At the Auction-Rooms--Their Changeable Temperature--My Finds in
Wellington Street--Certain Conclusions as to the Rarity of Old English
Books--Curiosities of Cataloguing and Stray Lots--A Little Ipswich
Recovery--A Narrow Escape for some Very Rare Volumes in 1865--A Few
Remarkable Instances of Good Fortune for Me--Not for Others--Three
Very Severe 'Frosts'--A Great Boom--Sir John Fenn's Wonderful Books at
last brought to Light--An Odd Circumstance about One of Them--The
Writer moralises--A Couple of Imperfect Caxtons bring £2900--The
Gentlemen behind the Scene and Those at the Table--Books converted
into _Vertu_--My Intervention on One or Two Occasions--The
Auctioneers' World--The 'Settlement' Principle--My Confidence in
Sotheby's as Commission-Agents--My Three _Sir Richard
Whittingtons_.--_A Reductio ad Absurdum_--The House in Leicester
Square and Its Benefactions in My Favour--Change from the Old
Days--Unique A.B.C.'s and Other Early School-Books--The Somers
Tracts--Mr Quaritch and His Bibliographical Services to Me--His
Independence of Character--The British Museum--My Resort to It for My
Venetian Studies Forty Years Ago--The Sources of Supply in the Printed
Book Department--My Later Attitude toward It as a Bibliographer--The
Vellum Monstrelet and Its True History--Bookbinders--Leighton,
Riviere, Bedford, Pratt--Horrible Sight which I witnessed at a
Binder's--My Publishers--Dodsley's Old Plays--My Book on the Livery
Companies of London--Presentation-Copies.
I now proceed to speak a few words about the two auctions, with which I
have been familiar--Sotheby's and Puttick & Simpson's. Both these
distributing agencies repay careful study. You must consider the
circumstances, and bear in mind Selden's maxim, _Distingue Tempora_. The
rooms are very variable in their temperature. Now it is high, now low. It
is not always necessarily what is being sold, but what is being asked for.
For instance, just at the present moment there is a desperate run on
sixteenth and seventeenth century English books and on _capital_
productions, because a few Americans have taken the infection; they know
nothing of values, so long as the article is right; and therefore the
price is no object. It is merely necessary to satisfy yourself that your
client wants the book or books, and you may without grave risk pose at the
sale-room table and in the papers as a model of intrepidity. But the game
does not usually last very long; the wily American soon grows weary or
distrustful; and the call for these treasures subsides, and with it the
courage of the bidders. The market resumes its normal tranquillity, till
a fresh fad is set afloat with similar results. No prudent buyer loses
himself in these whirlpools. He watches his opportunities, and they
periodically recur amid all the feverish competition arising from
temporary causes.
At Sotheby's my finds have been endless. It is in those rooms that ever
since 1861, when I made notes at the Bandinel sale, I have figured as an
inevitable feature in the scene, when anything remarkable, either
bibliographically or commercially, has been submitted to the hammer; and I
have not often had reason to lament oversights on one score or the other.
When I have missed a lot, of which I desired the particulars for my
collections, it has illustrated my conviction of the immense unsuspected
rarity of a preponderance of the national fugitive literature. This
accident occurred in the case of a tract called _The Declaration of the
Duke of Brabant_ (Philip III. of Spain) _proffering a Truce with the
Netherlands_, 1607, and I have not since met with a second copy. It is
over twenty years ago. I have occasionally registered the title of a
piece, which I have found in the warehouse in the hands of a cataloguer;
and it was fortunate that I did so as regarded _A Farewell to Captain_
(afterward Sir Walter) _Gray_, on his departure for Holland, 1605, as the
article was never again seen. There has been a good deal of this sort of
miscarriage. Quite at the outset of my bibliographical career, the most
ancient printed English music-book, 1530, was bought for the British
Museum at the price of £80; it was only the _Bassus_ part with that to
_Triplex_ bound up at the end; and the cataloguer _had put it into a
bundle_. Attention was drawn to the mistake in time, and the lot was
re-entered with full honours. On the other hand, I have been repeatedly
indebted to Sotheby's staff for useful and valuable help. Mr John Bohn
never failed to point out whatever he supposed to be of service, and in
1891 Mr A. R. Smith shewed me a small volume printed at Ipswich by John
Owen about 1550, entitled _An Invective against Drunkenness_, so far known
only from Maunsell's catalogue, 1598.
In quite the earlier portion of my experience here occurred the disastrous
and destructive fire of 1865, which made a holocaust of the Offor library,
and proved fatal to much of Lord Charlemont's. It was a most fortunate
circumstance that just at the moment Halliwell-Phillipps had some of the
rarest of the Charlemont books on loan from the auctioneers at his private
house in Old Brompton, and they were thus saved.
