difficult to get him to part with them. One item which you particularly want is a part of a set held at a king's ransom; some one has the refusal of another. It is possible to do business, but not easy.

His son, Frank, occasionally takes advantage of his father's absence to part with a volume or two. He admits the necessity of selling a book sometimes in order that he may buy another. This, I take it, accounts for the fact that he consented to part with a copy of "The Works of that Famous English Poet, Mr. Edmond Spenser"--the fine old folio of 1679, with the beautiful title-page. A "name on title" ordinarily does not add to a book's value; but when that name is "John Keats" in the poet's hand, and in addition, "Severn's gift, 1818," one is justified in feeling elated.

John Keats! who in the realm of poetry stands next to the great Elizabethans. It was Spenser's "Fairy Queen" which first fired his ambition to write poetry, and his lines in imitation of Spenser are among the first he wrote. At the time of the presentation of this volume, Severn had recently made his acquaintance, and Keats and his friends were steeped in Elizabethan literature. The finest edition of the works of Spenser procurable was no doubt selected by Severn as a gift more likely than any other to be appreciated by the poet.

Remember that books from Keats's library, which was comparatively a small one, are at the present time practically non-existent; that among them there could hardly have been one with a more interesting association than this volume of Spenser. Remember too that Keats's poem,--

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song,--

was addressed to my great-great-uncle, George Felton Mathew; and let me refer to the fact that on my first visit to England I had spent several days with his sister, who as a young girl had known Keats well, and it will be realized that the possession of this treasure made my heart thump.

Stimulated and encouraged by this purchase, I successfully angled for one of the rarest items of the recent Browning sale, the portrait of Tennyson reading "Maud," a drawing in pen and ink by Rossetti, with a signed inscription on the drawing in the artist's handwriting:--

I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood.

Browning's inscription is as follows:--

Tennyson read his poem of Maud to E.B.B., R.B., Arabel and
Rossetti, on the evening of Thursday, Septr. 27, 1855, at 13 Dorset
St., Manchester Square. Rossetti made this sketch of Tennyson as he
sat reading to E.B.B., who occupied the other end of the sofa.

R.B. March 6, '74. 19 Warwick Crescent.

W. M. Rossetti and Miss Browning were also present on this famous evening, which is vivaciously described by Mrs. Browning in an autograph letter to Mrs. Martin inserted in the album.

One of the pleasantest things which has happened to us here is the
coming down on us of the Laureate, who, being in London for three
or four days from the Isle of Wight, spent two of them with us,
dined with us, smoked with us, opened his heart to us (and the
second bottle of port), and ended by reading "Maud" through from
end to end, and going away at half-past two in the morning. If I
had had a heart to spare, certainly he would have won mine. He is
captivating with his frankness, confidingness, and unexampled
naïveté! Think of his stopping in "Maud" every now and
then--"There's a wonderful touch! That's very tender. How beautiful
that is!" Yes, and it was wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he read
exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music than speech.

Thus are linked indissolubly together the great Victorians: Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti, and Mrs. Browning. It would be difficult to procure a more interesting memento.

At 27 New Oxford Street, West, is a narrow, dingy little shop, which you would never take to be one of the most celebrated bookshops in London--Spencer's. How he does it, where he gets them, is his business, and an inquiry he answers only with a smile; but the fact is, there they are--just the books you have been looking for, presentation copies and others, in cloth and bound. Spencer owes it to book-collectors to issue catalogues. They would make delightful reading. He has always promised to do it, but he, as well as we, knows that he never will.

But he is kind in another way, if kindness it is: he leaves you alone for hours in that wonderful second-story room, subjected to temptation almost too great to be resisted. Autograph letters, first drafts of well-known poems, rare volumes filled with corrections and notes in the hand of the author, are scattered about; occasionally, such an invaluable item as the complete manuscript of "The Cricket on the Hearth."

