Chapter III Some Lucky Finds
The book-hunter whose heart is in his quest never tires of tales of lucky discoveries, and of rare books bought for a song. This is natural enough, and, moreover, authentic details of some great find invariably stimulate his eagerness, and encourage him to persevere in the search for what he is repeatedly being told—as though he of all men did not know it already—is only to be met with casually, and by the merest of accidents. Now that all of us have settled among ourselves what books are rare, and desirable to possess on that account, as well as for many other reasons, everyone is, of course, naturally anxious to obtain the credit and still more the solid advantages of a startling discovery. It is each man for himself, and that perhaps is the reason why book-men of the old school invariably dressed in staid and sober black, like Sisters of Charity, to show the world at large that charity in matters that relate to their pursuit is dead. What man among the whole fraternity would give away his suspicions that, in such and such a place, something may lie hidden? Rather would he make his way to the spot, in fear lest some other explorer might not, after all, have forestalled him, and during his journey there look to the right and the left of him, and get lost in crowds, as part of a deep design to shake off any other bookworm who, knowing his hunting instincts and great experience, might perchance be shadowing his footsteps. It has, indeed, been seriously questioned more than once by learned divines whether any collector, and more especially a collector of books, can by any possibility reach the kingdom of heaven, seeing that the inestimable gift of charity is by him regarded of such little account that he would do anything rather than practise it. It were best, however, to leave such polemical discussions to those who take an interest in them, and content ourselves with saying that the bookman’s ways are necessarily tortuous, and his route through life circuitous.
It is next to impossible to open any book about books without meeting with instances of lucky finds, and the most curious part of the matter is that the stories are invariably more or less the same. Like the literary man’s collection of stock phrases, which he uses with or without variation as occasion may require, and at judicious intervals, so these records of the chase strike us as being peculiarly liable to recur. From their opening sentences we know them—nay, the very mention of a place or a name is often sufficient to make an adept take up his parable and finish the narration. Let a man but whisper Hungerford Market, and we know that he is going to tell us of the fishmonger’s shop where about half a century ago ‘autograph signatures of Godolphin, Sunderland, Ashley, Lauderdale, Ministers of James II.; Accounts of the Exchequer Office, signed by Henry VII. and Henry VIII.; Wardrobe Accounts of Queen Anne; Secret Service Accounts, marked with the “E.G.” of Nell Gwynne; a treatise on the Eucharist, in the boyish hand of Edward VI.; and a disquisition on the Order of the Garter in the scholarly writing of Elizabeth,’ were rescued from the eaters of fried plaice, and the tender mercies of the barbaric tradesman who supplied them. Mr. Rogers Rees, of ‘Diversions of a Bookworm’ fame, got this story from somewhere, though he perhaps would not know it now, for it has been altered and added to in a score or more of competing publications. Then there are stories of Resbecque, who had a nose for a book second to that of no hound for a fox, of Naude, Colbert, the great Pixerecourt, and many more. It would be a shame to dish up these plats again, for to make them palatable they would have to be seasoned with imaginative details—an objectionable, not to say fraudulent, practice at its best.
There is one story, however, which must be raked up, and then decently buried again, for it is to be hoped that we shall hear no more of it. It is perhaps not so well known as many of the rest, but in any case would not be mentioned here except as an almost unique illustration of the vicissitudes to which any book, however scarce and valuable it may be, is occasionally liable. It is, stripped of its glosses, to the following effect: When the library at Thorneck Hall was weeded of its superfluous books, the butler, who superintended the operation, came across a perfect copy of Dame Juliana Berners’ ‘Boke of St. Albans,’ printed by an unknown typographer in 1486. One would have thought that the quaintness of the type, to say nothing of the extraordinary character of the coloured coats of arms and other illustrations, would at least have prompted inquiry; but no! it was thrown lightly aside, and in due course disposed of to a pedlar for ninepence. He in his turn sold it to a chemist at Gainsborough for four times the amount, and the chemist got £2 for his bargain from a bookseller, who, notwithstanding the fact that a very imperfect copy had been disposed of at the Duke of Roxburghe’s sale many years before, positively sold it to another bookseller for £7. He, at any rate, was somewhat better informed, though not much, for once more the volume changed hands, this time to Sir Thomas Grenville, for £80. These transactions did not take place in the Middle Ages, but in the forties of the present century, and the wonder is that anyone with the slightest knowledge of books could have flown in the face of Dibdin’s valuation of £420, which was at the time a matter of common knowledge. The butler may be honestly forgiven, and the pedlar commiserated with, the chemist even excused; but the two booksellers have no hope of redemption. The imperfect Roxburghe copy brought £147, and was resold at the White Knights sale for £84. In 1882 a perfect copy made its appearance at Christie’s, and was knocked down for £630, being about a third less than the purchaser had made up his mind to pay for it had circumstances compelled. The life of a book is more often than not like the life of a horse. You use it, and little by little strip it of its value till it becomes a wreck and can be used no more. The ‘Boke of St. Albans,’ in company with many other treasured volumes, is not, however, for use, but a thing of sentiment, with a value that will probably continue to increase, till the leaves crumble before the touch of time.
