A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

by Nicholas Basbanes

  Records at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia show that Folger was indeed foolish enough to pay big money for books. From 1919 to 1929, he spent $1,388,990 with Rosenbach, $421,705 for material acquired at auction and the rest for selections from stock. Rosenbach seems to have been genuinely interested in helping Folger create the world’s foremost collection of Shakespeareana. On June 27, 1922, he wrote Folger a letter headed “Very Confidential” to offer him “the only unique Shakespeare quarto play published in the 16th century,” the 1598 copy of The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, which he had just acquired from William A. White. “I am only permitted to offer it to you and to Mr. Huntington,” he advised, “and I am making you the first offer. One of the reasons that has influenced me to do this is that you are the only private collector that already possesses a unique Shakespeare quarto, the Titus Andronicus. Mr. Huntington has not had the good fortune to possess any.” Three days later, Folger agreed to the $55,000 asking price, providing he could defer half the payment for three months, which Rosenbach allowed.

  As fruitful as Rosenbach’s relationship with Folger became, the principal theater of operations was still in southern California. Rosenbach may not have fully comprehended in 1919 exactly what motivated Huntington, but Huntington himself certainly knew what he was trying to accomplish. Two days after he wrote out the terms of his agreement for the Marsden Perry quartos, Huntington dictated a jubilant letter to his librarian, George Watson Cole, in New York: “It makes quite a reduction in the number of plays I have to secure to be even with the British Museum. I should like to have you send me a list of all the Shakespeare plays lacking. Place the list on my desk and send me the duplicate.”

  Three months earlier, Cole had informed Huntington that their collection of pre-Restoration English plays and masques totaled 909, just thirteen fewer than the number held by the British Museum Library; the Perry quartos brought the figure down to two. The man who asserted that a great library is the surest way to achieve immortality had set as his standard nothing less than the venerable British Museum Library. In some areas, at least, he was getting close. Unlike J. Pierpont Morgan, who made it a point never to outbid the British Museum, Huntington was determined to build the finest library possible, regardless of whose feelings he ruffled. As a result, the reaction in England toward Huntington was not entirely congenial. He was a willing buyer and they were willing sellers, but they were determined to make him pay dearly. While Huntington always committed whatever funds were necessary, he still personally approved every nickel that was spent and saved money at every opportunity.

  This was demonstrated by the convenient way he found to acquire a superior run of pre-Restoration imprints without letting on that they were being bought for his library. Even Dr. Rosenbach, it appears, was kept in the dark about an understanding Huntington had formed with Clarence S. Brigham, the internationally respected bookman who served as librarian of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, from 1908 to 1930 and director from 1930 to 1959.

  Clarence S. Brigham (1877–1963) was a man committed to the building of American libraries, not least of which was the one he directed. As a hobby he collected examples of English printing produced before 1640, the date traditionally taken to mark the end of “early” English books. Because the Antiquarian Society only collects American material, this pastime posed no conflict of interest with his job. Sometime after he was introduced to Huntington in 1917, Brigham offered to sell the Californian items from his personal collection at cost.

  In a letter dated April 17, 1920, he also proposed taking along with him on a trip to Europe that summer a checklist of material Huntington was interested in locating, material that Brigham enthused might help create “the greatest collection in English literature prior to 1640” in the world. “I am not in the book business, and am actuated chiefly by my love of the subject and my pride as an American in your Library,” he stressed. “If you think well of the plan, it should not be mentioned under any condition. If anyone knew that I was buying for you, or it was understood in the trade that you had an ‘agent’ buying in England, it would make a great difference in prices.” Huntington wrote back within the month accepting Brigham’s “kind offer to get the books on your trip abroad.”

  Once in England, Brigham reported regularly on his adventures, which went exceedingly well. “Absolutely no one has suspected my Huntington connection,” he wrote on July 27. The following month Brigham advised Huntington that he had already spent $9,000 for books, about $4,000 of that from his own pocket. “A dealer would charge $20,000 for what I’ve bought,” he added somewhat ingenuously. Soon after Brigham’s return to Massachusetts, the books began to arrive from England: on September 20, he acknowledged receipt of $10,000 from Huntington and confided how he was “spending most of my evenings in unpacking and checking” the purchases. “I have become so much interested in the subject,” he wrote, “that the pleasure of looking over these volumes is preferable to most social engagements.”

  As the year came to a close, Huntington’s librarian, George Watson Cole, wrote to Brigham, on November 27, 1920, pleased to learn that another trip to Europe was on for the following summer. “I am delighted to know that you are going over once more in our interest. You will, of course, take up the train of 1640 books where you dropped it when you returned home last fall and I hope you will be quite as successful, if not even more so than on your previous quest.” Two weeks later, on December 13, Huntington wrote Brigham the news that he would be taking a train from New York to California shortly, “and as I plan to take the books you have in my car, I hope they will be here in time to go.” On January 19, 1921, Brigham informed Huntington that “you have at the present time about 6300 titles previous to 1640, which with the 1200 titles acquired by me last summer makes a total of 7500 titles. If we should be fortunate enough to acquire the Christie-Miller collection as a whole, this would add 700 titles at once, making a grand total of 8200 titles, and passing the collection at Cambridge. This is the first lap of the journey.”

