William Carew Hazlitt

Messrs Reeves & Turner—My Literary Work for the Firm—My Advantageous Acquisitions Here—Cheap Rates at which Rare Books were Formerly Obtainable—The Large Turn-over of the Business—Wake of Cockermouth—An Unique Wynkyn de Worde—A Supposed Undescribed Shakespear in a House-Sale at Bognor—Tom Arthur—The Wynkyn de Worde, which I secured for Another Shilling—Arthur and Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle Hill—The Bristol Book Shops—Lodge’s Rosalynd, 1592—Mr Elliot Stock—My Literary Work for Him—One Volume Unexpectedly Productive—Mr Henry Stopes—My Recovery for Him of a Sarum Breviary, which belonged to an Ancestor in Queen Mary’s Days—His Wife’s Family and Sir Walter Scott—A Canterbury Correspondent and His Benefits—Two More Uniques—A Singular Recovery from New York—Casual Strokes of Good Luck in the Provinces—The Wynkyn de Worde at Wrexham—A Trouvaille in the Haymarket—Books with Autographs and Inscriptions—A Few Words about Booksellers and Publishers.

My much-respected publisher and acquaintance, Mr Reeves, of the firm of Reeves & Turner, was in business in St Clement’s Churchyard, when I first met with him about 1873. He succeeded Mr Russell Smith as my publisher, and acted as my agent for some books, while others he entrusted to my editorship. The most important in the latter category were the Dodsley and the Montaigne, to the latter of which I contributed only the Introduction, my father revising the text for me, and seeing the proofs, as I was at this juncture extremely busy with all sorts of ventures, and was, above everything else, intent on a new bibliographical departure. Thousands of volumes had been in my hands during the last few years, had answered my questions, and had gone on their way, leaving me wiser and not poorer. The toll, which they paid me, had placed me in a position to pursue a vast Quixotic undertaking; and I had no other means of executing it.

Messrs Reeves & Turner’s premises were a favourite haunt of bargain-hunters in days gone by. Mr Reeves frequently attended outside and country sales, and bought many private lots; and every morning certain members of the trade made the place their first destination. I am not going to allege that I never participated in the advantages myself; but my gains were occasional and accidental; although I was long an habitual caller at the shop, the necessity for consulting Mr Reeves about some current literary affair making such visits imperative.

I have noticed the somewhat strange absence of perception and training which led Reeves to sacrifice an incalculable amount of valuable property, constantly passing through his hands in former years, and often going to others, who knew better how to turn it to account, where I describe the unique collection of Occasional Forms of Prayer of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the statement of the sagacious cataloguer that the volume containing them was so many inches thick. But it was ever so. There was no discrimination. At one time I bought an important first edition of Heywood, 1605, for half-a-guinea, and a theological tract worth a couple of shillings was marked at the same price. They had only just come in, and not to draw undue attention to the Heywood, I tendered a guinea for the two. On another occasion, a lovely little copy of Donatus De Octo Partibus Orationis, an unknown ancient impression, four leaves, octavo, fell to me here at 4s. But I should make too long a story, if I were to set down all the trouvailles, which I owed to my excellent friend’s omission to employ a capable assistant, or to look into these details himself, I might grow monotonous, unless the circumstances happened to be salient or peculiar.

Reeves, when he was in business in St Clement’s Churchyard, must have for some years done an enormous volume of trade, for he shewed me one day in the early eighties his bank-book, where it appeared that in a year he had paid in £21,000, exclusively of small amounts, which were used as cash. Yet sadly too little came of all this exhausting labour. He parted at too trivial a profit; he was too eager to turn over; and his assistants have told me that he often sold out of the open window for sixpence, items which had cost a couple of shillings. The auction-room in Chancery Lane did not, it is to be feared, contribute to his welfare. No man, however, was more honourable or trustworthy. He once remitted £50 to a person, of whom he had purchased a lot of books, on finding them more profitable than he had expected. Someone spoke of him to me as ‘a nobleman who dealt in books’—an improvement on Johnson’s definition of Tom Davies.