Stories such as this are the book-man’s tonic; they pick him up from the despondency into which he has fallen through lack of sustenance, and encourage him to believe that extreme scarcity is not always the reason of failure, but rather that all things come at last to him who can work and can wait, as indeed they do, for instances of good luck in the matter of discovering books, though perhaps not numerous when personal experience alone is considered, are common enough in the aggregate. Here is a comparatively recent instance of good fortune:
In the summer of the year 1893 a London bookseller, who must be nameless, was offered a small library, then stored in a provincial town some thirty miles away. The owner copied the title-pages of a few of the books, and these were of such a character that the bookseller went over and eventually paid the price asked. What that amount was I am unable to state, but have good reason to suppose that it was less than £50. The majority of the volumes were, as is usually the case with old-fashioned and not particularly noticeable libraries, almost worthless. There were sermons preached in the long-ago to sleeping congregations, tracts and pamphlets on nothing in particular, an old and well-thumbed Prayer-Book or two of no importance, and the usual ponderous family Bible in tarnished gilt. On a casual survey, the whole of the books might have passed muster at a third-rate auction, and yet the bookseller was only too glad to see them safely housed in London. The reason was this: Among the refuse were Americana, some of extreme rarity, such as those who deal in such books are perpetually on the look-out for, and rarely find, even at their full value. As these books were publicly sold the following December, we are in a position to see what the bookseller got in return for his money, which, as I have said, was probably less than £50. The prices realized are given, so that there may be no mistake about the matter:
1. An Act for Exportation of Commodities, Incourage Manufactures, Trade, Plantations, four sheets, printed on one side only, in Black Letter, 1657, 8vo. £1 10s.
2. Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 3 vols. in 2, Black Letter, 1599-1600, folio. £6 5s.
3. Josselyn’s Account of Two Voyages to New England, 1674, 12mo. £6 15s.
4. Gabriel’s Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pennsilvania, and of New Jersey, 1698, 12mo. £31.
5. The Book of the General Lawes and Liberties concerning the Inhabitants of Massachusetts, 1658. Printed according to the order of the Court, Cambridge (Mass.), 1660, small folio. £109.
6. Heath’s A Journal of Travels from New Hampshire to Caratuck, on the Continent of North America, 1706, 4to. £5 15s.
7. Frampton’s Joyfull Newes out of the New-found Worlde, 1596, 4to. £4 15s.
8. Brereton’s Briefe and True Relation of the Discoverie of the North Part of Virginia, 1602, 4to. £179. This copy had a few leaves mended.
9. Captain John Smith’s Description of New England, 1613, 4to. £5.
10. Mourt’s Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England, 1622, 4 to. £40. Title and corner of the first leaf mended.
11. A Briefe Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England, 1622, 4to. £40.
12. Captain Thomas James’s Strange and Dangerous Voyage in his intended Discovery of the North-West Passage, 1633, 4to. £17.
13. A Relation of Maryland, together with a Map of the Country. These Bookes are to be had at Master William Deasley, Esq., his house on the back side of Drury Lane, neere the Cockpit Playhouse; or, in his absense, at Master John Morgan’s House in High Holborne, over against the Dolphin, London, Sept. 8, A.D. 1635. £76. This copy had the rare map.