  These were words Huntington longed to hear, as George Watson Cole implied in April 1921: “Mr. Huntington after reading your letter suggested that the books, as fast as bought for this Library, be sent directly here; but I told him that this might divulge our little game and that it would be better for you to send them on from Worcester as fast as you receive them.” Probably because a “little game” admittedly was being played, all this correspondence from Huntington and Cole was sent to Brigham’s home, not his office, though Brigham subsequently deposited most of the letters he received in the society’s files.

  “We can readily see...with the additions you have made to our collection that it becomes increasingly difficult for you to find new material for us,” Cole wrote on June 10, 1921. “With regard to future purchases and shipments, Mr. Huntington is very desirous that you send us lists as soon as possible after purchases have been made so as to prevent duplication and that the books be sent to us so that we may receive them in as short a time as possible after they are acquired, and in a manner that will not show your hand in the transactions.”

  Brigham, meanwhile, outlined his thoughts on the upcoming trip in a letter to Huntington. “Because of the approaching completeness of your collection, it is now increasingly difficult to obtain titles which you lack.” But he was taking Huntington’s checklist with him nonetheless, because

  no opportunity should be lost to complete as far as possible [the collection]. I do not think that there will be any need of advancing any money, as I can easily finance all purchases, unless I should happen to land some very large collection. Do you know if Dr. Rosenbach visited any large private collectors in England, or made overtures in that regard? I doubt if he has, and certainly not the collections which I have in mind, and which I hope to see through the introductions of mutual friends. Of course it is very important to me in my purchasing to be assumedly purchasing for myself.

  This trip
also proved successful, as Brigham’s letter of December 19, 1921, made clear. “The books go forward to California tomorrow,” he announced. “I am sending them by express, in two cases, insured.” He then asked whether Huntington wanted him “to do anything” at the Britwell Court auction. “You lack a large number of titles in this sale, and they are very important. It looks to me as if the sale would bring the same amount as the Britwell Sale of last spring. At least 25% could be saved if the purchases could be made anonymously, or rather if the English book dealers did not immediately catch on to the fact who was buying for you.”

  This arrangement continued for another year. It would be comforting to report it ended happily, but that was not the case. There were minor problems: some haggling over money—the fluctuating exchange rate of the pound seems to have caused periodic misunderstandings— and the condition of some volumes was questioned by the staff at San Marino. But a major disagreement developed when Huntington learned that Brigham had lent to Yale University an imprint bought for him, so that a photocopy could be made of the title page. “I note with interest the increase in price of this volume as it appears on your invoice, over that at which it was sold in Pickering and Chatto’s catalogue of May 17th 1923, as well as the fact that you have allowed the volume to be used by others when it was the property of this library,” Huntington wrote testily on December 21, 1923, and then dropped a bombshell. “I think it would be well for you to discontinue your activities for this library until such time as I may authorize you to continue as our agent.”

  Brigham was stunned. “I have made three foreign trips, have worked day and night poring over immense book stacks, have examined many hundreds of thousands of titles in book catalogues and have given nearly all of my spare time to the research for over three years,” he replied on January 7, 1924. “And yet the profit to me, over the cost, expenses and time has been negligible. I do not think that anyone else would have given his time so long for the love of the subject.” He added that he lent the book in question to Yale after being asked to do so, and that he complied because “I did not think it wise to disclose the fact that I was buying for the Huntington Library.”

  The most painful repercussion of the “little game” came in 1931, four years after Huntington’s death, when Brigham received a copy of the first number of The Huntington Library Bulletin, which featured two detailed essays, one about the late founder’s life and accomplishments, the other a chronological summary of his numerous acquisitions. Midway through the summary, the Massachusetts librarian read that during “the years 1921–25, when Mr. Huntington’s collections of English books antedating 1640 were already rich, he employed the skillful services of Mr. Brigham, Director of the American Antiquarian Society, in securing further accessions in this inviting field. As Mr. Huntington’s agent, Mr. Brigham collected, mainly in England, about 2,750 items, many of them religious books.”

  In a confidential letter written to Max Farrand, director of the Huntington Library, Brigham protested the suggestion that he had ever been retained by the millionaire. “Mr. Huntington never ‘employed’ my services nor did I act as his agent,” he asserted, and outlined how the arrangement grew out of his offer to sell duplicates from his own collection.