Wake of Cockermouth, a member of the Society of Friends, who deals in every conceivable and inconceivable object of curiosity, but is a highly deserving and industrious man, sent me on one occasion at £4, 10s. a tract of six leaves from the press of Wynkyn de Worde—the Stans puer ad Mensam of Sulpitius. It was an edition of 1515, earlier than any on record, and the British Museum paid me £12, 12s. for it. The curious part was that some months later Reeves had a very bad copy of the Grammar of the same author from the same press—a thick volume in quarto, marked £6, 6s., and I took a note of it, and left it. Wake, shrewdly calculating that as I had given £4, 10s. for the little tract of six leaves, I could not hesitate to take this one of at least sixty at £10, 10s., bought the lot on speculation, and reported it to me. I returned him my thanks. His deduction was arithmetically, but not bibliographically, accurate.

I had put into my hands at Reeves’s one day the catalogue of a house-sale at Bognor, There was a single lot in it: ‘Shakespeare’s Poems, 8º, 1609.’ No such book was known; yet it was perfectly possible that it might have been printed. Reeves thought that it might be worth my while to go down, and inspect it. I did, and had a day at the seaside. The volume was a Lintot! The auctioneer apologised; but he did not offer to defray my travelling expenses.

There are many among us, who remember Arthur in Holywell Street. He was a singular character, and had been a porter, I think, at one of the auction-rooms. My purchases of him were very numerous; and they were always right and reasonable, or I should not have been his client. He left £400 to Mr Ridler his assistant, who, called in Reeves to appraise the stock, and obtained it within that amount. While Arthur was in business, there was a grammatical tract in English printed by De Worde in his catalogue at £3, 3s. I went in to ask for it, and Ridler said that I could not have it. ‘Is it out of the house?’ I enquired. ‘No,’ said he; ‘but it is put aside for a gentleman, who always gives me something for myself.’ ‘What does he give you?’ said I. ‘A shilling,’ quoth he. ‘I will give you two.’ The lot left the shop in my pocket.

I acquired several curious articles from Ridler himself. He was, as a rule, reluctant to sell anything except through the catalogue. But he made an exception in my favour by pulling out of a drawer on one occasion a very fine copy of the very book which Wake of Cockermouth had previously offered me; and I agreed to give £8, 18s. 6d. for it. It is now in the Museum. In a second case he sold me, with a stern proviso that it was not returnable on any account whatever, a defective copy of John Constable’s Poems, printed by Pynson, 1520, which nearly completed the Museum one—only two copies, both imperfect, being known! The Constable was bound up with a foreign tract of no value in such a manner as to mystify our good friend.

He no longer honours me with his catalogue. I ceased to find much in my way, and perhaps I was not worth the postage. Ridler it was, who once signalised a volume as ‘difficult of procuration.’

It was Arthur who had the only copy ever been with the colophon of Slatyer’s Paloealbion, 1621; he got it for a few shillings of Lazarus in the same street, and sold it to Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle Hill for £15, as Ridler informed me many years ago.

The last mad freak of Phillipps was the transmission of an order to Arthur to send him one of his catalogues en bloc. Some of the lots had been sold; but the remainder was duly shipped to the Broadway, Worcestershire; and a pretty parcel of rubbish it must have been! This is book-scavengering. You only require a besom and a purse, and a block of warehouses.

With the exception of Jeffreys and George of Bristol and Wake above named, I have not known much of the provincial dealers. Jeffreys sent me the Golden Legend by Caxton, as I have said, and a few other rare things, and with George my transactions were limited to just one. Mr Pyne had returned from these parts, and had seen at Jeffreys’ or Lasbury’s (as he thought) Lodge’s Rosalynd, 1592, at £3, 10s., bound up with an imperfect copy of Lyly’s Euphues. He declined it, but on his arrival home he reconsidered the matter, and wrote to the wrong man. I dropped in, just as he was deliberating whether it was worth while to write to the right one; but he concluded by giving up the volume to me. I had to pay £5 for it, George stating that a party had assured him it was quite worth the higher sum. I did not dare to dispute the point; I bound the Lodge, for which Mr Huth gave me £42, and let Mr Pyne have the Lyly. The only other copy known of the Rosalynd is in the Bodleian, and the single antecedent impression (1590) exists in an unique and imperfect one. The book, as it is familiar to most people, has the foundation-story of As You Like It.

