covers I immediately recognized the work book of “the first civilized
American,” as a recent biographer has so aptly called him. Not a
page had been tampered with; it was entirely as it had been kept for
Franklin, except that it was somewhat yellowed by its hundred and
eighty years of age. Very carefully he had listed each work printed by
his press. The title of every book, the number of copies made, and the
quality of paper used, all commercial details, the costs and selling
prices, were methodically written out. Other expenses, too, were set
down.
[Illustration: PAGE OF FRANKLIN’S WORK BOOK]
I looked at Mr. Lawler gratefully, and he, inwardly gloating, acted as
though the finding of historically invaluable account books was all in
an evening’s work. Of course, I could not leave without it, and I lost
no time in buying it from the owner. Ten minutes later two jubilant
bookmen climbed into the waiting automobile outside, making a triumphal
exit as they carried off their treasure from the town of Mount Holly.
It was impossible to realize, when I purchased it, the full historical
worth of Franklin’s account book. Not until I returned home, where
I found leisure to study every word, to compare the contents with
published facts concerning Franklin, did I recognize its true import
and value to all students of printing in this country. But how did
it happen to be in Mount Holly after all those years? This question
obsessed me for a long time. The former owner, from whom I purchased
it, could tell me nothing. I began searching through the records of
Franklin’s career as a printer, and found he was in business with
David Hall until 1766, at which time they dissolved their partnership.
Then it was that he requested his great friend, James Parker, a noted
printer in New York, to audit the accounts for him. Later Parker moved
to Burlington, New Jersey, probably taking this account book with him.
As Burlington is but a few miles from Mount Holly, it is not difficult
to imagine how it might have been carried there by some one of Parker’s
descendants.
Many people imagine they own things of great worth, especially if these
things are old. They become excited when they run across a letter
in some trunk which has not been opened for years. They are sure
they have found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They are
severely shocked, however, when the experienced dealer’s appraisal of
the ancestral letters is extremely low. Indeed, the dealer is quite
different from the law courts of England, which consider a man innocent
until he is proved guilty. Every expert is more or less suspicious of
any proffered autograph, especially if the so-called originals are
supposed to have been written by celebrated figures of a century or so
ago.
The false scent and the fruitless hunt, these the skillful buyer learns
to avoid. Sometimes the letters are genuine--sometimes! But it is
amazing, too, what tales otherwise honest men and women will fabricate
in their eagerness to sell an autograph letter or document. They will
swear to heaven that they remember that auspicious day, “over forty
years ago, when I was but a mere child,” when the letter was first
shown them. I have had many such experiences. Several times I have
recognized straight forgeries, letters which were actually written
quite recently, and clumsily made to appear old and important. However,
there are times when one is due for a delightful surprise. What you
believe to be idle vaporings turn out to be something delightfully
different.
One day some years ago an old gentleman called upon me in New York.
I happened to be walking through my reception room when he arrived,
and did not catch his name. But in deference to his extreme age--he
appeared to be more than ninety--I immediately invited him into the
library. He was very plainly dressed, almost dingy in appearance.
I entered into conversation with him and he seemed remarkably well
informed. Every celebrity of the past sixty years he appeared to know
intimately. We talked of prominent literary figures, of great political
and financial leaders. He knew them all!
He even told me of an incident which occurred one evening at Windsor
Castle when he dined with Queen Victoria. I looked at him queryingly,
deploring that exaggerated ego which is the pleasure and consolation
of old age. He continued with anecdotes of Palmerston, Gladstone,
Disraeli, and Lord Salisbury. Lincoln had been his friend, he said, as
well as all the Presidents from Lincoln’s time; and every corner and
crevice of the White House was known to him. I thought to myself that
here was certainly an old liar, if ever there was one. A regular Baron
Munchausen!
Then I naturally turned the conversation to old books and manuscripts.
I mentioned a famous volume, and he said he owned it. I mentioned
another; he owned that too! If he had been a younger man I should have
had it clearly understood that I no longer cared to be taken for a
credulous fool. But being a Philadelphian, of course I could not resist
mentioning Benjamin Franklin. The syllables of his name had hardly
left my lips when my visitor announced, with something of regret in
his voice, that he had once owned the manuscript of Franklin’s famous
_Autobiography_!
