Whose Hands Were On This Book?

This blog post is an online version of a presentation I gave before the Florida Bibliophile Society on Sunday, March 29th, 2015.  Lee Harrer, a founding member of the Florida Bibliophile Society, and a member of the Caxton Club of Chicago as well, introduced me.

At a meeting of the Florida Bibliophile Society back in 2004, Lee Harrer gave me a copy of the Caxtonian, the journal of the Caxton Club. It contained an essay he knew I would enjoy reading: "Other People's Books: Association copies and another pleasure of collecting."

Its author, Paul T. Ruxin, collected Samuel Johnson and association copies—same as me.  Only the association copies Paul Ruxin collected were books formerly owned by Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, and their contemporaries.  Now I don't have any books formerly owned by Samuel Johnson or James Boswell in my own library, but I do have over a hundred books formerly owned by a founding member of the modern-day Johnsonians:  Mary Hyde.  And I have about three hundred books formerly owned by authors, performing artists, noted bibliophiles, and other famous people.  What is an association copy, you might ask?  It can be a copy of a book inscribed by its author to a famous person.  Or it could be a copy of a book formerly owned by a famous person in his or her own right.  I call my collection of association copies "My Sentimental Library," after Harry B. Smith's Sentimental Library.  Why do I collect association copies?  For sentimental reasons, the best of which is depicted in the title of my presentation:  Whose Hands Were On This Book?"  I have to thank Maureen E. Mulvihill for that title.  My original title was something like "The Wonders and Blunders of My Collection of Association Copies."

Whose Hands Were On This Book?

Good question!  The only mark of ownership is a bookstamp the size of a dime stamped on the front free endpaper.   The book itself is an odd volume of Johnson's Poets, published in 1779, and one of thirty odd volumes of Johnson's Poets that I bought in Hey-on-Wye in 1988.

It would take more than a little bit of heraldic research to identify whose bookstamp this was.  The crest contained an estoile of eight points argent out of an heraldic coronet proper. The banner contained a quotation that dated back to 1348.  And on top of the banner was the coronet of a duke.

In 1348, the Countess of Salisbury was dancing with King Edward III when her garter loosened and fell to the dance floor.  Other people on the dance floor snickered.  But King Edward picked up the garter, placed it around his own knee, and said, "Honi soit qui mal y pense,"  which translated means, "Shame on him who thinks evil of it."  King Edward had an idea of using the garter as a means of honoring his knights who fought valiently for him.   He created the Most Noble Order of the Garter, much like King Arthur's legendary Knights of the Round Table.

In 2002,  I acquired a copy of Cyril Davenport's book, English Heraldic Book-Stamps.  And, after additional research, I was able to identify John Frederick Sackville, Third Duke of Dorset (1745-1799) as the owner of the bookstamp and thus the book.

Just to be sure, I wrote to The College of Arms.  But it would cost me $400 to confirm my findings.  I was confident of my findings and declined the assistance of the College.

John Frederick Sackville was elected to the Order of the Garter in 1788, but was never inducted.  He served as the Ambassador to France 1783-1789.  Marie Antoinette thought highly of him.  And John Adams thought him an honest man.  Sackville brought his mistress with him to France, a famous ballerina by the name of La Bacelli.  Horace Walpole mentions her in a letter to Hannah More dated July 4, 1788:

You say you hear no news, yet you quote Mr. Topham; therefore, why should I tell you that the King is going to Cheltenham? or that the Bacelli lately danced at the Opera at Paris with a blue bandeau on her forehead inscribed, Honi soit qui mal y pense!  Now who can doubt but she is as pure as the Countess of Salisbury? Was not it ingenious? and was not the ambassador so to allow it? No doubt he took it as a compliment to his own knee."

John Frederick Sackville returned to England at the start of the French Revolution, and retired to his humble abode at Knole House, a calendar house of 365 rooms.  He was a patron of the arts and had one of Sir Joshua Reynolds's paintings of Samuel Johnson at his residence, not to mention a nude sculpture of La Bacelli as well.

Vita Sackville-West was born at Knole House.  Were her  hands on this book?  Her lover, Virginia Woolf, wrote Orlando while at Knole House.  Were her hands on this book?  I wonder. . . .