I was away, when Mr Bolton Corney's books were sold at Sotheby's, and did
not see them. But one was returned by the buyer as imperfect; it was
Drayton's _Odes and Eglogs_ (1605), and was said to want two leaves. I
examined it, and found that it was complete, and had two duplicate leaves
with variations in the text. I bought it for £1, 11s., and sold it to John
Pearson on my way home for £8. 8s. A somewhat analogous incident befel me
at the Burton-Constable auction in 1889, where a volume containing the
_Theatre of Fine Devices_, 1614, the only copy known, and several other
rare pieces in the finest state, was sold with all faults, because a copy
of Wither's _Motto_, 1621, at the end, was slightly cropped. I left a
commission of £8, 8s. for this, and saw it knocked down for £1, 12s. I put
the Wither in the waste-paper basket, and divided the rest between the
British Museum and Messrs Pearson & Co. There were two other dispersions
of curious old books, which I may exemplify. At the Auchinleck sale the
prices were not low, but were extremely moderate, considering the
character of many of the early Scotish tracts there offered; but the other
instance, where a gentleman had with the assistance of John Pearson and
others formed a collection of early English poetry, making the
_Bibliotheca Anglo-poetica_ the nucleus, was a deplorable fiasco. Books
went for fewer shillings than they were worth pounds. I bought Drayton's
_Mortimeriados_, 1596, _clean and uncut_, which Mr Quaritch had acquired
for the late owner for £17, for 16s. No one particularly wanted that class
of books just at the moment, and the field was open to the opportunist.
The proprietor, who was living, must have been gratified. I never
witnessed a more thorough frost than this except at the Pyne sale already
described and at those of the dramatic libraries of Mr Kershaw and Dr
Rimbault, although I believe that the firm is steadfastly persuaded that
the most signal collapse, in recent times at least, was the two-days'
auction of Prince Lucien Bonaparte's philological stores, which realised
£70! The Kershaw and Rimbault affairs were rather notable as yielding a
large crop between them of old English plays, which were not in the Huth
library, and which dropped to myself at nominal prices. The slaughter of
Rimbault's property took place on a Saturday afternoon. I recollect the
buzz in the room, when Shirley's _Lady of Pleasure_ was carried to 14s. I
bought nearly everything worth buying.
Then there was the other side of the picture, as when the Frere, or rather
Fenn, books came to the hammer at Sotheby's in 1896. As nothing in the
before-mentioned auctions seemed too low, so nothing here seemed to be too
extravagant. There was a kind of mysterious halo round the affair. People
had heard of such books being in existence, and longed to put the report
to a practical test. Herbert, in his revision of Ames, had quoted Sir John
Fenn, the John Fenn Esquire of his day, as the owner of certain rarities,
of which nothing absolutely reliable was known. But the items really
material to myself amounted to no more than twenty, of which several were
mere verifications.
Mr Quaritch was in great form. He made himself master of all the principal
lots, as any one can do by bidding long enough. A copy of Herbert's
_Typographical Antiquities_ with an extra volume of original specimens,
of which the chief portion was of very slight significance, produced
£255. A volume of tracts, of which nearly all the title-pages had been
mutilated by Fenn for the sake of the printer's marks, and of which the
central interest lay in the first edition of Greene's _Groatsworth of
Wit_, 1592, fetched £80. The first might have been worth £40 and the
second (with the defects indicated) £15. A really valuable lot, which
belonged to Sir John Fenn, and which had gone somehow equally astray, was
subsequently offered for sale at another room, and brought £81. It was
Nicholas Breton's _Works of a Young Wit_ (1577), and was one of my
bibliographical _desiderata_. I took a full note of it of course, and
should have willingly gone to £42 as a matter of purchase. Mr Quaritch
trusted to the prevailing American boom, and was there to win the day
against all comers with the feeling that those who opposed him had with
him only a common market. Failing one or two wealthy enthusiasts, the
volume might lie on his shelves, so long as he lived, at that figure. This
is what Mr Quaritch himself has characterised as a species of gambling.
What is to be said or thought of the two imperfect copies of Caxton's
first edition of the _Canterbury Tales_ bringing in 1895-6 £1020 and
£1880 respectively? All that can be argued is, that the worth is
positively artificial, and that to the individuals, for whom Mr Quaritch
destines them, money is a drug or a form of speaking.
Then there was the second folio Shakespear which fetched the unheard-of
price of £540, and the third, to which I presently advert. The disregard
of precedents in such cases brings a certain type of early literature
within the magical circle of _objets de vertu_, when economic laws cease
to operate, and books seem to lose their true dignity in the hands of the
virtuoso. Beyond a certain financial altitude there are no _bonâ fide_
bookmen.
A sale, which might in its way deserve to be classed with the Frere-Fenn
one at Sotheby's, fell to the lot of the Leicester Square house in 1894.
