own library a letter written by Cervantes. It is the only one known
in a private collection to-day. Other letters of his--and they are
few--may be seen only in the Spanish National Library at Madrid.
Cervantes’s autographs are so rare that the British Museum possesses no
example of the handwriting of the author of _Don Quixote_, nor is there
one in the library of the Hispanic Society in New York City, founded
by that great collector, Mr. Archer M. Huntington. From this you may
realize to some extent the desirability and scarcity of a letter of
Cervantes. Written on two pages, and dated February 4, 1593, it is
extremely legible, in a bold Castilian hand, and contains his signature
in full: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, with a fanciful twirling
flourish becoming to a great Spanish author. Many an expert eye has
passed upon it gloatingly in years gone by, for it has been in the
celebrated collections, first of Benjamin Fillon, in Paris, and later
of Alfred Morrison, of London.
[Illustration: LAST PAGE OF THE ONLY LETTER IN THIS COUNTRY WRITTEN BY
CERVANTES]
Some time after acquiring this celebrated autograph I was startled one
day in New York, when an agent from a well-known English autograph
house telephoned me and said he had a wonderful letter of Cervantes.
He asked £3000 for it, which was certainly not too high, when you stop
to consider that Cervantes’s place in literature is second only to
that of Shakespeare. If a Shakespeare letter were found to-day many
collectors would not consider $500,000 too much to pay for it. What,
then, is a Cervantes letter worth? While I sat mulling over these
mathematical problems, the doorbell rang and the dealer came in. His
manner was important, almost condescending. His precious letter was
inclosed in a fine morocco case, elaborately tooled. He removed it from
its costly trappings, and after a moment of suspense, which was really
most effective, he handed the letter to me. I could scarcely believe
my eyes. I looked for the date--February 4, 1593. It was an excellently
forged copy of the one in my possession.
“Where in the devil did you get this?”
His face turned the color of a carnation and his swanky manner of
assurance wilted away.
“Just what do you mean?” he asked me slowly. I motioned him to follow,
and took him into my book vault, where I laid his clever forgery next
to mine the original. For a moment I thought he would crumple up and
fall to the floor. I have never seen anyone so completely nonplussed.
He had really believed his Cervantes letter to be the original, and
had come in all good faith to sell it to me. I proved to him how some
forger, after securing the sheets of old paper, had, through a process
of photo-engraving, cleverly produced the letter which he had so
exultingly shown to me.
The beautiful thing about the book business is that you must be
constantly on your guard. It makes the game exciting to know that there
are beings who, like vultures, would pick your bones if you but gave
them the chance. Thank heaven for them. The chase is more exhilarating
on their account.
The atmosphere of Wall Street is that of a Quaker meetinghouse beside
it.
[Illustration: ORIGINAL DRAWING BY DAUMIER OF DON QUIXOTE]
Forgeries have been in existence as long as the collecting game itself.
During the Renaissance forgers were very active in every field of
creative art. Not only did they make imitations of great Greek and
Latin classics, which were just beginning their popular vogue in
Europe, but they very cleverly copied old medals, and fabricated
old gems too. Of course, the collector himself is in a sense morally
responsible for the forger. The collector’s overdeveloped sense of
acquisitiveness leads him to pay extravagant prices for his favorites;
he will search out and buy every available pen scratch of some great
writer.
A poor wretch in an attic reads in the newspapers that a capitalist has
just paid $2000 for an autograph letter of Robert Burns. He then begins
to “discover” other letters and documents by the same author. This is
the launching of a career that is usually full of excitement and gives
full scope to the imagination. The forger is a picturesque figure until
he, too, is discovered and publicly condemned. This class of men--I
know of no women forgers--is responsible for the literary detective.
There is real sport in tracking these fabrications. An ability to tell
the original from the false, the genuine from the spurious, sometimes
under the most trying circumstances, has developed almost into a fine
art.
There are men who make literary detecting their profession. Their
eyes are so well trained that they are seldom wrong when pronouncing
judgment. They are as fully aware of the thousand and one tricks of the
professional forger’s game as they are alert to the peculiarities of
each author’s handwriting.
