A== = c= o A = = o 3 = cr — ■ — i -— X o a " Tj ^— ^ o 1 = x) — m 4 S =^= o 9 ■ ' > 2 ■ =^^ JO 4 m > ™ X 1 S = J> ^= n 1 ■ ^S^ The Fomance of the Bibliophile Soe? ety By Nathan Haskell Dole THE ROMANCE OF HE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY THE ROMANCE OF THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY • • « • • • I « • • •• •••«•••• ■ • • . • • ••• v • • • • • THE ROMANCE OF THE BIBLIOPHILE SOCIETY By Nathan Haskell Dole The purpose of this article is not to boast the eminent success of The Bibliophile Society, but 7 merely to call the attention of the members — and especially those who have joined in recent iV years — to certain concrete facts which must surely appear more or less romantic, even to many of our charter members. There are in- deed charter members who, although they have ^i acquired the publications in an unbroken series ; from the beginning, are not fully cognizant of } the potentiality and uniqueness of the organ- ization to which they belong. The writer was, so to speak, one of the origi- nal accoucheurs at The Bibliophile Society's birth, and for the first ten years of its existence was its President; and although deeming it [ 3 ] I 16 best at the end of that time to resign, so as to bring about some rotation of office, he has never in the least lost interest in its affairs; therefore he makes no apology for presumption in chronicling the rather romantic history of the organization. On February 5, 1901, practically beginning with the new century, The Bibliophile Society was formed and incorporated, having tor its object "the study and promotion of the arts pertaining to fine book-making and illustrating, and the occasional publication of specially de- signed and illustrated books, for distribution among its members at a minimum cost of pro- duction." The gratifying response to the first lot of an- nouncements sent out proved that "the kindred interests of bibliophiles are of themselves suf- ficient to sustain a mutual compact to cherish their common interests quite independently of the elements of proximity and personal acqaint- anceship," and in a few months the member- ship limit was reached and the initial publica- tion was begun. In a sense the genial Quintus Horatius Flac- cus, friend of Augustus Caesar and Maecenas, 1 4 1 was the patron saint of our organization. A small Horace Society with members belonging to several colleges had been struggling along for some years, occupying itself chiefly with in- terpretative readings whenever the members met. Eventually it occurred to one of the non- collegiate members, John Paul Bocock, that it might be an appropriate scheme to bring out an edition of Horace with translations; but the club was not sufficiently endowed with money and members to do this. About this time the unorganized forces of the new-born Bibliophile Society were casting about for an appropriate foundation stone, and Mr. Bocock, having heard of the new book society, presented his ideas for the Horace publication, which were promptly accepted. He was made a member of the Council and editor-in-chief of the notes and translations of the projected edition, while Clement Lawrence Smith, LL.D., professor of Latin in Harvard University, undertook to edit the Latin text. In due time Mr. Bocock furnished an extra- ordinary undigested mass of material consisting of notes and translations of Horace, amounting in all to nearly a thousand pages of manuscript. [ 5 ] A cursory examination — the adjective is ap- plicable even if the accent be doubly applied to the first syllable — showed that his treatment of the matter was quite inadequate to our re- quirements. A letter was despatched to him telling him that the style and treatment of the odes would have to be greatly modified. He re- plied very curtly that the manuscript was writ- ten just as he wanted it and that it would have to be printed exactly as it was written. As the easiest way out of the difficulty he was paid the stipulated price for his work and was allowed to withdraw, which he did in high dudgeon. Then the Treasurer and the President took the quarry to a certain sky-den in a newly-built house on Israel's Head at Ogunquit, Maine, overlooking the much-roaring sea, and spent many long weeks in reading, recasting, revis- ing, changing, adding, polishing, substituting more elegant English for slipshod sentences, and gradually getting the huge pile of material into shape fit for publication. On one occasion an ink-bottle was inadver- tently overturned on the virgin floor and al- though sapolio and milk and sand and hot water were applied the boards still keep the t 6 ] stain of that unfortunate accident, and serve each summer to recall the mighty labors ex- pended in those early days of our Society's his- tory. Who knows but that in time to come it may serve as an object of veneration and pil- grimage and require a commemorative tablet, just as the muddy stain from the glass of wine spilt by General Lafayette on that new carpet in the Sherburne House in Portsmouth is now