My Transactions with Mr Ellis--Rarities which came from Him, and How
He got Them--Riviere the Bookbinder--How He cleaned a Valuable Volume
for Me--His Irritability--A Strange Tale about an Unique Tract--The
Old Gentleman and the Immoral Publication--Dryden's Copy of
Spenser--The Unlucky _Contretemps_ at Ellis's--A Second Somewhere
Else--Mr B. M. Pickering--Our Pleasant and Profitable
Relations--Thomas Fuller's MSS. Epigrams--Charles Cotton's Copy of
Taylor the Water-Poet's Works--A Second One, which Pickering had, and
sold to Me--He has a First Edition of _Paradise Lost_ from Me for Two
Guineas and a Half--Taylor's Thumb Bible.
Ellis after a while penetrated my pharisaical duplicity in acquiring from
him and others, to keep my pot boiling at home, while I amassed material
for my barren bibliographical enterprise, every item calculated to fit my
purpose; he now and then resisted my overtures; but as a rule he gave way
on my undertaking to pay his price. I owed to him a large number of
eminently rare volumes, of which he did not always appreciate the full
significance. I could specify scores of unique or all but unique entries
in the Huth Catalogue, which filtered through me from this source, and
ministered to my leading aim--not the earning of money so much as the
advancement of bibliographical knowledge.
Some of these prizes came to hand in a strange and romantic manner enough.
Two young Oxonians brought into the shop in King Street the copy of
Withals' _Dictionary_, 1553, which was not only unique and in the finest
condition, but which settled the question as to the book having been
printed, as the older bibliographers declared, by Caxton. A correspondent
at Aberdeen offered Sir David Lyndsay's _Squire Meldrum_, 1594, and
Verstegan's _Odes_, 1601, both books of the highest rarity, and the
Lyndsay unexceptionable, but the other horribly oil-stained. I exchanged
the Withals for twenty guineas, and the remaining two for thirty more. The
first was in the original binding, and it was not for me to disturb it;
but the Scotish book and the _Odes_ I committed to Riviere. He made a
grimace, when he examined the latter, and asked me if I was aware how much
it would cost to clean it. I assured him that that was a point which I
entirely left to him, and he restored it to me after a season in morocco
with scarcely a vestige of the blemish. He informed me that he had _boiled
the leaves in oil_--a species of homoeopathic prescription; and I
cheerfully paid him seven guineas for his skill and care.
He was a capital old fellow, originally a bookseller at Bath, and was
constantly employed by Christie-Miller and Ouvry. He was ambidexter; for
he executed a vast amount of modern binding for the trade, and was famous
for his tree-marbled calf, which I have frequently watched in its various
stages in his workshop.
He was a trifle irritable at times. I had given him an Elizabethan tract
to bind, and on inquiring after a reasonable interval it was not merely
not done, but could not be found. I called two or three times, and Riviere
at last exclaimed: 'Damn the thing; what do you want for it?'--pulling out
his cheque-book. I replied that I wanted nothing but my property, bound as
ordered; and he was so far impressed by my composure, that he said no
more, and eventually brought the stray to light.
At the Donnington sale in Leicestershire, when the old library removed
from Moira House, Armagh, was brought to the hammer, there was in a
bundle a particular pamphlet entitled _The Eighth Day_, 1661, an ephemeral
poem on the Restoration by Richard Beling, of which Sir James Ware had
descended to the grave without beholding a copy. In fact, no one else had.
This precious _morçeau_ found its way to a stall-keeper in London, who
confidently appraised it at one shilling. He had occasional proposals for
it, but they never topped the moiety; and he at last carried it to Edward
Stibbs in Museum Street, and told him that, if he could not get his price,
he would burn it. Stibbs behaved in a truly princely manner by handing him
half-a-crown. In a day or two Ellis called, saw the prize, and gave £2,
2s. for it. I happened to catch sight of it on his counter, and he forced
me to rise to £12, 12s.--it was intended as a prohibitive demand; but I
was not to be intimidated or gainsaid. Mr Huth did not offer a remark,
when I sent it to him in the usual way (with other recent finds) at £21.
What is its true value?
An odd adventure once befell Ellis without directly affecting me. He
mentioned to me that an old gentleman had called one day, and had bought a
copy of Cleveland's Poems at six shillings. He paid for it; and shortly
after he returned, and beckoning Ellis aside, as there was a third party
present, he demanded of him with a very grave air whether he was
acquainted with the nature of the publication, which he had sold to him.
As Ellis hardly collected his drift, and seemed to await a farther
disclosure, he added, 'That is a most indecent book, sir.' Ellis expressed
his sorrow, and engaged to take it back, and reimburse him. 'Nothing of
the kind, sir,' rejoined his visitor; 'I shall carefully consider the
proper course to pursue;' and he quitted the premises. When he reappeared,
it was to announce that after the most anxious deliberation he had burned
the immoral volume!