It was from the table in this room that I picked up one day a rough folder of cardboard tied with red tape and labeled "Lamb." Opening it, I found a letter from Lamb to Taylor & Hessey, "acknowledging with thanks receit of thirty-two pounds" for the copyright of "Elias (Alas) of last year," signed and dated, June 9, 1824. I felt that it would look well in my presentation "Elia," in boards, uncut, and was not mistaken.

My acquaintance with Mr. Dobell I owe to a paragraph that I read many years ago in Labouchere's "Truth." One day this caught my eye:--

From the catalogue of a West End Bookseller I note this: "Garrick,
David. 'Love in the Suds. A Town Eclogue,' first edition. 1772.
Very rare. 5 guineas." The next post brought me a catalogue from
Bertram Dobell, the well-known bookseller in the Charing Cross
Road. There I read, "Garrick, David. 'Love in the Suds. A Town
Eclogue,' first edition, 1772, boards, 18 pence." The purchaser of
the former might do well to average by acquiring Mr. Dobell's copy.

Old Dobell is in a class by himself--scholar, antiquarian, poet, and bookseller.[4] He is just the type one would expect to find in a shop on the floor of which books are stacked in piles four or five feet high, leaving narrow tortuous paths through which one treads one's way with great drifts of books on either side. To reach the shelves is practically impossible, yet out of this confusion I have picked many a rare item.

Don't be discouraged if, on your asking for a certain volume, Mr. Dobell gently replies, "No, sorry." That means simply that he cannot put his mental eye on it at the moment. It, or something as interesting, will come along. Don't hurry; and let me observe that the prices of this eighteenth-century bookshop are of the period.

I once sought, for years, a little book of no particular value; but I wanted it to complete a set. I had about given up all hope of securing a copy when I finally found it in a fashionable shop on Piccadilly. It was marked five guineas, an awful price; but I paid it and put the volume in my pocket. That very day I stumbled across a copy in a better condition at Dobell's, marked two and six. I bethought me of Labby's advice and "averaged."

From Dobell came Wordsworth's copy of "Endymion"; likewise a first edition of the old-fashioned love-story, "Henrietta Temple," by Disraeli, inscribed, "To William Beckford with the author's compliments," with many pages of useless notes in Beckford's hand; he seems to have read the volumes with unnecessary care. Nor should I forget a beautiful copy of Thomson's "Seasons," presented by Byron "To the Hon'ble Frances Wedderburne Webster," with this signed impromptu:--

Go!--volume of the Wintry Blast,
The yellow Autumn and the virgin Spring.
Go!--ere the Summer's zephyr's past
And lend to loveliness thy lovely Wing.

The morning's mail of a busy man, marked "personal," takes a wide scope, ranging all the way from polite requests for a loan to brief statements that "a prompt remittance will oblige"; but at the bottom of the pile are the welcome catalogues of the second-hand booksellers--for books, to be interesting, must at least be second-hand. Indeed, as with notes offered for discount, the greater the number of good indorsers the better. In books, indorsements frequently take the form of bookplates. I am always interested in such a note as this: "From the library of Charles B. Foote, with his bookplate."

Auction catalogues come, too. These also must be scanned, but they lack the element which makes the dealers' catalogues so interesting--the prices. With prices omitted, book-auction catalogues are too stimulating. The mind at once begins to range. Doubt takes the place of certainty.

The arrival of a catalogue from the Sign of the Caxton Head, Mr. James Tregaskis's shop in High Holborn, in the parish of St.-Giles's-in-the-Fields, always suspends business in my office for half an hour; and while I glance rapidly through its pages in search of nuggets, I paraphrase a line out of Boswell, that "Jimmie hath a very pretty wife." Why shouldn't a book merchant have a pretty wife? The answer is simple: he has, nor are good-looking wives peculiar to this generation of booksellers.

Tom Davies, it will be remembered, who, in the back parlor of his little bookshop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, first introduced Boswell to Johnson, had a wife who, we are told, caused the great Doctor to interrupt himself in the Lord's Prayer at the point, "Lead us not into temptation," and whisper to her, with waggish and gallant good humor, "You, my dear, are the cause of this." Like causes still produce like effects.