14. Captain Luke Fox. North-West Fox, or Fox from the North-West Passage, 1635, 4to. £18.
15. Castell’s A Short Discoverie of the Coast and Continent of America, 1644, 4to. £17.
16. Morton’s New England’s Memorial, printed at Cambridge (Mass.), 1669, 4to. £47.
17. Lederer’s Discoveries in Three Several Marches from Virginia to the West of Carolina, 1672, 4to. £36.
And a few others, realizing a grand total of £658 odd for twenty-four works.
This remarkable collection of books of American interest is probably the most important that has ever been met with in such a way. It may have been formed a couple of centuries ago by someone who took a burning interest in the ‘New-found Worlde,’ as old Frampton calls America, and for various reasons was unable to go there. Or it may be that it was got together at a later date, as the presence of Heath’s ‘Journal of Travels’ seems to suggest, by some bookish prophet, with an eye to the main chance. If so, it is a pity that he did not live long enough to reap the reward of his foresight and energy, though, after all, even had he done so, cui bono? Suppose he gave £5 for the whole collection a hundred years ago—and surely this is on the right side, for Hakluyt’s ‘Principal Navigations’ would itself be worth as much in those days—even then he would be woefully out of pocket for his pains, for his £5 would, at compound interest, have increased to the best part of £2,500. It is this little matter of interest that upsets all calculations, and makes us all lying prophets, so far as money is concerned.
Another extremely fortunate find was made, in 1896, in Hampshire. Can such things be? Can any man be born to such a heritage of luck? It seems that Mr. M. H. Foster, who recently bought the Cams Hall estate in the county named, took it into his head to explore the mansion, and in doing so came across a number of old volumes which had been abandoned by the late proprietor. They lay, dusty and cobwebbed, in an old cupboard, and instead of consisting of forgotten ledgers and day-books, as would have been the case if any less fortunate gentleman had been concerned, proved to be of the greatest value. There was Caxton, writ large, among them—several Caxtons in fact, one being ‘Justinian’s Law,’ such an exceedingly scarce book that a later edition once sold in London for £1,000—so at least it is said, though I have no record of the circumstance. At any rate, there is very little doubt that the volume in question would bring that amount or near it, and again let it be asked, Can any mortal living enjoy such favour from the gods? As in the case of the Thorneck Hall ‘Boke of St. Albans,’ so in that of the Cams Hall ‘Justinian’s Law ‘; how can such books be overlooked? Their very type betrays them sufficiently, one would think, to make it impossible for anyone, however careless, to pass them by.
Wholesale and very valuable discoveries like these are naturally of such infrequent occurrence that when one is made the news of it is disseminated far and wide, and commented upon in all the newspapers, which are nothing now if not literary, at least to some extent. Isolated finds, the picking up of some single object of interest or value, is the most the book-man reasonably hopes for in these days, and so long as he confines his desires within such narrow bounds it is hard indeed if he never reap an occasional success, such as that reported of a Melbourne gentleman, who only a few months ago picked out of a box labelled ‘Fourpence each’ a first edition of ‘Sordello,’ with an inscription in the handwriting of the author himself. Browning had written on the flyleaf, ‘To my dear friend, R. H. Horne, from R. B.,’ which, though certainly autographically less important than if he had signed his name in full, is yet a very pretty and cheap souvenir of an eminent poet. This R. H. Horne, who was himself a versifier, and once celebrated as the author of ‘Orion,’ emigrated to Australia in 1852, and became a Goldfields Commissioner at Ballarat. When he left there and came to England again, the book must have been left to the mercies of the Melbourne streets, in which presumably it existed till rescued from the low depth of misery which the miscellaneous box is supposed to imply.
Amongst a lot of old paper recently received at a mill in Andover, Connecticut, was a Bible which some Goth had sold by weight. In it was an inscription, ‘This Bible was used in the pulpit by Rev. Stephen West, pastor in Stockbridge, Mass., from 1759 to 1818.’ This book was perhaps not so important from a worldly point of view as ‘The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy; By a Lady,’ which the late Mr. Sala rescued from oblivion in the Lambeth Marshes, as will shortly be related; but the Rev. Stephen West was a very noted personage in his day, and there are hundreds of people, more particularly in America, who would be very glad to possess a memorial of him. He was the author of the well-known ‘Essay on Moral Agency,’ 1794, the ‘Sketches of the Life of the Rev. S. Hopkins,’ 1805, and other books which in their day enjoyed a very extensive circulation.
