Andrew Lang and The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting

I didn't start collecting books until 1985. I was 38 years old and serving my last overseas tour in the United States Air Force before retiring. England was a great place to start collecting books. And I had four years to earn my nom de plume of "moibibliomaniac." So yes, I am partial to English bibliophiles, and to their books. And the 1892 Second Edition of Andrew Lang's The Library was one of the first books about books that I ever read. I devoured Lang's advice about book collecting, as did a bookworm who burrowed two tiny holes through the bottom right-hand margin of some of the pages of the book.

Most people remember Andrew Lang (1844-1912) as the author of the colorful Fairy book series, twelve books in all, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889. But he was also a bookman, a scholar, a folklorist, and a poet. What he was not –– or so I thought –– was a gentleman who had given up collecting.

The Property of a Gentlemen
Who Has Given Up
Collecting

OH blessed be the cart that takes
Away my books––! my curse, my clog;
Blessèd the auctioneer who makes
Their inefficient catalogue.

Blessèd the purchasers who pay
However little––less were fit;
Blessèd the rooms, the rainy day,
The knock-out and the end of it.

For I am weary of the sport,
That seemed a while agone so sweet,
Of Elzevirs an inch too short,
And first editions––incomplete.

Weary of crests and coats of arms
'Attributed to Padeloup',
The sham Deromes have lost their charms,
The things Le Gascon did not do.

I never read the catalogues
Of rubbish that comes thick as rooks,
But most I loathe the dreary dogs
That write in prose, or worse, on books.

Large paper surely cannot hide
Their grammar, nor excuse their rhyme,
The anecdotes that they provide
Are older than the dawn of time.

Ye bores, of every shape and size,
Who makes a tedium of delight,
Good-bye, the last of my good-byes,
Good-night to all your clan, good-night.

' ' ' ' ' ' ' '

Thus in a sullen fit we swore,
But on mature reflection,
Went on collecting more and more––
And kept our old collection!

I read this poem from the first volume of The Poetical Works of Andrew Lang, edited by Mrs. Lang and published by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1921.

I can relate to this poem because I took steps towards the disposition of my own library after a near-fatal illness last December. And I even wrote about it in my Contemplations of Moibibliomaniac blog last February.

But empty shelves were not for me either.

"Once a collector, always a collector."
Andrew Lang may have coined that phrase himself. At any rate, he used it in "A Bookman's Purgatory," one of the essays published in his 1886 book, Books And Bookmen. And I believed that he just wrote the poem about not collecting anymore in jest –– that he never really stopped collecting.

But I was wrong.

Many of Andrew Lang's poems and essays first appeared in magazines before they were published in books. And the poem, "The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting," was no exception. It first appeared in the December 1889 issue of The Library: A Magazine of Bibliography and Literature.

If you look closely, you will see that the last stanza about "collecting more and more" was not part of the original poem!

"The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting" was reprinted in the January 1890 issue of The Bookmart –– again with the last stanza omitted –– and again in an 1890 issue of The Bookworm: An Illustrated Treasury of Old-Time Literature

Did Andrew Lang realy give up collecting?

There is a tell-tale sentence in the Preface to the 1892 Second Edition of The Library in which Lang refers to book collecting in the past tense:

I know I read The Library from cover to cover twenty-eight years ago; but that one sentence did not register in my mind. Perhaps I did not want to remember that Andrew Lang, the man whose book inspired me to collect books, had given up collecting himself –– 'Tis gone! 'Tis gone!

A few words here about The Library. It was first published in 1881 by Macmillan & Co. in London. The Second Edition of The Library was published by Macmillan in 1892 in London and in New York. In addition to the Preface to the Second Edition, a Postscript was added to enlarge the last chapter on illustrated books by Austin Dobson. The other chapters about book collecting remained the same as in the 1881 First Edition.

A few years earlier, in 1886, Andrew Lang gave excuses for why he had given up collecting. They appeared in the Prefatory Note to the 1886 First American Trade Edition of Books and Bookmen. The Prefatory Note, presented in full below, includes the poem, "Ballade of the Real and Ideal:

I read this book almost twenty-five years ago. And, recently, I was completely at a loss as to why I couldn't remember reading this prefatory note. Friends and family used to marvel at my excellent memory! Was I losing it? Actually, no. There is a bibliographical maze surrounding the publication of the different editions of Books And Bookmen. It took me hours to comprehend what happened. And it will take more than a few minutes to explain it.

George J. Coombes published both a large paper limited edition of 100 copies and a First American Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen in New York during the early part of 1886. Longmans, Green and Co. published a large paper limited edition of 100 copies of Books And Bookmen in London in 1886 as well. But Longmans, Green and Co. did not publish the First English Trade Edition until 1887. And it published a Second English Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen in 1887 as well.