_From a pen-and-ink sketch by Charles G. Osgood_]

From Tregaskis I secured my "Memoirs of George Psalmanazar," 1764, an interesting book in itself; but its chief value is the signature and note, "Given to H. L. Thrale by Dr. Sam Johnson," I suppose about 1770. Following Mrs. Thrale's usual practice, there are scattered through the volume a number of notes and criticisms in her handwriting. It was Psalmanazar, afterwards discovered to be a notorious old scamp, whose apparent piety so impressed Dr. Johnson that he "sought" his company; and of whom he said, "Sir, contradict Psalmanazar! I should as soon think of contradicting a Bishop."

Side by side with this volume on my shelves stands the "Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa," a work of sheer imagination if ever there was one.

My "Haunch of Venison," 1776, in wrappers, uncut, with the rare portrait of Goldsmith drawn by Bunbury (he married Goldsmith's Little Comedy, it will be remembered), also came from him, as did my "London, A poem in imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal," and the first edition of the first book on London, Stow's "Survay," 1598.

From another source came one of the last books on London, "Our House." This book, delightful in itself, is especially interesting to me by reason of the personal inscription of its charming and witty writer: "To A.E.N., a welcome visitor to 'Our House,' from Elizabeth Robins Pennell."

Continuing along Holborn citywards, one comes to (and usually passes) the Great Turnstile, a narrow court leading into Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here is another bookshop that I frequent,--Hollings's,--not for the rarest things, but for the choice little bits which seem almost commonplace when you are buying them, and give so much pleasure when you get them safely on your shelves at home. I never spend a few hours with Mr. Redway, the manager, without thinking of the saying of one of our most delightful essayists, Augustine Birrell, who, to our loss, seems to have forsaken literature for politics: "Second-hand booksellers are a race of men for whom I have the greatest respect; ... their catalogues are the true textbooks of literature."

One sometimes has the pleasure of running across some reference in a catalogue to a book of which one has a better or more interesting copy at half the price. For example, I saw quoted in a catalogue the other day at eighty pounds a "Set of the Life of the Prince Consort, in _five_ volumes, with an inscription in each volume in the autograph of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The first volume being published before Her Majesty was proclaimed Empress of India, she signed as Queen; the other four volumes Her Majesty signed as Queen-Empress."

In my collection there are _seven_ volumes, the five mentioned above and two additional volumes, the "Speeches and Addresses" and the "Biography of the Prince Consort." My copies also are signed, but note: the volume of "Speeches and Addresses" has this intensely personal inscription:--

To Major General, the Hon. A. Gordon, in recollection of his great, & good master from the beloved Prince's broken hearted Widow

VICTORIA R.

OSBORNE _Jan: 12. 1863_.

The "Biography" has this:--

To Major General, The Hon. Alexander Gordon, C.B. in recollection
of his dear Master from the great Prince's affectionate and
sorrowing Widow,

VICTORIA R.

_April, 1867._

Volume one of the "Life" is inscribed:--

To Lieutenant General, The Hon. Sir Alexander Gordon, K.C.B., in
recollection of his dear Master, from

VICTORIA R.

_January 1875_.

Volume two:--

To Lieut. General, The Hon. Sir Alexander Hamilton Gordon, K.C.B.,
from

VICTORIA R.

_Dec. 1876_.

Volume three:--

To General, The Hon. Sir Alex. H. Gordon, K.C.B., from

VICTORIA R.I.

_Dec. 1877_.

The inscriptions in the last three volumes are identical, except for the dates. All are written in the large, flowing hand with which we are familiar, and indicate a declining scale of grief. Time heals all wounds, and as these volumes appear at intervals, grief is finally assuaged and Majesty asserts itself.

