In addition to his indictment of Feldman’s ethics, Hamilton unleashed a character assessment that ridiculed Feldman’s famous one-word slogan, QVALITY. “My wife Diane could never decide whether Lew intended this word to be pronounced with a Yiddish accent or merely hoped that it would give a classic flavor to his vulgarity by incorporating the Roman u.” Further on, Hamilton wondered why such clients as the New York Public Library “employed as an agent this exquisitely tasteless man who limped about with Mark Twain’s silver-headed cane and a supercilious sneer on his fat upper lip.”
Other people teased Feldman about the QVALITY slogan, “but they did it good-naturedly,” Auerbach said. “One time after he swept everything he wanted at a Sotheby’s sale, Herb Cahoon of the Morgan Library said to him, ‘Well, Lew, now you’ve got QVANTITY to go along with the QVALITY.’”
John Maggs, a fourth-generation London bookseller, said during an interview in his office at 50 Berkeley Square that he knew Lew Feldman very well, but that he had no idea how Feldman became exclusive agent for Texas. “He was no scholar, that was my viewpoint, but he and Ransom certainly worked that oil well until it was nearly dry, I will say that. The result was that they may have paid too much at the time, but they got the books. I have been to and seen these great roomfuls of books in Austin, Texas, and it is a sight to see. They bought far beyond their capacity to absorb. But on the other hand, that’s when the books were thick on the ground, and they are the ones who have them now. That certainly has to stand for something.”
That Texas bought “far beyond its capacity to absorb” is evident by the fact that thirty-seven years after the program started, 30 percent of the manuscript holdings and 50 percent of the books remained to be catalogued. According to Mary Beth Bigger, assistant director in charge of cataloguing, there are about a million books in the HRC, along with thirty million leaves of manuscript, and six million photographs. “We are progressing,” Bigger said, noting that in 1989, “we changed over from item-level cataloguing to collection-level cataloguing on the manuscripts, which means we will get that job done a whole lot quicker.” She said that strict “prioritization” guidelines were being observed as well, with the most important materials processed first. “I have three people working full time on cataloguing,” she-said, and was pleased to report that all of the Gloria Swanson and David O. Selznick material, two vast archives acquired in the 1980s, were “fully on line” by 1993. Meanwhile, new acquisitions continued to augment the existing workload. In January 1994, the papers of Isaac Bashevis Singer, including correspondence in four languages, manuscripts of all the published books, and several unpublished and untranslated works, were being processed in Austin after a combination purchase-gift had been worked out with the Nobel laureate’s estate the previous month. Thousands of documents spanning five decades came with the archive.
Clearly, Harry Ransom’s enthusiasm for twentieth-century material such as this is part of a continuing legacy, but it did not prevent him from going after what combat pilots call targets of opportunity, as his pursuit of the Louis Silver library of English literature demonstrated in 1964. Considerably greater sums were at stake in 1965 when, sight unseen, he tried to buy the “residue” of the Sir Thomas Phillipps library, then in the possession of Robinson Brothers, noted British booksellers. The source for this anecdote is Lew Feldman himself, who recalled the pertinent details during an interview he gave on December 18, 1973, as part of an oral history project commissioned by Columbia University to document the New York antiquarian book scene. Though only twenty typewritten pages in length—Feldman was suffering then from Lou Gehrig’s disease—the interview offers valuable insight into the man’s sense of himself and his accomplishments as a bookseller.
By Feldman’s reckoning, some 450 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts on vellum, along with “hundreds of thousands of manuscripts on paper,” were being offered. Feldman’s celebrated bent for grand description and strained phrasing is very much in evidence throughout the interview: he called the Robinson brothers’ London office their “sanctum” and the discussion they had a “colloquy.” After describing the Phillipps material, which was then being stored in a house outside London, the Robinsons asked Feldman if he wanted to make an offer, even though he had not yet handled a single document.
I said they would find that I did not mince words nor matters, that I was candid and blunt to the point of hurting myself, but that I would take a calculated risk and tell them that I was talking in terms of ten million dollars cash. I assure you that as skilled as they were in arcane negotiations, this took them aback, and they both reported to me their interest, and could they be excused from the study for a few minutes to talk about it, and they would come back and give me their answer as to how we could proceed in this matter.
Fifteen minutes later the Robinson brothers reported they were “very much interested” in Feldman’s offer, but they had a question: “Their query was, how could I possibly arrive at the figure of ten million dollars which I so freely gave them without having any knowledge of the contents of the collection. Surely a good question, but hardly one to faze me, since my eye was on such a magnificent goal that I brushed aside these questions and said, ‘Well, I am quite sure that we’ll cover that situation when we get to see the entire collection all at one time.’”
Arrangements were made to view the Phillipps material the following week, but in the meantime the Robinsons asked Feldman “to come around with them and talk to their solicitor,” who quickly drew up a formal option that would hold the material for six months in return for a deposit of £10,000. “I remember standing up, and I said, ‘Sir, as you may have already been informed, I represent the sovereign State of Texas in this matter, and I can assure you that the State of Texas does not pay for options.’” After another private “colloquy,” the brothers and their solicitor declared that “it would be best to drop” the matter of a paid option.
