Mr John Pearson--Origin of Our Connection--His Appreciable Value to
Me--He assists, through Me, in Completing the Huth Library--Lovelace's
_Lucasta_--The Turbervile--The Imperfect Chaucer--The Copy of Ruskin's
Poems at Reading--The Walton's _Angler_--Locker and Pearson--James
Toovey--Curious Incident in Connection with Sir Thomas
Phillipps--Willis & Sotheran--Two Unique Cookery Books--Only Just in
Time--The Caxton's _Game and Play of the Chess_--A Valuable Haul from
the West of England--A Reverend Gentleman's MSS. _Diaries of
Travel_--The Wallers--Lamb's _Tales from Shakespear_, 1807--The Folio
MS. of Edmond Waller's Poems--An Unique Book of Verse--A Rare American
Item--The Rimells--I take from Them and sell to Them--Some Notable
_Americana_--The Walfords--An Unique Tract by Taylor the Water
Poet--John Russell Smith and His Son--My Numerous Transactions with
the Latter--Another Unknown Taylor--John Camden Hotten--I sift His
Stores in Piccadilly--The Bunyan Volume from Cornwall--John
Salkeld--My Expedition to His Shop on a Sunday Night, and Its Fruit--A
Rather Ticklish Adventure or Two--Messrs Jarvis & Son--My Finds
There--King James I.'s Copy of Charron, dedicated to Prince Henry--The
Unknown Fishmongers' Pageant for 1590--The Long-Lost English Version
of Henryson's _Æsop_, 1577.
I first met with John Pearson, if I remember rightly, when he had a room
at Noble's in the Strand. He had sent me his catalogue, and I went to buy
a small London tract, for which he demanded £3, 3s., because it had all
the three blank leaves; it was in fact a speech delivered to King James I.
on his entry into the City in 1603 by Richard Martin of the Middle Temple.
Mr Huth sent it to Bedford, who removed the leaves, which constituted the
feature; but I did not see the mischief, till it fell to my lot to
catalogue the piece years afterward. My good friend was very tiresome and
difficult in these small matters, which in bibliography are apt to become
great ones. I obtained for him a bipartite volume by Ben Jonson,
comprising the description of James I.'s reception in London and his
previous entertainment at Althorp, in 1603-4, at two different points, and
explained to him the desirability of having them bound together, as the
latter portion was named on the first title. They went to Bedford, I
suppose, without a word, and were clothed in separate jackets.
Pearson became another of my coadjutors. His intelligence, energy, and
good fortune did me excellent service. He dealt of course with many other
persons, both here and in America; but a handsome proportion of his prizes
passed through me to Mr Huth. The latter at that period--in the
seventies--still lacked some of the most ordinary _desiderata_ of a
collection, which was beginning under my auspices to assume a more general
character than it possessed, when I entered on the scene in 1866. Even
Lovelace's _Lucasta_, of which I purchased of Pearson George Daniel's copy
for £3, 3s., Carew's Poems, 1640, of which I met with a beautiful specimen
on thick paper in the original binding for 21s., and many others, were
absent. It was Pearson's object to come to the front, and I perhaps did my
part in making him known to my patron, who eventually added his shop to
his places of call, and inspected the articles, which the proprietor and I
had agreed to lay before him as suitable and deficient.
The Turbervile above noticed was my most signal gain from this quarter. I
shall never forget Pearson's exultation, when I acceded to his proposal;
he seemed, as he cried, 'I have made £75 by it,' as if he would have leapt
over the counter.