II

BOOK-COLLECTING AT HOME

In the preceding chapter I wrote of the amenities of book-collecting in London, of my adventures in the shops of Bond Street and Piccadilly, of Holborn and the Strand--almost as though this paradise of the book-collector were his only happy hunting-ground. But all the good hunting is not found in London: New York has a number of attractive shops, Philadelphia at least two, while there are several in Chicago and in unexpected places in the West.

Where in all the world will you find so free a buyer, always ready to take a chance to turn a volume at a profit, as George D. Smith? He holds the record for having paid the highest price ever paid for a book at auction: fifty thousand dollars for a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, purchased for Mr. Henry E. Huntington at the Hoe sale; and not only did he pay the highest price--he also bought more than any other purchaser of the fine books disposed of at that sale.

I have heard Smith's rivals complain that he is not a bookseller in the proper sense of the word--that he buys without discretion and without exact knowledge. Such criticism, I take it, is simply the natural result of jealousy. George D. Smith has sold more fine books than perhaps any two of his rivals.

"G. D. S." as he is known in the New York Auction Rooms. Like "G. B. S." of London, he is something of an enigma. What are the qualities which have made him, as he undoubtedly is, the greatest bookseller in the world?

_From a photograph by Arnold Genthe_]

There is no affectation of dignity or of knowledge about him, and it is well that there is not. No one knows all there is to know about books; a man might know much more than he--such men there are--and yet lack the qualities which have enabled him to secure and retain the confidence and commissions of his patrons. He is practically the main support of the auction-rooms in this country, and I have frequently seen him leave a sale at which he had purchased every important book that came up. He had knowledge and confidence enough for that, and I cannot see why his frankness and lack of affectation should be counted against him. It takes all kinds of men to make a world, and George is several kinds in himself.

Twenty-five years ago, in London, early in my book-collecting days, I came across a bundle of dusty volumes in an old book-shop in the Strand,--the shop and that part of the Strand have long since disappeared,--and bought the lot for, as I remember, two guineas. Subsequently, upon going through the contents carefully, I found that I had acquired what appeared to be quite a valuable little parcel. There were the following:--

"Tales from Shakespeare": Baldwin and Cradock, fifth edition, 1831.

Lamb's "Prose Works": 3 volumes, Moxon, 1836.

"The Letters of Charles Lamb": 2 volumes, Moxon, 1837; with the
inscription, "To J. P. Collier, Esq. from his friend H. C.
Robinson."

Talfourd's "Final Memorials of Charles Lamb": 2 volumes, Moxon,
1848.

By the way, the last was Wordsworth's copy, with his signature on the title-page of each volume; and I observed for the first time that the book was dedicated to him. Loosely inserted in several of the volumes were newspaper clippings, a number of pages of manuscript in John Payne Collier's handwriting, a part of a letter from Mary Lamb addressed to Jane Collier, his mother, and in several of the volumes were notes in Collier's handwriting referring to matters in the text: as where, against a reference to Lamb's "Essay on Roast Pig," Collier says, in pencil, "My mother sent the pig to Lamb." Again, where Talfourd, referring to an evening with Lamb, says, "We mounted to the top story and were soon seated beside a cheerful fire: hot water and its better adjuncts were soon before us," Collier writes, "Both Lamb and Talfourd died of the 'Better Adjuncts.'"

There was a large number of such pencil notes. The pages of manuscript in Collier's heavy and, as he calls it, "infirm" hand begin:--

In relation to C. Lamb and Southey, Mr. Cosens possesses as
interesting a MS. as I know. It is bound as a small quarto, but the
writing of Lamb, and chiefly by Southey is post 8vo. They seem to
have been contributions to an "Annual Anthology" published by
Cottle of Bristol.

The MS. begins with an "Advertisement" in the handwriting of
Southey, and it is followed immediately by a poem in Lamb's
handwriting headed "Elegy on a Quid of Tobacco," in ten stanzas
rhiming alternately thus:--

It lay before me on the close grazed grass
Beside my path, an old tobacco quid:
And shall I by the mute adviser pass
Without one serious thought? now Heaven forbid![5]

The next day, Collier copied more of the poem, for on another sheet he remarks, "As my hand is steadier to-day I have copied the remaining stanzas."