Here's a copy of Virginia Woolf's Common Reader.  And Mary Morley Crapo's hands were on this book—the maiden name of Mary Hyde, and even later known as Mary Hyde Eccles, or Lady Eccles.

I have Gabriel Austin to thank for many of the Hyde association copies in my library.

Here are just a few of the Hyde association copies :

The last book, Letters of George Birkbeck Hill, was given to Don and Mary Hyde by "EOB" or "EDB" in October 1963.  In a July 2012 message to me, David Buchanan, the author of The Treasure of Auchinleck, identified himself as the donor of the book in 1963.  His full name is Eric David Buchanan.


Whose hands were on this book?

Good question!  and I'm going to need your help with this one.  A rather famous person in his own right, John Dunlap, the printer of the first broadside of The Declaration of Independence, sold this 1770 edition of Johnson's Dictionary.  And Dunlap pasted his bookseller/printer ticket on the front pastedown.

The former owner's name, however, was either worn off or torn off of the top right-hand corner of both the front free endpaper and the Preface page, leaving only the descenders of the first two letters.

But there are several other letters below the signature that you can compare to the letters in the writing samples in the handout I provided for you.

The word his is similar to the letters his in the word this in the bottom right-hand corner.

The D in Dictionary is similar to the Ds on the left-hand side.

The minute break between the ti and the on in the word Dictionary is similar to the break in the ti and on in the word Destruction.

The letters i, a, r, and y are similar.

And the letter N is similar.

The letter s in his could be questionable.  But then the hand that wrote it wrote several variations of the letter in the writing samples I accessed.

I ask you:  Was the hand that wrote His Dictionary the same hand that wrote the letters shown in the writing samples?

The writing samples were taken from John Hancock's business letterbook, which is available online at Harvard.

While I believe that it is John Hancock's hand that wrote His Dictionary, I don't believe that the first letter above His Dictionary is a J.  I believe it is the letter G.  In all writing samples I observed, the ascender of John Hancock's J begins in an upward motion.

But if you look at the ascender in the first letter, it begins in a downward motion, very much like Hancock's G.

In May 2013, I devoted a separate blog post to His Dictionary?   And I'm still researching.  But I would love to hear from an expert or two who would either confirm or refute my findings.
Update:  May 26, 2015  A professional autograph dealer quite familiar with John Hancock's handwriting  does not believe the writing on my book was done by Hancock's hand.


Whose hands were on this book?

The hands of the Grand Master of the Masons of New York, who laid the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty:  William A. Brodie.


Laura E. Richards, a prolific writer herself, was the owner of the book shown below, which was written by another prolific writer, Andrew Lang.

And Laura Richards's mother was a rather famous poet.  When Laura was young, the family would stand around the piano and sing.  And sometimes her mother would make up new words to old songs.

Now this may never have happened; but I can imagine Laura in 1863, twelve or thirteen years old.  She hears soldiers singing as they march past her house in Boston.  She runs to the porch, smiles, and says rather proudly: "My mother wrote that song."

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. . . ."


Whose hands were on this book?
I'll  give you a hint: A little bitty tear let me down. . . .

Yes.  Burl Ives.  But the book is inscribed to his son Alexander Ives.

The author, John Patric, was a wacadoodle—anti-government, anti-everything.  Patric lived like a hermit in Frying Pan Creek, and wanted Alexander to convince his father to come visit "so the next two decades would be better than the last two."  Patric is referring to Burl Ives being branded as a Communist and testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

I have another book formerly owned by Burl Ives.  And if he were alive today, and if the current House committees got wind of it, he'd be testifying again.

Next book!
Clue!
"You dirty rat!"

Yes.
 James Cagney.
 Interference was the first "talkie" produced by Paramount Pictures.

And here's a book formerly owned by the movie star, Anthony Quinn, who lived in Italy in the 1950s.

Paul Lemperly, a founding member of the Rowfant Club, had a unique system of obtaining signed copies of books.  He had E. D. French make a bookplate for him.  Then Lemperly would buy a copy of an author's book, paste the bookplate in it, and  mail the book to the author requesting his or her autograph.  He got more than an autograph from the poet Robert Nichols.  He got a holograph letter.

W. S. B. was William Stanley Braithewaite, the African-American poet and columnist.


Here's a book that J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps presented to James Russell Lowell, who was our minister to England at the time.  I own several books from Halliwell-Phillipps's library as well.

