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

by Nicholas Basbanes

  To

  Livy L. Clemens

  with the matured and perfect love of

  The Author

  Xmas, 1884.

  Manney’s first-issue copy of Paradise Lost, one of a handful still in an original binding, went for the same figure. A copy of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon sold for $29,700, and a copy of Dracula inscribed by Bram Stoker on its publication date went for $44,000. Disappointing was the interest in Manney’s Tamerlane, which was bought by Stephan Loewentheil of the 19th Century Bookshop in Baltimore for $143,000. But overall the sale was a success. “Almost like the old days,” Los Angeles dealer Mark Hime said afterward. “You’d never have known there was a recession going on outside the building.”

  Only two lots did not meet Sotheby’s reserve. The 1661 Eliot Indian Bible was “bought in” at $135,000 and the four Shakespeare folios, which had carried a daunting presale estimate of $1.5 million to $2.5 million, attracted tepid interest from the floor. Only a few paddles were raised during the early going, and the auctioneer, David Redden, stopped calling out numbers at $1.1 million. Thus, the very books whose purchase on credit had forced the dispersal remained unsold, providing a cautionary note about how tastes and trends can change.

  A few weeks later, advertising trade journals were reporting another kind of activity, this time at the other end of Manhattan, in the United States Bankruptcy Court. Manney’s company, The Mediators, Inc., owed more than $32 million to various networks and television stations throughout the United States. Soon, what had started as an involuntary proceeding became a reorganization under Chapter 11. Court papers showed that it was rapidly becoming a brawl. Frustrated by their attempts to secure what they felt was an acceptable settlement from Richard and Gloria Manney’s company, the creditors had sought permission to attach the couple’s art, which was itemized in a list of seven hundred works. Included among them was “Rain Shower on Rue Bonaparte,” a Paris street scene painted by Childe Hassam, and originally purchased for $735,000. The Manneys had acquired Norman Rockwell’s “The Right to Know” for $225,000 in 1982.

  Court papers indicated that all the works on that list had been bought by The Mediators over a period of years, but had been sold en bloc on one day, June 30, 1988, to the Manneys, who were listed as 100 percent owners of the company, for $12.6 million. Lawyers bickered back and forth but resolved nothing, and both sides conceded that it would take many months to sort everything out. The Manneys, meanwhile, placed their large home in Irvington-on-Hudson up for sale.

  In June 1993, Sotheby’s featured a number of prize antiques from the Richard and Gloria Manney collection at a major spring sale of Americana. Among the items sold was a silver dining-table centerpiece made by John W. Forbes in 1825 and presented to the then governor of New York, De Witt Clinton, upon completion of the Erie Canal. When the Manneys bought it for $264,000 in 1982, they outbid the State Department. The price eleven years later was $266,500, and the buyer was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the couple had placed the intricately crafted piece known as a mirrored plateau on indefinite loan. “We had to have it, we’ve had it so long,” Morrison Heckscher, curator of the American Wing at the museum, said. “It will go right back on display.”

  The bankruptcy hearings continued with little movement toward a settlement. After three years of legal maneuvering, nothing had been resolved. In June 1994 a plan of reorganization for The Mediators, Inc. drafted by the creditors committee included liquidation of the company. Hope was expressed that some form of settlement would be reached by the end of the year. Manney, meanwhile, had been named president of M.P.I. International Ltd. in 1993, a marketing and media company doing business with the motion picture industry.

  Walking with Manney on Madison Avenue back to his office from lunch, I had once asked him what he thought about the talk going around that suggested he was the Donald Trump of the rare-book world, a mocking reference to the highly publicized adventures of the young wheeler-dealer who had enjoyed celebrity status for his successful exploits during the 1980s, but had become the butt of snide jokes afterward when he fell on hard times.

  “Put on your tape recorder,” Manney said, stopping in his tracks so abruptly that there was a mild flurry of curiosity among other pedestrians. “The people who really know me know that I am not a flash in the pan. For twenty-eight years my wife and I have put together collections and given them away.” He smiled. “I’m flattered that I am able to make the kind of mark where some of my enemies are so jealous they want to compare me to Donald Trump. I take that as a compliment.”