The following week Feldman had a chance to examine some of the material before returning to America and placing the matter before Ransom. What happened next, Feldman told his interviewer, is “on the record” and “confirmed by correspondence.” The Board of Regents and Governor John B. Connally approved an appropriation “to the extent of the ten million dollars that was required” for the purchase, sight unseen and without any kind of professional evaluation. “Now, to understand the wheels that started to turn after I returned to America, you have to understand the very close and confidential relationship that existed between myself and my firm and the people in Austin, Texas,” Feldman explained. He praised Harry Ransom for having “perseverance and utter prescience in the destiny” of the collections, and for entrusting him with the kind of confidence that “permitted me to accomplish the manifold achievements that transpired between us from 1956 through 1972.” Without Ransom, he added, the acquisitions “would never have gotten off the ground, and I would never have had the opportunity for achieving the marvelous acts that were part of the program that developed between us.”
Unfortunately for both Ransom and Feldman, those “marvelous acts” did not include acquiring the Phillipps manuscript material, because shortly after the $10 million had been authorized, “out of the blue” came an announcement that Lyndon Baines Johnson would be sending his presidential papers to Austin after he left office, and that the university would be building “a great library” to receive them. A choice had to be made, Lyndon Johnson or Sir Thomas Phillipps, and it came as no surprise to anyone in Texas when LBJ carried the day. “To go into further detail would really be harrowing,” Feldman told his interviewer eight years later, “and as tragic as it might seem to me at this moment, I cannot blame anyone in the picture for deciding the way they apparently had to in order to keep faith with the President.”
John Silber, the outspoken president of Boston University whose controversial political views brought him within 76,000 votes of the Massachusetts governorship in 1990, began his career in public life as a professor
at the University of Texas in 1957. Silber’s keen mind and unorthodox demeanor quickly attracted the attention of Harry Ransom, and by 1967 Silber had advanced through the history department to become dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. This highly influential position made him the odds-on favorite to become the next president of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Yes, I was one of Harry’s boys,” Silber said with a lingering Texas twang one morning in the Boston office he moved into after his unceremonious departure from Austin in 1971. He had been the victim a few months earlier of a summary firing at the hands of Frank C. Erwin, Jr., chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents. “That’s what everyone called me and a few other people Harry brought in as well, people like Norman Hackerman, Roger Shattuck, and a few others; we were Harry’s boys.”
Silber not only confirmed that he was being groomed by Ransom to take over direction of the university, but also quickly added that he had intended to make it “the finest university in the United States.” One reason he felt this would have happened was because “it had no excuse not to be. It had the money; all it needed was guidance. By now it would have been recognized as the greatest university in the world. I firmly believe that. The reason this has not happened is that it did not have the direction, and the direction that it did have, it was given first by Logan Wilson and then especially by Harry Ransom, and was muted in the last years of Harry Ransom’s chancellorship by Frank Erwin, and then terminated when Frank Erwin proceeded to get rid of Norman Hackerman and me.”
Silber said Texas was “a desert” when he arrived there. “When I went to Texas the only things I could find in the library were those damn Thomas Wise forgeries. That’s a slight exaggeration, of course, but Harry Ransom did transform the place. When I left Texas after having been there for thirteen years, all those manuscripts he brought in were there, and that was no small achievement.” He agreed that Ransom was a man who dreamed of greatness. “Extraordinary vision,” he said, “and extraordinary daring. His strength was in his ignorance of the human modalities. He didn’t know the difference between what was necessary, what was possible, or what was impossible, and consequently he would do things that reasonable people would have concluded were impossible and not worth trying to do, because he just didn’t understand those modal relationships. And he was imaginative. If he liked an idea, he would usually stick his neck out for it.” Silber recalled the first major report he wrote for Ransom on a proposed revision of the curriculum. “He read it, and his comment was, ‘This is a splendid report with an engaging touch of the totally impossible.’”
Silber said that Ransom was not a “con man,” as Charles Hamilton charged, because “there was never anything personal in it for him, of that I am absolutely certain. If Harry Ransom made millions, nobody ever found him spending it, and his wife certainly didn’t become rich on his death.” He agreed there is a “great deal of truth” to the frequent criticism that Ransom “was always breaking his promises,” but quickly pointed out that that was because “Harry would promise anything to damn near anybody. He was a man who had difficulty saying no to any idea that had any merit whatsoever.”
One rumor that has circulated in Austin for two decades is that Ransom made what amounts to a “devil’s deal” in 1970 with Frank Erwin over the fate of John Silber. As chairman of the Board of Regents, Erwin controlled the flow of money needed to build the Humanities Research Center, and when he determined, for a variety of reasons, that Silber had to go, Ransom never came forward to defend his protégé. Some people have suggested that Ransom remained silent because Erwin threatened to terminate support of the HRC if he interfered.