Samuel Addington of St. Martin's Lane, of whom there is some account in
_Four Generations of a Literary Family_, formed his collections, as a
rule, wholly from direct purchases under the hammer. He had no confidence
in his own knowledge of values, and liked to watch the course of
competition. It was his way, and not altogether a bad one, of gauging the
market, and supplying his own deficiencies at other people's expense. But
Addington occasionally bought prints of his friend Mrs Noseda, on whose
judgment he implicitly relied, and now and then he took a book or so of
Ellis. I was in the shop in King Street one day when he was there, and
Ellis succeeded in fixing him with £150's worth of MSS. Of course, it was
all whim; and the money was a secondary matter. He pulled out his
cheque-book on the spot, and paid for the purchase.
We had many a chat together, and he was obliging enough in one or two
instances to lend me something in his possession for myself or a friend. I
never heard the origin of his career as a collector. He was somewhat
before my time. But I ascribed his peculiarly fitful method of buying to
uncertainty as to the commercial aspect and expediency of a transaction;
for of real feeling for art or literature I do not believe that he had a
tittle.
When I was talking to Ellis in King Street one day, an individual strongly
pitted with small-pox presented himself, and asked for a catalogue. He
said in a tone, which suggested the presence of a pebble in his mouth,
that he was 'Mr Murray Re-Printer.' This person was the predecessor of
Professor Arber in his scheme for bringing our earlier literature within
the reach of the general reader, who as a rule does not care a jot for
it.
Of course it would be idle to pretend that I monopolised the innumerable
curiosities, which Ellis was continually having through his hands. I did
not even see the copy of Spenser's Works, 1679, Dryden's MSS. notes, which
he sold for £35 to Trinity College, Cambridge, having got it at an auction
for £1, where it was entered in the catalogue without a word; nor did I
venture to stand between Mr Huth and him in the case of the miraculously
fine copy in the original binding of the romance of _Palmendos_, 1589,
which Mason of Barnard's Inn brought in by chance. Mr Huth unfortunately
re-clothed both that and the Withals in modern russia.
Mason unwisely relinquished his employment as a brewer's actuary for the
book-trade, and that, again, for a yet worse one--drink. Many valuable
volumes passed through his hands, and he afforded me the opportunity of
taking notes of some of them.
I was once--once, only I think--so unhappy and so _gauche_ as to incur the
serious displeasure of my estimable acquaintance, and it was thus. Dr
Furnivall happened to enter the place of business with a volume in his
hand, which he was going to offer to the British Museum on behalf of the
owner, Mr Peacock of Bottesford Manor, and without reflection I tried,
standing on Tom Tiddler's ground, to dissuade him from his project in the
hearing of Ellis, and to let me have the refusal for Mr Huth. It was a
beautiful little book, _The School of Virtue_, the second part, 1619, and
unique. To the Museum it went surely enough; and I was upbraided by Ellis,
perhaps not undeservedly, with having thwarted him in his own intended
effort to intercept the article _in transitu_ with the same view as
myself; and I apologised. He was terribly ruffled at my indiscretion; and
I was sorry that I had perpetrated it.
Dr Furnivall is my nearly forty years' old friend. He is associated in my
recollection only with two transactions, both alike unfortunate: the one
just narrated, and a second, which was more ludicrous than anything else.
I had seen on his table at his own house a remarkably good copy of
Brathwaite's _Complete Gentlewoman_, 1631, and I thought of Mr Huth. I
knew Furnivall to be no collector, and I suggested to him that, if he did
not urgently require the Brathwaite, for which he had given 6s., I would
gladly pay him a guinea for it, and find him a working copy into the
bargain. He pleasantly declined, and I was astonished the next morning to
receive from him a fierce epistle enjoining me to restore to him instantly
the book, which I had taken. I contented myself with writing him a line,
to intimate that I had not the volume, and that I thought when he found
it, he would be sorry that he had expressed his views in such a manner. I
heard no more from him, till, a few days subsequently in my absence, he
called on me, and asked to see my wife, and to her he declared his extreme
regret at what had occurred, and announced the discovery of the lost
treasure underneath a pile of papers, where he had probably put it
himself. The affair was not exactly a joke; but it was just the kind of
impulsive thoughtlessness, which distinguishes my eminent contemporary,
and to which I dare say that he would readily plead guilty. I made no
secret of the business; and it produced no substantial difference in our
relations. I understood, rightly or wrongly, that he had gone so far as to
advertise the supposed larceny; but I treated the matter with stoical
indifference, and I believe that we have shaken hands over it years upon
years.
I used to see at Ellis's the late William Morris. He was then in the prime
of life, and I recollect his long curly black hair. I do not think that he
had yet imbibed those socialistic ideas, which afterward distinguished
him, and which one is surprised to find in a person of considerable
worldly resources--in other words, with something to lose. I bought a copy
of his _Earthly Paradise_, when it first came out; but beyond the smooth
versification, and correct phraseology I failed to discern much in it. I
have often seen Morris stalking along with his rod and bag in the vicinity
of Barnes.