Mr. Sala’s discovery of Mrs. Glasse’s cookery-book was due to his habit of prowling round the old bookstalls of the Metropolis, particularly those which line the narrow streets of Lambeth Marshes and the New Cut. On a Sunday morning these places are like a fair, and, literally, scores of peripatetic booksellers, who for the most part follow another occupation the remaining days of the week, take their stand with barrows piled high with lore. The mob pull the volumes about, and haggle over the prices, so that the stock displayed is not, on the whole, in the best possible condition. Still, sometimes you do meet with a well-preserved rarity, as Mr. Sala did when he purchased ‘The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy,’ 1747, thin folio, for six humble pennies. He had the book bound by a first-rate craftsman, and when it came at last to the inevitable hammer some two or three years ago, it sold for £10, and was reasonably worth considerably more. Only five or six copies of this edition are known to be in existence, but of the second edition, which also appeared in 1747, only one copy is known, according to the Rev. Richard Hooper, whose unique specimen contains an inscription worth reproducing. It runs as follows:
‘Steal not this Book my honest Frend for Fear
the Galowss should be your hend and when
you Die the Lord will say and wares that Book
you stole away.’
Cooks are proverbially greasy people, and a book passing through their hands is apt to return like ‘Tom and Jerry’ from those of a prize-fighter or sporting publican. Still, 201 persons subscribed to the first edition of Mrs. Glasse, and 282 to the second, and some were neither cooks nor publicans, but members of the aristocracy, who might be expected to treat their books with some show of respect. But perhaps they expressly bought them for the use of their cooks, and handed them over to the kitchen authorities, in which case their rarity is accounted for. All old cookery-books, and not merely Mrs. Glasse’s famous work, are rare, because they are books of practical utility meant to be consulted in a republic of pots and pans, and grease and litter; but Mrs. Glasse’s guide is more desirable than most other English books of the kind, because there is a sentiment hanging around it like a halo, by reason of words which are not to be found therein, ‘First catch your hare.’
For my part, whenever I see a cookery-book flaunting it on a street barrow, I rescue it at once, for I have a belief, rightly or wrongly, that some of these days there will be a very great demand for old works of the kind. There is a present disposition to return to ancestral dishes which means the resuscitation of ‘The Skilful Cook,’ ‘The Good Housewife’s Jewel,’ ‘The Queen’s Closet Opened,’ ‘The Ladies’ Practice,’ and many other volumes where the necessary recipes are to be found. For some time past, indeed, recipe-books of all kinds have practically disappeared from the stalls where once they were so numerous. ‘They’re miking a lot of ’em hup at the West Hend,’ said a stall proprietor, jerking his thumb in the direction of Belgravia, from which it must be understood, not that any manufactory of forgeries is as yet established there, but merely that the upper ten think a great deal of old recipe-books, and are buying them up for their cooks to practise with.
It is sadly to be feared that the paper-mills grind many good books exceeding small at times. This is to be conjectured by reason of the fact that every now and then a consignment is stopped and rescued just as it is about to be transformed into pulp. What happens once, is, we may be sure, repeated at intervals, though direct evidence may be wanting to convict the paper-maker. Evidence of this character is, however, occasionally forthcoming, as, for example, in the case of the sixth volume of Dr. Vallancey’s ‘Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,’ which was published in two divisions in 1804. The previous five volumes are comparatively common, but both parts of volume six are very scarce, nearly all the copies having been accidentally sold for waste-paper, and treated as such. Charles Dickens’s ‘Village Coquettes’ and also Swinburne’s ‘A Song of Italy’ were once much rarer books than they are now, and commanded a great deal more money in the market. Neither book sold well when published, and a very considerable ‘remainder’ was stacked in quires in the publishers’ cellars. One day these Augean stables were cleaned out, and the ‘Village Coquettes’ and ‘A Song of Italy’ were saved from the mill by the merest of accidents, with the result that the former book went down fifty per cent. in the market, and the latter to next to nothing. These finds were noised abroad, with the result that they were robbed of most of their importance. Imagine, if we can, a great discovery of a hundred copies of Shakespeare’s first folio. And imagine also a journal of credit getting hold of the news and noising it abroad, as it would do when it had satisfied itself that there was at least a substratum of truth in the story. The result we know. Half the value of the find would vanish away on the instant, and rightly so, too, as a strict moralist would doubtless insist.