On still another sheet, referring to the Cosens MS., Collier writes:--

The whole consists of about sixty leaves chiefly in the handwriting
of Southey and it contains ... productions by Lamb, one a sort of
_jeu d'esprit_ called "The Rhedycinian Barbers" on the
hair-dressing of twelve young men of Christ Church College, and the
other headed, "Dirge for Him Who Shall Deserve It." This has no
signature but the whole is in Lamb's clear young hand, and it shows
very plainly that he partook not only of the poetical but of the
political feeling of the time.

The signatures are various, Erthuryo, Ryalto, Walter, and so forth,
and at the end are four Love Elegies and a serious poem by Charles
Lamb, entitled, "Living without God in the World."

How many of these were printed elsewhere, or in Cottle's
"Anthology," I do not know. I would willingly copy more did not my
hand fail me.

J. P. C.

Twenty years later, in New York one day, George D. Smith asked me if I would care to buy an interesting volume of Southey MSS., and to my great surprise handed me the identical little quarto which Collier had many years before found so interesting that he had made excerpts from it. It might not have made such instant appeal to my recollection of my purchase in London had it not been for an inserted note, almost identical with the one on the loose slip in my Lamb volume, obviously in Collier's "infirm" hand, repeating briefly what he had said on the loose sheets in my volumes at home.

Mr. Cosens, the former owner of the manuscripts, had added a note: "In 1798 or 1799 Charles Lamb contributed to the 'Annual Anthology' which a Mr. Cottle, a bookseller of Bristol, published jointly with Coleridge and Southey. This manuscript is partly in the handwriting of Southey and was formerly the property of Cottle of Bristol."

Upon investigation I ascertained that the little volume of manuscript verse had passed from Mr. Cosens's possession into that of Augustin Daly, at whose sale it had been catalogued as a Southey MS., with small reference to its Lamb interest. Although the price was high, the temptation to buy was too strong to be resisted; so after many years the small quarto of original poems by Lamb, Southey, and others, and Collier's description of it, stand side by side in my library. For me the three poems by Lamb outweigh in interest and value all others. The volume is labeled, "Southey Manuscripts, a long time since the property of a Mr. Cottle of Bristol."

The most scholarly bookseller in this country to-day is Dr. Rosenbach--"Rosy" as we who know him well call him. It was not his original intention to deal in rare books, but to become a professor of English, a calling for which few have a finer appreciation; but mere scholars abound. He must have felt that we collectors needed some one to guide our tastes and deplete our bank accounts. In both he is unequaled.

His spacious second-floor room in Walnut Street is filled with the rarest volumes. "Ask and it shall be given you"--with a bill at the end of the month. It is a delightful place to spend a rainy morning, and you are certain to depart a wiser if a poorer man. I once spent some hours with the doctor in company with my friend Tinker--not the great Tinker who plays ball for a bank president's wage, but the less famous Tinker, Professor of English at Yale. We had been looking at Shakespeare folios and quartos, and Spenser's and Herrick's and Milton's priceless volumes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when, looking out of the window, Rosy remarked, "There goes John G. Johnson." "Oh!" said my friend, "I thought you were going to say John Dryden. It would not have surprised me in the least."

_Photograph by Arnold Genthe_]

Don't expect ever to "discover" anything at Rosenbach's, except how ignorant you are. Rosy does all the discovering himself, as when, a few years ago, he found in a volume of old pamphlets a copy of the first edition of Dr. Johnson's famous "Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane." It will be remembered that this Prologue contains several of the Doctor's most famous lines: criticisms of the stage, as true to-day as when they were uttered; as where he says,--

The Drama's Laws, the Drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live.

It has also the line in which, speaking of Shakespeare, he says, "And panting Time toil'd after him in vain." Garrick having criticized this line, Johnson remarked, "Sir, Garrick is a prosaical rogue. The next time I write I will make both Time and Space pant."

