The Caliph of Books: A. E. N

by CHAUNCEY B. TINKER

1

WITH the death of A. Edward Newton at Michaelmas, 1940, there passed from this troubled scene the man, who, in America at least, had become the acknowledged Caliph of the book-collecting world. The title, bestowed by Christopher Morley, amused and pleased him, and was, in truth, appropriate enough, for he was not only the inheritor of a great tradition, but a sovereign who by personal influence alone had extended the boundaries of his realm.

He had made the collecting of rare books a popular pastime. He was, moreover, a democratic ruler, who mediated between the man of fabulous wealth, whose aim was to create and leave behind him a library which should send his name down to posterity, and the humblest lover of books who prized his slender stock as a woman does her jewels, but whose expenditure must be limited to the size of a schoolboy’s allowance. He bade nobody be discouraged by modest beginnings, but announced, with his sweeping enthusiasm, that he had precious books on his shelves which had cost him no more than fifteen cents, and in which he took even now the same kind of delight as in neighboring volumes worth his estate of Oak Knoll itself.

He despised nothing relating to a book or to the contents of a book, or to the making of a book. He worshiped authors and preserved every scrap relating to them. He saved programs and menus and letters in the sure confidence that some of them would one day find their place in a significant group of documents and books. He was not himself a diarist, but he loved journals and collections of correspondence, and was aware that the surest way to be remembered was not to create or to endow a library (like the millionaire referred to above) but to keep a diary, and write in it daily, tired or fresh, sick or well — doggedly, inexorably.

Newton was perpetually in search of new fuel for his burning enthusiasm. He never forgot an author who had once given him delight, but would suddenly make him a subject of study — begin collecting his works and, as it were, “Newtonizing” him. Only there must be about his career something vivid, something to gossip about, something to quote in order to keep the tide of reminiscence rolling. He recalled with gusto books which he had enjoyed in boyhood, and derived the same satisfaction from discovering the correct “first” of The Swiss Family Robinson as from acquiring the original Robinson Crusoe in contemporary calf; and, once the discovery was made, he published an essay in the Atlantic to prove to all and sundry that this book was a Most Desirable Item, and well worth rereading — and collecting.

The effect of all this on the reader was electric. The victim began to ask himself whether he had not once had in his own hands a book in the “original condition,” greatly to be desired today. One could at least look and see. He set us all to searching for treasures up attic. We went to the dirty task books are only less grimy than coal — of looking through the old bookcase in the cottage at the shore, in the hope of discovering some first edition to write to the Caliph about.

At the same time Newton warned the aspirant not to run about the world looking for rare books on the bookseller’s bargain table. The books on the sixpenny shelf have all been sorted by professional hands, and are worth precisely sixpence. Newton warned us that no collector could go far without seeking assistance from the great dealers. He allayed suspicion and laughed at persons who shuddered over high prices. He showed that the men who handle great books must have great abilities. A good bookseller is as much concerned with bibliography and literary research as a graduate student in pursuit of a Ph.D. degree. Are not Mr. Harper and Mr. Goodspeed scholars in their own right?

2

ALL this excited the dealers as well as the collectors. They had never been kindly treated before, but described as though their one aim were to overreach the customer. Here at last was a writer who defended them and who loved them for the pleasure they had given him. So the names of “my friends” Tregaskis and Robinson and Wells and Drake and Rosenbach and a score of others appeared in every book he published. He made their names famous and their profession enviable. And in this too he was democratic, for he spoke with the same unction of Leary’s Old Book Store in Philadelphia as of the famous and rather arrogant shop of Bernard Quaritch in Grafton Street, London, where fortunes have been knocked into a cocked hat in order that a man may boast the ownership of a Coverdale Bible or of a quarto of Hamlet. With two of these dealers, alas, he quarreled — for he was not by nature a man of peace — and was once foolish enough to announce to his subjects that he had “retired from the book-collecting game” because of an insult deliberately administered to him by one of the greatest of all the dealers. But it is not easy for a popular sovereign to abandon his throne, nor did any of the faithful really expect him to. It was his punishment that nobody took him seriously.

Newton was at his most picturesque in the auction rooms. There, in his loud checked suit, looking now like Mr. Churchill and now like Mr. Pickwick, he seemed to be the very genius loci. The atmosphere of that famous exchange has been described in a delightful sonnet by Mr. Morley, who attended a sale — I believe at the invitation of Newton himself— in the Anderson Galleries, when an autograph letter of John Keats to Fanny Brawne was knocked down to Dr. Rosenbach for eight hundred dollars. Morley gave the MS. of the sonnet to Newton, who promptly reproduced it in facsimile: —

IN AN AUCTION ROOM

Letter of John Keats to Fanny Brawne Anderson Galleries, March 15, 1920

To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach

Now there has been something wanting at the galleries since the disappearance of the Caliph. The sales, which have of course declined in number and in glamour, have lost their terrifying thrill, and threaten to become a war casualty. Must we, then, bid this book-collecting game a long farewell?