His commercial transactions became sufficiently wide and lucrative, and
all my purchases of him did not go to Mr Huth. A curious little piece of
luck befel me in the case of a Chaucer wanting the end, which he had kept
for years, and at length sold to me in despair. The next week Reeves &
Turner obtained a second of the same impression by Thomas Petyt, _wanting
the commencement_. Reeves let me take out the leaves I required for a
trifle. I never experienced from Pearson any deficiency of
straightforwardness, except that once Mrs Noseda and he had, I think, a
joint hand in passing off a facsimile frontispiece of Taylor the
Water-Poet's Works, and I was the victim. I said nothing, but, like the
Frenchman's jackdaw, thought the more. He was an exceptionally shrewd and
vigilant character, and nearly broke Lovejoy of Reading's heart by getting
from his assistant an uncut copy of Ruskin's poems for a shilling during
Lovejoy's absence. But Pearson paid the price, which the fellow asked. I
was in the shop, when he had just received through a third party a lovely
copy of Walton's _Angler_, 1653, in the pristine binding for £14 plus £3,
10s. to the bringer. The last copy in the market in precisely the same
condition brought successively £310 and £415. Someone tells me that in
both cases the buyer and the seller was one and the same party. Poor
Walton! like Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, and our other Great Ones, he
has been converted into _bric-à-brac_. To your millionaire amateur it does
not signify whether it is a book or a tea-pot or a violin, if the price is
high enough--better still, if it is higher than was ever given before.
That is his intelligent seeing-point. In the present instance the holder
of the Walton, if the above-named view be correct, did not meet with a
customer so enthusiastic as himself. He was a trifle too much _in
excelsis_.
Pearson was almost the introducer of those stupendous prices for really
first-rate books or rarities in book-form, which have now gone on
ascending, till it is hard to tell where they will stop. Frederic Locker
told me that he had asked him fifty guineas for a prose tract by Southwell
a few years anterior in date to any recorded. Why not five hundred? With
Pearson's successors I have had many years' pleasant acquaintance. _Verbum
sap._ The volumes, which have changed hands on that ground, would form a
library and a fine one.
With the late James Toovey I never had a single transaction. But Mr Huth
often spoke of him and of the _Temple of Leather and Literature_, as his
place of business in Piccadilly was jocularly called from Toovey's
predilection for old morocco bindings. I do not pretend to know what was
the exact nature of this business; but it must have been a very profitable
one. Ordinary bookselling made only a small part of it. I always took
Toovey to be a Jew, till I found that he was a Catholic; and it was a
laughable circumstance that, when the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps of
Middle-Hill had to be valued, he was the very person selected to perform
the task, although Phillipps had laid down in his will that the house
should never be entered, nor the books examined, _by Mr Halliwell or a
Papist_.
Willis & Sotheran's in the Strand was known to me by tradition. My father
had bought books of Willis in early times, when the latter was in Prince's
Street and in the Piazza, before he joined Mr Sotheran. The shop in the
Strand united with Pickering's and one or two more to supply me with a
handful or so of curiosities, while I remained what is termed an
_amateur_. Later, it was one of the marts, to which I regularly resorted
with advantage in quest of the wants of Mr Huth or the British Museum. An
old-established business, it mechanically attracted year by year an
endless succession of private parcels and single lots, which generally
rendered the monthly catalogues remunerative reading. It is more than a
quarter of a century ago, since I received one of these lists at
Kensington, and spied out two unique items in the shape of _Cookery Books_
of the Elizabethan period at 10s. 6d. each. I was on the top of the next
omnibus going Londonward, and entered the premises with a nervous
uncertainty not legible on my countenance. I applied for the lots; _they
brought them to me_; they were in splendid state; I clapped them in my
pocket, and I left the place with a lightened heart. I met some of my
friends, who were coming in, as I walked out, and I guessed their mission.
How sorry I was for them! Mr Pyne was one. There came into my thoughts a
saying of Mr Huth's elucidatory of the success of his firm: 'We do not
profess,' quoth he, 'to be cleverer than other folks; but we get up
earlier in the morning.'
Mr Huth owed his copy of Caxton's _Game of Chess_ to Willis & Sotheran. An
individual brought it into the shop, and offered it for sale. It was in
vellum, but wanted A i. and A viii., the former a blank leaf. What the
firm gave, I never heard; but when Lilly approached them on behalf of Mr
Huth, the demand was £1000. It is always wise to start with a margin. The
ultimate figure was £300. It was the second edition, of which Trinity
College, Cambridge, the Duke of Devonshire, and Lord Tollemache, have
perfect copies.