In 2002, I posted to the rec.collecting.books newsgroup about an online find from the Strand bookstore.  It was a copy of To Dr. R, which contained a festschrift of essays in honor of A. S. W. Rosenbach's seventieth birthday.  The Strand listing said this copy of the book was inscribed by Joseph Conrad.  The Strand notified me after I ordered the book that their listing was in error. The book was not inscribed by Joseph Conrad; it was inscribed by a Joseph Carson to one of his own daughters (Good thing, because Conrad died twenty-two years before this book was ever published).  I told the Strand to send me the book anyway.  I didn't care who signed it.  I just wanted the book.  I had dial-up webtv at the time, so  after I initiated the online search of "Joseph Carson" I picked up the book to browse it for a few minutes, and three sheets of folded paper tucked in near the end of the book literally fell in my lap!  It was an obituary of Rosenbach by Joseph Carson.

Here's another blunder!

If you believe the information written on the rear pastedown of the book,  General Andrew Jackson bought this book in a bookstore in Washington D. C. on Dec. 24th, 1828.  But Jackson was miles away on Dec 24th 1828 burying his wife at the Hermitage in Tennessee.

And on the front pastedown, the same hand—not Jackson's—wrote December 28th, 1828, Saturday.  But that date in 1828 was a Sunday.

Here's a book that had Zane Grey's embossed stamp on the front free endpaper.  I acquired  the book from a respectable bookseller.  Only the book was published in 1941 and Zane Grey died in 1939.  Come to find out, Zane Grey's wife was still stamping books she received with her husband's stamp.  And yes, the bookseller made amends.

I have what I thought was a rather unique collection: books about bathrooms and outhouses.  Come to find out it's not so unique.

One of Fritz Liebert's favorites was two copies of Charles Lindbergh's We side-by-side.

Whose hands were on the next book?  Good question.  Someone excised the signature of the owner.  But I love the former owner's humor.

Finally, the issue of the Caxtonian wasn't the only thing from the Caxton Club that Lee Harrer gave me.  In early 2008, he gave me a copy of a lettter from the Caxton Club calling for submissions for a book  to be published about association copies.

I submitted several stories of association copies, and a committee selected  my story, "Hither-unpublished Obiter Dicta," as one of the fifty-two essays for the book.  I had Augustine Birrell's copy of Lord Acton's Lectures on the French Revolution, with marginalia in Birrell's hand.  Birrell was the Irish Secretary leading up to the Easter Rising in 1916.  And I believed his thoughts on the French Revolution would make an interesting story.

On March 18, 2011, I attended the Caxton Club Book Launch Party at the Newberry Library in Chicago.  I sat at a table with Paul Ruxin, Terry Seymour, and the bookbinder Samuel B. Ellenport.

I carried my copies of the book with me from table to table, acquiring signatures of some of the other authors, and providing my own for them.

                           And pinned to my jacket pocket that night, was this name tag:

 I hope you enjoyed this presentation.  I enjoyed presenting it.  I am the author of over one hundred blog posts on the web about my books.  And I think you will enjoy reading some of them:

My Sentimental Library,

Biblio-Connecting,

Biblio Researching,

Contemplations of MoiBibliomaniac,

Bibliophiles in my Library,

Idlewild Blue Yonder,

and

The Displaced Book Collector

About Samuel Johnson's Undergraduate Library

From January to May 2008, I helped catalogue the library of Samuel Johnson on Library Thing.   But as one Johnsonian, A. W. Hutton,  put it,  Mr. Christie's 1785 auction catalogue was "the worst book catalogue ever produced."  Only twenty percent of the books listed in the catalogue were identified by title.  So we relied heavily on Donald Greene's guide.  And on May 12th, 2008, we called the cataloguing of Johnson's library complete.  Nine months later, however,  someone more versed than I in the good doctor's life told me about Samuel Johnson's "Undergraduate Library:" the books he had brought with him to college at Oxford:

There are also the 80 odd books that Johnson refers to in a 1735 letter to Gilbert Repington that he wished to have sent to him from Oxford as the basis for the library at Edial.  How many of these later followed him to London, one can only guess at.