These experts could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. When you
stop to consider that there are men even now in dark holes in London,
in obscure garrets in Paris, in flats in Harlem, and in apartments in
Atlantic City, making their livelihood forging autographs, it puts you
pleasantly on your guard. These fellows are very often unsuccessful
authors with a certain amount of erudition, broken-down booksellers, or
other bits of riffraff from the literary world. I once knew a genial
old college professor who turned from unlucrative teaching to make an
honest penny, as he termed it, by forging.
My uncle Moses always told with a chuckle of his experience with an
Englishman by the name of Robert Spring. He called at my uncle’s shop
in Commerce Street one day in the 60’s and said he had an old document
signed by Washington. In fact, it was a military pass issued to some
Revolutionary worthy, permitting him to go through the lines. My uncle
naturally pricked up his ears at the mention of his favorite character,
General Washington, and immediately asked to see this interesting
relic. The Englishman then held it up dramatically, and when Uncle
Moses read it he felt like embracing his visitor. For, lo and behold,
the pass was made out in the name of one of my uncle’s own ancestors!
It had every earmark of age, was written on old paper in faded ink, the
creases were almost worn through, and the edges were frayed. To his
covetous eyes the pass seemed much more desirable on account of its
connection with his forbears. He asked the Englishman what he wanted
for it and how it had come into his possession. He glibly explained he
had found it in an old-fashioned hair trunk in the attic of a house in
old Philadelphia. He wanted fifteen dollars for this pass--a large sum
in those days, when one could buy a full autograph letter of Washington
for that much money. Uncle Moses rose to this thin story as a trout
strikes at a fly.
Some years later Ferdinand J. Dreer, of Philadelphia, a connoisseur,
came to see him. Among other things, my uncle showed him the faded
pass. Mr. Dreer looked at it for a moment, and then, according to Uncle
Moses, turned to him and in that cheerfully disgusted tone which one
collector uses to a brother who has made a foolish deal, said:--
“Mr. Polock, you, of all men, should know better! This thing is an
arrant forgery, and worth less than nothing.”
It later appeared that Robert Spring was the first great forger of
American documents. He had written many such military passes, all of
them with spurious signatures of General Washington. But he was always
foxy enough to look up the name of some ancestor of the man on whom
he planned to prey. Uncle Moses, nevertheless, remained stoical, and
said this outlay of fifteen dollars was one of the most profitable
investments he had ever made. It placed him on his guard as nothing
had before; was, in fact, an investment that would in time be worth
thousands of dollars to him.
[Illustration: FROM A LETTER IN THE AUTOGRAPH OF GEORGE WASHINGTON,
SIGNED BY HIM FOR MARTHA WASHINGTON]
Spring’s career as a forger lasted a surprisingly long time. He reached
a point where he made no effort to conceal from his Philadelphia
customers the almost made-to-order character of these documents of
his. He salved their feelings by saying he would never think of
offering them anything that was not genuine. Of course, he was an
excellent penman. Washington was his favorite model, perhaps because
he had greatest success in copying his handwriting. He sold most of
his productions to persons who lived abroad, who were not regular
collectors. He assumed various names when he wrote to members of the
English nobility, representing himself sometimes as a widow in want,
or as the needy daughter of Stonewall Jackson, thus feeding most
lucratively upon the kind-heartedness of wealthy people thousands of
miles away. He was arrested several times, but finally reformed. Before
dying he grew to be a most proper and meticulously honest dealer in
books and engravings, and, I suppose, rests comfortably now in the
bookmen’s heaven.
I have collected letters and documents of Washington almost from
the beginning of my career. To-day I own an interesting, authentic
collection of more than two hundred, written between the years 1755
and 1799. He was a prolific correspondent. His handwriting is always
legible; the writing of a sensitive, clear-thinking person whose
nerves were under excellent control. Many of these letters are the
charming messages which any leisured gentleman of that period might
write. Others are on military matters of the utmost importance. Another
series deals entirely with agriculture, and shows how well the masterly
general could play the gentleman farmer.
