Chapter VI Vagaries of Book-Hunters
Ten or fifteen years ago it was quite usual to meet with collections of title-pages formed by followers of the immortal Bagford. These were to be seen quoted in booksellers’ catalogues and displayed in the auction rooms, and were commonly disposed of for small sums of money—small, that is to say, in comparison with what would have been realized for the books themselves had they been allowed to remain in that state of life to which the author and others had called them. Of late, collections of title-pages have not been very much in evidence anywhere, for it is universally felt that there is little or no romance surrounding the slaughter even of folios, to say nothing of smaller-sized victims, and for that reason these scrappy collections are huddled out of sight like family skeletons. The book-hunter of the present day has his foibles, it is true, but he has learned by experience and from the expostulatory remarks of others that wild freaks are completely out of place in a library, and so it has come to pass that books are treated in a different way from what they were only a couple of decades ago, and no one who has the smallest respect either for himself or his vocation would now either care or dare to form a collection of title-pages. Should he happen to own one either by purchase or under circumstances beyond his control, he will produce it, if at all, with apologies and sighs. It is abundantly manifest that the wicked man hath turned away from much of his wickedness.
The reason of this tremendous transformation must be put down to the credit of a rule which, though formulated and preached at one time by the elite only, has been insisted upon with such pertinacity that it has gradually become diffused throughout the whole world of collectors, no matter to what objects of interest they may direct their attention. This rule is, that taste and the pocket alike demand that be a book good, bad, or indifferent in its externals, it shall, nevertheless, be left untouched by its owner, who is but its temporary custodian, and a trustee for others who shall come after him. To rip out the title-page, no matter with what object, is an outrage on decency which, it is pleasant to find, is now appraised at its proper pitch of enormity. If the stamp-collector rejoice in the possession of a specimen with ‘original gum,’ and rate its interest and value higher on that account, shall the book-collector, who is the oldest, the most learned, and the most aristocratic of all collectors, give place in the matter of common-sense and discretion to the product of a frivolous age? Shall he cut initial letters from missals and other manuscripts, and insult the shades of Fust and Schoeffer by making a senseless collection of colophons? These things were in vogue at one time, but are now frowned down even by the most ignorant of mortals, since, to put the matter on no higher ground, the money value of old books has considerably increased of late years to his certain knowledge, and he believes that anything with curious type, the f’s made so—ƒ, and villainous prints scattered about the text, must ex necessitate rei be worth its weight in gold, and perhaps more. What a contrast is this little false, but preventative, store of knowledge to the crass stupidity of the early years of the present century, as exemplified in the persons of the Bishops, Canons, and Chaplains of Lincoln Cathedral, who permitted the choir-boys to collect illuminated initials, and with that object to cut up with their pen-knives scores of vellum manuscripts. A good many of the Caxtons from this same Cathedral were purchased by Dibdin for the Althorpe collection, and will be found catalogued in ‘A Lincolne Nosegaye.’ The Dean and Chapter, knowing little about books, and caring less, had disposed of them all for a ‘consideration,’ and thus without thought stripped themselves of their choicest possessions next to the Cathedral itself.
Of a truth, books have only recently come to be regarded as possessing a sentimental value altogether distinct from considerations of utility, and it is only within the compass of a comparatively few years that collectors have sprung up from the very stones to cry aloud, and to protest against such wanton acts of mutilation or destruction as the records of past days almost choke themselves in the echoing of. Only a little while ago ‘Grangerizing’ was the favourite pastime of thousands of persons of elegant leisure, as Griswold called the lazy dullards of his generation, and what this involved would be whispered in corners but for the fact that it was for 200 years unblushingly shouted in the open day.
During all that period the teachings of the genuine bibliophiles had so passed from deed and truth into mere monotony of unbelieved phrase that no English was literal enough to convert the persons who went about seeking material, at vast expense, wherewith to extra-illustrate some inane book of polemics or proverbs.
Nicholas Ferrar, who kept the ‘Protestant Nunnery’ at Little Gidding, in Huntingdonshire, was, I believe, the inventor of a system which was not fully developed until the publication of Granger’s ‘Biographical History of England,’ but which is, nevertheless, directly or indirectly responsible for the condition of most of the imperfect volumes which are met with at every turn. The story of Nicholas Ferrar, assuming it to be true, which there is little reason to doubt, makes it clear that King Charles I. was as bad as or worse than anybody in this matter, for, had he not affected to admire the handiwork of this first and chief of sinners, the baneful practice of mutilating books for the sake of their illustrations, title-pages, or frontispieces, might never have become an aristocratic amusement, sanctified by tradition, and ennobled far beyond its deserts by kingly patronage. The Concordance which Ferrar showed the King escaped the wrath of the fanatic Hugh Peters and his crew, and, after many vicissitudes, is now safely lodged in the British Museum, a warning to all who may at any time seek to revive a practice which would, in these days of emulation and competition, burn with a white heat.