It was the buyer (Francis), whom Willis & Sotheran employed about 1860, to
whom we were all indebted for discovering at or near Plymouth the unique
tragedy of _Orestes_, 1567, which went to the Museum, and for a duplicate
of which Payne Collier safely offered at the time fifty guineas, and the
equally rare copy of Drayton's _Harmony of the Church_, 1610, which was
acquired by Mr Corser, and at his sale by Mr Christie-Miller. I have not
heard that the West of England has of recent years yielded many such finds
as it formerly did. It was long a profitable hunting ground.
Speaking of Drayton, of whose early editions it has fallen to my lot to
secure several at different times, I am reminded that in Willis &
Sotheran's 1862 catalogue appeared that eminent writer's _Tragical Legend
of Robert Duke of Normandy_, 1596, of which only three copies are known;
the volume turned out on examination to want a leaf; but luckily in
another list issued by the firm there was a second example misdescribed as
_Drayton's Poems_, which, though elsewhere imperfect, supplied the
immediate deficiency; and the duplicate, which had served me so well, was
wasted. I had been about the same time disappointed by missing at a shop
in Old Bond Street (not Boone's) the _English Ape_, 1588, in the original
binding at £2, 12s. 6d.; and curiously enough the house in the Strand
purchased it, bound it in red morocco, and put it in a subsequent monthly
circular at £5, 5s. I had to stretch my purse-strings, and go to the
higher figure.
I have elsewhere given Willis himself credit for introducing me to a small
literary commission, which if it did not yield much money, did not entail
much labour. The only other experience of the same class afforded me the
labour without any result. It was a parson of independent fortune, who
called me in for my opinion on certain _Diaries of Travel_, which he had
written, and which he thought (most correctly) in need of editorship. The
negotiation came to nothing, and so did my fee. It was not my province to
inform the reverend gentleman that his MSS. were waste-paper, nor would
the mention of his name be of any utility. He was unconsciously one of
those sempiternal caterers for the paper-mill, whose unprinted effusions
generally figure in the auctions among the bundles in the wane of the
season, and they resemble in their inevitable doom the processions through
the streets of the drover's charges on their way to our shambles. Let us
pray that from the pulp of this holy man's _derelicta_, swept out by his
executors, something worthier and more durable may evolve.
There is quite a group of minor or secondary dealers, whose absolute rank
to me was indifferent, and from whom it has been my fortune in the course
of my career as a bibliographical huntsman to bring away spoils of the
chase neither few nor unimportant.
An odd case of rather shallow misrepresentation occurred, when I went to
an emporium in Conduit Street in search of a copy of Stapylton's
_Musoeus_, 1647. It was marked 5s. 6d. in the catalogue, but, said the
owner, 'that is a misprint for 15s.' I put down the larger sum, merely
inquiring how the odd sixpence crept in!
The Wallers of Fleet Street, originally next to Saint Dunstan's Church,
subsequently higher up, had known my grandfather. The younger was my more
particular acquaintance, and helped me to many choice items. I recollect
that I refused a spotless copy of Lamb's _Tales from Shakespear_, in old
sheep, 1807, for 7s. 6d., which Waller assured me that Mr George Daniel
had seen, and estimated at a guinea; and I regret this more than I
congratulate myself on the acquisition of an unique folio MS. of Edmond
Waller's Poems, which his namesake had got from a furniture sale for one
shilling, and let me have for fifty, of an unknown impression of _A
Description of Love_, 1629, tenderly and mercifully swaddled between two
imperfect books in a volume, and itself (the sole thing of value) as clean
as a new penny, and several other ungratefully forgotten blessings. It was
to the Waller volume that the last editor of the poet was indebted for the
unprinted and otherwise undescribed dedication to Queen Henrietta Maria,
of which I furnished the earliest notice an age since to _Notes and
Queries_. By the way, I must not overlook the matchless copy in boards
uncut of the _Papers relating to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay_,
published at Boston, 1769, for which I tendered Waller 5s., and for which
an American house gave £8.