The discovery by Dr. Rosenbach of this Prologue shows that the days of romance in book-hunting are not over. It is not to be found in the British Museum. So far as we know, it is the only copy in existence. Rosy has declined to sell it, though tempting offers have been made, for he is a booklover as well as a bookseller.

That he is a rare judge of human nature, too, is evidenced by a little card over his desk on which is printed the text,--

"It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer; but when he hath gone his way then he boasteth."--PROVERBS XX. 14.

That is exactly what I did when I secured from him my "Robinson Crusoe," the first edition in two volumes, with the third, which may not be Defoe's. It lacks one "point" perhaps: the word "apply," the last word on page 1 of the preface, is correctly spelled, not spelled "apyly," as in some copies I have seen. The matter, I believe, is not clear. The type may have been correctly set at first and have become corrupted in process of printing, or a few copies may have been so printed before the error, being noted, was corrected.[6] After page 304, of Volume 1, the paper is of thinner and poorer quality than in the pages preceding it. The three volumes are clean, the binding contemporary calf, the folding maps immaculate, and the first two volumes were once the property of "Mr. William Congreve." Altogether it is a book of which this collector "boasteth."

For some unexplained reason I have never been able to buy as many books from Walter Hill of Chicago as I should like. He is one of the most amiable and reliable men in the business. His catalogues issued from time to time are delightful. He once put me under an obligation which I have not yet repaid and which I want to record.

Several years ago I met him in the streets of Philadelphia and said to him, "Hello! what are you doing here? Are you buying or selling?"

"Both," said he; "I bought some nice books only a few minutes ago at Sessler's."

"Don't tell me," I cried, "that 'Oliver Twist,' that presentation copy to Macready, was among them."

"It was," said he; "why, did you want it?"

"Want it!" said I; "I have just been waiting for my bank account to recover from a capital operation, to buy it."

"All right," said he, "I'll turn it over at just what I paid for it, and you can send me your check when you are ready."

I was mean enough to accept his offer, and the book is to-day worth at least twice what I paid.

Yet, come to think of it, several nice volumes, "collated and perfect," came from him. There is my "Vicar," not the first edition, with the misprints in volume 2, page 159, paged 165; and page 95, "Waekcfield" for "Wakefield,"--that came from North,--but the one with Rowlandson plates. And "Evelina," _embellished with engravings_, and wretchedly printed on vile paper; and "She Stoops to Conquer," with all the errors just as they should be--a printer's carnival; and I have no doubt there are many more.

Sessler has some unexpectedly fine things from time to time. He goes abroad every year with his pocket full of money, and comes back with a lot of things that quickly empty ours. Dickens is one of his specialties, and from him I have secured at least five of the twenty-one presentation Dickenses that I boast of. A few years ago quite a number came on the market at prices which to-day seem very low. In my last book-hunting experience in London I saw only one presentation Dickens; but as the price was about three times what I had accustomed myself to pay Sessler, I let it pass.

Sessler studies his customer's weaknesses--that's where his strength lies. When I came back from Europe some years ago, I discovered that he had bought for me, in my absence, at the Lambert sale, one item which he knew I could not resist. It was a little pen-and-ink drawing by Thackeray, the first sketch, afterwards more fully elaborated, illustrating "Vanity Fair," where, at the end of the first chapter, the immortal Becky, driving away from Miss Pinkerton's school, throws Dr. Johnson's "Dixonary" out of the window of the carriage as it drives off.

I think that all who knew him will agree with me that Luther S. Livingston was too much of a gentleman, too much of a scholar,--perhaps I should add, too much of an invalid,--to take high rank as a bookseller.

His knowledge was profound. He was an appreciative bibliographer, witness the work he did on Lamb for Mr. J. A. Spoor of Chicago; but I always felt a trifle embarrassed when I asked him the _price_ of anything he had to sell; one could ask him anything else, but to offer money to Livingston seemed rather like offering money to your host after an excellent dinner.