In Wordsworth’s ‘Ecclesiastical Biography’ the story of Nicholas Ferrar is set out at length. There is no need to enter into minute details, as the tale has since become stereotyped, and is found reproduced in a dozen different places at least. Shortly, it appears that in June, 1634, King Charles I. was staying with the Earl of Westmorland at Apethorpe, and from thence sent one of his gentlemen to the home of Nicholas Ferrar, hard by, to ‘intreat’ a sight of a Concordance which he had heard had recently been completed. When Ferrar was on the Continent some time previously, he had bought up a great number of prints by the best masters, illustrative of historical passages of the Old and New Testaments, and these he afterwards used for ornamenting various compilations of the Scriptures, among them a ‘full harmony or concordance of the four Evangelists, adorned with many beautiful pictures, which required more than a year for the composition, and was divided into 150 heads or chapters.’
This was the Concordance that King Charles was so anxious to look at, and which, indeed, he admired so much that he never rested until he had obtained one like it for his own library. Both books are now in the British Museum, the original having been acquired about three years ago, and the one in the King’s Library from George II., who had inherited the royal collection of books and manuscripts.
From the point of view of Nicholas Ferrar, there was certainly no harm in this process of extra-illustrating. There is no reason to believe that he had gone about tearing out plates from books, or done anything else which in any respect, save one, could be regarded as objectionable in the slightest degree. There was, and is, however, one objection to his procedure, namely, the very bad example he set to unscrupulous people who, in after years, rose up in their thousands and commenced to rip and tear with diabolical enterprise. These were the days of Granger’s ‘Biographical History of England’—hence the verb to Grangerize—when people went about searching for portraits of celebrities mentioned in the text to paste between the leaves in their proper places. If Granger incidentally mentioned that someone had been conveyed to the Tower, and subsequently had the good fortune to escape out of a certain window, books would be ransacked and mutilated to provide illustrations of (1) the Tower of London from the N., S., E. or W., as the case might be; (2) portrait of the prisoner; (3) view of the window from which he let himself down; and finally, if, Laus Deo, a letter in his handwriting or a section of the rope which had made his escape possible could only be unearthed, great was the joy in the camp of the Philistine.
This mania for Grangerizing grew till it assumed enormous proportions. One enthusiast tried to illustrate Rees’ ‘Cyclopaedia,’ but died before he had accomplished very much in comparison with what remained to be done. Mr. Crowle’s copy of Pennant’s ‘History of London’ cost that gentleman £7,000 from first to last, and there is a book of this kind in the Bodleian which has engulfed nearly double that amount. It consists of Clarendon’s ‘History of the Rebellion’ swollen to sixty-seven large volumes, representing forty years of intense application. The vagaries of a whole army of book-collectors are reflected from every page of works such as these, for a man must necessarily be a book-collector first, and a Grangerizer after, else would material fail him. Happily for the peace of books, the mania for extra-illustrating has practically died out. The expense is too great, life too short, the knowledge and taste—of a kind—too laborious to acquire, to endow this pastime with a permanent and stable interest.
And yet there is another vagary, eccentricity, freak, or what you will, which, for cool, deliberate folly, has never been equalled even among Ferrar’s admirers. The fun in this case consists in wilfully destroying a certain number of scarce and valuable books in order to heighten the importance and value of the survivors. Three or four collectors whose tastes are similar—that is to say, who accumulate works by the same author—will take stock of their belongings. Thanks to the Grangerizers, a portrait will perhaps be missing from one volume, and a plate from another; some disciple of an ancient Goth may have removed a title-page or two; one copy may be fairer to look upon than another; a leaf or two may be injured which in another copy, imperfect perhaps in other respects, may be above suspicion. Our collectors have duplicates, for they have been striving all their lives to prevent anyone else from obtaining any copy, good, bad or indifferent, of the scarcest works of the author or authors they think they honour by their notice. They make a ‘pool’ of all the volumes which are not immaculate; complete or perfect as many of them as possible, apportion them, and destroy the remainder. They will burn a work which is perfect, provided each has a copy in better condition, and this is to prevent you or me, or anyone else, from sharing in their sacrilegious joy. When we reflect that, from the nature of things, it is only the scarcest books that can be so treated with effect, we shall begin to realize the sinister importance of the act. Practices such as these are the product of the present age; they are not common, far from it, but they are not unusual. And yet the perpetrators mean no harm, for, as they would very truly say, if their practices were generally known and complaint were made, ‘You can, if you like, read So-and-so without the least difficulty, for his works have been reprinted many times, and it is not either essential or advisable that the very scarcest edition of all should be in your hands.’ There is in this argument a little logical force, but no decency for anyone to dissect.