I didn't remember reading anything in Boswell's Life of Johnson about a personal library of books that Johnson brought with him to college at Oxford.   Nor were these books mentioned in any of G. B. Hill's numerous notes either.  A. W. Hutton didn't mention them in his talk on "Dr. Johnson's Library" before the Johnson Club on June 11, 1892 (later reprinted in Johnson Club Papers, London and New York, 1899).  Nor did Austin Dobson mention them in his article on "Dr. Johnson's Library," which appeared in The Graphic on Oct, 8,1892 ( later reprinted in Eighteenth Century Vignettes II as "Johnson's Library" in 1894).

I grabbed Vol I of the Hyde Edition of the Letters  of Samuel Johnson 1731-1772 down from the shelf and read Johnson's letter to Repington.  Johnson  mentions writing a catalogue of the books on the other side of the letter.  But the catalogue does not accompany the rest of the letter in the Hyde Edition.  Instead,  there is a footnote, which reads "The catalogue lists eighty-six items, which are described in detail by A. L. Reade (Johns. Glean. V.214-29)."


From The Hyde Edition

A. L. Reade's Johnsonian Gleanings had already been on my want list; Part V quickly moved to my had-to-have list.  And soon,  Parts IV, V, and VI  of Johnsonian Gleanings were on my bookshelves—the ebay seller sent the wrong volume so I bought all three just to be sure I got Part V.   I also realized I needed more current biographies of Samuel Johnson in my library.  And in the months to follow I bought a few.  And I read what modern Johnsonian scholars had to say about the books Johnson brought with him to Oxford:

    In late October 1728 the nineteen-year old Sam Johnson and his father took the eighty-mile, two-day journey to Oxford on horseback.  A wagon lumbered behind, carrying Sam’s meager personal possessions and a substantial library of more than a hundred books in Latin and English.  Despite the often strained relations of father and son, they both valued these books, which had depleted Michael’s stock (31).
                                             Samuel Johnson:  The Struggle 
                                             By Jeffrey Meyers, New York: 2008

“With the clutch of books he had selected following later by wagon, he and his proud father set off for the academic Promised Land (72).”
                                              Samuel Johnson:  A Biography
                                               By Peter Martin, Cambridge: 2008

He had brought with him to Oxford a library of almost a hundred books, more than all but the most learned would have read by the time they left.  But for him, they were books to be read for amusement, not tomes to study:  what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer and Euripedes, and now and then a little Epigram (27).
                                              Samuel Johnson:  A Life
                                               By David Nokes, New York: 2009
                                                (uncorrected proof)

I disagree with David Nokes's opinion that Johnson's books were "books to be read for amusement, not tomes to study."  As Jeffrey Meyers pointed out, these books depleted Michael Johnson's stock.  Would Samuel Johnson have depleted his father's stock for amusement only?  He wanted the books for study at Oxford and would later want them for his students to study at the school he started in Edial.

Another modern Johnsonian scholar has a different opinion of what Johnson read while at Oxford:

The best evidence we have of what Johnson was reading shortly before and during college is a list of books he wrote on the back of a letter to Gilbert Repington, a friend of the friend with whom Johnson left his books when he departed from Oxford in December 1729 (92).
                        Samuel Johnson And the Life of Reading
                        By Robert DeMaria Jr. Baltimore 2009 (1997)

The reason why James Boswell, George Birkbeck Hill,  A. W. Hutton, and Austin Dobson didn't know about the books Johnson brought with him to Oxford was because they didn't know about Johnson's letter to Repington.  Gilbert Repington forwarded Johnson's letter to Richard Congreve (Johnson had asked about Mr. Congreve in the letter).  And the letter remained undisturbed in the Congreve Family papers for 174 years.

 We can thank J. Schomberg for discovering  Johnson's letter to Repington in the Congreve family papers, and submitting it to The Athenaeum for publication in 1909.  You can read her newspaper article below, or you can view it online at Haithi Trust:

Something needs to be said about J. Schomberg—her name is Miss Julia Schomberg—especially in light of her remarks about Mr.  Spicer, who had taken care of Johnson's books:

Mr. Spicer was a gentleman seemingly of temporary obscurity, who now, we may hope will attain immortality.