I have both the 1886 First American Trade Edition and the 1887 First English Trade Edition, acquiring both shortly after retiring to Florida and becoming a "man of letters" (mailman) for the United States Postal Service.

I read the 1887 First English Trade Edition first because it contained five essays that were not published in the 1886 First American Trade Edition. I should also note that the First English Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen did not contain Andrew Lang's swan-song Prefatory Note.

Contents of the 1st Eng Trade Edition

The First American Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen only contained two essays that were not published in the First English Trade Edition. And, when I read it, I went straight to the Table of Contents, and then to the essays themselves, completely bypassing Lang's Prefatory Note.

Contents of the 1886 1st Am Trade Edition

To confuse the matter even further, the Second English Trade Edition of Books And Bookmen, published the same year as the First English Trade Edition, contains two new essays which replaced the essay about Parish Registers. I recently read the two new essays online.

Contents of the 2nd Eng Trade Edition

I ask you! How could a gentlemen with that much knowledge about books and bookmen give up collecting?

"The Property of a Gentleman Who Has Given Up Collecting" was published at least one more time during Andrew Lang's lifetime; this time in New Collected Rhymes by Andrew Lang, published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1905. And it contained one new stanza!

It appears that Andrew Lang finally came to his senses and started collecting again sometime during or before 1905. He died July 20, 1912, and his library was put up for auction at Sotheby's on December 5th and 6th of 1912.

I have a small collection of books by and about Andrew Lang, some of which were previously owned by some prominent people. I have yet to acquire a book from Andrew Lang's own library.
But, then again, I am not a gentleman who has given up collecting.

A Splendid History of Ownership

Ex-lib with all the markings. Covers detached. Text block split.  Not what I would call collectible.  But then I collect books formerly owned by the person who donated this very book to the library.  And she was not the original owner. The inscriptions written and the bookplates pasted on its pages speak volumes about this book's history of ownership.

J. O.  Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889), the author of this book, was the Shakespeare expert of his time, writing over five hundred books and articles about Shakespeare. This book, The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England, was years in the making. For parts of twenty summers, Halliwell-Phillipps toured England, searching the corporate records of seventy cities and towns for notices of visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors. In the preface to the book, he notes that Shakespeare was not the company's manager. Halliwell-Phillipps merely used the term, "Shakespeare's Company of Actors," to identify the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged.

Here are the corporate records for Shewsbury:

The book itself was printed "for Private Circulation and for Presents only," a statement which could be unique in the book world.

I could find no other book with that statement printed on its title page. Another book by Halliwell-Phillipps, printed in London the same year, however, contains the statement, "For Special Circulation and for Presents only," on its title page.

Halliwell-Phillips was known for limiting the number of copies of his Shakespearean research that were printed in order to make the books more collectible. Here is one such listing from Justin Winsor's Halliwelliana: A Bibliography of the Publications of James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips, published in 1881:

I don't know how many copies of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England were printed in 1887, but there are currently three copies for sale on the web, two of which are listed at reasonable prices. (Update: Feb 16, 2014.  Maybe I don't realize how popular my blog is; all three 1887 copies have been sold and numerous pods are now listed on abebooks).

Halliwell-Phillipps presented this copy of the book to the Rev. J. W.  Ebsworth (1824-1908) in April 1887.  His inscription on the half-title page reads:

The Rev. J. W.  Ebsworth
With the Compiler's kind regards,
Hollingbury Copse,
Brighton,
April, 1887.

If Halliwell-Phillipps was the resident Shakespeare expert of his time, J. W.  Ebsworth was the authority on ballads. He edited both the Bagford Ballads and the Roxburghe Ballads for the Ballad Society, and edited several ballads and plays for the New Shakspere Society, both societies of which he was a member.   In 1880, Ebsworth wrote the Introduction to the William Griggs facsimile edition of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and dedicated the work to his friend, J. O.  Halliwell-Phillipps.

On Feb. 28, 1907, Ebsworth put his library up for auction with the London auction house, Puttick & Simpson. He was disappointed in the sale: 559 lots sold for a measly sum of £521 8s 6d.

A second inscription in the book, this one written on the rear free endpaper by A. K. S., reads like a bookseller's description:

Very small edition, privately printed.
J. W.  Ebsworth's copy, presentation copy to him
from J. O.  Halliwell-Phillipps.
Tipped in loose is an autograph letter of J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps to Mr. Ebsworth.

A. K. S.

 Written near the bottom left-hand corner of this endpaper is what could be the word "Sale," along with the number "41." I have no clue about the number but the word could refer to the auction sale.  A. K. S. could have been a bookseller who acquired the book at the Puttick & Simpson auction.

 I researched the 1906 edition of James Clegg's International Directory of Booksellers and the list of "Principal Second-hand Booksellers in the United Kingdom Who Publish Catalogues," which is included in J. H. Slater's Book Collecting:  A Guide For Amateurs, London, 1892, but did not readily identify a bookseller with the initials, A. K. S. in either book.