displayed with more pride than anything else in the fine old mansion. At all events the for- mer president of The Bibliophile Society would be proud to conduct any member to that giddy height where the ink-spot makes a little black- and-white wash-drawing on the floor ! It may be added that this, the first distinct mark made in the world by The Bibliophile Society, forms no blot upon its present escutcheon. It was no easy task to collect and arrange in chronological sequence the bibliography of all the hundreds of editions of Horace, to read the proofs and decide all the moot questions that came up as the enterprise proceeded. I am free to confess that the Treasurer, who rarely permits anything to interrupt steady applica- tion, must have felt a little annoyed when his [ 7 ] co-worker would occasionally suspend labor for an hour or so in the middle of the forenoon to take advantage of the tide for his daily plunge. It was a happy thought of Mr. Harper's to invite various members of the Society to take part in editing the Fourth Book of the Horace, printing the favorite translation of each op- posite the ode assigned and contributing to each a bibliographical or personal note. Mr. Harper himself set the example in selecting the translations and contributing a scholarly intro- duction to the fourth ode. That was a distin- guished corps of collaborators: Doctor Kirby Flower Smith, of Johns Hopkins University; Howard J. Rogers, superintendent of public instruction for the state of New York; the Hon. Whitelaw Reid, United States ambassador to England; George Alfred Stringer; Professor William P. Trent, of Columbia University; Professor Theodore M. Barber; "Governor" John D. Long, statesman, poet, wit and friend of inextinguishable memory; Roswell Field, whose collaboration with his brother Eugene Field in rendering Horace into light and grace- ful English made the volume of Echoes from the Sabine Farm one of the treasures of literature ; [ 8 ] Charles E. Hurd, painter, scholar, and literary editor of the Boston Transcript — also one of the Council until his lamented death ; the Hon. Henry Wayland Hill, of Buffalo; the Hon. Henry Hitchcock, at that time Secretary of the Interior; and last in order, but not least, the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, senator from Mass- achusetts, who is still a member of the Council. The President also contributed his mite in edit- ing one of the odes, to which he furnished his own translation. In format, in style of print- ing, in richness of page margins, in appropri- ateness of decoration, the Bibliophile Horace immediately attracted wide attention, and at many auctions in subsequent years, its appear- ance on sale elicited lively competition. Speaking of auction-sales, the Society has consistently discouraged judgment of the vol- umes by the prices current at such competitions, One member, disloyal to the principles on which the Society was founded, — and who was quiet- ly dropped from the roster because it was dis- covered that as soon as he obtained his allotted volumes they were sent to the block,- — com- plained, asserting that he supposed he was fulfilling his membership requirements if he [ 9 ] subscribed for all the issues. While there is no specific rule preventing members from doing as they please with their books, yet considering the fact that generous members have loaned us valuable MSS. to print, without accepting any compensation for the publication rights, and considering also the amount of gratuitous labor involved, it will be seen that the completed books carry a considerable valuation not actu- ally included in their cost to members; there- fore under the circumstances the Council has what may be termed a moral right to expel a member whose motives in joining are mani- festly opposed to the avowed principles of the Society. Members have occasionally encoun- tered hard times and been obliged to liquidate their assets; and I wonder how many such members our Treasurer has quietly assisted by arranging for the transfer of their Bibliophile books to new members who desired to complete their files, or in buying them outright and dis- tributing them among members with no at- tempt at speculation. It has been remarkable what high prices have been obtained for certain issues, for the comparatively large membership and the usual [ io ] habit of a large percentage of the members to subscribe for all the issues has not made the limit of issue very small. The anecdote is well authenticated of a man who, holding the only two extant copies of a famous book, deliber- ately destroyed one of them so as to make the other unique. The Society has had no such selfish estimate of the value of books. It has been the purpose to have a large number of book-lovers interested in the same treasures and not to restrict the number of copies below reasonable limits. For this reason also the So- ciety has carefully chosen its product in the light of intrinsic merit. They are all books to read and reread, to display not merely because they are