It was bipartite, and rather on the incongruous principle discountenanced
in the Horatian _Epistle to the Pisos_. For the first division consisted
of MSS. and printed books formerly belonging to Thomas Astle the
antiquary, and chiefly relating to Suffolk, the Tower, and America; while
the second was a series of autograph letters, particularly a small parcel
addressed by Mottley the historian to Prince Bismarck between 1862 and
1872. The auctioneers looked on the day's sale as worth £150; it realised
four times as much. A single lot of _Americana_ brought £216. The Mottley
correspondence was highly interesting, and indeed important, and some of
the allusions were almost droll from their homely familiarity. The nine
letters were knocked down _en bloc_ for £60.
The first item in this remarkable series, written from Vienna, the Hague,
and London, found the Prussian statesman at a watering-place in the South
of France, and at that time the two men appear to have been well known to
each other; for Mottley subscribes himself 'Always most sincerely your old
friend;' and the next of 1864 starts with 'My dear old Bismarck.' There
was evidently much cordiality and sympathy. A good deal of pleasantry
arises out of some photographs of the great German's family and himself,
which were a long time in arriving. But a singular interest centres in a
letter of 1870, urging the desirability of mediation between the two then
belligerent Powers; it is marked _Private and Confidential_; and I do not
imagine that anything came of it.
The day's sale embraced another lot of a somewhat mysterious character, as
regarded a portion of the contents. I refer to two letters from Sir
Christopher Hatton in his own hand to a lady, couched in most familiar and
affectionate terms, and subscribed with the same fictitious signature as
Hatton employed in corresponding with the Queen herself.
It is so usual to associate the ownership of a library in middle-class
hands with a single generation--scarcely that very often--that events like
the Auchinleck, Astle, and Frere sales strike and impress us, and often,
indeed generally, produce results gratifying to the beneficiaries; and so
it was with the Berners Street and Way affairs. Volumes, which were known
to exist somewhere, at last emerged from their places of concealment. Mr
Swainson had bought many of his books at the sale of George Steevens in
1800; the Way lot belonged to about the same date. Among the latter were
such prizes as the original editions of _Arthur of Little Britain_ and
_England's Helicon_. The Berners Street business took place on the
premises; there was of course a settlement; and John Payne Collier, who
looked in, could get nothing. I was offered, some time after, a rare
little treatise, which I declined; and I subsequently heard a queer story
about a copy of it (? the same) having been removed from Joseph Lilly's
tail-pocket, while he was attending the auction. I put this and that
together.
It was certainly much the same thing at the Osterley Park, Beckford, and
Fountaine sales. The quotations are suggestive of lunacy, not on the part
of the immediate purchasers, who are middlemen, but on that of the
ulterior acquirer behind the scenes. What could be more childishly
extravagant or absurd than 610 guineas for Henry VIII.'s _Prayer Book_ on
vellum, 1544, with MSS. notes by the king and members of his family? What
could be indeed? Why, the £435 paid for a third folio Shakespear, 1663-4,
with both titles--a book which has been repeatedly sold for £60 or £70,
and which the auctioneers misdescribed, as if it had been something unique
and unknown. The Beckford books realised perfectly insane prices, and were
afterward resold for a sixth or even tenth of the amount to the serious
loss of somebody, when the barometer had fallen. The Thuanus copy of
Buchanan's Poems, 1579, which was carried to £54, was offered to me in
October, 1886, for £15. Of course there have always been inflations of
value for special articles or under particular circumstances here and
elsewhere; and I must confess to an instance of _malice prepense_ at one
of the Corser sales at Sotheby's, when I made Ellis pay £100 for Warren's
_Nursery of Names_, 1581, by sitting next to Addington at the table, and
whispering in his ear the praises of the book and its fabulous rarity. He
left it at £99. There was no other competitor within a fifty-pound note's
distance. The Museum could not have gone beyond £30 or £35.
I stood behind Quaritch at Sir John Simeon's sale in Wellington Street,
and when it came to two lots, the first being the _History of Oliver of
Castile_, printed at York in 1695, and the second one of David Laing's
publications, I told him that if he would let me have the first, I would
not bid on the second. He was so amiable as to assent, and the almost
unique little volume fell to me at 7s. Unhappily some one else opposed him
for the Laing, which realised its normal value. I looked as grieved as I
could, when he good-humouredly turned round to inquire what he had got.
I have said that 1861 marked the date, when I graduated at Sotheby's as a
bibliographer. As a private buyer to a sparing and experimental extent I
had known that house since 1857, when I was baulked, as I have elsewhere
related, in my attempt to obtain an unique copy of the Earl of Surrey's
English version of the _Fourth Book of Virgil's Æneid_, which was unique
in a second sense--in being the only lot of value among a mass of rubbish.