The autograph letter no longer accompanies this book.  But in my research, I uncovered a letter written by Halliwell-Phillipps to Ebsworth on March 28, 1887.  John Collins Francis (1838-1916) printed the gist of this letter in his book,  Notes by the Way: With Memoirs of Joseph Knight and Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth, London, 1909:

As mentioned before, Halliwell-Phillips gave Ebsworth a copy of his book in April 1887.  If this letter is the very letter mentioned in the second inscription,  Halliwell-Phillipps may have given Ebsworth a copy of his book in recognition of Ebsworth's recent assistance concerning the ballad.  And John Collins Francis, the publisher of The Athenaeum, may have been the next owner of Ebsworth's copy of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England.  There are, however, no marks of provenance in the book identifying him as one of the owners.  As stated in Notes by the Way, published after Ebsworth's death,  Francis was already in possession of the March 28, 1887 letter. Later in Notes by the Way Francis states he was in possession of Ebsworth's manuscripts.  The manuscripts were not included in the 1907 auction of Ebsworth's library.  And, while it is possible that Ebsworth did not insert this particular letter into his copy of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England, he normally inserted autograph letters into presentation copies of books.   Book-Prices Current, Vol XXI contains an abbreviated listing of 66 of the 559 lots, three of which were presentation copies from other authors. Ebsworth inserted autograph letters in all three of them. The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England was not identified in this abbreviated listing.  I suspect either Ebsworth withheld the book from the auction or John Collins Francis acquired both book and autograph letter from "A.K.S.,  the unidentified bookseller.

There are no "what if's" about the identity of the next owner of the Ebsworth copy of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England.  He is the Shakespeare actor, Edward Hugh Sothern (1859-1933).

There is, however, a question of when he acquired the Ebsworth's copy of this book.  E.H. Sothern, as he was known, was the leading Shakespeare actor of his time.  Sothern arrived in London on April 3, 1907, shortly after the sale of Ebsworth's library (Feb. 28, 1907).  Sothern was co-starring with the actress, Julia Marlowe (1865-1950), in a series of plays to be performed in England beginning April 15, 1907.    But E. H. Sothern may not have acquired Ebsworth's copy of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England during this tour in 1907.  He married Julia Marlowe in London on Aug 16, 1911, which would have been the earliest date he could have pasted their bookplate on the front pastedown of the book.  And if John Collins Francis was an unrecorded owner, Sothern may not have acquired the Ebsworth's copy of this book until after Francis's death in 1916.

E. H. Sothern continued to play Romeo and Hamlet and all the other leading male roles, while his wife Julia played Juliet and all the other leading female roles until she retired in 1924 due to poor health.  After E.H. Sothern's acting career waned, he  gave dramatic recitals and lectures until his death in October 1933.

During one of these lectures, it is possible that E.H. Sothern may have crossed paths with the next owner of  the Ebsworth-Sothern copy of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England: C. F. Tucker Brooke (1883-1946).  Tucker Brooke, as he was known, pasted his Ex Libris bookplate near the top of the front free endpaper of the book.

 Tucker Brooke was one of the first students to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.    In fact, all three recorded owners were in England at the same time in April, 1907:  J. W. Ebsworth in Ashworth, E. H. Sothern in London, and Tucker Brooke in Oxford.

Tucker Brooke was the Shakespeare authority of his time, teaching at Yale from 1909 until 1946. He published numerous books about Shakespeare and several about Christopher Marlowe.   Brooke was the founder and one of the editors of the Yale Shakespeare series.  Although he did not believe in the authorship theory that Christopher Marlowe was Shakespeare, he firmly believed that Marlowe was the original author of the second and third parts of King Henry VI.

I am most familiar with the next owner of the Ebsworth-Sothern-Brooke copy of The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England, having written two blog posts about her and her books:  "Mary Hyde and the Unending Pursuit" in 2008 and "A Virtual Tour of My Mary Hyde Collection"in 2012. Her toad bookplate is pasted on the front free endpaper of this book below the bookplate of Tucker Brooke.

In the early to mid 1940s, Mary Hyde (1912-2003) was still collecting Elizabethan drama, while her husband Donald F. Hyde (1909-1966) was creating an impressive Samuel Johnson Collection.  In her essay, "A Library of Dr. Samuel Johnson," first published in the May 1960 issue of Vassar Alumnae Magazine,  and reprinted in Mary Hyde Eccles: A Miscellany of Essays and Address, by the Grolier Club in New York  in 2002, she wrote:

Despite the influence of the Newton Sale, I continued to collect Elizabethan quartos, several of the plays that I had treated in my book of the 1600-1605 productions, including one star, the 1611 Hamlet.  I also could not resist, though I did not know exactly where to put it, Professor Tucker Brooke's working library of some four thousand volumes! 