  Epilogue

  If the 1990s was to be a stripped-down version of the decade that preceded it, then no setting was more appropriate for a big book sale than Swann Galleries, the no-nonsense auction house at 104 East Twenty-fifth Street in New York. For two days in April 1992, the major dealers gathered in this turn-of-the-century loft building on Lower Manhattan, a structure of unadorned function that had been home to a prosperous printing shop before Swann owner George S. Lowry converted the sixth floor to an auction hall in 1980.

  Instead of fancy plastic paddles, the registration numbers are marked on paper cards. Unlike the auction rooms at Christie’s and Sotheby’s farther uptown, Swann has no elegant paintings hanging on its walls, and no effort has been made to disguise the ventilation ducts that snake across the ceiling. But the seats are comfortable and the sound system works, and though the items put on the block are not Gutenberg Bibles or Audubon folios, they are the kinds of books gathered by the vast majority of collectors in the United States.

  For this sale, mounted to mark the golden anniversary of Swann Galleries, 519 items covering a full range of categories—American, English, and Continental literature; Judaica, children’s literature, detective fiction, fantasy, and science fiction among them—had been culled from a ten thousand-volume library consigned by Raymond Epstein of Chicago, a retired engineer and architect.

  Sitting in the front row next to Epstein was Ralph Newman of Chicago. Lou Weinstein and Mark Hime were in from California, and Jim Cummins, Glenn Horowitz, Justin Schiller, and Bart Auerbach made up part of the New York contingent. Bill Reese was in from New Haven, Anne and David Bromer had driven down from Boston, Stephan Loewentheil had come up from Baltimore, Clarence Wolf was in from Philadelphia. Arthur Freeman flew over from London, and even Stephen Massey, head of the rare-book department at Christie’s, dropped by to watch. Altogether an impressive crowd, and most dealers were carrying commissions from customers.

  “I’ve been collecting for forty years, and now it’s time for the books to go,” Raymond Epstein told me just before the first lot went on the block. “I’m seventy-four years old, and my wife and my kids wouldn’t know what to do if they were stuck with all these books. The truth is that I also can use the money in my retirement. I must say that when I got here this morning and saw them all laid out like this, I said to George Lowry, ‘Pack them up, I’ll take them home.’ But I am very happy about the sale because a lot of people are getting books they want to own. They’re going back into circulation.”

  Soon, a Kelmscott Chaucer sold for $35,200, $15,000 above the upper estimate. L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz brought $20,900, and Wilkie Collins’s The Queen of Hearts in three volumes showed strength at $10,450. Patterns require repetition to take shape, so it was nothing overly remarkable when on the second day of the sale a woman holding number 108 bought an inscribed copy of Jack London’s White Fang for $5,500 and Peter Newell’s 1908 illustrated work for children, The Hole Book, for $1,320. But when number 108 topped all comers for a fine limited edition of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit at $55,000, people began to pay attention. In the very next lot, she spent another $20,900 for the first trade edition of the same book, going ten times higher than the presale estimate to get it. As she continued to buy, more heads turned in her direction. Lot 417, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, for $30,800, and Lot 418, Adam Smith’s
Wealth of Nations, $26,400, then became her property; next, Lot 421, Gertrude Smith’s The Arabella and Araminta Stories, one of fifteen large copies on Royal Japan paper, was knocked down to her number for $26,400.

  As Lot 440 was being sold, a Swann employee held up a piece of paper with a scrawled note that read, “We just broke $1 million,” the first time in Swann’s fifty-year history that that magic number had been surpassed. Then, an 1855 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, one of just two hundred copies produced in a first issue binding of dark green cloth with gilt decorations, came up in Lot 500. When the bidding reached $15,000, the dark-haired woman in the middle of the room raised her number and held it high until the prize was hers; the price, with a 10 percent house commission known as a “buyer’s premium” added, came to $30,800. Fifteen minutes later the sale was over, and no fewer than ten booksellers were introducing themselves to the woman most knew only as number 108.

  “Joan Hill,” she said with a bright smile, and offered her hand. She and her husband, Daryl, live in a suburb of Santa Barbara, California, and though they “dabble” in the trade of children’s books, their purchases this day were for themselves. “We’ve just started putting together a high-spot collection,” she said. After dropping all the new business cards she had just received in her purse, Hill walked over to Raymond Epstein and introduced herself.

  Later, Epstein said wistfully before leaving the auction gallery, “The books you see here used to be stacked all over my house, but it was never enough. I used to read catalogues in bed at night, and I would say to my wife, ‘Look at this, here’s a book I paid fifty dollars for, a dealer wants thirty-five hundred for it.’ And my wife would say, ‘So sell it.’ Well, today she finally got her wish.”