The years which have passed since his death have seen the world flooded
with Washington autographs. But it took a measure of daring and a
fanatical spirit of patriotism to forge letters of his while he was
still alive and fulfilling with vigor the now historical duties of his
military career. It was in May or June of 1777 that a book appeared in
London purporting to contain certain letters of Washington written in
1776 to friends and relatives of his in Virginia. These letters paint
him as a man whose motives were questionable. The false lines in this
book relate his pretended thoughts and feelings about the Revolution
in which he was then engaged. They make him say he is tired of it all;
that he wishes for peace at any price with the mother country. They
reveal him as a military scapegrace with the soul, but not the courage,
of a traitor! Despite the publisher’s preface explaining his possession
of these intimate documents, it was soon proved that the letters were
deliberate forgeries. Nevertheless, they were of grave importance at
the time, for they served as a powerful propaganda against Washington,
and therefore the colonies, and made a strong appeal to the ignorant
and easily biased mind.
Forgers must have, above all, a keen sense of chronology. This is
the first great requisite after their natural skill in imitating
handwriting. For instance, they cannot refer to the discovery of
America in a letter supposed to have been written before that event
took place, or date a letter of Dickens, 1872, two years after his
death, and expect to get away with it. Both these slips, strange to
say, have occurred. In fact, forgers frequently make similar crude
errors, alluding to incidents that hadn’t happened at the time the
letter was dated.
It is plain, therefore, that the master forger must have his chronology
at his finger tips. He should know not only the dates of history, which
he can find in any textbook, but he must be familiar with the history
of costume, of furnishings, and decorations also. I remember reading
the invention of one gentleman’s brain and pen in which he alluded to
hoop skirts ten years before they put in their dreadful appearance.
The literary forger hoping for success should also acquire an almost
endless knowledge of the colloquial language of the period in which he
writes, and must be naturally a student of orthography and spelling. In
fact, he has taken up the one career where he has literally to mind his
P’s and Q’s!
It is fairly easy to imitate the writing of a distinguished character;
the most difficult part is to interpret, as well, the thoughts of the
equally distinguished mind. A forger of Thackeray wrote the name of the
author of _Vanity Fair_ in many volumes, together with a short comment
about the text. He composed a pointed criticism of each work, or
invented what he believed to be some smart phrase about the author. In
this case the signature and the writing itself are so excellent that
they almost defy detection, but the thoughts are no more those of the
great Thackeray than are mine of Shakespeare.
[Illustration: PAGE FROM A LETTER OF THACKERAY TO MRS. BROOKFIELD]
Not many are privileged to see presentation copies actually in the
making. A friend of mine told me of an experience he had in London.
One day he strolled into a little bookshop near the British Museum. He
looked over some dusty volumes for a time, and finally found one which
he wanted to buy. There was no clerk in the front of the shop, so he
walked to the rear, where he discovered a little old man seated at a
large table. Before him was a row of books all opened at the title
pages. The busy old fellow was bent over another and so absorbed in
his work that he heard nothing. My friend looked over his shoulder. He
was committing a little quiet forgery! In other words he was caught in
“fragrant delectation.” On the title page he was painstakingly forming
Lewis Carroll’s autograph. Before my friend left he had an opportunity
to see what was written. He found, much to his astonishment, that
the old gentleman was inditing to long-deceased friends of Lewis
Carroll, copies of _Alice in Wonderland_, each one with an appropriate
inscription. When asked the reason for all this industry, he replied,
“I am making them for the American market!”
Among the many bugaboos which the forger has to face are watermarks
woven into paper. These are the manufacturer’s trade-marks, and often
show the date the paper was made. You can see them if you hold the
paper to the light. Quite recently I was offered three manuscripts
supposed to be in the hand of Oscar Wilde. His exquisite though
affected Greek style of handwriting was well enough imitated. But when
I pointed out to the man who offered the manuscripts to me that they
were written upon paper which bore the watermarks of a manufacturer who
had made it during the Great War, he suddenly remembered an appointment
and hurriedly made his departure.
About twenty years ago a celebrated French firm of book and autograph
dealers cabled my brother Philip that they were offering for sale
the original manuscript of Oscar Wilde’s _Salomé_. Wilde, who was a
literary exhibitionist if ever there was one, gave _Salomé_ to the
world in French, and not such very good French at that. As I had an
extensive collection of Wilde autographs even then, I was extremely
eager to own the original of this famous work also. Before my reply
could reach the firm in France, some luckier collector who was on the
spot at the time bought it. I was very much annoyed, but concealed
my chagrin as best I could, not even inquiring who the buyer was. I
suspected it was some French author. The year before last, when on my
annual pilgrimage to England, a French journalist came to see me one
day at the Carlton Hotel in London, with the news that he knew the man
who owned the _Salomé_ manuscript, and was informed that he would part
with it if paid a sufficiently high price.