Of his typographical and artistic styles I own that I had a very
indifferent opinion, for they seemed to me to be incongruous and
unsympathetic. They did not appeal to my appreciation of true work. I
regarded them as bastard and empirical; they might do very well for
wall-papers. I must not be too sure; but I should imagine that any one,
who is familiar with the early printed books illustrated by engravings of
whatever kind, would be apt to take the same view. The graphic portion of
Morris's publications is intelligible, however, and sane; one can see what
is meant, if one does not agree with the treatment. It is not so utterly
outrageous as Mr Beardsley's performances.
There were two other personages, with little in common between them, whom
I met in King Street--George Cruikshank and Mr A. C. Swinburne. I have
come across the latter elsewhere; but Cruikshank whom my grandfather had
known so well, a short, square-set figure, who once entered the shop,
while I was there, it was not my fortune to behold on more than that
single occasion.
I had started as a bookman nearly soon enough to meet William Pickering
himself; but with his son, B. M. Pickering, when he opened a small shop in
Piccadilly, my intercourse was prompt and continuous. He was a man of
rather phlegmatic and unimpressionable temperament, but thoroughly
honourable and trustworthy. My earliest dealings with him were on my own
personal account, while I cherished the idea, that I might take my place
among the collectors of the day, and I obtained from him a few very rare
volumes, including a copy of _England's Helicon_, quarto, 1600, which he
had found in a bundle at Sotheby's in 1857, shortly after the realisation
of £31 at the same rooms for one at the Wolfreston sale. He gave £1 for
this but it was not very fine, and like the Wolfreston and every other
known copy, except Malone's in the Bodleian, wanted, as I subsequently
discovered, the last leaf. Pickering had it washed and bound in brown
morocco by Bedford, and charged me £18, 18s. for it. Perhaps the most
remarkable purchase which I ever made in this direction was a copy of
Richard Crashaw's Poems, in which an early owner had inserted a MS. text
of upward of fifty otherwise unknown epigrams by Thomas Fuller. Pickering
marked the volume 15s., and said nothing about the unique feature. Dr
Grosart printed the collection from this source.
My relations with the younger Pickering were almost equally divided in
point of time into two epochs: from 1857 to 1865, when I bought for
myself, and thenceforward till the date of his death, when I added him to
the number of those who assisted me in carrying out, through Mr Huth and a
few others, my interminable task of cataloguing the entire _corpus_, with
very slight reservations, of our early national literature. Pickering
never objected to let me become the medium for filling up gaps in the Huth
library from his periodical acquisitions; I paid him his price; and I
paid it promptly, as I did all round.
Our maiden transaction was a very humble one. It was a copy of a little
tract called _A Caution to keep Money_, 1642, and it was a sort of
experiment. I had to give 5s. for it, and at the same not very extravagant
figure it went to my acquaintance. He eyed it rather wistfully; the low
price was somewhat against it; but he accepted it, and fortunately or
otherwise he did not take its counsel practically to heart. But I
discovered the futility of allowing cheapness to appear as a
recommendation in the case of one, who knew comparatively little of the
selling value, and to whom cheapness was not the slightest object. The
pamphlet in question was the pioneer of many scores of articles of the
highest rarity and interest, which found their way through the same
channel to the ultimate possessor. Among them was a curious copy in the
original calf binding with many uncut leaves of Taylor the Water Poet's
works, 1630, formerly belonging to Charles Cotton the angler; it had come
from the Hastings library at Donnington, and I paid Pickering £30 for it.
A second one, which I had of him, was the only example containing
anything in the nature of a presentation from the author, whose autograph
is of the rarest occurrence; but unfortunately in this case the memorandum
was written by the recipient. The folio Taylor is one of those books,
which has unaccountably fallen in price of late years; and certainly it is
by no means uncommon.
I was almost invariably on the acquiring side. Once I sold Pickering, as I
have already related, a Caxton, and at another time a first edition of
_Paradise Lost_, 1669, in the original sheep cover. I had seen the latter
at a shop in Great Russell Street, of which the rather impetuous master,
when I put some query to him, seemed undecided, whether he would let me
have the book after all for £2, 2s., or throw it at my head. He did the
former, and an American agent begged me as a favour to let him pay me
double the money, which, as I thought him to be in jest, I declined. I
subsequently parted with it to Pickering for £2, 12s. 6d., which was about
the prevailing tariff thirty years since. I may take the present
opportunity of mentioning that it was at the same emporium in Bloomsbury,
that a later occupant apologised to me, in tendering me a beautiful uncut
copy in sheep of Taylor the Water Poet's _Thumb Bible_, for being so
unreasonable as to want 14s. for the Jeremy Taylor, as he took it to be. I
forgave him, and Mr Huth was very pleased to have the volume.
Pickering had, like his father, a singular weakness for accumulating
stock, and laying up imperfect copies of rare books in the distant hope of
completing them. Yet he held his ground, and gradually enlarged his
premises, till they were among the most spacious at the West End. Poor
fellow! he lost all his belongings in an epidemic, and never recovered
from the shock.