With unbelieving amazement I stared at him. Then it dawned upon me
that the gentleman before me was a distinguished American diplomat and
everything he said was the truth! As Minister to France many years
ago, he had handled with extraordinary tact several serious political
situations; one time editor of the _New York Evening Post_, he was also
an essayist and historian. I leaned forward and said in a voice which
made no attempt to disguise either my surprise or my pleasure, “Have I
the honor of addressing the Honorable John Bigelow?”
Mr. Bigelow then told me how in an off moment he had been induced to
sell, at what was then considered a high price, but which would be a
mere trifle now, the immortal _Autobiography_ of Benjamin Franklin.
He disposed of it through a New York firm of booksellers to E. Dwight
Church of Brooklyn, and it is now in that bookman’s paradise, the
library of Mr. Henry E. Huntington, at San Marino, California.
Speaking of manuscripts recalls a rather pretty story of how I
unexpectedly secured an autograph essay by a favorite modern.
I remember one day in London, when I was calling upon my dear friend,
H. W. Massingham, the beloved editor of the _Nation_. His editorial
offices in Adelphi Terrace were directly beneath George Bernard Shaw’s
apartments in the same old Georgian building. Knowing he was a good
friend of Shaw, I asked if he had any of his manuscripts. Massingham
looked at me oddly for a moment, as though my request had brought to
his mind an entirely new train of thought, then replied, “Oh, yes!” He
ran his hand to the bottom of an enormous waste-paper basket under his
desk; it was filled to overflowing, as though it had not been emptied
for days. He drew out a manuscript which he had thrown away, written
in a familiar hand--Shaw’s article on the censorship of the press!
He offered it to me as a present, and you will well understand that
I accepted it eagerly. This little story should delight Bernard Shaw
himself.
To-day it is unfortunate that almost all manuscripts are typed. There
are, however, rare exceptions. The late Joseph Conrad was one of the
very few authors who worked almost entirely in longhand. When I bought
the manuscript of his book, _Victory_, at the Quinn sale in New York in
1924, I paid the highest price--$8100--ever given at auction for the
manuscript of a living author. It was closely written on sheets that
fill two bulky cases.
The average writer nowadays, after he has corrected the final draft
of his work, has it copied by a competent stenographer and then makes
any further correction on it he wishes. Many writers find it easier
to create their stories directly upon the typewriter, while others
dictate. The typewriter--what a curse it has become to the collector!
A century from now it will be almost impossible to find the original
autograph manuscripts of writers of to-day who stand the test of time.
Who knows but that the styles will have changed, and the machine upon
which a masterpiece was brought to life will be considered even more
precious!
[Illustration: PAGE FROM ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF CONRAD’S “VICTORY”]
[Illustration: PAGE FROM ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF CONRAD’S “LORD JIM”]
No one knows exactly why there is hardly a scrap left of the original
manuscripts of most of the writers of the Elizabethan period. Perhaps
publishers in those days had one fault that is prevalent to-day. They
may have been too close to their writers to be able to appreciate the
value of the original draft, or perhaps they had scrap baskets like
Massingham’s. Of Shakespeare’s writing only six or seven signatures are
known, and these are attached to his will and other legal documents.
They are priceless, and have been kept with great care at Somerset
House and at the Record Office in London. How unfortunate it is that
not a single line of his original work remains. What would collectors
not give now for just one page of _Hamlet_, or even a short note in
Shakespeare’s own handwriting! Surely, $500,000 would not be too much.
Nor is there any manuscript left of either of his noted contemporaries,
Christopher Marlowe and Robert Greene. Of these two, who opened the
way for the greatest dramatist of all time, not even a signature
remains. I was successful this year, however, in obtaining a letter
of John Fletcher, who very probably collaborated with Shakespeare in
the writing of _Henry VIII._ Fletcher addressed this rhymed epistle to
the Countess of Huntingdon. For years it had been in an old English
muniment room neglected and unsung; and it is really the nearest
approach to Shakespeare I have been fortunate enough to find. When you
think that hitherto not a signature of Fletcher’s had been known, it
makes this find the more remarkable. There are, however, many relics of
his great contemporary, Ben Jonson, early drafts of his celebrated
plays, and many books are known in which he inscribed comments and
notes.
[Illustration:
THE
Historie of Troylus
and Cresseida.
_As it was acted by the Kings Maiesties_
seruants at the Globe.