I had not much to do with the Rimells and the Walfords. The former put in
my way two or three rarities, and I furnished them with a couple of
valuable _Americana_ for the Carter-Brown library at New York. The books
which I associate with this firm are Philipot's Elegies on the Death of
William Glover, Esquire of Shalston in Buckinghamshire, 1641, which cost
me 4s., and Gardyne's _Theatre of the Scottish Kings_, 1709, both alike
scarce to excess. Of neither are more than two copies known, and the
Grenville one of the second is mutilated. Mr Christie-Miller would have
been glad to possess the Philipot; but it went to the national library;
the Gardyne passed into the Huth collection.
The Walfords were instrumental in enabling me to track out a pamphlet by
Taylor the Water Poet relative to a murder at Ewell in 1620, of which I
had been on the scent for years, and of which a copy at last occurred in a
huge pile of miscellanies at Sotheby's tied up together at the close of a
season. I found that Walford was the buyer; and when I waited on him, it
turned out that it was a commission. For whom? Well, a customer in
Scotland. But he did not want the account of a transaction at Ewell! Well;
he would write, if I would name my price. I offered 10s. The tract came
up; I took all the particulars; and the Museum relieved me of it at £4,
4s. No duplicate has ever been seen, I believe.
John Russell Smith was one of my earliest publishers. I became acquainted
with him in 1857 in that capacity, and continued to do literary work on
his behalf down to 1869. I subsequently purchased a large number of old
books of him and of his son, Alfred Russell Smith, through whose hands
passed some very rare articles less highly appreciated by him than by
myself. Which was the truer estimation, I do not know; but Smith now and
then ingenuously stated to me that a lot in the catalogue, which I
selected, had been ordered over and over again. Such was the case with
the _Book of Measuring of Land_, by Sir Richard de Benese, Canon of Merton
Abbey, printed at Southwark about 1536 by James Nicholson, priced 15s. in
the original stamped binding, and Henry Vaughan the Silurist's _Thalia
Rediviva_, marked 25s. Smith said one morning that a party had sent him
three tracts, which he shewed me, and wanted 25s. for the lot; and he
should expect 5s. for his trouble, if they would suit me. 'Very well,'
said I. But the party advanced to 30s. and Smith by consequence to 35s.
Still I was agreeable; and at that figure they became mine. Two of them
were by Taylor the Water Poet, one unique--the original narrative of his
journey to Bohemia, 1620; and it was, as so many of these exceedingly rare
items often are, in a perfect state of preservation.
I once went through Hotten's stores in Piccadilly, and found nothing but
the copy which Mr Huth had, of Wither's _Psalms_, printed in the
Netherlands, 1632, in unusually fine condition, and marked 15s. Hotten had
from Cornwall, in a volume, Cowley's Poems set to music by W. King, 1668,
and Bunyan's _Profitable Meditations_, the latter unique, and now in the
British Museum. I somehow missed that; but I bought the Cowley; it is the
identical one described in the Huth catalogue. Hotten had a curious
propensity for marking his old books at figures, which might denote the
exiguity of his profit--or the reverse. He would not ask 18s. or a guinea,
but 19s. 6d.
There was a constitutional and aggravating proneness on his part as a
publisher to the pursuit of a tortuous path in preference to a straight
one; and I am afraid that he took a certain pride in trying to outwit or
overreach his client. Most unwillingly I had in the case of a small book,
which he took, to involve him in two bills of costs from his sheer
perversity in regard to his engagements; and the curious, but unfortunate
sequel was that his successors, in taking over the interest, repudiated
their balance of liability, and exposed themselves to a farther
superfluous outlay. What was a poor author to do?
When he was in Orange Street, Red Lion Square, I saw a good deal of John
Salkeld, a north-countryman, whom I always found perfectly satisfactory
and reliable. He never had occasion to carry out the practice on me, as I
was a most exemplary paymaster, especially in those cases, when I thought
that the money was at once an object and an encouragement; but Salkeld
often spoke to me of less punctual clients at a distance, whom he should
like to _hug_. My most notable adventure in connection with him was the
result of a catalogue, which he sent to me, so that I got it the last
thing on a Saturday night. There was a Wither's _Emblems_, Daniel's
_Works_ and _Panegyrick_ in a volume on large paper, and one or two other
matters. They were not very cheap; but they were worth having, thought I.