The mention of that drama reminds me that Rosalind and Rosaline were rather favourite names with our early poets. Spenser introduces Rose Daniel, the writer’s sister, into his FaËry Queen under that designation, as he had done another lady in his Shepherd’s Calendar. Shakespear himself has Rosaline in Love’s Labours Lost and Romeo and Juliet, and Thomas Newton wrote a poem no longer known beyond its registration in 1604, entitled: A pleasant new History; or, a fragrant Posie, made of three Flowers: Rosa, Rosalynd, and Rosemary.

I edited a few small books for Mr Elliot Stock, and had the opportunity of taking notes of one or two very rare volumes in that gentleman’s private library. I met in the shop one day my friend M——, who told me that he had come to buy the new English translation of the Imitatio Christi. I expressed surprise. He explained that it was to give away. I still expressed surprise. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘you see it is the fine style.’ I had thought that that lay in the original Latin; but I scarcely presumed to hint such a thing. I passed for one who had long laboured under a very grave misapprehension, and who was at length undeceived.

I did not grow very rich out of Mr Stock’s commissions; they were, as I have mentioned, little undertakings; perhaps they did not sell very well—I fancy that the general editor of the series gave me to understand that his own contributions were the only ones which did. But one of them—the Old Cookery Books, introduced me to a city gentleman, whose library I assisted in completing. He was a very good fellow, who had been spoiled by companies and company-mongers. He had conceived, before I met him, the design of collecting everything in all languages relative to fermented liquors and the processes of their manufacture. He was not fastidious as to condition, though he preferred a good copy to a bad one; and I left his shelves fuller than I found them. He unconsciously made up the deficiency in Mr Stock’s cheque; and my researches on his behalf were bibliographically useful to me, as they brought under my notice a variety of pamphlets and other ephemerides illustrative of a by no means uninteresting topic. Besides, he threw in my way editorial work worth £700 or more.

A rather curious incident evolved from our temporary acquaintance. Quaritch had in his catalogue just then a Sarum service-book, which purported to have belonged in Queen Mary’s days to one L. Stokes; I looked at it; and I saw that the name was Stopes, and I concluded that the old proprietor was the same Leonard Stopes who printed an Ave Maria to the Queen in or about 1555. The book also bore the signature of his brother, James Stopes. Leonard was of St John’s College, Oxford. The point was, that my casual correspondent was Henry Stopes, and was a descendant of Leonard or James. He was hugely delighted by the discovery; and he purchased the Breviary.

It was his wife, a very pleasant and accomplished Scotish lady, daughter of Mr Carmichael, clerk to Sir Walter Scott as Sheriff-Depute, who wrote the almost superfluous confutation of the claims set up on behalf of Bacon to the authorship of Shakespear’s plays.Had it not been for my intuitive surmise, that the inscription in the volume was mis-rendered, a piece of family history, valuable at least in somebody’s eyes, might have been overlooked.

Bohn of Canterbury helped me to a good thing or two. That is a neighbourhood formerly most rich in early English books; and a good deal of obscurity hangs over certain incidents connected with the books once belonging to Henry Oxenden of Barham and to Lee Warly, and to the hand, which Sir Egerton Brydges seems to have had in obtaining some of the rarest for the library at Lee Priory. A sale of the residual portion of the Lee Warly collection took place in situ many years ago, and a few remarkable items found their way to Mr Huth, particularly Oxenden of Barham’s MS. Commonplace Book, 1647, in which the original proprietor had written a list of his old plays bound up together in six volumes. I copied out this inventory for the Huth catalogue; but it was one of the numerous omissions made by Mr Ellis to save space. Bohn met with a fair number of curious tracts, some of which he sold to me. Two of them were The Metynge of Doctor Barons and Doctor Powell at Paradise Gate, printed early in the reign of Edward VI. and in verse, and the History of King Edward the Fourth and the Tanner of Tamworth, a black-letter ballad in pamphlet form with woodcuts, both unique. Mr Huth declined the former, God knows why, but took the latter.

Through the late Mr Sabin I once sent a couple of commissions to New York for as many unique items, which had been sold at Sotheby’s in 1856, a little before my time, among the Wolfreston books. They were the Cruel Uncle, 1670, the story of Richard III. and his nephews, and A Map of Merry Conceits, by Lawrence Price, 1656. I secured the latter only for £5, 5s., and it went to the national library. This was my sole transatlantic experience in the way of purchases.