rare but because they are beautiful — beautiful in typography, beautiful in paper, beautiful in decoration ; in a word, beautiful in everything that goes to make the perfect vol- ume. If they bring high prices at sales, it is because of their intrinsic worth, and the fur- ther fact that owners, and often the heirs of the original members, hold closely to them, con- tinue the membership, and in turn become en- thusiastic adherents to the principles of the Society. [ » ] More than one member, as I happen to know, has devoted a special room to the collection, ar- raying the prints on the walls and preserving the attractive prospectuses of the publications, for these have been printed with care and due regard for appropriateness, and represent no small thought. The complete series of Biblio- phile volumes present a united front, so to speak; they represent a small army of — well, let us say steadfast friends, for all books worth anything are friends. They possess a distinct individuality, both separately and collectively. Grouped together on the library shelves they present a cynosure upon which the eye of the most casual observer will invariably rest, and when examined scrutinizingly they are at once the pride of their possessor and the envy of his bibliopolic friends. The Bibliophile books, moreover, are truly representative of the age in which they are produced; and as the poetry of Dante, because it accurately portrays the spirit and manners of its age, will live through all time, so in generations and centuries to come the series of volumes issued by The Bibliophile Society will attain historic importance not alone for their literary contents, but as the represen- [ 12 ] tative labors of the best artists, the best etchers and engravers, the best printers and other arti- sans, and as typifying the best taste of the era in which they were produced. The long list of elaborate engraved title- pages alone makes the volumes unique in the annals of fine bookmaking. In this group of titlepages — most of them costing well up into the hundreds of dollars — is now to be found the finest work of nearly every American cop- per plate engraver of note in the early part of the twentieth century. The Horace and First Year Book have titlepages from direct process plates after original pen drawings by the late Howard Pyle ; two of the Year Books have title- pages designed and etched by Sidney Smith; the Andre Journal and the Lamb Letters con- tain examples of the finest, and almost the last, work of Edwin D. French — indeed they repre- sent two of the only four titlepages by him that were ever published. A single proof print of the Andre Journal titlepage has been known to sell for more than the original cost of a com- plete copy of the work. The clever handiwork of the late J. A. J. Wilcox is to be found in the vol- umes of Theocritus, Bion & Moschus, the Varick [ 13 ] Court of Inquiry, and one of the Year Books. The Payne-Shelley volume and the Dickens- Beadnell Correspondence were adorned by elab- orate titlepages designed and engraved by F. S. King. W. H. W. Bicknell etched on copper the charming titlepages to Rossetti's Poem "Der arme Heinrich," the poem by Keats addressed to his sister Fannie, and the Bryant and Tho- reau poems — the latter two publications being printed entirely on sheepskin parchment. And this same brilliant artist has furnished no less than half a hundred other examples of his work, besides the two portfolios of large etchings and portraits which are recognized as masterpieces in that noble art. One of our own members, Mr. W. F. Hop- son, designed and engraved the admirable title- pages to Thoreau's Walden and the Sixth Year Book. He also engraved on wood the first plate made for the Society and this reproduced on copper by the late J. W. Spenceley has been used for a subtitle in nearly every publication we have put forth, — being always changed to suit the name, year, and limit of each work. Our Seventh Year Book contains Spenceley's last important piece of engraving; he finished [ 14 ] it when in the last stages of the slow but surely fatal malady which snatched him from us in the very prime of life. He took infinite pains with that work, making no less than five dis- tinct changes after the original sketch. He de- clared it to be one of the most satisfactory pieces he ever did. The Year Books of the Society contain vastly more of literary value than the term "Year Book" would imply. Indeed the reports of committees and officers form but a small part of their contents. They contain many original articles and essays on topics of interest to bib- liophiles, and are also used as a sort of repos- itory, so to speak, for unpublished literary gems that are of insufficient length to justify their pub- lication in separate volumes. There is scarcely a volume among the fifteen Year Books already issued but what contains one or more items which if printed separately would bring more than the cost of the entire book. If The Biblio- phile Society had never printed anything but its