On Book Collecting
There lay Partridge's dictionary(1) of word origins, with a price, most reasonable. The question; should you buy it? Your copy, printed on poor quality paper was unsteady and this one was much better. So you buy it before another sees the treasure!
What to do with the tattered one? Why of course, you can pass the old copy onto a friend. But wait, what would they think if you gave them such a shopworn stained and much abused book. As you bought this upgrade, why not sell the old one? You had just as likely let go your wife or lover and in thinking about it, why should anyone want to buy such a disheveled bit of paper and ink as your old one. No, you'll just put it away in a place of respect and enjoy the new book. However, what if you damage the new one, drop it, or perhaps by negligence let it become a bit twisted from standing a bit askew. Perhaps the cover and signatures are not as secure as you first thought and it becomes shaken, what then? The answer my friend is to put this new one aside and "reserve" it for special use. In the meantime, the words in the old one are quite serviceable. But what does this say about you? You show signs of a most serious disease which has progressed to an advanced stage. Ben Franklin had a word for it, "bibliomania."
You have become a "collector" and having never given a thought to what a book collector is, you have reached a turning point in a disease which takes many facets. Alas this disease, never acute, always chronic, lingers on, not for weeks or months but for scores of years. The only relief from the affliction, is death itself. Unknown and unnoticed by you, it has reached a critical stage. Bibliomania is often obscured, lying just under the surface, ready to erupt, not unlike a cold sore by a herpes virus long ago entrenched in the cells genetic information, but ready to emerge after some minor infraction of the body's defenses. The paroxysm of bibliomania has several outward appearances which make it presence known, sometimes by the dire economic straits that you now find yourself in.
Should you strive to buy only the very best? Fine leather bindings create just the proper backdrop, enhancing your office or den and representing to the casual visitor that you are one of discerning taste. If this be the case, you need not even look to the contents, the author, illustrator, publisher, or the edition. No it is the book's outward appearance that is the sole guide to your purchasing decision. The binding is the casket which bears the body, but with such a fine box, cannot the contents not have been regal as well. Smell the leather, the richness of its texture, the fineness and near-perfect grain, the color, the well-turned edges, the hinges that open like a well-oiled door, the gold leaf and sculpted designs. Ah, that speaks well of you, and you are in good company; notice the backdrop of books in the lawyer's office, the politician's study; the showcase home of the rich and famous.
Or, perhaps as a collector of rare copies that have the smell and feel of history itself is the direction you choose to go. Once found, these tomes of course must be properly housed. No simple shelf, where the edges may wear, the covers fade, leather affected by red rot turns to dust, worms and insects prey upon the fibers or some careless person may chance gain access and actually open and read the words contained therein and do damage to the binding or the book itself, is adequate. These volumes, rightly so, deserve a special place, a proper atmosphere where humidity and light can be controlled, not unlike a tomb. And have them rest on a painted or wooden surface, of course not. The shelf must be lined with a leather equal to that of the binding itself. How the author would surely give an approving nod of his or her head to discover such a resting place for their works. The lust for rare volumes takes a life of its own.
One only has to look to the story by Gustave Flaubet(2), when he was a mere lad of fifteen, written in 1836, to see the company you keep. Flaubet wrote; "Once upon a time there lived in a narrow and sunless street of Barcelona, one of those men with a pale face, dull and sunken eye, one of those satanic and bizarre beings such as Hoffman dug up in his dreams. He was Giacomo the bookseller" Giacomo was driven to possess the single copy of The Mystery of Saint Michael and when he was unable to purchase it, he was in great despair. Later, the book's owner's house burned and when the police searched Giacomo's, they found The Mystery of Saint Michael. He was accused of burning the house and was to be sentenced to death. However, his lawyer reported to the court that the book in Giacomo's possession might not be the one from the fire. To prove his point, he presented to the court, a second copy of the book which he had obtained from afar. This surely would prove Giacomo's innocence. But Giacomo said, "I believed that it was the only one in Spain!" Hearing this the judges pronounced the sentence of death upon him.