I have now and then of course laid my hand on a stray volume or so in some unexpected corner, as when I was in Conway in 1869, I ran through a local stationer’s humble stock, and discovered Paul Festeau’s French Grammar, 1685, a phenomenally rare book, of which I never saw more than two copies, and those of different editions. It cost me sixpence and the labour. The author was a native of Blois, where, says he, ‘the true tone of the French tongue is to be found by the unanimous consent of all Frenchmen.’ At another time, a bookseller at Wrexham had attended the house-sale of the Rev. Mr Luxmoore’s effects in the vicinity, and among the lots was Richard Whitford’s Work for Householders, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1533—the unique copy which had been Sir Francis Freeling’s. The buyer had marked this £3, 3s., without finding a customer; I basely offered him £2, and he accepted the amount. It is the copy described in the Huth catalogue. It reached Mr Huth through Ellis, who estimated it to me at £12.

The Luxmoore books were represented to me as having been thrown out on a lawn, and sold at random; and the same story was related of a second haul, which I once made of a Mr Fennell in Whitefriars, including an unique copy of Chamberlain’s Nocturnal Lucubrations, 1652.

I have never been a stall-hunter. I do not rise sufficiently early; and, sooth to say, it has grown by report a barren quest. At Brooks’s in Hammersmith, which I mention more particularly below, I would turn over dreary lots of volumes which he had carted away from some house-sale for a song; but I never laid out anything there or elsewhere. I always found the cheapest books were to be obtained at the auctions, or at Mr Quaritch’s, or at Mr Ellis’s. To be sure, Brooks once had uncut cloth copies of the first editions of Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Maud, and Princess at ninepence each, or two shillings the three; but I passed them.

A sensible proportion of my discoveries was thus turned to good account; but such was not invariably the case. I have, on the contrary, now and then ordered a book or books from a country catalogue, simply because it or they were undescribed by me, and when I had done with them, I was often obliged to be satisfied with reimbursing myself. Again, it sometimes occurred that I transcribed the full particulars in a shop, and went no farther. One of my latest adventures in this latter way was at Messrs Pickering & Chatto’s in the Haymarket, where I have always met with the greatest kindness and consideration. On information received, as the policeman says, I proceeded to the premises, and there, surely enough, I found a dilapidated and imperfect copy, yet still a copy, of the First Part of the First Edition of Johnson’s Seven Champions of Christendom, 1596. The Second Part, 1597, was in the Heber sale from Isaac Reed’s collection, where it fetched 17s. But no trace of the First was discoverable, till this one turned up, dog’s eared, torn, and deficient of three leaves at the end. It was in the original vellum wrapper, and must have been reduced to its actual degradation by excess of affection or of neglect. It has been my fortune to rescue from oblivion many and many an item in our early literature, of which only just so much survived as was absolutely needed to make out the story; and I have known cases, in which it has been requisite to employ two or even three copies, all defective, to accomplish this.

So far I have presented a sketch of my life-long touch with the collectors of books and the dealers in them, and have shown that to a certain extent I am entitled to rank in both categories, my own share in the commercial side being due to the exigencies, to which I have adverted, rather than to choice. I think it not improbable that during the period from 1868 to 1878 the regular trade might have been prepared to raise a handsome subscription to send me and my family to a distant colony. Yet I exercised an influence beneficial rather than the reverse on their businesses, since I paid them their prices, and relieved them of large numbers of volumes, which they might have kept on their shelves. There was a jealousy, however, and a natural one.

Of books with autographs and inscriptions I have published in more than one periodical rather copious particulars and varied examples, ranging in date from the monastic era to our own days. I have generally found no difficulty in judging as to the character of entries in books by private owners; and considering the large number of surviving volumes which contain matter of this kind, fabrications are certainly uncommon, as well as fairly self-convicting.

Yet it cannot be a source of surprise, that the less experienced book-hunter falls into occasional traps. It is so pleasant and so tempting to be master of some copy which has once been consecrated by the fingers of a king or a queen, or a king’s lady, or a queen’s favourite, or a renowned soldier, poet, or whatever it may be, that we do not always pause to weigh the decent probabilities, do we?