“It went much deeper than that,” Silber said. “It is true that Harry was forced to make a choice, and he chose not to support me. He could have saved me if he wanted to, but chose to lay low during the whole thing.” Silber said he believed that what happened was that Erwin “made it very clear to Harry that if he tried to defend me, he was gone, and that he had the means to do it.” Silber was not specific about what might have made Ransom vulnerable to such a threat, but his conviction was based on “something I know, and I think I will leave it at that. But let me say this. I knew Harry Ransom very well, and I knew Frank Erwin very well. And I know that Frank Erwin always looked for people’s weaknesses so that he could exploit them. Frank Erwin was a very intelligent, very ambitious man, with a very limited education, who knew almost nothing about what was required to have a great university, but he was very, very smart, and he was politically astute. His idea for a university was a whole lot of buildings, a great football team, a great stadium, a great basketball team, a great baseball team, and if Harry Ransom wanted a great research center, well, that was all right, he liked that idea, too, because there was plenty of money for everything. Frank Erwin was a lot like Lyndon Johnson in many respects. He trusted no one that he could not control. And if Harry Ransom had not been controllable, Harry would not have been allowed to stick around.”
Silber said that one reason Erwin demanded his own dismissal was because “I could not be controlled.” Silber said that when he was named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, he divested himself of an interest in a high-rise Austin dormitory bought at the invitation of a developer. “When I became dean, I immediately sold my interest, instantly, because then I was in a position to create residential colleges on the part of the university. I felt it would be a conflict of interest and I decided to divest. And I think that when Frank Erwin found out that I had divested, that was a bad mark against me, as far as he was concerned, because it meant that Silber was squeaky clean.”
At that time, the College of Arts and Sciences accounted for 22,000 students, more than half of the total enrollment on the Austin campus. One of Silber’s first acts was to propose a reorganization that would have placed even greater emphasis on liberal arts. Silber said he knew his days were numbered in the fall of 1969 when he told Erwin the Austin enrollment should be maintained at 35,000 students, and strive for quality, not constantly increasing numbers. “When that happens, I think it’s time to fire the dean and break up the college,” Silber recalled Erwin saying.
Eight months later, on a hot Friday afternoon in July, Silber was fired and the College of Arts and Sciences was dissolved; three smaller schools were created in its stead. Frank Erwin later said that the College of Arts and Sciences had become “an administrative monstrosity” that gave Silber “disproportionate control” of “more than half of everything at the university.” Erwin told reporters that the character of students then enrolled in Arts and Sciences was another reason he wanted to form three smaller colleges. “A lot of students during this period went to college that might not have gone to college before,” Erwin charged. “Many were people who went for fear of being drafted and going to Vietnam. And so, they signed up for the College of Arts and Sciences because they really didn’t know what to major in.”
A feature published in the magazine section of the Dallas Morning News in 1977 described Frank Erwin as “an unbroken power broker” known as “Chairman Frank” to some, “Frank Vermin” and “Emperor of the University” to others. Erwin was a former lobbyist and lawyer whose political influence began growing in the 1960s as he became a member of John Connally’s inner circle. In 1963, Governor Connally appointed him a regent at the same time he was named state Democratic chairman and Democratic national committeeman. With John Connally in the state house and Lyndon Johnson in the White House, Erwin’s power to decide how huge dividends from state-owned oil and natural gas leases would be spent was enormous. During Erwin’s tenure the Austin campus grew from 26,000 to 42,000 students. He served as chairman of the Board of Regents from 1966 to 1971, left the board in 1975, and died of a heart attack in 1980 at the age of sixty. Lady Bird Johnson offered a special tribute. “He was a rare human being who leaves a lonesome place in the world and the hearts of all who knew and loved him. Most people have ideas. Frank Erwin had ideas and ran with them.”
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sp; In January 1971 Silber accepted an offer to become president of Boston University. About the same time, Harry Ransom retired to become chancellor emeritus and moved his offices into the recently completed Humanities Research Center. In 1974, two years before he died, the building was named the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, an honor Kathleen Hjerter said was inevitable. “Why do you think Dr. Ransom called it the HRC in the first place?” she asked. “He was going to get his initials on that building whether they named it for him or not.”
No fewer than nineteen rooms at the Humanities Research Center are named for notable people, and each one contains materials entrusted by an important public figure. The Erle Stanley Gardner Room contains not only the mystery writer’s personal library and curiosities but also a redwood replica of the California study where most of the Perry Mason stories were written. There is a John Foster Dulles Room, a J. Frank Dobie Room and a Karl and Esther Hoblitzelle Room. This appeal to a person’s vanity is frequently the ultimate card the university can play. “They always say, ‘I’ll give you my material, but give me a room,’” Kathleen Hjerter said. “When Alfred Knopf was thinking about where he would send his books, it didn’t hurt our chances at all when he found out we had this big, enormous room we were willing to put aside just for him. He used to come down here once a year, too, just to check things out and make sure everything was in the right place.”
People need to be assured “that you really want them,” Ellen Dunlap said, “and it takes more than words to convince them.” Evelyn Waugh’s books came along with his actual library, including shelves and furniture, shipped carefully from England to Texas. Before Gloria Swanson agreed to send her papers to Austin in 1982, she received assurances that her curator would be hired to watch over them. “I was part of the deal,” Raymond S. Daum told me.
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books Page 43