The auctioneer's world is classifiable into two sections: Buyers and
Sellers. If you do not belong to one of these divisions, the profession
scarcely knows where you come in in the economy of nature. You enter into
the nondescript species. The man with the hammer views his commission as
the elixir of life, as the sole object, for which men and women are born
and exist; he has no other motive or seeing-point; and he does not expect
others to have it. Your friends, as a rule, estimate you according to the
house, in which you live, and the undertaker by the order, which he gets
for your funeral; but the auctioneer appraises you by your value to him as
a bidder at his table and by the marketable quality of the property, which
you leave behind. If it happens that you are only a scholar, occasionally
picking up a cheap lot, or a bibliographer, taking notes for the benefit
of others without profit and without thanks, he eyes you with a mixture of
commiseration and surprise, and has a private feeling, perhaps, that there
is a percentage somewhere. And so there is--in Fame, for which he cares
nothing except as an advertisement for his business; and it is natural
enough, that the staff takes its cue from the principal, and unless you
distribute _largesse_, sets you down as a troublesome nondescript.
I think that I am right in saying that it was the member of the firm of
Walford Brothers, who attended the sales, who was referring at the table
to the knock-out system, and Mr Hodge, who was in the rostrum, disclaimed
any knowledge of such a thing, whereupon says Mr Walford to him, 'You are
the only person who does not know about it, then.' The other day at the
sale of the Boyne coins nine continental dealers were counted--_confrères_
indeed. Had it not been for the English competition, the result would have
been absolutely disastrous.
Thus much may be confidently affirmed of Sotheby's. As commission-agents
they are implicitly trustworthy. I have had a long and large experience,
and where I have not been able, or have not deemed it politic, to attend
in person, I have found that I could depend on the discretion of the
auctioneer. Let one instance suffice. In 1882 there appeared in a
catalogue published by the firm _The Famous and Remarkable History of Sir
Richard Whittington_, octavo, 1656, a mediocre copy, but twenty years
earlier than any on record. I left a commission of five guineas, and the
lot fell to me at as many shillings. Only three copies are known, all of
different issues: and every one has been in turn mine. Two are now in the
British Museum; the other, from the Daniel sale, is in the Huth library.
There was an imperfect copy of the first edition of the _Paradise of
Dainty Devices_, 1576, in a catalogue issued by the firm in 1889. It was
described as probably unique, as wanting A 4, which had been supplied from
the next earliest edition in the British Museum, and as bound by F.
Bedford; it was further stated, that every possible search had been made
for a second copy without success. This was a tissue of romantic
inventions on the part, not of the auctioneer, I apprehend, but on that
of the ingenious and candid owner, who was rewarded for his pains by
seeing his property fetch £100!
Some time before, Mr Burt the facsimilist came up to me at the Museum, and
shewed me the copy, asking me whether I could refer him to another, whence
the missing leaf might be supplied. I did so; but he eventually took it,
not from the next earliest issue, which was not in the library, but from
that of 1596. Bedford was dead, when the volume was bound. I leave the
_judicial_ reader to sum up!
At one of the Scotish sales at Sotheby's--David Laing's, I think--Kerr &
Richardson of Glasgow bought against Quaritch at an utterly extravagant
price some specimens of old Scotish binding, but thought better of it
afterward, and the next morning Richardson went to Piccadilly, and offered
to lose the last bid, if Quaritch liked to have the book. 'No,' replied
the other; 'I thank you; I was mad yesterday; but now I have come to my
senses again.'
I have recorded in a previous page an anecdote connected with the Simeon
sale at Sotheby's. I may take the present opportunity of adding that Sir
John Simeon was a resident in the Isle of Wight, and a friend of
Tennyson, who met Longfellow under that roof. There is a curious story of
Wilberforce, when he was at Winchester, making one of a picnic party at
Simeon's, and, the guests strolling about, as they pleased, the bishop was
discovered sitting down in a field alone, with a handkerchief over his
head as a sunshade, one foot in a rabbit-hole, and in his hand a bottle of
champagne.
To the house in Leicester Square I feel myself under considerable
obligations for acts of courtesy and kindness. In former years I bought
there rather largely; and it was very possible, even in a full room, to
obtain bargains, such as do not go many to the sovereign. I remember that
it was here that I got the Fishmongers' Pageant for 1590, a tract of the
utmost rarity, the _Merry Devil of Edmonton_, 1631, a prose version of the
story far scarcer than the play, and mistaken by some of those present for
it, till it was knocked down to me, and a volume of early pieces relating
to murders, accidents, and other cognate matters in the finest state.
There seemed to be no voice lifted up for them beyond a bid, which I could
easily cap. One of the most remarkable early grammars in the British
Museum occurred here, and fetched only 44s. although it was in the highest
preservation and wholly undescribed. Another work of this class, which led
to a certain amount of inquiry, was an _A B C_ printed on paper like linen
at Riga in Russian Poland for the use of the German children there, who
preponderate in number, about 1700--perhaps the oldest example of the
kind. It was very appropriately lotted with Thomas Morton's _Treatise of
the Nature of God_, 1599! The two did not bring more than 12s. The Riga
Primer was, I conclude, a find, as the British Museum sent down an
individual to my house to procure information about it and similar
productions in connection with some task which he had before him.