I knew that Salkeld resided over his shop, and on the Sunday evening I
walked up to town from Kensington, proceeded to Orange Street, found my
man at home, and carried off my plunder in triumph. What charming books
they were! For no better a copy of the Wither Mr Huth had paid Toovey £40.
Both wanted the pointers to the dial.
Like so many other of my doings in the book-market, the solitary
experience which I had of a person named Noble was with an immediate eye
to Mr Huth. He (Noble) had come into possession of a handful of scarce old
English tracts, including a volume containing several by Lady Eleanor
Audley, a very rare item in the series of George Chapman's poetical
works--his _Epicede on Prince Henry_, 1612, absolutely complete with the
folded engraving, and Joshua Sylvester's Elegy on the same personage, so
difficult to procure in such condition as Mr Huth always desired. These
treasures I converted for Noble into cash, and was immediately afterward
favoured with a casual suggestion elsewhere, which led me to take them to
Riviere to be measured for new coats, except the Lady Audley volume, which
I deposited at Great Russell Street. I had paid Noble £2 for it, thinking
it must be worth £3; but before I reached Bloomsbury, I thought that it
might not be too dear at £7, 7s.
The only other misadventure of the kind--if it may be so termed, as no
unpleasant consequences ensued--was in connection with a book, which some
one stole from Stibbs in Museum Street, and sold to Salkeld, who sold it
to me. I was apprised by the original owner that he had traced it to my
hands; but I pointed out that I had purchased it in good faith in open
market, and for the rest I referred him to the Trustees of the national
library, where it had found a resting-place.
Messrs Jarvis & Son succeeded during my acquaintance with them in
stumbling upon a variety of bargains and prizes, which I usually
appropriated. One was a splendid copy of Greene's _Pandosto_, 1592, the
only known one of that of 1588 in the Museum being imperfect. A second
acquisition was the copy, which had belonged to James I. of the long-lost
first edition of Lennard's translation of Charron _De la Sagesse_,
dedicated to PRINCE HENRY; and a third was a singular metrical tract by
John Mardelay, Clerk of the Mint to Henry VIII. called _A Rueful Complaint
of the Public Weal to England_, printed under Edward VI., and completely
unknown.
There was a remarkable coincidence between this Mardelay piece and an
equally unique little volume by Thomas Nelson, 1590, which I purchased
elsewhere about the same time, that both were folded in a precisely
similar manner, as if the old owner grudged the space, which they occupied
in a drawer or a box. They were perfectly clean and very much as they had
left the printer's hands. The Nelson was the hitherto undiscovered pageant
of the Fishmongers under the mayoralty of John Allot, Lord Mayor of
London, and Mayor of the Staple, and was six-and-twenty years anterior to
any of which the company was aware. It was not published, but privately
issued to members. I held this to be a great find, and I reproduced the
text in the _Antiquary_, before I parted with the original to the Museum.
The printer could not make out the meaning of _staple_, and in the first
proof put _steeple_.
There was one more striking episode in my temporary contact with Jarvis &
Son. I saw in a catalogue of miscellaneous books sold at Sotheby's in 1890
a lot, which fixed my attention as a bibliographer. It was the English or
Anglicised version of Henryson's _Æsop_, printed at London in 1577, and of
which David Laing, in his edition of the old Scotish poet, 1865, speaks as
having been seen by him in the library of Sion College, when he visited
that institution about 1830. He mentions that he wished to verify
something at a later date, and that the volume had disappeared. I found on
inspection that this was the identical book, no other being known
anywhere, and I bought it under the hammer for £6, and let Jarvis & Son
have it for £12, 12s. They sold it to Lord Rosebery. It had probably been
a wanderer above half a century, since it quitted the College in the
pocket of some divine of elastic conscience or short memory.