Bookmen of the present day, or at least those among them who aspire to the highest seats in the collectors’ Pantheon, are invariably bound by rule, and it is this hard and fast bondage that makes them do things which, if left to themselves, they would probably be the first to deprecate. To accumulate any considerable number of really scarce books is the labour of a lifetime, and to obtain immaculate copies necessitates not merely the possession of plenty of money, but a very great deal of energy, discrimination, and tact. The old school of general lovers is dying out. People now very seldom buy up whole libraries, or send out colossal orders to gratify a mere love of possession. They work by the book of arithmetic, cautiously, slowly, and with one main object ever in view. In this they are right, but in this also they fail, a paradox which is no paradox at all when it is remembered that book-hunters are of many kinds and of varying degrees of intelligence.
For instance, though there is undoubtedly something unique and strange about the very appearance of a library of extremely diminutive books, the collector of works of this kind is ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d,’ within the compass of about two square inches at the most, and probably does not expect to derive either instruction or amusement from their pages when he has succeeded in reading them with the aid of a microscope. His rule is inflexible. Shakespeare in folio must give place to ‘The Mite’; ‘The English Bijou Almanac’ for 1837 is, in his eyes one of the choicest of all volumes. Here literature and the rule are in conflict, and books become bric-à-brac, as they must do when any rule is too rigidly applied to them. Yet there are many collectors of small books both here and abroad, and prices rule inordinately high in consequence.
Very probably ‘The Mite’ is the smallest book printed from movable type in the world. Its size is only 3/8 in. by 3/4 in., and it would certainly be an exceedingly difficult matter to reduce this measurement. If anybody could do so, it would be M. Salomon of Paris, who has long been a collector of these microscopical curiosities, or the trustees of the British Museum, who have a box full of them. In 1781 a little book called the ‘Alarm Almanac’ made its appearance in Paris, and though printed with movable type and not engraved, like nearly all these little works are, measured only 19 millimetres by 14. There are very nearly 25-1/2 millimetres to the inch, and this specimen consequently runs ‘The Mite’ very close indeed. The ‘English Bijou Almanac’ for 1837, however, completely eclipses both, but unfortunately it is engraved and not printed from type. This book measures 3/4 in. in height, 1/2 in. wide, and 1/8 in. in thickness. The authoress was ‘L.E.L.,’ Letitia Elizabeth Landon, an almost forgotten poetess, whose sad marriage and untimely death are known to only a few students of Victorian literature. Some of her poems were printed in the ‘Bijou’ for the first and only time, so that this tiny volume is of some literary importance. Its title is so minute that a magnifying glass is necessary to read it. Its thirty-seven leaves are devoted, inter alia, to several pages of music and some portraits, including one of James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist. Even small books have a history and an importance of their own, but to collect them to the exclusion of every other book is surely a pronounced ‘vagary.’
M. Salomon has more than 200 specimens, but then he does not absolutely confine his attention to midgets. I never knew nor heard of more than one collector who was so infatuated as to do so, and he had forty-five volumes of the kind, all different, in which he took such extreme delight that he was ever on the look out for more.
Another collector with whom I am personally acquainted has read this chapter through at my express request, and consequently cannot reasonably say that I have endeavoured to question the soundness of his discretion behind his back. He accumulates books with a history. If a book has no history, he will have none of it. In his library are many volumes which I must confess I have a great regard for, but which I know can never be mine, for each is unique, and the whole collection is destined for a public museum in the end.