  Notes

  Sources cited in the Notes by the author’s last name or by a short form of the title are to be found in the “General Bibliography,” pages 584–604.

  Complete information on archives containing cited material can be found on page 583.

  Prologue

  Page

  2 “accountable for anything”: Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1939), 30–31.

  5 “instinct to collect”: Wroth, “The Chief End of Book Madness,” 77.

  Part One

  1: “TOUCHING THE HAND”

  9 “The bibliophile is”: Lawrence S. Thompson, 42.

  9 “A great library”: Burton, 171.

  10 “O my darling books”: Fitzgerald, 1.

  10 “My wish is that”: Newton, Amenities of Book Collecting, 94

  11–12 “In the days that followed”: The following from Uzanne: “In memory of the happy moments,” 134; “perfect politeness,” 133; “in his own image … customs of men,” 135; “special costume … Paris bookstall men,” 228–30.

  12–13 “A child bearing the name”: John Carter Brown Library, 65; “No one but the collector,” ibid., 41.

  14 “They may some day”: Stillwell, 13. For more on Hawkins, see also Cannon, 188–91, and Dickinson, 154–55.

  14 “On my coffin when in the grave”: Jackson, vol. 2, 265.

  14 “I have given my friends to understand”: Field, 170.

  15 When Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal Rossetti: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s letters from Buck.

  16 What undoubtedly qualifies: For more on the Gospel of St. John, see Olmert 9–10, and Hubert Chadwick, SJ, “Unfamiliar Libraries II: Stonyhurst College,” Book Collector, Winter 1957, 343–49.

  16 “disposition to collect books”: Burton, v.

  16–17 “It is, as you will observe”: ibid., 231.

  17 “For all time these courts”: Theodore Blegen, “A Glorious Court,” in Book Collecting and Scholarship, 23.

  17 “It is a wonderful and magnificent thing”: Rosenbach, Books and Bidders, 254–55.

  18 “I have known men”: ibid., 37; “are buzzards”: ibid., 17–18. Rosenbach also tells of the time his Uncle Moses Polock dropped a treasured copy of Tom Jones out of a horse-drawn wagon onto an icy Philadelphia bridge. “You should have let me get your book. You might have broken your leg!” young Abe, then thirteen, said when his mentor returned from retrieving the volume. “I would risk breaking two legs for this book,” Polock grumbled. ibid., 36–37.

  18 “My main anxiety … Philobiblon Club?”: Adelman, vii. See also Adelman, “Introducing the Collection,” in The Adelman Collection (Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Bryn Mawr College Library, 1976), 7–11; Adelman obituary, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 27, 1985.

  18 “First of all”: Barrett, 18.

  18–19 “It must be clearly understood”: Taylor, “Battle Between Libraries,” 232.

  19 “The trouble with you”: ibid., 238.

  19 “integrity of this library … serve the purpose?”: Jameson, 11–14. See also Maxwell.

  20 “Every item was purchased”: Osborne, Alfred Clark Chapin, 12.

  20 “With no disrespect”: Hofer, 4; “he that hath a library”: ibid., 2. For more on Hofer, see Hofer, “On Collecting Japanese Manuscript [MS] Scrolls,” Book Collector, Winter 1958, 369–80; William A. Jackson, “Philip Hofer,” Book Collector, Summer 1960, 151–64; Bond, Philip Hofer Bequest, vii–xiv (introduction).

  20–23 Account of Ellis and Fitzpatrick: Vosper.

  23 “with chiseled features”: Hellmann, “Steward of Strawberry Hill—I,” 26.

  23 “The loyalty of collectors”: Hellmann, “Farmington Revisited,” 168. For books by Wilmarth Lewis, see bibliography.

  24 “he had hardly any serious rival”: Muir, Talks on Book-Collecting, 4. For more on Michael Sadleir, see Sadleir, “The Sadleir Library,” Book Collector, Summer 1955, 115–21; John Carter, “Michael Sadleir: A Valediction,” Book Collector, Spring 1958, 58–61.

  24 In a 1951 essay: Sadleir, vol. 1, xii.

  25 “the finest and most beautiful”: Hobson, 273.

  25 “It has raged”: Dibdin, 11.