There was a singular little upheaval, so to speak, at Puttick & Simpson's
a few years ago, when certain tracts, so far known only from report or the
Stationers' Register, occurred. I took memoranda of them all, but somehow
omitted to bid for them. What became of the others, I do not know; but an
extraordinarily rare Elizabethan pamphlet respecting Edward Glemham, 1591,
fell to Mr Quaritch, and from him passed to me at 36s. My intimacy with
the market-value of these relics inspired my eminent acquaintance by
degrees with a distrust of me, and led to a cessation of his catalogues. I
own that I should have looked from such a quarter for greater magnanimity.
He sold me a small piece by Ralph Birchensha on Irish affairs, 1602, for
£6, 6s., less ten per cent. for cash, and subsequently wrote to demand for
what consideration I was willing to surrender it. But both purchases were
bespoken: the former for the British Museum, the latter for Mr Huth.
It was on this ground that I had the bad luck to fall into a trap laid by
myself. In some sale a copy of Dekker's _Belman of London_, 1608, occurred
in a volume in old vellum with the same author's _Lanthorn and
Candlelight_, bearing the same date as the first piece, and so far known
only in a re-issue of 1609. I committed the stupid and double blunder of
fancying that it was the former and less important article, which was
imperfect, and of suggesting to the auctioneers, that the book should be
sold with all faults. Even then I had to give £5, 2s. 6d. for it, and it
turned out that the missing sheet in the middle was in the _Lanthorn and
Candlelight_. I separated the two pieces, and sold the _Belman_ to Smith;
and the other, when I had kept it a twelvemonth or so in the vain hope of
completion, I handed over to the Museum. I just saved myself.
Nothing is much more remarkable than the jetsam, which chance brings up to
the surface here and in Wellington Street alike. Some of the rarest books
and pamphlets in our early literature have fallen under my eyes in
Leicester Square. Once it was a parcel, I recollect, including, among
others, Drayton's _Shepheard's Garland_, 1593; but the lots were
uniformly, in point of condition, hopeless; and I had to leave them to
others.
But the most signal acquisition on my part was the series of the SOMERS
TRACTS in thirty folio volumes, which had belonged to the famous
chancellor, and had passed through several hands, but were still in the
original calf binding. This set of books and tracts comprised some of the
rarest _Americana_, especially the _Laws of New York_, printed there in
1693-4, and probably one of the earliest specimens of local typography. I
forget what I left with the auctioneers; but the price, at which the
hammer fell, was £61. A single item was worth double that sum; and there
were hundreds and hundreds. I spoke to Mr Quaritch after the sale, and
begged him to say why he had not bidden for the article. I apprehend that
he overlooked it--at all events its peculiar importance. What a lottery!
Now alike in Wellington Street and here all is changed. A new school has
arisen, and every article of the slightest consequence is carried to the
last shilling--and beyond. The highest bidder never despairs of finding,
when he gets home, somebody more enthusiastic or more foolish than
himself. I sometimes look round, while a sale is proceeding, and nearly
all the faces are strange. They are those of young men, who represent
firms, or who speculate on their own account. There are no cheap lots,
save to the preternaturally knowing or lucky.
I have reserved to the last the name, which should by right, perhaps, have
come first in order--that of Mr Quaritch, because he co-operated with me
in the enterprise, which constituted throughout my motive for mingling in
the commercial circle, and has enabled me to preserve from the risk of
destruction a vast body of original matter. Mr Quaritch cannot have
realised any appreciable advantage from publishing my _Bibliographical
Collections_ from 1882 to 1892; and he left me a perfectly free hand with
the printer, saying that his share of the business was to pay the bill and
sell the books. I waxed tired of the practical side, when I lost £140 by a
single volume of the series.
But, while he associated himself with me in a variety of ways, some more
mutually profitable than this one, our practical transactions were,
comparatively speaking, not so important or heavy as might have been
expected. Mr Quaritch used at one time to have cheap books as well as
dear; and I suppose that I gave the preference to the former. I saw a copy
of _Fortunatus_ in English in his window one day, marked 12s., and I went
in to buy it. He was just by the door, and when he learned my object,
'Ah,' said he, 'I have kept that book so long, that it is 15s. if you want
it,' and the higher figure I had to pay. There was never any remarkable
event in my life immediately identifiable with these classic premises. I
fear that I was suspected of knowing too much. I was not like the good
folks, to whom, when he had bought the first copy of the Mazarin Bible, he
exhibited an ordinary early printed specimen on their application for
leave to inspect the real article. They were just as happy and just as
wise. How many thumbs it saved!