As far as Johnsonians are concerned, Miss Julia Schomberg appears to have been reduced to two footnotes in Johnsonian Gleanings, Part V, nary a footnote in the Hyde Edition of Johnson's letters, and seemingly, not a word of acknowledgment by Jeffrey Meyers,  Peter Martin or David Nokes in their biographies of Samuel Johnson..  Miss Julia Schomberg had previously sent The Athenaeum two other Johnson letters she discovered in the Congreve family papers, one on May 23, 1908 and another on May 8, 1909.  From what she wrote in The Athenaeum articles, she knew more than a little about Samuel Johnson, having researched Boswell's Life of SJ as well as "the sale catalogue of Dr. Johnson's goods."  Her own interesting papers are filed in the national archives at the Staffordshire County Record Office, along with the records of the Congreve family.

A. L. Reade published Part I of Johnsonian Gleanings in 1909, the same year Miss Julia  Schomberg  sent Johnson's Letter to Repington to The Athenaeum.  Reade would spend a lifetime researching the life of Samuel Johnson, privately printing Johnsonian Gleanings in eleven parts from 1909 to 1952.  Reade's papers at the University of Liverpool, Special Collections and Archives, indicate that he contacted the Congreve family at least once (in 1918).  Part V:  The Doctor's Life:  1728-1735 was first published in 1928 and set the record straight on Johnson's days at Oxford, including how long he was at Oxford.  And in Appendix K of Part V, Reade identified all but one of the books Johnson brought with him to Oxford.  Reade dubbed the books "Johnson's Undergraduate Library."  He mentioned that he had identified many of the books himself, but required the help of  L. F. Powell, Taylorian Librarian at Oxford, Dr. Henry Guppy, Librarian of the John Rylands Library at Manchester, and Mr. Leonard Whibley, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge.   Reade's catalogue of Johnson's Undergraduate Library can be viewed online at Archive. org.

From December 2009 to June 2010, using Reade's Appendix K, I catalogued Samuel Johnson's Undergraduate Library on Library Thing.  And with today's research capabilities, I was able to identify several more possible editions of the books in Johnson's Undergraduate Library.  Just recently I may have identified the one book Reade had problems identifying:


Vol II only. Undergraduate Library listing reads: "Milton's Poems Vol. 2D."

 In Appendix K of Johnsonian Gleanings, Part V,  A. L. Reade wrote: "We can scarcely identify this edition. It is of interest to know that Johnson the undergraduate had some of Milton, whom he quotes frequently in the Dictionary."

And here's my research and listing from Library Thing:


 It is difficult, even today, to sort out Jacob Tonson’s editions of Milton’s Poems. He published Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d separately in numerous editions. And he combined them in a one-volume folio edition in 1695 under the title, The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton. Jacob Tonson published two-volume octavo editions using this same general title in 1705 and 1707. The general title, however, was printed on the half-title pages only. The title page of the first volume of the 1705 and 1707 editions contained the title, Paradise Lost, while the title page of Volume the Second contained the title(s), Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes, and Poems Upon Several Occasions. In 1720, his nephew, also named Jacob Tonson, published a two-volume quarto edition—but the general title, The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, was printed on the title pages of both volumes. In addition to Paradise Regain'd, Samson Agonistes, and Poems Upon Several Occasions, Volume the Second also contained A Tracate of Education, a system of education Johnson discussed and Boswell recorded in his Life (Hill, III, 358).  It stands to reason that Samuel Johnson may have had Vol the Second (2D) of either the 1705, 1707, or—more likely—the 1720 edition of The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, in his undergraduate library. But we must also remember that Samuel Johnson was the son of a bookseller. And he may have considered Paradise Regain'd and the other poems published in the volume with it to be "Vol.  2D" of Milton's "Poems." In fact, Samuel Johnson owned a copy of the 1725 edition of Paradise Regain'd . . ., which is now in the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Samuel Johnson in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.  And that is probably the edition that Reade could not identify.

A Gathering Of Other People's Collected Letters

In my library, there is a library table in the design of a book.  And on this library table are two rows —and counting—of books of other people's collected letters:  from Charles Lamb's letters on the far left, to Michelangelo's letters on the far right.

And in the middle of my library table are the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Queen Victoria, John Steinback,  Louisa May Alcott, Alexander Woolcott, Charles Darwin,  Joyce Kilmer, Robert Southey, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, just to name a few.