_Written by_ William Shakespeare.
[Illustration]
LONDON
Imprinted by _G. Eld_ for _R Bonian_ and _H. Walley_, and
are to be sold at the spred Eagle in Paules
Church-yeard, ouer against the
great North doore.
1609.
ONLY UNCUT SHAKESPEARE QUARTO KNOWN, PUBLISHED IN SHAKESPEARE’S
LIFETIME]
I have always been deeply interested in all that remains of the
literary lights of the Elizabethan era, and especially in Edmund
Spenser, another of the great masters of Shakespeare’s magnificent day.
Last year, when I was crossing to England on the Berengaria, another
bookseller, truly a friendly enemy, met me on deck one morning, and by
way of greeting, said: “Speaking of association copies, what would you
give to own a presentation copy of the first edition of _The Faerie
Queene_?”
“Why talk nonsense?” I replied. “It’s impossible. It doesn’t exist.”
About two weeks later an eminent scholar who has made many great and
outstanding discoveries in early English literature called at my
hotel to see me, and invited me to go with him to inspect his fine
collection. He spoke of one book in particular, which he was sure would
interest me, but purposely neglected to say what it was. I arrived at
his home and had hardly got beyond the front door when he placed in my
hands a volume in its original binding of old calf. It was Spenser’s
own copy of _The Faerie Queene_, dated 1590, with an inscription in his
handwriting on the title page in Greek: “From the author to himself.”
He had also presented this volume to Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married
four years later. On a blank page toward the back of the book he
gallantly wrote in French, “A sa mistresse,” and under this elegant
heading had inscribed the complete first sonnet from his glorious
_Amoretti_, beginning:--
Happy ye leaves when as those lilly Hands
That houlds my life in hir dead-doing might,
Shall handle you and hold in Love’s swete bandes
Like captives trembling at ye victors sight.
The _Amoretti_ was not published until five years later, in 1595.
As I stood looking at _The Faerie Queene_ I became quite speechless
with surprise and delight, as no other presentation copy of Spenser was
known to me. Almost before I could regain my equilibrium my host handed
me another, a smaller volume. This was bound in old vellum, a quaint
little English travel book. With a gasp I read upon the title page a
presentation address to Gabriel Harvey, the poet’s dearest friend,
and incidentally, the bitter literary enemy of Ben Jonson. It read:
“The gift of Edmund Spenser, clerk to the Archbishop of Rochester,
1578.” What enhanced its preciousness was that Harvey had made notes
throughout, commenting upon his happy friendship with Spenser. After
such a startling introduction to his collection, I looked upon my
friend, this learned book lover, with even greater admiration than
before; and if he had further offered me a presentation copy of
_Hamlet_ I should not have been amazed. To-day these marvelous mementos
of the Elizabethan era are treasured among the outstanding volumes in
my library.
[Illustration: PRESENTATION INSCRIPTION TO ELIZABETH BOYLE IN “THE
FAERIE QUEENE” IN THE AUTOGRAPH OF EDMUND SPENSER]
One week later my friend the American bookseller called upon me at the
Carlton Hotel in London.
“Hello,” I began. “You’re just the man I want to see. I’ve found a
presentation copy of _The Faerie Queene_.”
“You unholy liar,” he said, not knowing whether to believe me or not.
“Yes,” I replied; “it is at your hand.” His hands trembled as he lifted
the book from the table, and I could see his face change color as he
read the magic lines in Spenser’s autograph.
An author’s manuscript will reveal just how his work was planned
and built, as well as the fluid state of his mind at the time. Very
often it reflects his attitude toward his subject, whether he wrote
meticulously, carefully, or with assurance and ease. The early
manuscripts of great writers are curiously alike in that they seldom
show any large amount of correction or rewriting. When these men are
young their very passion sweeps them along. But as they grow older they
develop a certain attitude of critical acuteness which study brings,
the experiences of life itself also cause them to be less sure. Very
often they become the worst faultfinders, and tear their work to pieces
to build and rebuild glorious phrases that later become household
words. The bugaboo of rewriting comes with the years, accompanying the
stern virtues of maturity.
In his later manuscripts you can almost see the author at work, bending
over his pages, writing lines, whole paragraphs, then deleting them.