series of Year Books its existence would have been amply justified. A paragraph in this connection is due to the extraordinary volume containing Mr. Arthur [ 15 1 N. Macdonald's copper-plate edition of Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." It has been one of the principles of the management of the Soci- ety to encourage the allied arts of printing and engraving and to stimulate them by giving unusual opportunities to those who practice them. It had long been Mr. Macdonald's ambi- tion to produce some monumental work, and he was allowed not only sufficient time to sat- isfy his most fastidious taste but also a monthly income sufficient to relieve his mind from all financial worriment. The text and the embel- lishments were all engraved with what it is now fashionable to call meticulous care. Every one of the numerous vignettes if studied with a microscope will reveal a wealth of illustrative imagery; and the lettering is exquisite. Mr. Macdonald was nearly three years in preparing this royal gem of a book — one of the most superlative examples ever issued. In some cases he redrew a plate four or five times be- fore it finally suited his critical eye. To this artist is also accredited the remark- ably fine titlepage in the Society's Tenth Anni- versary Year Book, "Gray's Elegy" — the en- tire text of which he engraved on copper — the [ 16 ] "Deserted Village," the Swinburne publication, the Browning volumes, and finally, one of the best of all, the elaborate illustrative titlepage to the current Stevenson publication. Furthermore, the various Bibliophile publi- cations will stand for all time as the finest contemporary examples of the printer's art, as exemplifying the best work of nearly all of the important book printing establishments in America, — including the De Vinne Press, the Riverside Press, the University Press, the Heintzemann Press, the Gillis Press, the Plimpton Press, the Woodward and Tier- nan Printing Company, The Torch Press, and the Heliotype Company. To all of these printers we have paid the prices demanded for the highest quality of work they are capable of producing. Cheapness, as relating to work- manship and materials, has always been rele- gated to a subordinate place with the manage- ment, and the artists and artisans who have contributed to the artistic, literary, and me- chanical make-up of our productions have in- variably received as their honorarium a price fully commensurate with the quality of their work. [ 17 1 A review of the wealth of hitherto unpub- lished literary material included in the Biblio- phile publications up to the present time would require vastly more space than can be allotted to this article. If it be possible to measure the value of such material in mere dollars and cents, let it suffice to say that the market value of the MSS. printed for the first time by The Bibliophile Society would aggregate nearly half a million dollars, and that scarcely any of this material was known to the public before it appeared in book form. Of the thirty-three publications — exclusive of the Year Books — issued up to date only eight contain any consid- erable amount of published material, and in most of these eight the text has been revised, amplified, or corrected to conform with the original MSS., which were abridged or garbled in previous editions. In reprinting Thoreau's Walden more than ten thousand words were added from the original MS., and in the Lamb Letters hundreds of omissions were supplied from the manuscript letters, while upwards of a thousand misprints were corrected. And to Mr. Bixby, more than to anyone else, the Society is indebted for these almost price- [ 18 1 less literary treasures which we have been able to put into type. Each new publication, as it is rounded out to completion and added to the list, may be likened to a new and carefully chiseled stone added to a monument destined to perpetuate the memory of The Bibliophile Society down through the ages. It was not strange, perhaps, that occasion- ally persons hearing of The Bibliophile Society, conceived the idea at first that it was merely a mercantile organization. In the early days of our corporate existence a well-known book- collector sent to a friend of his as a joke a copy of the original invitation and prospectus, know- ing that he had never bought but one set of subscription books in his life, and that he had been badly "bitten" on that. "Here is another chance for you," wrote the worthy collector, and the friend signed the application, as he afterward admitted, simply "to see what the game was." He subscribed to the Horace, and liking it, he took the next, which was Dibdin's Bibliomania. His wife became enthusiastic over the books and his capture was complete. He began to collect other books and before [ 19 ] many years had a choice library of more than three thousand volumes, of which the succes- sive issues of The Bibliophile Society formed the key-stone. A few years later the friend who had jestingly sent him the application- papers himself