Sometimes, though not often, some of the literary auctioneers will make a mistake, and in the most unaccountable manner include a rarity in a ‘parcel’ of rubbish. A good copy of the first edition of Cocker’s ‘Decimal Arithmetic,’ 1685, was picked up in this way a short time ago, though not in London, and at Leeds a dealer bought an original and very interesting letter in Shelley’s autograph, which had somehow or other slipped among a number of school-books of trifling value. It is the easiest thing in the world to make a mistake where books are concerned, more particularly when they consist of pamphlets and other works which lie in a small compass. Folios can take care of themselves, but a man needs to have a first-rate all-round knowledge who would essay to catalogue a good old-fashioned miscellaneous library.
In France, sale-catalogues are prepared by experts, who are called in to assist the auctioneers; in London the auctioneers keep their own cataloguers, and in the country towns they seek the assistance of booksellers, or do the work themselves. If a sale is advertised to be held at a house where furniture is the chief attraction, the presence of a comparatively small number of books acts like a magnet, and people are attracted from far and near in the hope that something good will fall to their share. Sometimes they are rewarded, more frequently not; for what everybody is looking for is almost sure to be detected by several, if it exist at all, and then, of course, the price is run up. Still, occasionally, a whole roomful of experts will miss a bargain which stares them in the face. Unaccountable as it may seem, I myself once bought for £1 a first-rate copy of Alken’s ‘National Sports of Great Britain,’ 1821, a scarce folio book full of coloured plates. It was wedged in among a quantity of furniture, and had escaped observation, although there were several booksellers in the room.
The highest form of genius to be met with in book-men is, however, the capacity possessed by a very few of them to detect the author of an anonymous book by reference to the style in which it is written. If we happened to meet with ‘Swellfoot the Tyrant’ for a trifling sum, and passed it by, we should deserve our fate, for the authorship is so generally and widely known that there is no excuse for any book-man who is unacquainted with the facts surrounding it. But were we to discover another poem by Shelley, which no one had ever heard of before, and also be able to prove conclusively that he must, ex necessitate, have been the author of it, that indeed would be a triumph of skill. Some few books have been rescued in this way, ‘Alaric at Rome,’ for instance, which was discovered and assigned to Matthew Arnold simply and solely by reference to the style. ‘Alaric at Rome’ made a sensation when the authorship came to be known, and book-hunters were searching high and low, and giving commissions in hot haste. A few copies were unearthed in this way, but the number was exceedingly small, not more than two or three, I believe, and the pamphlet, for it is nothing more, is at this moment an object of deep interest to the few, who are in reality very many, when we come to reflect that none but perhaps half a dozen can ever hope to possess it.
When we get into bookland, more particularly into that secluded corner of it where specialists assemble to compare notes and exhibit their treasures, confusion springs up on the instant. The specialist cannot always know his business thoroughly. If you mention a particular book which comes within his purview, he will probably tell you how many copies of it are known to exist, and where they are, how many of the total number are cropped, and to what extent, and whether the titles have been ‘washed’ or otherwise renovated. He knows accurately the original cost in money of each, and how much each would be likely to sell for in case it were brought to the hammer. All this is, of course, good and solid information, but it is too microscopically minute and exact to interest anyone outside a very small circle. To most of us these details are unimportant, and yet every lucky find must pass some specialist, who assigns to it its proper position in point of excellence, and makes it keep its place. For this reason I have been charged with the offence of speaking about him as though he were a common bookworm, ready to feed on anything that came in his way, which is, of course, flat treason, not by any means to be silently borne by the elite.