Or perhaps consider the plight of William Morris who became so distressed with the "modern' printing processes that he led a movement back to the production of books by artisans. He founded Kelmscott Press prior to 1900, which published fewer than 500 copies of what Morris considered books worth passing on to future generations. Hand laid paper with watermarks, no less; type styles created just for the volumes, bound in vellum and elaborately decorated has made some of these of great value. The works of Goeffey Chaucer now newly imprinted was a run of 425 copies out of a total edition of 438. Bound in vellum, which according to the books large size has resulted in slight cocking, but otherwise in fine condition, being carefully preserved the book is offered for sale at $125,000. It is said that to read these books (the type style makes reading more difficult) is an experience, to savor the words, the thoughts, the book itself is a reward to those who practice can afford conspicuous consumption. Thorstein Veblen had this to say about book making: "These products, since they require hand labour, are more expensive; they are also less convenient for use than books turned out with a view of serviceability alone; they therefore argue ability on the part of the purchaser to consume freely, as well as ability to waste time and effort.... Here we have a somewhat cruder type, printed on hand-laid, deckel-edged paper, with excessive margins and uncut leaves, with bindings of a painstaking crudeness and elaborate ineptitude. The Kelmscott Press reduced the matter to an absurdity as seen from the point of view of brute serviceability alone by issuing books for modern use, edited with the obsolete spelling, printed in black-letter, and bound in limp vellum fitted with thongs...this book is scarce and lends pecuniary distinction to its consumer. Perhaps, but Veblen was clearly speaking with envy of those who could so indulge themselves.(3)
Maybe having complete sets, that is, every translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, the different editions with artists; Dali, Barnell, Hopkins, Pizan, etc., and then the books regarding the great writer and even books about the translators themselves. Of course there are Cervantes' other writings, as example, Exemplary Novels, as well as his contemporary de Vega and those others who pass themselves off as his equal - Avellaneda, Mahtrow, etc. The "set" is never complete. If this be the direction, then be prepared to buy a bigger house for there is no end to the assembly.
There is yet another direction. Condition of the books has little to do with the contents, provided the pages are intact, so why compete with those who surely have deeper pockets. Be satisfied with that copy of Crabb's Synonymes badly infected with red rot. So what if Webster's Counting House and Family Dictionary lacks a covering of leather on the spine and the hinges are weak. That set of Brann's Iconoclast is missing volume six, but the other eleven have more sarcasm and devilment than any current author would dare to write. Mencken's three volumes of the American Language aren't quite as perfect as you would like but HLM comes through as only he could. Should you wait for better? Of course not.
Finally you descend to the depths from which the collector can never emerge - you simply cannot pass up any book that is offered; if the price is right, and somehow the price is always right. Go to a sale of used books at the library, the lodge, the club or a garage sale; there are always books there that you know as old friends or perhaps that author's name sounds familiar and maybe you should spend a bit of time becoming aware of what he has to offer. And so you buy not one but an arm full of books. Pile them on the floor, in the closet, under the bed and later you will have time to determine what great treasure(s) you now possess. Ha!
Let me introduce a few of your fellow travelers down the road to ruin.
The most famous book collector of all time was the Spaniard known as the Knight of Mournful Countenance, or perhaps better known as The Ingenuous (not Ingenious) Gentleman, Don Quixote de la Mancha. So taken with the stories which lay within his books, he emulated the characters and became as one. Even the destruction of many of his most precious books at the hands of friends (?) could not deprive him of the pleasures which he had committed to memory. As Mahtrow has written, the library, although walled up and supposedly unknown to Quixote, remained accessible to him and gave him much pleasure in secret reveille.
Some collectors are "closet" bibliophiles and undertake to keep their malady secret. Samuel Pepys, Diary, was in code that prevented the casual observer from knowing what he had written. In the "translation" we find that he was an avid collector of books. He gave much attention to the binding and pressing of the volumes that he acquired. We learn that he was not always pleased with the artisan that encased, sewed and pressed his volumes but nevertheless, even during the plague that deprived London of perhaps one third of its citizens, he continued to collect books as they were available.
Charles Lamb, another covetous collector, wrote in his essay on Books and Reading, "Thomson's Seasons looks best (I maintain it) a little torn, and dog's -eared. How beautiful to a genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and worn-out appearance, nay, the very odour (beyond Russian) if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidiousness, of an old "Circulating Library" Tom Jones or Vicar of Wakefield! How they speak of the thousand thumbs, that have turned over their pages with delight! Of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered (milliner, or hard-working mantua(a)-maker) after her long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when she has snatched an hour, ill-spared from sleep, to steep her cares, as in some Lethean(b) cup, in spelling out their enchanting contents! Who would have them a whit less soiled? What better condition could we desire to see them in?"
(a) Woman's cloak popular in the 1700's.
(b) To drink from a river in Hades that produces oblivion or perhaps
forgetfulness.
Andrew Lang lovingly described in Books for the Bibliophile characteristics of those who might pursue this strange hobby. He also wrote, Letters to Dead Authors, Books and Bookmen and The Library as a tribute to those who write and those who read.
William Mathews(4) in his essay on book buying: "The most discouraging feature of the mania for book-collecting is, that it grows by what it feeds on, and becomes the more insatiable the more it is gratified. It is hard for ordinary book lovers to comprehend a desire for books so devouring as that which consumed Richard Heber. The number of his books was stated in six figures, and the catalogue of them filled five thick octavo volumes. He built a library at his house in Hodnet which was said to be full. His residence at Pimlico, London, was filled, like Magliabechi's at Florence, with books from the top to the bottom, - every chair, table, and passage containing piles of erudition. He had another house in York street, Oxford; an immense library in Paris; another in Antwerp; another at Brussels; another at Ghent; and yet others at places in the Low Countries and in Germany. When any one raised a cui bono (what is to be gained?) query of wonder at this, his answer was ready: "Why, sir, you see no man can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for a show-copy, and he will probably keep it at his country-house; another he will require for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have a third at the service of his friends." Heber is known to have collected more than 150,000 volumes during his life time (1773 - 1823) which is the largest individual collection ever assembled.