He has a book bound in what looks like dry and hard parchment, warped with damp, and stained here and there with reddish brown. It is a copy of Johnson’s ‘Lives and Adventures of the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, and Street Robbers, etc.,’ printed in folio in 1736, a scarce book at any time, but under existing circumstances past praying for. The parchment is human cuticle, stripped from the back of a criminal who had swung at Tyburn for a series of atrocious butcheries, which are chronicled with considerable minuteness in the pages of the ‘Newgate Calendar.’ When the corpse was cut down it was, according to the custom then prevailing, carted ‘home,’ and exhibited to gaping crowds at so much a head, and finally sold to the surgeons. From them a prior owner of this delightful volume obtained the skin, which, when tanned, formed an appropriate and never-to-be-forgotten binding, to all appearances sweating great smears of blood. It is only the damp, of course, or perhaps some defect in the curing process, which is responsible for these blemishes; but they seem to cry for vengeance, still greater and greater vengeance, against an inhuman wretch long since departed more or less in peace.
This is the only gruesome thing in the library, and I know as a fact that it excites more interest than all the rest of the books put together, though many, not to say most, of them are distinctly worthy of the closest attention. One volume belonged to Charles Lamb, who has made a perfect wreck of it, and half a dozen or more have the signature of ‘Will Shakespere’ scribbled in an Elizabethan hand on the title-pages, and in all sorts of places. These were once among the choicest possessions of Samuel Ireland, of Norfolk Street, Strand, the father of William Henry Ireland, a liar and a solicitor’s clerk, who, as all the world knows, was for a time, and in very truth, mistaken for the great dramatist himself. Then there are books with inscriptions, undoubtedly genuine, of Bradshaw the regicide, Algernon Sidney, and many other persons of the highest political eminence in their day; books, too, which have belonged to Young the poet—distinguishable at a glance by the multitude of turned-down leaves—and the unfortunate Louis XVI.
This library is, of its kind, perhaps as important as any that has ever been formed, and yet it only numbers some 250 volumes, so supremely difficult is it, as a rule, to trace the possession even of books for more than a generation or two. Great men have ever been chary of their names, or at least it would seem so from the number of unimportant signatures and inscriptions we meet with day by day.
A long and very interesting chapter might be written on ‘Inscriptions in Books,’ and it must be confessed that a really important signature or comment adds so very appreciably to the sentimental value of the volume in which it is found, that it is not surprising that Oliver Wendell Holmes conjured up a pleasant train of reflection, in his inimitable style, based upon the name of a former owner of his own copy of the ‘Colloquies of Erasmus,’ which, by the way, my friend is extremely anxious to possess himself of, but will probably never obtain. In this instance the personality of the ‘Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table’ obscures all else, and gives the book a distinct history of its own—a history that invests it with an importance and value it could never claim of itself. To find out all we can about the former owners of books which we ourselves take pleasure in is no frivolous task, and the pity is that our opportunities for doing so are limited. The book-plate has very nearly put an end to owner’s autographs, and being easy to remove, affords little or no guarantee of ownership. And book-plates have been in use in this country for more than 200 years.
No doubt everyone who has anything to do with books, whether as writer, producer, or collector, can call to mind the eccentricities of his neighbours with regard to them. I call it extremely eccentric conduct on the part of any man to persist in collecting odd volumes, and to studiously ignore complete sets. Yet I knew an old gentleman—now dead, and his books littering the stalls of Farringdon Street and elsewhere—who did this, year after year, and for many years, with the inevitable result. He was fond of literature, and the pleasure he derived in reading was part and parcel of his existence.
It was an axiom with him, however, that anything which is worth having, and any knowledge worth acquiring, must be laboriously worked for; and he would instance numerous authorities who have taught this truth by example as well as by precept. He would say, ‘If I go out and buy a Bible for £500, because it is old and scarce, do you think I shall derive as much benefit and solace from its pages as if I had invested a trifle with the fixed determination to read what I had acquired and to follow its teachings?’
‘No, certainly not,’ is the obvious and truthful reply to that; but this would appear to be different from buying one volume of, say, Pope’s works when there ought to be twenty, and trusting to enterprise not unmingled with luck to discover the remaining nineteen. To this, however, he would not agree, and, to do him justice, he did not preach one thing and perform another. His theory was that, if the perusal of an odd volume leads the reader to long for the possession of its fellows, it is better that he should search for them until he finds them, than that he should have them to his hand, as it were, ready made.