One wonders what Mr. Newton’s answer to such a query would be. He has told us that, even in the grave, he would be listening for news of the latest movement of prices in the book-collecting world. If he were here today, he would watch with fascinated interest the currents and eddies in the fluctuations of the great game, and would have pointed out their significance to us while in the very act of rallying the fainthearted and reuniting the scattered forces. He would have reaffirmed, in ringing tones, his faith in the abiding worth and the incomparable and inexhaustible entertainment of English literature. He had shown a generation of booklovers how he derived power and a kind of vita nuova from his association with great books. It is hardly too much to say, in the words of an author who was no favorite of his, that he cared and taught his readers to care for the “best that has been thought and said in the world.” Within that best he would, to be sure, have insisted on including a large body of highly colored talk about authors — that “biographical part of the literature” which his master, Samuel Johnson, had declared to be his favorite section of the general field. Newton’s critics have asserted that his page was highly seasoned with gossip, and that he revived literary scandals long since forgotten; but none of them could deny that he opened to the reader a way of escape from the terror and tragedy of our day.

3

I REPEAT that Newton would have acknowledged the distressing change that has occurred for all who love old times, old friends, and old books; for in order to ameliorate our condition, it is necessary to look bravely at the slough into which we have fallen. He would have told us, I think, that though our condition is desperate enough, it is not without a certain interest of its own.

The continuous flow and interchange of books, on which both dealer and collector relied for their very existence, have ceased. Rare books do, it is true, still leave England on their way to this country; but, on the other hand, English dealers are forbidden to renew their stock by purchases in the American market. Assume, for instance, that a London dealer has an outlet for a group of first editions of Dickens — Dickens’s popularity holds on both sides of the Atlantic — he must either acquire them in England or do without. He is prevented from purchasing them in New York, where he could readily get them, because he must not spend British money for American goods. Moreover it is almost impossible for an American dealer to go to England to renew his stock. In the olden days — for they already seem like another era — Mr. James F. Drake made an annual summer visit to London, where he advertised his arrival in the Times Literary Supplement, and quietly accumulated books for the ensuing year. He returned to New York in August, when the London “season” ended, and began the preparation of the diminutive but richly laden catalogues which he issued from time to time during the winter. Lucky was the collector who happened to call on Mr. Drake immediately after his return. He walked forth from 14 West Fortieth Street a poorer but a happier man.

Mr. Drake was of course not without rivals in this activity. During the season London was filled with American dealers and collectors, and the great sales at Sotheby’s, where a typical British sedatencss had reigned for two centuries, were enlivened by the noisier rivalries of transatlantic buyers. I suppose that the sales have, during the past three years, reassumed their native pretense of indifference and austerity. The prices fetched have risen sharply, despite the declining interest of the volumes sold; but the former excitement supplied by the mad Americans is no more. This is perhaps as well, for there are no longer enough books available to supply the collectors who remain active.

The reasons for this unhappy condition arc two. In the first place, the old sources of supply are largely closed. The Continent is wholly shutoff, and even in England many books are not to be come at, since they have been boarded up in country houses awaiting sale after the war is ended. Many more books, hundreds of thousands of them, have of course been destroyed — a calamity that the passage of time will do little to amend. Some relief will come with happier conditions, but it would be rash to predict the return of the Golden Age. Rare books have become rarer, and there is nothing to be done about it. Furthermore, after the war, there will be an unprecedented demand for books to re-establish libraries that have burned.

The second reason for the shrinking supply of books is of a very different kind indeed. It has been caused by the princely gifts made to the famous libraries of this country, which have received whole collections, usually amounting to thousands of volumes, to add to their already crowded quarters. These particular volumes will never come upon the market again, so that no future bibliophile can have the delight of acquiring the unique pieces among them. This is, of course, a serious misfortune for both dealer and book-collector, and it was for this reason that it was long the custom at the Anderson Galleries to carry on the cover of their catalogues a section from the will of Edmond de Goncourt, w hich they translated as follows: —

My wish is that my Drawings, my Prints, my Curiosities, my Books — in a word, these things of art which have been the joy of my life — shall not be consigned to the cold tomb of a museum, and subjected to the stupid glance of the careless passer-by; but I require that they shall all be dispersed under the hammer of the Auctioneer, so that the pleasure which the acquiring of each one of them has given me shall be given again, in each case, to some inheritor of my own tastes.

Beautiful and generous sentiments, these, but they run counter to human instincts no less fundamental than M. de Goncourt’s: the desire to preserve the thing which one has created, and to leave it as a memorial behind one. A man who has patiently brought toget her a vast amount of material relating to a particular author or subject feels a strong impulse to commit it to posterity in unbroken condition, so that its usefulness to future inquirers shall be in no way impaired. There is not one among the dozen of our largest libraries that has not been enriched by bequests and gifts of this kind. The university, institute, or city thus favored becomes the custodian of the public wealth, and the state itself replaces the private collector.