And on my library shelves, in my Mary Hyde collection, are still more volumes of other people's collected letters—books which once stood tall on the bookshelves of the Four Oaks Library:

To me,  reading other people's letters is like being a fly on the wall who peers over the shoulders of authors as they share their thoughts on paper with friends and acquaintances.

Here is a gathering of ten other people's letters that you may enjoy reading:


TO THE REVEREND FATHER IN CHRIST, FRATE JACOPO JESUATO IN FLORENCE

Frate Jacopo—As I have to have certain things painted here, or rather to paint them, I have occasion to inform you of the fact, as I need a certain amount of fine quality azure, and if you have some you could provide me with immediately, it would be a great convenience to me.  So arrange to send to your brethren here as much of the fine quality as you have available and I promise to take it at the just price.  And before I collect the azure I'll have the money paid to you, either there or in Florence, whichever you prefer.
    On the thirteenth day of May [1508].
    YOUR MICHELANGELO SCULPTOR IN ROME

Sir Thomas Bodley's letter detailing the building of what is now known as Duke Humfrey's Library:

TO THOMAS JAMES, FIRST KEEPER OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY

Sir, Mr Principal Hawley, hath sent me some part, of your Cambridge collections :  which were worthy the copieng, for their age and antiquitie :  though they giue but little light, for any point that was in doubt, about the builders and building of our third erected Librarie.  Howbeit it should appeere, by Mr Principals letter, that yow have better stuffe behind, to cleere many doubts, that may concerne that whole foundation.  This makes me long for your returne, though I would not yow should hasten, to leaue any thing vnobserued, that is there to be had of any worthe, ether touching our foundations, or the order, and statutes, and regiment of their Libraries:  which also I hope, they will impart without any scruple.
   Within this fortnight, I trust,  I shall haue ended with my carpenters, ioiners, caruers, glasiers, and all that idle rabble : and then I goe in hand, with making vp my barres, lockes, haspes, grates, cheines, and other gimmoes of iron, belonging to the fastning and riuetting of the bookes : which I thinke  I shall haue finished, within two or three monethes.  But of this and other maters, we shall heereafter conferre, at very good leasure.  In the meane while, I can not but enjoine yow, to be carefull of your health, and not to be more lauishe, then yow must of mere necessitie, in wearing out your eies, with the transcriptes of those dustie, and rustie parchment manuscriptes.
                                          your trewe affected frind
From Aino [Aynho] Dec 24. [1599]      Tho. Bodley.

Yow must by no means omitte, to take good notice of their orders, in placing and disposing their librarie books : whether they doe it, by the Alphabet, or according to the Faculties.

I haue a brother dwelling at Bluntsham, within 10. miles of Cambridge : to whome I would intreat yow to conuey the inclosed by such meanes, as yow may ether finde out by the Cambridge London cariar, or by some other where yow are.

TO GILBERT REPINGTON

Sir                                               Lichfield, May 18th, 1735

   I hope You will not imagine from my Silence, that I neglected the kind offer which You[r] Brother was pleased to make, that You would take care about my Books; I had wrote much sooner, but that I did not know till to day wither to direct.
  The Books, (of which I have written a Catalogue on the other side) were left with Mr. Taylor from whom I had reason to expect a high regard to my Affairs.  There were in the same box, which I left lock'd, some papers of a very private Nature, which I hope fell into good hands.  The Books are now, I hear, with Mr. Spicer of Christ Church.  I beg you, Dear sir, that you will be pleased to collect them with what care you can, and transmit them directed to me at the Castle in Birmingham Warwickshire, to which a Carrier goes weekly from Oxford.  I will very thankfully repay the expenses of the Boxes, Porters, and Letters to your Brother, or whoever else You shall think fit to receive 'em.  I am sorry to give You this trouble which I hope You'll excuse from a former Schoolfellow.  Be pleased to answer this by the next post, for I long to know in what condition my affairs stand.  If Mr. Congreve be in college pray pay my compliments to him, and let him know I should think his correspondence a pleasure and would gladly write to him, if I was inform'd what college he is of.  I have many other Acquaintance in the University whom I remember with Pleasure, but shall not  trouble You with messages, for I shall esteem You sufficiently kind if you manage this Affair for, Dear Sir, Your humble Servant,

                                                           Sam.  Johnson
My humble Service to Mr. Spicer.