[Illustration: PAGE FROM ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF OSCAR WILDE’S “SALOMÉ”]
Now, I am never frightened at high prices. I asked my friend to return
to France and buy it for me. Two days passed. Then I received the
news that I was again too late. It was plain that Salomé was playing
hide and seek with me, and placing my head on a charger. After two
months in England I went to Paris. I had hardly arrived before the
collector who last purchased _Salomé_ offered to sell it. I asked
him to bring it immediately to my hotel. With my nerves on edge, I
kept telling myself that this time she should not escape me. Now, the
collector in question was supposed to be a judge of autographs. He
arrived and took the manuscript from its case. I fairly grabbed it from
him, fearing that the evil Salomé would sprout wings and fly out of the
window. I opened the cover to the first page, looked at it, turned the
second, then the third. Quickly I closed it and gave it back to him. A
silence followed during which he regarded me in amazement.
“No, thank you,” I said; “I am looking for Salomé in the flesh, not a
will-o’-the-wisp. Your manuscript is a forgery!”
It was plain this poor fellow had been deceived. He walked up and
down my room, tearing at his hair in the best French manner, for he
had given a good sum for this clever fabrication. I, too, was deeply
disappointed, after tracking over Europe for it. Like the villain in
the play, Salomé still evaded me.
[Illustration: DEDICATION OF OSCAR WILDE’S “THE SPHINX” TO MRS. PATRICK
CAMPBELL]
In Philadelphia a year later I received a cable from a firm of
auctioneers in Paris, offering me the original manuscript of _Salomé_
once more. I naturally paid no attention to the offer, thinking it
another forgery. I was tired of the wiles of this wicked woman. I had
come to the conclusion that this work was not, by some weaving of the
fates, for the house of Rosenbach. No more fool’s errands for me.
A few weeks after, when dining with a well-known American collector in
New York, he said to me:
“Doctor, I have something which will open even your eyes. I have
_Salomé_!”
Naturally, I could not suppress a cynical laugh. “Another forgery?” I
smilingly inquired.
After dinner we went to his library, and he pointed very proudly to
two old copy books on the table. The moment I looked at the pages I
knew that at last I held the original in my hands. How envious I was!
But I now realized this manuscript could never be mine. I felt truly
heartbroken. My friend, seeing I was not exactly elated over his
treasure, but rather downcast, asked the reason. I related the whole
story of my chase.
With great generosity he replied, with the air of a sultan presenting
a favorite slave, “Doctor, I don’t want to stand in your way. If you
want her, she is yours.” He told me its history as far as he knew it;
the manuscript had been purchased by Pierre Louÿs, the eminent French
poet. It was he who had bought it directly from the shop in Paris when
I first tried to obtain it twenty years before. It is far more precious
to-day than it was then. Not only is it the greatest work from the pen
of Oscar Wilde but it is the one work of his that has been translated
into all languages. It has also been used as the libretto by Richard
Strauss for his startling and beautiful opera.
The up-to-date literary forger always keeps his eye upon the market.
Genuine letters of certain famous, or infamous, men and women will
always command high prices. Yet the styles in collecting change as
in everything else. One decade there may be a sudden craze for Byron
letters; the next, autograph letters or documents pertaining to Keats
or Shelley are frantically sought.
So it goes. One cycle begins as another cycle ends. Therefore, forgers’
productions often swarm into the market when the popularity of an
autograph is on the crest of the wave. There are certain historical
characters whose autographs will always sell at top prices. With this
in mind, one of the greatest hoaxes ever planned was, for a time, put
over by a French forger a few years after the middle of the nineteenth
century. Vrain Lucas was his name, and his guileless customer was a
noted mathematician, Michel Chasles. I first knew of Lucas’s wretched
forgeries through hearing my uncle Moses tell of them; in a way, it was
rather humorous, for when he told me the story he became as enraged as
though Lucas had taken him in, rather than Chasles.