applied for membership and was on the waiting-list for nearly a twelvemonth before he could be admitted. This seems to be the proper time and place to speak of the membership of the Society. Any- one casting an eye over the list printed at the end of each Year Book will find there the names of the greatest book-collectors of the country. While it was not originally intended to include other than private collectors, a few Public Li- braries have by special request been admitted to membership, and the archives of nearly all these institutions now contain the complete series of the Bibliophile issues : The Library of Congress, the British Museum, Columbia Uni- versity Library, The Forbes Library, the Bos- ton Athenaeum, the Hackley Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, and the Worcester Pub- lic Library. Other like institutions may per- haps be admitted from time to time. [ 20 ] The writer has found it a great source of pride and pleasure to be connected with The Bibliophile Society, both in an official capacity and later in occasional service as a sort of back- stairs literary counsellor. He has been enam- ored of its romance ; for what, after all, is more romantic than to witness the creation and birth of a beautiful book or family of books? There is a fascination in correcting such proofs as have come in year after year and in seeing the perfectly printed sheets take their orderly places in the trim volumes, like soldiers, straight and well-groomed, arranging themselves in com- panies and regiments. There are many pleasant memories connected with the meetings of the Council ; the satisfac- tion of adding to the membership some distin- guished book-collector, the hearing of letters, some expressing enthusiastic satisfaction at the latest publication, and occasionally — only very occasionally — others indulging in captious crit- icism; others recommending some absolutely impossible reprint, and so on. It is but natural that any successful enter- prise should have its imitators, and The Biblio- phile Society has proved to be no exception to [ 21 ] the rule. Its name in a slightly modified form was used some years ago in publishing a volu- minous set of books purporting to contain pretty much all of the best literature in the world, and even some of the members them- selves were misled to subscribe, thinking the set was necessary in order to retain the continuity of their Bibliophile series. Another Bibliophile Society was incorporated in New York State, but thus far it seems to have come to no frui- tion. The instigators of these schemes appear to have been silenced by the wholesale expose sometime ago, of de luxe book swindles, and the resultant prosecution of several of the self- styled publishers and publishers' agents who brought the term "de luxe" into such odious prominence that no booklover has since dared apply it to any of his books, unless perhaps it be one with which he was "stung." The well deserved fame of The Bibliophile Society, based wholly upon the record of its publication work, should give every member good cause to glow with pride on account of the unique position it occupies in the world of fine books. It is the largest book society ever formed and at the end of sixteen years of exis- [ 22 ] tence, although many members have passed on, the broken ranks have been immediately filled from the waiting-list, and at no time since its organization has there been less than five hun- dred forming the legal limit of its associates. The remarkable cohesion of the membership is due entirely to the Society's consistent plan of bringing out each year one or more publica- tions of inherent interest, not merely because they are club publications, but because of the literary and historic value of their contents and the artistic qualities of their make-up. From the beginning the Society has had a definite purpose in view, and has worked steadily to- ward the accomplishment of that purpose. Some years ago many of us were led to won- der if we had not exhausted the unpublished material that was worth printing, but diligence and money are powerful agencies in uncover- ing hidden literary treasures, and scarcely a year has passed without our capturing some unexpected prize. The latest acquisition, a vast collection of entirely unpublished manu- scripts by Robert Louis Stevenson, furnishes the literary surprise of the age; and the large- paper two-volume edition of these manuscripts [ 23 ] S \ S just issued to the members marks a highly im- portant epoch in the Society's history. It is probable that in due time other important items may be unearthed- and revealed to the world through the medium of The Bibliophile Society. Boston, January 2, 191 7. [ 24 ] UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY "his bopJc'is DUE on the last date stamped below 'WO WEEKS FROM DATE OE tofl ^ON-RENEWABLE i L-9 ii aw :-tt«U PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARDZ ^HIBRARYQ^ " - I 1/ •^■_ ^OJITVD-JO^ University Research Library r, > c 5 N O O < c -I s --" it'i