I shall always cherish a sentiment of gratitude toward Mr Quaritch for his
valuable aid during a whole decade in putting it in my power to present in
instalments the fruit of my labour at the auction-rooms and elsewhere, and
in agreeing to defray the entire cost of the _General Index_ to a large
portion of it. I look forward to the possibility of carrying on the task
piecemeal, till it embraces the entire _corpus_ of our earlier national
literature in all its branches, each item derived from the printed
original, and illustrated by such notes as may appear desirable and
appropriate.
Thousands of new titles await the printer.
It was through this medium that Lord Crawford was pleased to honour me
with a proof of his lordship's catalogue of _Proclamations_, thinking that
it might be of service; but I had to return the copy with a message by the
same channel that the descriptions were drawn up on a different principle
from mine, and that I never accepted information at second-hand, if I
could possibly avoid it.
After what I had seen of Lord Crawford's bibliographical discernment, I
was rather distressed to hear that his lordship is regarded as one of the
best-informed men on the Board of Trustees in Great Russell Street. But
the qualifications of an _ex-officio_ member cannot be always
satisfactory.
I conclude that it is, except among the general public, an open secret
that Mr Quaritch has been during quite a long series of years eminently
indebted for his success to the varied and extraordinary erudition of his
adviser, Mr Michael Kerny. Mr Quaritch was accustomed to say to me: 'I am
a shopkeeper; Mr Kerny is a gentleman;' and there was a degree of truth in
this remark. Yet the former is something more than _le grand marchand_;
his enterprise and pluck are marvellous; and they are the outcome, for the
most part, not of foolhardihood, but of genius. A man, who buys blindly,
soon reaches the end of his tether. That Mr Quaritch for divers reasons
has often made unwise purchases, and has missed his mark, may be perfectly
the fact; but in the main he has obviously struck the right vein; and he
pursues his policy season after season, witnessing the departure of old
clients (or, as he would rather put it, customers) and the advent of new
ones. He despises popularity, and has ere this given umbrage by his
_brusquerie_ to supporters of long standing and high position; and he
leaves them to do as they please to seek other pastures or to return to
their former allegiance. He is a striking example--the most striking I
have ever seen--of a man, who knows how to accommodate unusual
independence of character and conduct to commercial life.
The successive authorities in the Printed Book Department of the British
Museum have earned my cordial gratitude by their uniform deference to my
somewhat peculiar and somewhat exacting requirements. They soon formed the
habit, when it was found that I was an earnest and genuine worker, of
waiving in my favour, so far as it was consistent with reason and
propriety, the hard and fast rule of the establishment, and even under the
now rather remote and quasi-historical keepership of Mr Watts.
It was as a simple student that I in the first place sought the British
Museum, and in the old reading-room initiated myself in the learning
requisite to qualify me, as I imagined, for becoming the English
historian of Venice. I was self-complacently happy in the unconsciousness
of my own intense ignorance of the magnitude of the task and of the fact
that, at a distance of forty years, I should still have merely reached a
more advanced stage of my labours. It at any rate speaks for my
perseverance and resolution, that my interest in the topic is unabated,
and my desire and intention, to see the project of my youth completed on a
suitable and satisfactory scale inflexible.
I ventured into type in 1858 and 1860, and since then I have printed
farther instalments destined to fall into their places, when the time
arrives. But accident directed my steps and thoughts about the same time
into a different groove, and I turned my attention to book-collecting and
bibliography, at first vaguely and desultorily, and by degrees on a more
systematic principle; and cogent circumstances--that necessity for living,
which Dr Johnson ignored--finally drove me into the market as a
speculator. My conversance with old books was very special and defective;
of many classes I knew next to nothing; but I gradually gained a fair
insight into the value of those, for which I had contracted a personal
liking--the early poetry and romances--and I tried my hand as a hunter
for specialities. I naturally turned to the Museum as a channel; for I was
not acquainted with many of the booksellers, and I had yet to meet with Mr
Huth.
It may not be, indeed is not, generally known, how wide a diversity of
persons offer their possessions or acquisitions to the national library.
There are great differences of opinion respecting the questions of rarity
and value, and the authorities are most unconscionably plagued by a host
of individuals of imperfect bibliographical attainments, who shoot parcels
of old volumes in Great Russell Street in the expectation of a more or
less rich harvest, in which they are apt to be more or less disappointed.
Here and there a real treasure is netted. The Bishop of Bath and Wells
brought a small octavo volume from Ickworth, comprising the _Prophete
Jonas_ and other tracts of singular scarcity and importance. A gentleman
from Woolwich introduced a quarto volume in old vellum of poetical
compositions of the middle of the sixteenth century, including the
_Scholehouse of Women_, the _Defence of Women_, the _Seven Sorrows that
Women have when Their Husbands be dead_, etc., with the autograph on a
flyleaf of 'John Hodge, of the Six Clerks' Office 1682.' Such prizes atone
for a vast amount of annoyance and rubbish.