Carlyle intimated that a man had far better study the title-page of any book worth the trouble of looking at than read the whole text with a vacant mind, and no doubt he was right, though this, too, seems to be an entirely distinct matter from the general principle that nothing can be learned without a maximum of inconvenience. Such a conclusion is rather a straining of the position insisted upon by Nero’s tutor, that no one should collect more books than he can read, and that a multitude of books only distracts the mind. Therefore was it that Francis Bissari in the year 1750 designed a plate, which he pasted in the few volumes he possessed, and which consequently is now extremely scarce. ‘Ex-Libris civis Francisci Bissari,’ he says, ‘Distrahit animum librorum multitude, itaque cum legere non possis quantum habueris, sat est habere quantum legas. Seneca. Ep. 2.’
Still, as I have intimated, the old gentleman had his way and his day, and when he died his books were all despatched to the auction rooms. It took three men more than a week to pack them in boxes. There were books under every bed in the house, and every nook and cranny was full of them. There were, altogether, many thousands of volumes, and nearly all were odd. If a series were found to be complete, as sometimes happened, it was sure to be made up of volumes belonging to different editions, and, naturally enough, in different bindings. The auctioneers did what they could, and sold the vast majority in ‘parcels’ for a mere song, which in truth was all they were worth.
This peculiar form of book-collecting, though apparently strange, is, and always has been, very usual, for the vast majority of readers are poor. One volume will cost less, proportionately, than the complete set of which it forms part; and, moreover, we are again face to face with the argument that it is better to master the contents of one volume than to have a mere superficial knowledge of a dozen or more. The only thing is that, as the world wags at present, the advice is erratic, and the system of buying books in sections one that cannot be recommended. If we could be sure of a hundred years of life, then things might be different. Sed Ars longa, vita brevis est.
And so it happens that the vagaries of book-hunters are often passing strange. Some, like Sir Thomas Phillipps, will buy largely, and never even open the cases in which they arrive. Others will hide them in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, while others again will cut them to pieces, or in some other way destroy them utterly. It is the most usual thing, for me, at any rate, and therefore presumably for others who are known to write about books, or to give the reports of the auction-rooms, to receive a bundle of title-pages as samples of the volumes to which they belong, with a request for information as to how they ought to be bound, and what they are worth. Some collectors—real bonâ-fide collectors these—start life with strong opinions as to the usefulness of books, and, after the manner of Grolier, though without his discretion, open their doors to all sorts and conditions of men, only to close them later with a firm resolve that, come what come may, they will never again allow any friend whomsoever even to gaze upon their store. Some, too, are so deeply immersed in their all-absorbing hobby that they have no clear conception of the difference between meum and tuum. Estimable in every respect but one, and scrupulously honest to a degree in all matters of daily intercourse, they yet fail in this one supreme trial. And yet they are absolved; for these unfortunates are not thieves but eccentrics, who would no more think of selling the objects they have mistaken for their own, than they would of getting wealth by false pretences. Pope Innocent X., when still Monsignor Pamphilio, was found in the possession of a book he could not satisfactorily account for, and the ludicrous part of the matter was that Du Moustier, who claimed that it had been abstracted from his library, was subsequently proved to have stolen it himself. Then, again, Catherine de Medici sequestered the entire library of Marshal Strozzi, and on complaint promised to pay for it by instalments, which, of course, she never did. Hearne hints more than once that Sir Thomas Bodley was eccentric, and when Moore, Bishop of Ely, and father of English Black-Letter Collectors, went to dine with a bibliophile, as was his wont, the latter would, if he were wise, spend the morning in removing out of sight, and, therefore, out of temptation’s way, the choicest of his possessions. But the king of all these suspicious characters was Libri, who, as Inspector-General of French Libraries, under Louis Philippe, presented himself, from first to last, with books of the value of more than £20,000, among them a fine MS. of the Pentateuch, which he sold to the late Lord Ashburnham on condition that it was not to be published for twenty years. In 1868 the time expired, and then the matter was traced home, to his memory’s shame.
This conduct of Libri in selling what did not belong to him puts him, indeed, on a level, in point of turpitude, with the young divinity student of Chicago commonly called ‘The Champion Biblioklept of America.’ In vastness of conception the latter was a mere tyro, for he only stole a few hundred books of small value from the Chicago Public Library. The motive of both men was, however, the same, and it was that which, according to some consciences, made them thieves. After all, it is this motive that must be primarily considered in all ethical questions such as those which underlie, to some extent at least, the vagaries of every book-hunter who ever was born to hunger and thirst for Caxton’s types, and paper white as snow, bound in a dream by the Gascon’s magic touch.