NOTE: "Johnson's Undergraduate Library," as these books became known as, is my tentative topic for next month's blog post.



TO S. T. COLERIDGE
                                                                         September 27, 1796

  My dearest friend,—White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family.  I will only give you the outlines.  My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother.  I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp.  She is at present in a madhouse, from whence she must be moved to an hospital.
  God has preserved to me my senses,—I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound.  My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt.  Mr. Norris of the bluecoat school has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do.  Write,—as religious a letter as possible but no mention of what is gone and done with.—With me 'the former things are passed away,' and I have something more to do than feel.
  God Almighty have us all in His keeping!
                                                                                    C. Lamb
Mention nothing of poetry.  I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind.  do as you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a book I charge you.
   Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife.  You look after your family; I have my reason and strength to take care of mine.  I charge you, don't think of coming to see me.  Write.  I will not see you if you come.  God Almighty love you and all of us!

TO WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
         
To Walter Savage Landor, Esq.
          Kesdwick, Jan 23, 1811

. . . Your abhorrence of Spencer is a strange heresy.  I admit that he is inferior to Chaucer (who for variety of power has no competitor except Shakespeare), but he is the great master of English versification, incomparably the greatest master in our language.  Without being insensible to the defects of the Fairy Queen, I am never weary of reading it.  Surely Chaucer is as much a  poet as it was possible for him to be when the language was so rude a state.  There seems to be a material point of difference between us—you think we have little poetry which was good for any thing before Milton; I, that we have little since, except in our own immediate days.  I do not say there was much before, but what was there was sterling verse in sterling English.  It had thought and meaning in it.  At present, the surest way to become popular is to have as little of either ingredient as possible.
 Have you read Captain Pasley's book? I take it for my text in the next Quarterly, and would fain make it our political Bible.
                                God bless you!                          R.  S.
                                                                  [Robert Southey]

 

TO JAMES T. FIELDS:

                                                                 Concord May 28th [1864]
    My Dear Mr Fields

   Many thanks for the green 'Maine Woods,' through which I have been delightfully wandering in spite of rainy weather, feeling the while as if Thoreau were walking with me again, so entirely does he seem to have put himself in the book.
  Mrs. Hawthorne frequently expresses her satisfaction in & gratitude for the fitting & friendly cares bestowed upon her & hers during the sad yet beautiful Monday which will not soon be forgotten.  Mr Hawthorne is gone but [she] still finds herself patiently, hopefully awaiting his return.  Many of us have the same feeling, I fancy, because he was one of those who are felt not seen, & we all not really miss him till we turn the last leaf of his story without end.
  Father and mother desired to be remembered, & with love to Cousin Annie I am
                                                                          Very Truly Yours
                                                                          L. M. Alcott


TO THE CROWN PRINCESS OF PRUSSIA       15 February 1878

Mr. Gladstone goes on like a madman.  I never saw anything to equal the want of patriotism and the want of proper decency in Members of Parliament.  It is a miserable thing to be a constitutional Queen and to be unable to do what is right.  I would gladly throw all up and retire into quiet.
                                                                [Queen Victoria]

TO R. L. STEVENSON:
                                                  Box Hill, Dorking, April 16, 1879

MY DEAR STEVENSON,—I have had but the song of a frog for a correspondent since your last letter reached me; and my note is Batrachian still.  A hint of suppressed influenza seems to have been the cause. . . .
My 'Egoist' has been out of my hands for a couple of months, but Kegan Paul does not wish to publish it before October.  I don't think you will like it: I doubt of those who care for my work will take to it at all.  And for this reason, after doing my best with it, I am in no hurry to see it appear.  It is a Comedy, with only half of me in it, unlikely therefore to take either the public or my friends.  This is true truth, but I warned you that I am cursed with a croak.—I am about one quarter through 'The Amazing Marriage,' which I promise you, you shall like better. . . .
                                                      Yours very cordially,
                                                       George Meredith

TO AMY LOWELL:

           Dear Miss Lowell,                                3 March 1924 Paris

  It is simply ridiculous for me to try to thank you.  From the time that I posted my letter to you I lived in hope and fear that you would do precisely what you did—hope because I knew you could help me more than anyone else and fear because I know I had no right to ask you to do it. . . .
  Your suggestion that I do critical work to get into step with myself is a very keen bit of analysis.  I have a perfect clear cut dissatisfaction with what I have already done but no more than a sort of sense of gravitation toward the thing that would give me satisfaction to do.  Of course I have been trying to get my ideas into shape but they remain pretty nebulous so far.  The rhythmic problem troubles me for one thing.  I suppose the truth is that old brother Algernon made deeper ruts in my brain than I supposed.  Diluted Algernon of course.  I find that under the pressure of any sort of emotion I fall back into cadences which I know to be stale before I use them.   Working with deliberation I can get effects that don't disgust me on rereading but only then.  That's one thing.  The other is the equally basic problem of verbiage.  Where are the living waters of the word?  . . . The trouble is that you people who made poetry of natural diction, who threw the poetic vocabulary so-called into the ashes where it belonged, have left little for the bottom layer but extremities.  I don't mean that I sympathize with the position which you so effectively squash—the position of those who apparently put idiosyncrasy above poetry.  But I do mean that one must get hold of a speech which seems to him fresh—as you did—with the additional factor that you carried over the impression to the rest of the world.  I suppose one answer to my difficulty is the perfectly tenable theory that you can only get a certain amount of poetry out of the speech of any particular age anyway.  But one doesn't believe that sort of thing until one has to. . . .
As I say it is ridiculous for me to try to thank you.  But its all I can do.  Please believe that you have done one of the kindest and most generous things on record in the elaborate books.  Only the suspicion that I wasn't worth saving can possibly detract from your piece of mind.
                   Ada sends you her love and I that and all my gratitude.
                                                         Archie MacLeish

TO IRA GERSHWIN:
                                                                                           
                                                                               New York City
                                                                            November 10, 1934
          Ira Gershwin

        Listen, you contumacious rat, don't throw your dreary tomes at me.  I'll give you an elegant dinner of your own choosing and sing to you between the courses if you can produce one writer or speaker, with an ear for the English language which you genuinely respect, who uses 'disinterested' in the sense you are now trying to bolster up.  I did look it up in my own vast Oxford dictionary a few years ago only to be told that it had been obsolete since the seventeenth century.  I haven't looked up the indices in your letter because, after all, my own word in such matters is final.  Indeed, current use of the word in the seventeenth century sense is a ghetto barbarism I had previously thought confined to the vocabularies of Ben Hecht and Jed Harris.  Surely, my child, you must see that if 'disinterested' is in our time, intend to convey a special shade of the word 'unselfish' it is a clumsy business to try to make it also serve another meaning.  That would be like the nit-wit practice of the woman who uses her husband's razor to sharpen her pencil.  The point of the pencil may emerge, but the razor is never good again for its peculiar purpose.
                                        Hoping you fry in hell, I remain
                                                          Yours affectionately,
                                                           A. W.
                                                          [Alexander Woolcott]

                                                                                                 
References:

Harper, Henry H. (1905)  The Letters of Charles Lamb In which Mutilated Words and Passages Have Been Restored to Their Original Form; with Letters Never Before Published And Facsimiles of Original Letters and Poems (Volume II).  Boston: The Bibliophile society

Hibbert, Christopher (1985) Queen Victoria In Her Letters and Journals.  New York:  Viking.

Kaufman, Beatrice and Hennesey, Joseph (1944)   The Letters of Alexander Woolcott.  New York:  Viking Press.

Letters of George Meredith Collected and Edited by His Son Volume I 1844-1881 (1912) New York:  Charles Scribner's Sons.

Myerson Joel, Shealy Daniel and Stern, Madeleine B. (1987)  The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott.  Boston:  Little Brown and Company.

Ramsden, E. H. (1963)  The Letters of Michelangelo (Volume I).  Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Redford, Bruce (1992) The Letters of Samuel Johnson Volume I 1731-1772 (The Hyde Edition). Princeton:  Princeton University Press.

Southey, Rev. Charles Cuthbert [1850?] The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey.  New York:  Harper and Brothers.  Note: Reviewed in The American Review, March 1850.

Wheeler, G. W. (1926)  Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley To Thomas James, First Keeper of the Bodlean Library.  Oxford:  Clarendon Press.

Winnick, R. H. (1983) Letters of Archibald MacLeish 1907-1982.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Company.

You can view the listings of all of my books of Other People's Collected Letters on Library Thing.