The worst thing of all to do is to trust to ordinary catalogues and dealers of the commoner type. The latter have constantly by them specimens of the libraries of Queen Elizabeth, Mary of Scotland, James I., with imposing lateral, if not dorsal, blazons, and autograph attestations of proprietorship or gift. An eminent member of the trade once offered me a copy of May’s Lucan, in which the translator, quoth he, had written, ‘Ben Jonson, from Thomas May.’ I recollect an early Chaucer with Thomas Randolph on the title; of course the vendor avouched it to be the signature of the poet. Joseph Lilly had a black-letter tome with the name George Gascoigne attached to it, and advertised it as a souvenir of that distinguished Elizabethan writer; but unluckily the writer died, before the book was printed. There was similarly more than a single W. Shakespear just about the same period of time; but we have not come across any sample of his cunning in caligraphy. Perhaps he wrote better than the dramatist. That excessively interesting Florio’s Montaigne, 1603, in the British Museum carries the impress of former appurtenance to our great bard, and its history is much in its favour; but some question it (do not some question everything?), not that the inscription belongs to a namesake, but that it does so to a disciple of Mr Ireland junior.

As an illustration of the manner, in which one may be misled without remedy by an auctioneer’s catalogue, a copy of Cranmer’s Bible, 1549, was offered for sale a few years since, and, says the cataloguer, ‘on the second leaf occurs “Tho. Cranmer” in contemporary handwriting.’ In fact, some one at the time under the line of dedication to the Archbishop of Canterbury had inserted his name, to shew who he was. But there was no unwillingness on the part of the auctioneer’s assistant—or the auctioneer himself—to catch a flat. Alas! that the world should be so full of guile!

Henry Holl and myself were once parties to a mild practical joke on a fashionable bookseller and stationer named Westerton near Hyde Park Corner, who engaged to procure for his clients at the shortest notice any books required. We drew up between us a list of some of the rarest volumes in the English language, and one or the other took it to Westerton’s, desiring the latter to let him have them punctually the following day. We did not go near the shop for some time after that, I remember. Of course we never heard anything of our desiderata. The fellow woke up probably to the hoax.

There is not the slightest wish on my part to disparage the qualifications of the bookseller as a type; but it has always struck me as unreasonable, looking at the large number of persons, whose subsistence is wholly derived from this pursuit—and often a very good one, too—to represent the calling as an indifferent and an uncommercial line of industry. For there must be thousands earning livelihoods by it, although very few realise the El Dorado of £500 a year, which I have heard Mr Quaritch cite as a kind of minimum, which it is in the power of any poor creature to make out of books. Moreover, it is to be recollected that many and many, who have chosen the employment, would scarcely be capable of discharging the duties of any other; it is recommendable for variety and liberty; and it brings those engaged in it into contact with celebrated people and interesting incidence.

Imprimis, as of every other calling, there are too many booksellers. Within my memory their ranks have sensibly increased. They are not dealers in the sense in which Mr Quaritch is one; their training has been slight and superficial; and their stocks are of the thinnest and poorest quality. Still, in town and country alike, they maintain a sort of ground, and when you pass and repass their places of business, you wonder how they live, and conclude that the occupation must be profitable even on the smallest scale. For the bargain-hunter—from his point of view—there is nothing to be got out of these outlying or minor emporia nowadays; the whole actual traffic in valuable commodities centres in two or three London auction-rooms and half-a-dozen West-End houses. For all the rest it is a scramble and a pittance. I have almost ceased to look at ordinary shop catalogues; and the stall was a thing of the past before my day. If I wanted a cheap book, I should go to Mr Quaritch or to a sale-room. Your suburban and provincial merchant in all kinds of second-hand property is desiccated.

Much the same appears to be at present predicable of the publisher. He tells you that it is a poor vocation, a slender margin for himself, yet the number of houses devoted to the business was never greater, and of some the experience and capital must be equally limited, as the printer and paper-maker can tell you.

A curious, almost comic, side in the question of literary earnings, is the habitual propensity for embracing one of two extremes. A. is coining money; his publishers are all that a man could desire or expect; he has taken so much in such and such a time from them on account of his last book. You listen to his tale with jesuitical reticence; you have just parted from a member of the firm, who has told you exactly how many copies have been sold, and you can do the rest for yourself. B., on the contrary, never makes any appreciable sum by his efforts; all publishers are rogues; and the public is an ass. How much in both these views has to be allowed for temperament and imagination? Perhaps B. does nearly as well as A.