The Newton Sale referred to is the Parke-Bernet Galleries auction of the A. Edward Newton Collection of Books and Manuscripts conducted in April, May, and October of 1941.  Newton had a Samuel Johnson Collection second only to that of R. B. Adam.   And the Hydes significantly improved their own Samuel Johnson Collection with their purchases from the Newton Sale.

The book of 1600-1605 productions Mary Hyde refers to is an expansion of the thesis for her doctorate awarded by Columbia University in 1947, Playwriting for Elizabethans 1600-1605,  first published by Columbia University in 1949, and reprinted by Octagon Books in New York in 1973.

While researching for her doctorate, Mary Hyde had access to the Shakespeare and Elizabethan quartos belonging to  A. S. W. Rosenbach and Carl H. Pforzheimer.  And with Rosenbach's help, she assembled "a small but significant collection of Shakespeare and Elizabethan quartos, including the 1611 Hamlet.  This collection was later sold at Christie's in 2004 with prices realized of $1,867,092; the 1611 Hamlet was not sold at the auction, but was sold to a private party afterwards.

Interestingly, one of the books sold at the Christie's auction, lot #84, was formerly owned by Edward Hugh Sothern and Julia Marlowe Sothern, albeit in better condition than Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England.

And there was one very rare book formerly owned by Tucker Brooke in lot #5, Lord Burghley's provenance adding to its value.

Mary Hyde purchased Tucker Brooke's library en bloc shortly after his death in June 1946.  At the time, the gun room served as the library at Four Oaks Farm, and it was filled with their ever-growing Samuel Johnson Collection.  But in  "The Guest Book" chapter of Four Oaks Farm,  privately printed in Somerville, New Jersey in 1967, Mary Hyde reveals that George Knapp, the award-winning gardener of Four Oaks Farm,  also had carpentry skills, and built bookshelves  to house the Tucker Brooke Collection in the attic.  The room then became known as the Tucker Brooke Library.

 The term "working library" best describes the Tucker Brooke Library, most of the books being "scholarly works" rather than "collectibles."  In fact, the Tucker Brooke Collection is not identified in the Four Oaks Farm companion book,  Four Oaks Library,  as one of the collections in the Four Oaks Library.  The acquisition and disposition of the Tucker Brooke Collection evidently were not considered to be significant events because they were not identified in "Mary Hyde Eccles:  A Chronology," located in the preliminary pages of Mary Hyde Eccles:  A Miscellany of Her Essays and Addresses, published by the Grolier Club in 2002.

There is, however, a folder (#2505) in the Mary Hyde Eccles Papers shelved off-site at the Harvard Depository and dated December 1969 which contains photographs of "the moving of the Tucker Brooke Library."  I believe this is when Mary Hyde donated a substantial portion of the Tucker Brooke Collection to a library named after a very dear friend of hers: Arthur Houghton (1906-1990).   But if you're thinking the Houghton Library at Harvard University, you are wrong!  I'm referring to "the other Houghton Library," the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Library, Corning Community College, in Corning, New York.

The Gift Bookplate of the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Library is pasted on the verso of the front free endpaper.  Note:  1957 is the year the College was created, and not when the gift was received.

The Hydes first met Arthur Houghton in November 1940 shortly after their arrival in New York from Detroit.  At the time, Houghton, a rare book collector himself, was Curator of the Rare Book Collection of the Library of Congress.   Arthur Houghton was President of the Shakespeare Association of America from 1949 to 1956, and remained on the Advisory Board while Mary Hyde was President in the early 1960s.

Arthur Houghton, an executive with Corning Glass Works and its subsidiary, Steuben Glass, actually had two libraries named after him.   A graduate of the Harvard Class of 1929, Houghton paid for the construction of a library at Harvard to house its rare book collections and manuscripts in a separate building.  The Houghton Library at Harvard opened in 1942.  In 1960, Arthur Houghton and Corning Glass Ware donated 273 acres of land and $2,225,000 for the construction of a Spencer Hill campus for Corning Community College.  And the library named after him,  the Arthur A. Houghton, Jr. Library, opened in May, 1964.

The gift of the Tucker Brooke Collection to the Arthur A. Houghton Library appears to have been conducted without fanfare or publicity.  The books were gradually absorbed into the library stacks.  There are dates ranging from 11-05-70 to 10-19-72 written in the gutter of the page after the title page in the books I acquired from the library.  I suspect these are the dates the books from the Tucker Hyde Collection were absorbed into the library.  The Ebsworth/Sothern/Brooke/Hyde copy of Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England was absorbed into the Houghton Library on 8-27-71.

And so I gladly add this ex-lib book with all its markings, and all its splendid history of ownership to My Sentimental Library Collection.