Vrain Lucas was a middle-aged man of fair education and rather well
read. By his own confession he had manufactured more than twenty-five
thousand spurious autographs, many of which he sold to Chasles over a
period of eight years. During that time Chasles had doubted his word
only once. Lucas immediately offered to buy back everything he had sold
him, and thus Chasles’s faith was restored.
This charlatan, Lucas, must have had a certain hypnotic influence over
Chasles, plus the assurance and the courage of Old Nick himself.
Chasles’s belief in him, however, proved Lucas’s undoing. For when
he sold him two letters from Charles V to Rabelais, Chasles, in his
excitement and delight, presented them to the Academy of Belgium.
The letters for a time were believed to be genuine. Then Lucas came
again to Chasles, this time with letters from Pascal to Boyle and Sir
Isaac Newton, in which the writer proved that he, and not Newton, had
discovered the law of gravitation.
You can imagine how deeply moved was Chasles, the naïve mathematician.
He rushed with them to the French Academy of Science, and at once
the scientific world was stirred into a commotion. At the height of
this agitation Sir David Brewster came forward and announced that the
letters must be from the pen of an impostor, proving conclusively at
the same time that Newton was a mere child of ten when these pretended
messages of Pascal were written. Thus began the beginning of the end
for the forger.
Certain testimony given by Chasles at Lucas’s trial before a tribunal
of the Seine, in 1870, is almost unbelievable. It seems ridiculous to
me that any man, especially a collector, could have been so simple and
gullible as was Chasles. He spent 140,000 francs, a lot of money in
those days, for a list of autograph letters that is too good to pass
over lightly. Although Monsieur Lucas supplied his customer with the
important names of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries,
including Boccaccio, Cervantes, Dante, Racine, Shakespeare, and
Spinoza, he likewise delved into the remote past and produced letters
from Abélard, Alcibiades, Attila, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Ovid,
Pliny, Plutarch, and Pompey!
Lucas was careful enough to mix an ink for his forgeries which,
when dry, gave the appearance of age. Then he treated the completed
masterpieces in such a way as to make them look worn and of great age.
But his cleverness was only half-witted! He had the audacity not only
to write these ancient epistles on paper from local mills, which showed
the watermarks of Angoulême, but most daringly inscribed them in modern
French!
The late Simon Gratz, in his delightful and authoritative volume,
_A Book about Autographs_, gives translations of several of these
shameless fabrications. Here is the letter which Chasles believed
Cleopatra wrote to Julius Cæsar:--
Cleopatra, Queen, to her very beloved Julius Cæsar, Emperor.
MY VERY BELOVED:--
Our son Cæsarion is well. I hope that he will soon be able to support
the travel from here to Marseilles, where I need to send him to study,
as much for the good air one breathes there as for the fine things
which are taught. I beg you will tell me how long you will still
remain in that country, for I want myself to take our son there and
see you on this occasion. This is to tell you, my very beloved, the
pleasure I feel when I am near you, and meanwhile I pray the gods to
have you in their guard.
The XI March year of Rome VCCIX
CLEOPATRA
Think with what pious glee Monsieur Chasles read the following
priceless letter from Lazarus, the resuscitated, to Saint Peter!
MY DEAR FRIEND PETRUS:--
You tell me you have noticed in the writings of Cæsar and in those of
Cicero that one of the most important parts of the Druids’ religion
consists in sacrificing savage men. It is true they take in an
erroneous sense this principle, that men can only appreciate the life
God gave them by offering Him the life of a man. They have continued
that inhuman and bloody practice until the time of Cicero. This is
why he says they soil and profane their temple and altars by offering
there human victims, and here Cicero is right in insulting a worship
so barbarous, saying it is a strange thing that to satisfy for what
they owe to their religion they must first dishonor it by some murder.
They cannot be religious without being homicides. The infamy of this
horrible maxim has reflected on all the Gauls, even if it has been
practiced only in some places. But the arms and the conquest of the
Romans have wiped out this infamy and I do not believe that it is
practiced anywhere now. Amen.
This X August XLVII
LAZARUS
Lucas’s interpretation of Biblical characters was rather unusual.
Perhaps it was this quality, which so fascinated his generous customer,
that caused him to be blind to obvious discrepancies. Here is rather a
quaint letter purporting to be from Mary Magdalene to Lazarus:--
MY VERY BELOVED BROTHER:--