_From the first pen-and-ink sketch, by Thackeray, afterwards elaborated_]

He enjoyed the love and respect of all book-collectors and we all congratulated him when he graduated from the bookshop to the library. For many years in charge of the rare-book department of Dodd, Mead & Company, and subsequently a partner of Robert Dodd, he was the first custodian of the choice collection of books formed by the late Harry Elkins Widener and bequeathed by the latter's mother to Harvard. A more admirable selection could not have been made. A scholar and a gentleman, he brought to that position just the qualities needed for a post of such distinction, but, unhappily, he lived hardly long enough to take possession of it. He died at Christmas, 1914, after a long and painful illness.

James F. Drake, in New York, specializes in association books and in first editions of nineteenth-century authors. His stock I have frequently laid under contribution. My Surtees and many other colored-plate books came from him, and first editions innumerable of authors now becoming "collected."

I know of no bibliography of George Moore, but my set is, I think, complete. Many are presentation copies. George Moore's many admirers will remember that his volume, "Memoirs of My Dead Life," is much sought in the first English edition. I have the proof sheets of the entire volume, showing many corrections, as in the specimen on page 50. My "Literature at Nurse,"--a pamphlet attacking the censorship of the novel established by Mudie,--which was published at threepence, and now commands forty dollars, is inscribed to Willie Wilde; while "Pagan Poems" was a suitable gift "To Oscar Wilde with the author's compliments."

There is no halt in the constantly advancing value of first editions of Oscar Wilde. That interest in the man still continues, is evidenced by the steady stream of books about him. Ransome's "Oscar Wilde," immediately suppressed; "Oscar Wilde Three Times Tried," and "The First Stone," privately printed by the "Unspeakable Scot," already difficult to procure, are among the latest.

For books of the moment, published in small editions which almost immediately become scarce, Drake's shop in Fortieth Street is headquarters; and as my club in New York is near by, I find myself frequently dropping in for a book and a bit of gossip.

There are drawbacks as well as compensations to living in the country. "Gossip about Book Collecting" has its charms, as William Loring Andrews has taught us. It is sometimes difficult to get it, living as I do "twelve miles from a lemon"; and so, when I am in New York and have absorbed what I can at Drake's, who is very exact in the information he imparts, I usually call on Gabriel Wells. How Wells receives you with open arms and a good cigar, in his lofty rooms on the Avenue overlooking the Library, is known to most collectors. Books in sets are,--perhaps I should say, were,--his specialty; recently he has gone in for very choice items, which, when offered, must be secured, or anguish is one's portion thereafter. My last interview with him resulted in my separating myself from a bunch of Liberty Bonds, which I had intended as a solace for my old age; but a few words from Wells convinced me that Dr. Johnson was right when he said, "It is better to live rich than die rich"; and so I walked away with a copy of Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which is about as rare a book as one can hope to find at the end of a busy day.

It was, if I remember correctly, Ernest Dressel North who first aroused my interest in Lamb, bibliographically. I had learned to love him in a dumpy little green cloth volume, "Elia and Eliana," published by Moxon, which I had picked up at Leary's, and which bears upon its title-page the glaring inaccuracy,--"The Only Complete Edition." I have this worthless little volume among my first editions; to me it is one, and it is certainly the last volume of Lamb I would part with.

It must be all of thirty years ago that I went to London with a list of books by and about Charles Lamb--some twenty volumes in all--which North had prepared for me. I came across this list not long ago, and was amused at the prices that he suggested I might safely pay. Guineas where his list gives shillings would not to-day separate the books from their owners.

It was at this time, too, that I made my first Lamb pilgrimage, going to every place of interest I could find, from Christ's Hospital, then in Newgate Street, where I saw the Blue-Coat boys at dinner, to the neglected grave in Edmonton Churchyard, where Charles and Mary Lamb lie buried side by side. The illustration facing page 54 is made from a negative I procured in 1890, of the house at Enfield in which Lamb lived from October, 1829, until May, 1833.