These later manuscripts of noted men and women show not only blotted
lines but entirely new readings. However, the notable phrase in the
verses prefixed to the first folio of Shakespeare by his editors, John
Heminge and Henry Condell, dated 1623, does not apply to most of the
modern manuscripts. “And what he thought,” they wrote, “he uttered
with that easiness, that we have scarce received from him a blot on his
papers.”
[Illustration: ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF WALT WHITMAN’S “BY EMERSON’S
GRAVE”]
There is also some impalpable quality in a great man’s handwriting
which draws one to it; people who have never dreamed of collecting,
who never heard of the collecting mania, will suddenly react to old
letters and documents. They are mad to own them. Some human attraction
exists in the written word of other years quite different from the
appeal made by printing. This appeal is primarily emotional, rather
than intellectual. Especially is this true of autograph letters. They
naturally hold a more personal message, in that they interpret the
spirit and reflect the period of the writer, who in informal letters
is off his guard, quite unlike the mood that an author brings to his
work when he knows it may be published. I have known people to weep
with delight at the sight of one of those charmingly familiar letters
written by Bobbie Burns. Indeed, I once became rather dizzy with joy
myself, when I bought the Harry B. Smith Library, which included that
famous letter of Charles Dickens about the inception of _Pickwick_,
which he writes to his publishers, Chapman and Hall. It is dated 1836,
and was written one Thursday evening from Furnival’s Inn, London. It
says:--
DEAR SIRS:--
Pickwick is at length begun in all his might and glory. The first
chapter will be ready tomorrow.
I want to publish The Strange Gentleman. If you have no objection to
doing it, I should be happy to let you have the refusal of it. I
need not say that nobody else has seen or heard of it.
Believe me (in Pickwickian haste)
Faithfully yours,
CHARLES DICKENS
[Illustration: PAGE FROM MANUSCRIPT OF DICKENS’S “PICKWICK PAPERS”]
This great letter is now in the collection of that famous man of
affairs, fast becoming equally well known as a bibliophile, Mr. Owen D.
Young.
When I read Dickens’s wonderful living message,--isn’t there a
tremendous thrill in those words: “Pickwick is at length begun in
all his might and glory,”--I never dreamed I should one day own all
that is left of the original manuscript of the master’s greatest
work, the _Pickwick Papers_. This, which Dickens wrote when he was
but twenty-four years old, is without doubt the most valuable modern
manuscript in existence. An earlier owner, the late Mr. W. A. White,
abstracted from it a single leaf and presented it most generously to
the British Museum. What a gracious tribute this was from an American
collector!
When so many of the great English treasures have come to this side
of the water, how ingratiating was so splendid a gift! There the
_Pickwick_ page lies, in a glass show case, in the British Museum,
and any day one may see Dickens’s never-failing admirers crowding in
front of it to read and thrill to the broadly penned words, now browned
and a bit faded. How rapidly the words seem to fly across the pages
of this manuscript! You can’t but feel, as you read, that Dickens was
almost divinely chosen to give to the world a fount of humor which in
its very humanity will delight man, woman, and child throughout the
years. All that is left of the manuscript is thirty-two leaves, which
Dickens himself arranged into two chapters. When I read them I feel the
closest union with Dickens the author; in these pages the period just
before the coronation of Queen Victoria is made alive and vivid to us,
bridging the world of yesterday to that of to-day.
The _Pickwick Papers_ first appeared in serial form in 1836, issued
monthly. I think he became weary writing them, although, heaven
knows, there is nothing in the story which would give the reader the
slightest inkling of this. But prefixed to my manuscript is a hitherto
unpublished verse. Dickens marks it “Private and Confidential,” and it
is written for the benefit of one Mr. Hicks, as follows:--
Oh, Mr. Hick
--S, I’m heartily sick
Of this sixteenth Pickwick
Which is just in the nick
For the publishing trick,
And will read nice and slick,
If you’ll only be quick.
I don’t write on tick,
That’s my comfort, avick!
_July 26, ’37_
At the auction sale of the library of the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts
in 1923, in London, I paid £3700 for the manuscript of Dickens’s _The
Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain_. He had given it, the fifth and
last of his series of Christmas books, to the baroness in 1850. Ten
years after _Pickwick_, Dickens wrote this story, and the manuscript
demonstrates what I have said earlier about the painstaking and less
spontaneous work of an author as he grows older. The manuscript of _The
Haunted Man_ is filled with blottings, deletions, and corrections. It
is now in the choice collection of Mr. Carl H. Pforzheimer of New York.