But Mr Maskell, Mr Halliwell, Mr Henry Stevens, and myself have probably,
apart from purchases made direct from the sales and the shops, contributed
of late years most largely to supply _lacunæ_ in the Early English
Department, and supersede the three-volume catalogue.
At the Bodleian the late Dr Coxe and the Rev. Mr Madan have always done
their best to help me, and at Cambridge the late Mr Henry Bradshaw was a
host in himself. These relations, however, were purely bibliographical;
while those with the Museum were of a more mingled yarn, and my connection
with that institution, both as regarded printed literature and
manuscripts, was in fact part of the system, which I have above fully
explained.
I did a good deal _con amore_. A strange story reached me about a copy of
Monstrelet's Chronicles in French, printed on vellum, for which Mr
Quaritch was not willing to give as much as the owner desired, in fact
throwing discredit on the genuineness of the book. Whereupon it was
carried to Great Russell Street, duly inspected, and as to the price--the
authorities were prepared to hand over all the cash in hand, about £700.
Mr Quaritch was stated to have been very wroth, when he found that he had
missed the lot, and declared that his ground for scepticism was the fact
that the only copy in the market or likely to occur for sale was in
Russia; and he then learned for the first time, that the present one had
been obtained at St Petersburg. I called on Mr Garnett, and inquired what
were the actual circumstances, so far as the Museum was concerned; and it
appeared that the book did come from Russia, and consisted only of vols. 2
and 3; but the library already possessed vol. 1 (wanting one leaf only) in
an incomplete set formerly belonging to King Henry VII.; and the purchase
was arranged. The keeper referred to the accounts, and found that the
transaction took place in 1886, and that the sum given was £375.
My experiences of bookbinders have been tolerably manifold, and not exempt
from the sorrows, with which the employers of this class of skilled labour
are bound to become familiar. The earliest of my acquaintances was Mr
Leighton, who executed a great deal of work for Sir William
Stirling-Maxwell--in those days known as William Stirling of Keir. There
was a stupendous copy of Maxwell's _Cloister-Life of Charles V._,
published at a few shillings, which I understood Leighton to say had cost
with the illustrations and elaborate Spanish binding about £1000. I saw
the book in Brewer Street, but not the value. Leighton's speciality was
Spanish calf, as Riviere's was the tree-marbled pattern. I had a
considerable amount of work done for me here, while I filled the _rôle_ of
a collector on my own account in a humble degree. But when I had occasion,
at a later period, to put volumes into new liveries, and their condition
demanded nice handling, I employed Riviere, whom I found very satisfactory
and punctual. His place of business in Piccadilly adjoining Pickering's
shop was during years one of my not least agreeable resorts, and I
profited, with the concurrence of the principal, by the constant presence
on the premises of undescribed books or editions consigned for binding. Of
Bedford I saw very little. He was a true artist, and a very unassuming,
pleasant fellow, whom I occasionally visited at his address in or near
York Street, Westminster. My first call was in consequence of Mr Huth
having given me leave to take notes of some rare volumes, which were in
course of treatment. Bedford was more reliable than Riviere, who could
bind well, if he liked; but he sometimes left too much to subordinates.
Pratt, who had been a workman at Bedford's, was a respectable binder, but
an indifferent cleaner and mender, two very essential features, where the
slightest neglect or oversight may prove disastrous. It is trying to look
in casually, and perceive that the tender title-page of a quarto
Shakespear has parted with one of the letters of the poet's name or a
figure of the date, and that one of these is floating on the surface of a
tub of water; and such thrilling episodes have occurred.
If it is in some cases an advantage to take your acquisitions to a binder,
and have them separately clothed, it is in others, and perhaps for the
most part, one to buy ready-bound. It saves expense, delay, and annoyance.
Of my publishers I am scarcely entitled to speak in a volume devoted to
the collecting side beyond such works as directly arose from my pursuit as
a book-lover pure and simple between 1857 and 1867. But, when I look
closely at my professedly literary undertakings, I discern more or less in
nearly all of them a bibliographical spirit and training. My Venetian
labours included the formation of a fair representative collection of
books relating to the subject and a study of the MSS. within my reach. My
pronounced taste for method and minutiæ in early English literature
extended to Italy, when I was endeavouring to concentrate on the history
of the Republic all the direct and collateral light, which I was enabled
to gather from various sources; and the same thing may be truly predicated
of the commissions, which I executed for several publishers, beginning
with Russell Smith and Reeves & Turner. Mine have been chiefly
enterprises, where a knowledge of detail and a familiarity with extant or
available material were apt to prove of eminent service; and such was
especially the case with the _Early Popular Poetry_ and the _Dodsley_.
Disciples of the _belles-lettres_, who entertain less respect for the
extrinsic side or part of their tasks, may be wiser than myself; but it
strikes me, that it is difficult to do justice to a subject without
surveying the entire ground occupied by it.
