Revelations in Books KIPLING BOWLS Were Decorated with Doggerel About Fruit

_ lit* i T-: B fi I B * B m ¦ ||j Blf • W Bill j BIGGEST book in the library—Audu- SMALLEST books compared with 25- B Bn|j • bon's drawings—is shown by Frederick cent piece. In glass case is an edition B I Goff, director of Rare Books Division. of Omar Khayyam's "The Rubaiyat." HOCUS-POCUS JUNIOR, second magic CHILDREN'S books: Primer and "horn book published, was printed in 1635. book" with ABCs and counting beads. / 1,1 ' 1/ V | I jgejjryjwSU S Bil l| I ’fl 9 -JM ill Hfev I B ¦ I ggfelMJMEffigk,. I I 1 Rt Photo* by Sid Alport Revelations In Books KIPLING BOWLS were decorated with doggerel about fruit. The top one is Jo "Apples," lower one to 'The Peach." By DEANE and DAVID HELLER HOPES, DREAMS AND FOIBLES of many a great man who strode named Abraham Lincoln. “I hope you will find it of interest,” he wrote. rEmagnificently over the pages of history are often revealed by a small trait. Lincoln did. In response, he wrote a three-page commentary, concluding Take Benjamin Franklin's habit of scribbling comments in the margins of with the question: “Can we, as a Nation, continue—forever—half slave and the books he owned, for Instance. If you were to visit the Rare Books Division half free?” ofthe Library of Congress and ask to see a book Franklin owned called Thoughts Lincoln’s letter, with the book that inspired it, give a priceless insight into on the Oriffin and Nature of Government, published In London in 1769, you’d the growth of the Great Emancipator’s thinking about the slavery question—- find a good example. Allan Rkmsay, the author, gave a very pro-British account thinking that changed the history of America. of the matters “occasioned by the late disputes between Great Britain and the One of the legends of the Rare Books Division is The Mint, an expose of American Colonies.” It obviously sent Franklin’s temperature skyrocketing. conditions in the British RAF after World War I. Written by T. E. Lawrence He wrote hundreds of comments in the margins like the following: “A falsity! (“Lawrence of Arabia”), the book was priced at $500,000 per copy so that Mere assertion without the least proof.” The ideas contained in these marginal nobody would want to buy a copy. notes were the same as many he later used to justify the American Revolution. Lawrence expected the book to create such a scandal that he stipulated Among the 250,000 books in the division, a tremendous number are unique. that it should not be published until many years after his death. But to The “lost” plays of Eugene O’Neill, Rudyard Kipling’s literary dessert bowls, protect the copyright, the publisher had to print it, deposit two.copies with Sinclair Lewis’ hack writing, Harry Houdini’s library of magic, the early the Library of Congress, and offer it for sale. The half-milUon-dollar price failures of Edgar Allan Poe and Hans Christian Andersen, Abraham Lincoln’s tab discouraged purchasers, of course—but the ironic thing is that anybody early writings on slavery, T. E. Lawrence’s book priced at $500,000 a copy—- who wants to read it would need only go to the Rare Books Division. these are only a few. Houdinl, probably the greatest magician of all time, collected a fabulous Kipling once paid an extended visit to the United States. His host was library on the black arts. It was donated to the Rare Books Division and is a Dr. Taylor of Beaver, Pa., president of a local college. The doctor had a consulted by conjurers from all over the world. charming daughter named Caroline, whose hobby was ceramics. An autographed first edition copy of Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue One day, on an impulse, Kipling took paint brush in hand and decorated is a prized volume. It Is worth more than $25,000 now, but when it was written, six unfinished plates with original drawings and poems. The verses paid a its author was heartbroken because it failed to earn much money. UnH of doggerel tribute to apples, peaches, pears, grapes and other fruits. Andersen's first book, Youthful Efforts, failed dismally, selling only eight After Kipling finished, the plates were baked, and the incident probably copies. It was reissued five years later as a ghost story and failed again. would have been forgotten, except that years later an admirer of the poet’s The “lost” plays of O’Neill, written in his early, struggling days, were never works, William M. Carpenter of Evanston, 111., bought the plates. These were performed and have only recently been published. included in the collection of Kipling manuscripts, letters, first editions and Nobel Prize Winner Sinclair Lewis’ admirers may be surprised to learn numerous association pieces presented to the Rare Books Division by Mr. that his first book was strictly a hack job, done to earn money. Lewis signed Carpenter’s widow. it "Tom Graham” so he would not be embarrassed. A Juvenile thriller published In 1855 George Robertson wrote a book called A Scrapbook On Laun and in 1912, it pertained to the then Infant science of flying. Lewis reluctantly Politics, Men and Times. By now it doubtless would have been forgotten except autographed a copy for actor Jean Hersholt at the latter's request. It is that the author inscribed a copy to an obscure and unsuccessful politician this copy that is in the Rare Books Division. THE SUNDAY STAC MAGAZINE. WASHINGTON. 0. C„ MARCH 4. 1994 13.

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