4

EVERY scholar who is engaged in any kind of original research knows the importance of this development, for he has often been obliged to travel far in order to see an indispensable book or document not to be found elsewhere. He knows what it has meant to go, hat in hand, and with soft flattery upon his lips, to the palace of some wealthy man who has astutely acquired the precious thing.

It is sometimes difficult for such a scholar to avoid a feeling of resentment that a man should have got his hands upon a book of which be knows next to nothing except the title, and of which he can make no intelligent use. The visitor goes socialistic on the spot and asserts — quietly and to himself, of course — that he himself has a better right to the book than its titular owner can show; for to the rich man it is a costly souvenir, to the scholar a living voice. Is a book a thing to be read, or is it to be enclosed in a glass case, and “exhibited” like a rare hummingbird for stupid spectators to gape at?

Now most scholars smile condescendingly at the collectors of rare books, whom they classify in a group with the lovers of sea shells and dried butterflies. They wax impatient at the restrictions they encounter in the Treasure Room at the Widener or in the Rare Book Room of the Sterling Library. “Who,” they inquire in their petulance, “are these arrogant young women at the receipt of custom who have the assurance to warn a borrower to be careful as they hand out a book to him? What, pray, are the books for?” These indignant folk all talk the same language. Touched at any point on their sensitive hide, they will inform you with a benign smile that they “cannot help feeling that the important thing about a book is its contents.”

They have no appreciation, and do not want any, of what collectors call “condition.” I have had an irreplaceable volume, bound in contemporary calf, returned to me with the cool words, “I am sorry the cover came off. It was loose when I got the book.” It never occurs to the culprit to confess that he carelessly dropped it. He is like the cook who informs you that the dish broke itself.

Indeed, a person charged with the acquisition and preservation of material for the use of scholars is sorely tempted to include these same scholars along with dust, dampness, and bookworms as the natural enemies of books. An ardent bibliographer, like a child with a toy, may pull a book to pieces in order to see how it is put together. These proud persons have never denied themselves a theater ticket or a new spring suit in order to buy the rare books for themselves — that is a privilege which they willingly leave for others to enjoy. If an exception occurs, and a scholar does impair his bank account in order to purchase a document he needs, it will be found that he at once becomes more considerate — yes, and more courteous — in his behavior to those whose lot it is to preserve such material for — and from — scholars.

As a matter of fact, scholars are usually very cordially received by private collectors, who are only too happy to find a person who shares their passion for a particular subject. Newton set the fashion of always being courteous to “faculty people, ” and used to boast of his extensive acquaintance among college professors. His list of favorites began with Schelling (at the top), and went all the way down to the latest recruit at Haverford College. He used to collect us like postage stamps. He understood perfectly what we wanted, and used to leave us alone in the great library at Oak Knoll to work in perfect peace and retirement.

Newton understood that there was no excitement like the uncovering of new information. There is, of course, nothing esoteric about it. All readers of detective fiction, all lawyers who draw up briefs reposing on the study of precedents, all teachers who have to focus the attention of a class on a beautiful line of poetry which an author has recast in half a dozen trial forms, will testify to the truth of this assertion.

I have before me, as I write, a copy of Wordsworth’s greatest single publication, his Poems, 1807. Mine is perhaps the most interesting copy that has come down to us, for it is filled with all manner of corrections and “trial” lines. I turn, for example, to the famous lyric on daffodils, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” a poem so beautiful that one would think it might have been left alone. But the poet wished to add something to the three stanzas which originally made up the poem. So he began writing at the top of the page the closing lines of the first stanza. The new material is itself altered more than once, but may fairly be represented by the following: —

Here, then, is the first form of the second stanza of the poem as we know it; and I will add, if I may, that I think line 3 as it stands here is scarcely inferior to the lovely “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” which is the form that the poet finally adopted.

But this is not the most startling annotation. At the end, below the famous couplet,

is written: —

and an inch further down: —

Reader, make what you can of that. “The Reverie of Poor Susan” is, as everybody knows, one of the poet’s best-known poems in ballad form, printed in the edition of 1800. In some strange fashion, these two pieces, as different in kind as can well be imagined, had become associated in the poet’s mind, so that in the final arrangement of his works they appeared side by side among the “Poems of the Imagination.”

Do you ask me to explain the relation of the daffodils to the “reverie” of poor Susan? I know, but I will not tell. At least not here and now. For at the moment I am concerned only to illustrate the excitement that a person feels when he holds in his hand a unique document, containing information not to be found elsewhere.

There are many other delightful little problems lurking in my book. I propose to keep it by me for my private delectation, since this copy of Poems, 1807 is one which I stalked for ten years before it finally fell into my grasping hands. It is now mine, for I bought it with my money, which I might have spent on a wine cellar or a race horse. It shall never be copied or photostated while it is in my care, and I will protect it from all sentimental inquirers, from all dealers and envious rivals, and from all Wordsworthians. Indeed, I shall attempt — unsuccessfully, I suppose — to keep it from such pestilent scholars as may wish to use it for their own vile ends.