Two very mortifying illustrations of the soundness of this view occurred
to me at different times. In my collected edition of Randolph, I collated
everything with the original editions except the _Aristippus_ and had the
satisfaction of discovering, when it was too late, that all but the first
issue were incomplete in many places, in one to the extent of omitting a
line. In my reconstructed and enlarged Dodsley, _in fifteen thick octavo
volumes, containing eighty-four dramas_, I have a table of _errata_ of
_thirty-six items_, many very trivial and even dubious; and of this total
_five-and-twenty_ occur in one play, which I neglected to compare with the
old copy deposited in an inconvenient locality, and gave from the
Shakespear Society's text. I attach greater blame to myself, that I should
have forgotten, when I reprinted in 1892 my Suckling of 1874, to set right
the stupid mistake in the song from 'The Sad One,' of _dawn_ for _down_.
I shall remain highly pleased, that I succeeded, in the volume entitled
_Tales and Legends_, in putting in type my long-cherished ideas about
Robin Hood and Faustus; and I adopted a sort of old-fashioned, vernacular
style throughout the book, apparently not unsuitable to the nature of the
topics treated. Both the stories just mentioned were there for the first
time presented in an English form and text agreeably to my view and
estimate of the facts relative to two of the most remarkable characters in
romance. The accumulation of absurdities round those heroes of the closet
and the stage prompted me, years and years since, to endeavour to reduce
the legends to a shape more compatible with evidence and probability. Yet
I am informed that some of the critics wondered, what the aim of the
volume was. It struck others, as well as myself, as fairly clear; indeed
the undertaking was strictly on recognised lines. But I had unfortunately
omitted to graduate as a specialist and to add myself to the roll of the
faithful.
Another venture, which involved the writer in a slight temporary
_imbroglio_, was the monograph on the _Livery Companies of London_. I was
most unhappy in the season and circumstances of launching this work. It
was a tolerably hard six months' task, and I hurried it forward, inasmuch
as I knew that a rival scheme was on the stocks. Considering that it is a
big book with numerous illustrations supplied by the editor, it is perhaps
not much worse than it might have been, had it proceeded from a pen
writing _superiorum approbatione_. The rumour arose that, as soon as the
real work on the subject appeared, the attempt of an outsider would sink
into merited oblivion; but the real work did not appear, and its proposed
author had to content himself, in the presence of his disappointment, with
sending me an anonymous communication, based on erroneous intelligence,
that the word _Gild_ ought to be spelled with a _U_, as it is in
_Guildhall_, _Gild_ signifying _to face with gold_.
A far more serious misadventure, however, was occasioned by an unlucky
clerical oversight. In the account of the Cutlers' Company I stated that
there had been, many years before, a defalcation by the Clerk, whereas I
should have said 'by a clerk;' the wrong article and the capital letter
drew down on me the ire of the party, who still occupied the position of
Clerk to the Gild, and who pleaded damage to his reputation by the
misprint, pointed out to him by the frustrated compiler aforesaid. There
could be no sustainable plea of injury, and the large amount lost rendered
it obvious that there must have been neglect by superiors; but the
publishers thought it better to agree to cancel the leaf, which was done
in all copies unsold or recoverable. The Clerk was in fact the
responsible officer, and although he might have had no hand in the
misappropriation, he must have exercised a very imperfect control over the
accounts, to render such a thing possible.
Owing to the unlucky retention in my agreement for the Livery Companies'
book of certain clauses, I involved myself in an unpleasantness, which
made me anxious to get rid of the entire business. Accordingly, the moment
that I was advised by the firm, that they had (without previous
consultation with me as a royalty-holder) converted themselves into a
limited company, I solicited a cheque in settlement of all claims, and
obtained it. I have very possibly set a precedent, by which others might
not do ill to profit.
I know that to my more recent acquaintances and auxiliaries I must have
appeared rather niggard of presentation copies of my publications. But I
used to be generous enough in distributing such things, till I was
thoroughly disheartened and disgusted. Some stopped short of
acknowledgment; others might without much disadvantage have done the same.
I sent a privately-printed volume worth several pounds as a gift to a
reverend professor at Cambridge, and he wrote back on a card: 'Thanks.
Curious.' My former schoolmaster at Merchant Taylors had only to say that
I had left out a Greek accent in a quotation, and a female relative, after
two years' deliberation, apprised me that I was guilty of printing the
wrong article in a French maxim. When I forwarded to Mr William Chappell
direct as from myself an important volume edited for Mr Huth, he pointed
out to the latter, leaving me unrecognised, that I had made a slip in a
particular place. An official at the British Museum, who solicited one of
my books as a memorial, which would be cherished as an heirloom in his
family, forthwith passed it on to a bookseller, who priced it in his
catalogue at £12, 12s., and Mr Huth, till I explained the circumstances,
imagined that I was the culprit.