  I also suggested that since I was going abroad I could take along his checklist and would try to pick up as many titles as possible in English book shops. These books I sold at cost without making any financial profit to myself. I did it as a friendly act and not in any way as agent. In fact, not an English dealer knew, or had any suspicion, that any of the books which I purchased were for Mr. Huntington. Your announcement, now made in print for the first time, will be a surprise to some of them, if they happen to see it. [The] whole transaction [was intended] to build up Mr. Huntington’s collection so that it would rate numerically higher in the world’s greatest collections of early English printing. It was largely due to my help, for I obtained nearly twenty-eight hundred titles, that his collection went from possibly the sixth to third place among the collections of this kind.

  At this point Brigham confessed an “ulterior motive” he had in the arrangement:

  I hoped that Mr. Huntington would be so appreciative of this help that he would make a contribution to the funds of the American Antiquarian Society, either through gift or bequest, of at least $25,000. I talked with him about this matter two or three times and he really seemed interested. He certainly had it in mind and I think, in fact, I almost know, that if he had lived a little longer, he would have brought this about. Now I wish that I had charged a profit on those books, which easily could have amounted to $25,000, and then given that fund to the American Antiquarian Society.

  Brigham did not demand a correction or amplification, but he did ask that any future use of the article delete the words “employed” and “agent.” Fifteen years later, Brigham wrote a short essay in which he discussed his “friendly act” once again, stressing, as he had in the letter to Farrand, that he was motivated only by a wish to help create a great library. He did not mention, however, that when he was buying the imprints, he did so under the pretense of acquiring them for his own collection. In another context, Brigham confided that he once asked Huntington how much money he had spent on his collections. The old man doodled for a few minutes with a pencil and paper, then said, “I think that I have spent twenty million on books, and slightly more on art.” If there were any lingering hard feelings, they were not apparent in Brigham’s concluding opinion of Huntington: “It was the combination of will power, sagacity and money that made him the greatest book collector in the world.”

  As to why Huntington allowed the Massachusetts librarian to buy anonymously for him in the first place, the answer may well be found elsewhere in the same issue of The Huntington Library Bulletin as the account that Brigham had found so shocking. “Mr. Huntington was an opportunist,” Robert O. Schad observed succinctly in his respectful profile, and was “ready to consider any material offered which would augment or improve his library.”

  Correspondence and archival information also demonstrate that even though Huntington employed a professional staff, he was the final authority on which items were to be bought for his library, and how much should be spent. Rosenbach submitted offers on items personally to Huntington, and though a response occasionally came from a senior staff member, it was the “old man,” as George D. Smith had referred to him, who made every important decision. On January 24, 1923, Huntington’s curator, Leslie E. Bliss, relayed to Rosenbach the collector’s commissions to purchase 168 lots in a forthcoming Britwell Court sale in London. The next day Bliss sent Rosenbach two more letters, one listing 103 additional items, but with a warning that “we most emphatically do not want to pay fancy prices for them. However, should you buy them and then offer them to us at what we consider reasonable figures, it is quite probable that we will take a fair percentage, and, perhaps, all of them.” Rosenbach’s copies of these letters show every item checked off, and presumably purchased. In the second letter dated January 25, 1923, Bliss relayed a counterproposal from Huntington regarding the purchase of 140 volumes of early American imprints gathered by Simon Gratz, a Philadelphia lawyer and close friend of Rosenbach’s: “You buy the collection and keep the eighteen following books (all of which we already have), and Mr. Huntington will pay you forty thousand dollars for the remainder.”

  Rosenbach’s original proposal had been for $50,000, but he accepted the terms. Since Gratz had consigned the books with the understanding that they were to be sold en bloc, Rosenbach asked Huntington to “keep the matter confidential and state to no one that you purchased any of Mr. Gratz’s collection. You see, he intended to present it, together with his Confederate Imprints to the Free Library of Philadelphia (of which Mr. Gratz and myself are trustees) so you see it will be much better if no public announcement is made of it.”

  Another problem that developed the following month illustrates just how closely Huntington monitored his acquisitions. It
involved a 1595 first issue of Richard Barnfield’s Cynthia, which Rosenbach had sold Huntington in 1921. Two years later, Huntington reminded Rosenbach that the copy he received contained a “rather clumsily altered” facsimile page; since the forthcoming Britwell Court sale included “a perfect copy of the issue which you sold me with the facsimiled leaf,” he thought it “only right if you would bid in this copy and exchange it for the one sold me in June, 1921. How does this seem to you?” Three months later, having received no satisfaction in the matter, Huntington wrote again. “I note that you purchased Cynthia, but as it was not in your Britwell shipment, I am curious to know what you did about it.”

  When Rosenbach finally answered, he responded forthrightly by citing an earlier exchange of letters between the two of them “concerning this item before I left for Europe. At that time I stated that as Mr. Folger had in every case acceded to your wishes and would not bid against you, I thought it only right that in this one instance he should have this copy of the book considering that there was already one in your possession.” Rosenbach acknowledged having turned the book over to Folger, but added, “I might say also that there were no conflicting American bids in this sale, and that every collector here was kind enough to refrain from bidding against you.”