Charles Boewe wrote in Fitzpatrick's Rafinesque: A Sketch of His Life and Bibliography regarding Thomas Jefferson Fitzpatrick's love of books:
"Fitzpatrick was a botanist by profession, a teacher by necessity, and a manic book collector by temperament." Here we are interested more in his love of books than his delving into the quirks that made Rafinesque such a notable and questionable scientist. Boewe writes that in the two and half story house in Lincoln Nebraska, Fitzpatrick had in the ten larger rooms some 25 tons of paper which the "building inspectors" surmised to be some eight times the load limit for the structure. In addition he had a five-room bungalow next door which he also stuffed with books. And, in a family home near Iowa City he had books stored in a large room as well as in a large barn on the property. In the house in Lincoln, Fitzpatrick removed bathroom fixtures so that even more books could be stored there. To spare space, He and his wife slept on cots to make room for their books.
The Fitzpatricks not only bought books but they read them, many times, over and over, searching different editions for differences. As a botanist, he appreciated a systematic approach to cataloging and his "Rafinesque" is a triumph of piecing together the 900 plus publications of Constantine S. Rafinesque and bringing order into what otherwise would have been a great loss to us all.
Mrs. Fitzpatrick is quoted as saying regarding the mania that possessed Thomas Jefferson Fitzpatrick that it would often deprive them of food. "While Teddy was alive, we couldn't bear to part with a single one of those books." Sometimes we didn't have much money. When a check did come in Teddy often went to the store for groceries. But if on the way he found a book that he wanted, he bought the book." She continued, "I want you to know, that I never spent an unhappy day, not an unhappy hour with Teddy."
At death in 1952, Fitzpatrick's bank account showed $11.86. His wife died not much later.
Kansas University was the fortunate purchaser of the bulk of the collection which to Fitzpatrick and his devoted wife, had value far greater than monetary. Much of the damaged and lesser books went to a used book store in Lincoln. The contiguous areas of Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska offer a mother lode of Americana, with rare books still emerging from family holdings.
Andrew Carnegie may have built libraries and thus began the thought that a "library is a place where you keep old books," but Thomas Jefferson Fitzpatrick built a library where the written word was a banquet for the soul, of far greater richness than that of mere food.
Which brings us again to William Mathews. He said of Chamfort(5) that "his works should be kept from the "moth and worm, and mouldering hand of time."" That is the mission to which books and their collectors are assigned. In his, Hours with Men and Books, the first symptoms of the disease, bibliomania, occurs as you view a selection of bargain books (no matter what the price may be to one possessed by this strange melancholy, the books are bargains) and you bought your first "duplicate." This may seem of no consequence since surely it was because the one which you first possessed was perhaps tattered, heavily damaged or perhaps an edition that was lacking in some respect. Perhaps it was just too good a price to pass by. Which is where we began.
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With the introduction of various means of copying, the possession of a particular tome has become within the reach of most everyone. One need not go to the library, the Internet has provided a feast on which to dine. But I suspect that as was said by Lamb, the worn thumbed, and abused copies will still have a place in the hearts of many. And as authors fill space with words, too soon will we be lost in a forest where indeed we can't see the trees. Then there remains as before, the lowly book seller offering his wares. Find a copy of Warreniana(6) at a price you can hardly afford and you will be like the Fitzpatricks and gladly forego food for such a treasure.
This sparse introduction to book collecting is far from complete and the reader should look to that offered by Holbrook Jackson in his The Anatomy of Bibliomania (Retitled as The Book About Books in later printings) . Jackson compares his offering to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, as it references the world's literature as it pertains to books. He wrote, "... Men have the liberty to read our Books, or not, they should give us leave to write what we like, or forebear, which for the most part they do." Jackson would be distressed that his book retitled and published by a mass marketer is printed on paper not much above the grade of newsprint.
Vale.
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(1) Partridge, Eric, Origins; A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London, Routledge, & Kegan Paul, (1958).
(2) Flaubet, Gustav, Bibliomania, London, Rodale Press, 1954.
(3) Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of The Leisure Class, Augustus M. Kelley, 1991. pp 161-166.
(4) William Mathews, Hours with Men and Books, pp354, S. C. Griggs and Company, 1879
(5) Sebastian Roch Nicholas Chamfort (b. 1741) offered up many sharp jabs that remain with us today. My favorite, "Society is composed of two great classes, - those who have more dinner than appetites, and those who have more appetites than dinners." Substitute "books" for dinner and "need" for appetites.
(6) Gifford, William, editor: Warreniana: With Notes, Critical and Explanatory, By the Editor of a Quarterly Review. Boston; Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851.
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