  25 “ingenious views”: For background on Dr. Ferriar, see entry in Dictionary of National Biography.

  25–26 “What wild desires … mind engage”: Ferriar, 139–40.

  26 “pride, pleasure, and privileges … READING THEM”: Bibliosophia, 1–4.

  27 “Do you take care … bibliomanie”: ed., Strachey, vol. 2, 40–41 (March 19, 1750). On the publishing history of the letters, see ibid., vol. 1, xlvii–xlviii.

  27–28 “inordinate desire … instinctual drives”: Weiner, 217; “literature of bibliomania … in Bohemia”: ibid., 220; “fetish … castration anxiety”: ibid., 231; “It has never”: Quoted in ibid., 217. For a more current evaluation by a psychoanalyst of collecting in general, see Muensterberger.

  28 “It speaks rather well”: Rosenbach, Book Hunter’s Holiday, 106–7; “Let us forgive her”: ibid., 114.

  29 Among history’s more dogged: The account of Queen Christina’s library is from Charles Elton, “Christina of Sweden and Her Books,” in Bibliographica, vol. 1, 5–30; “Continue to send me” and “was arranged in four great halls”: ibid., 11.

  30 “If Freud’s helpless love”: Gay, 170.

  30 “Miss Lowell had a well-defined plan”: Rosenbach, Book Hunter’s Holiday, 126.

  31 Regrettably, visitors: For more on Mrs. Pope, see Charles Ryskamp, “Abbie Pope,” in Book Collector, Spring 1984, 39–52.

  31 “Fifteen Women Book Collectors”: See article by Marie E. Korey and Ruth Mortimer, 49–87. See also Frances Hamill, “Some Unconventional Women Before 1800: Printers, Booksellers, and Collectors,” in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 4th qtr., 1955, 300–14.

  31–32 “origin of a new species … unending pursuit”: Mary Hyde Eccles, 89–100. For more on the Hyde Collection, see Austin, Four Oaks Farm and Four Oaks Library, and Donald and Mary Hyde, “The Hyde Collection,” Book Collector, Autumn 1955, 208–216.

  32 “My mother died”: Janny Scott, “Onassis Burial to Be Monday at Arlington,” New York Times, May 21, 1994, 1.

  33 “With the development of b
ibliomania”: Sander, 155.

  34 “I am not a thief. … My copy is not unique”: ibid., 157. For more on Don Vincente, see Rosenbach, Books and Bidders, 37–38; Flaubert, see Koch’s “Postscript,” 49–56; L. S. Thompson, 41–89, and Charles G. Roland, M.D., “Bibliomania,” Journal of the American Medical Association 212, (April 6, 1970), 133–35.

  34 “scarcely knew how … the only copy in Spain!”: Flaubert, Bibliomania: A Tale, 47–48.

  35 “For him that stealeth”: Drogin, 88.

  35 Historians agree: For more on I’affaire Libri, see De Ricci, 131–38; Sander, 158–60; L. S. Thompson, 53–54.

  36–37 Throughout history: The following examples are from Cim: Emil Bessels, 663–64; Mr. Bryan, the American expatriate, 664; Henri de la Bédoyère, 667; Anquetil-Duperron, 672; Bordas-Demoulin, 674–75.

  37 The nineteenth-century French pianist: Eric Blom, ed., Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., vol. 1, 111–12, s.v. “Alkan.”

  37 Professor Theodor Mommsen: “Prof. Mommsen’s Peril,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 1903, 8; “Prof. Mommsen Is Dead,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 1903, 1.

  38 “He is in himself a great library”: Anderton, 4.

  38 “low and mean rank … luxury of book learning” and “The only copy of this work”: Dibdin, Bibliomania, 86.

  38 “indispensable condition”: Cochrane, 267.

  38 “lived on titles and indexes” and “dirty, ragged, and as happy as a king”: Elton and Elton, 74–75.

  39 “If I were the owner”: Smith, A Sentimental Library, xii. See also Smith, First Nights and First Editions.

  39–40 “I here refer not”: Muir, Talks on Book-Collecting, 9. For more on Wise, see Partington.

  40 “way ahead of his time”: Wolf and Fleming, 189. For more on Quinn, see Reid, “A Note by John Quinn” in Complete Catalogue of the Library of John Quinn, vol. 1, unpaginated; Cannon, 228–30; and Dickinson, 265–66.