[Illustration: OWEN D. YOUNG]
[Illustration: DICKENS’S RHYME TO MR. HICKS, PREFIXED TO THE MANUSCRIPT
OF THE “PICKWICK PAPERS”]
I do not hesitate to prophesy that in time the works of Dickens will
be the most valuable after Shakespeare. He is one of the few English
authors whose appeal is universal. Even in translation his works are
wonderful, and they have been translated into almost every language,
keeping their peculiar raciness, though they must sacrifice their
English idiom. Dickens will be read always, by the man in the street as
well as by the scholar.
[Illustration: LAST LETTER WRITTEN BY CHARLES DICKENS]
Speaking of the generosity of Mr. White in presenting the _Pickwick_
leaf to the British Museum recalls to my mind the magnificent gift of
Mr. John Gribbel of the Glenriddel Burns manuscripts to Scotland. The
great liberality displayed by this Philadelphian should do much to
cement international relations. All the friends of Bobbie Burns in
Scotland--and they are legion--gave up hope when these manuscripts were
purchased by Mr. Gribbel, believing them lost to the homeland forever.
You can imagine the thrill in every Scotchman’s heart, from Sidney to
Edinburgh, when the stirring news came, hot over the cable, that they
were to be returned to their native land.
[Illustration: “THE DYING CLOWN”: ORIGINAL DRAWING BY ROBERT SEYMOUR
FOR DICKENS’S “PICKWICK PAPERS”
(_Seymour committed suicide after finishing this drawing_)]
When Mr. Gribbel bought this collection in 1914, I was naturally
disappointed that I did not secure the Glenriddel manuscripts myself.
But I was as delighted as any bra’ laddie directly descended from the
celebrated ploughboy when I learned of Mr. Gribbel’s gift.
However, there are always compensations in this game if you have the
patience to wait. I recently secured probably the greatest collection
of Burns manuscripts, the one formerly belonging to that fine student
and most charming of men, Mr. R. B. Adam, of Buffalo, New York. I had
known of this collection all my life, but never dreamed that I should
one day own it.
It includes the original manuscripts of the great poems of Burns that
are enshrined in the souls of every lover of true poetry. Perhaps the
foremost is the original draft of “Tam o’ Shanter,” written on twelve
leaves, which Burns presented to Cardonnel Lawson in 1790. There is
also the appealing “There Was a Lass and She Was Fair”; the beautiful
poem, “The Last Time I Came O’er the Moor”; the exquisite lyric, “To
a Woodlark”; and that lovely characteristic poem, “Wilt Thou Be My
Dearie,” in which Burns himself especially delighted. Indeed, these
original drafts truly give Burns “an immortal life in the hearts of
young and old,” and when I read and reread in the poet’s own hand
Burns’s “On Hearing a Thrush on a Morning’s Walk,” the magnificent
“Address to Edinburgh,” and the sonorous “Lament of Mary, Queen of
Scots,” I am thrilled to the marrow.
[Illustration: ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF ROBERT BURNS’S POEM,
“BANNOCKBURN”]
It is difficult to describe the emotions aroused when I read the
original of that stirring battle song, the address at Bannockburn of
Robert Bruce to his troops, which begins, “Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace
bled.” This manuscript the poet presented to his sister-in-law, with
the inscription, “To Mrs. G. Burns, from her brother, the author.”
Burns used to wander through Leglen Wood, supposed to be the haunt
of Wallace, and confessed having visited it “with as much devout
enthusiasm as ever a pilgrim did the shrine of Loretto.”
My collection contains poems of noble sublimity and heart-melting
tenderness, such as the first poem known to have been written by Burns,
and one of his most charming, entitled, “Once I Lov’d a Bonnie Lass.”
There are two, however, which make a terrific appeal to me. One is
the poem in which he was inspired by the American Revolutionary War,
beginning:--
No Spartan tube, no Attic shell,
No lyre Eolian I awake,
’Tis Liberty’s bold note I swell,
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take.
The other is in some respects the favorite one of all lovers of Burns,
the magnificent “For a’ That and a’ That.” I keep this collection
and the poet’s priceless letters under lock and key in my vault in
New York, lest the whole Scottish nation awaken one day, rise up, and
demand them.