Among Harvard's Libraries: Looking at books, learning from it, passing it along

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Citation Stoddard, Roger E. 1992. Among Harvard's Libraries: Looking at books, learning from it, passing it along. Harvard Library Bulletin 2 (3), Fall 1991: 4-17.

Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42661985

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LOOKING AT BOOKS, LEARNING take through the gigantic telescope, reveals to FROM IT, PASSING IT ALONG him nothing of the intense concentrated watching by which the observer wins his Roger E. Stoddard higher reward. The nightly vision of the astro- nomer, revealing myriad worlds in the vague From my European acquisitions trip six nebulous spaces of heaven, is not for him; he years ago, subject of my talk and essay, I must take the great results of astronomy for returned with three emblems of my journey: granted, since no man capable of original "Aux lecteurs 'fervents,' salut" by research has the time to prepare for the Gerard Blanchard, typographe,in a re- uninitiated the attendant circumstances cent book on design that I found at essential to his more difficult investigations, or Beaubourg. to train their eyes to see what he sees." 2 Here is a good example of what Agassiz "Questa sera spegni la TV . . . Un could convey: libro e meglio" in Hoepli's bookshop window in Milan. The similarity of motion in Families is another subject well worth the consid- "One fondly hopes that this piece, too eration of the naturalist: the soaring of short to be boring, will amuse by a the Birds of Prey,-the heavy flapping philosophical tone well suited to the of the wings in the Gallinaceous taste of the moment" by Marc Michel Birds,-the floating of the Swallows, Rey in his introduction to one of with their short cuts and angular Hemsterhuis's Letters in r 770. tums,-the hopping of the Sparrows,- the deliberate walk of the Hens and the As I composed my thoughts about my strut of the Cocks,-the waddle of the experiences abroad, I began to see the rele- Ducks and Geese,-the slow, heavy vance to my line of work of some of the things creeping of the Land-Turtle,-the I had been reading by or about the great natu- graceful flight of the Sea-Turtle under ROGERE. STODDARDis Cura- ral scientist Louis Agassiz. In his eulogy, the water,-the leaping and swim- tor of Rare Books in the Har- William James exposed Agassiz's method: ming of the Frog,-the swift run of vard College Library and Senior "'Go to Nature; take the facts into your own the Lizard, like a flash of green or red Lecturer on English in the hands; look, and see for yourself!'-these were light in the sunshine . . . In short, Department of English and the maxims which Agassiz preached wherever every Family of animals has its charac- American Literature and Lan- he went, and their effect on pedagogy was teristic action and its peculiar voice; guage, Harvard University. electric. The extreme rigor of his devotion to and yet so little is this endless variety this concrete method ofleaming was the natu- of rhythm and cadence both of motion ral consequence of his own peculiar type of and sound in the organic world under- intellect, in which the capacity for abstraction stood, that we lack words to express and causal reasoning and tracing chains of con- one half its richness and beauty. 3 sequences from hypotheses was so much less developed than the genius for acquaintance From the 28th of April, 1985, when I fled with vast volumes of detail, and for seizing Visiting Committee weekend for London, upon analogies and relations of the more until the 2 r st of May when I returned from proximate and concrete kind." 1 The last word Milan, I looked at books in fifty-three on the discipline of observation was set forth bookshops, libraries, museums, and private by Agassiz in his Lowell lectures: "The glance collections in London, Long Sutton and at the moon, or at Jupiter's satellites, which the Bourne (Lincolnshire), Oxford, Blackheath, chance visitor at an observatory is allowed to Sevenoaks, Paris, and Milan. I will tell you

This essay was prepared as a talk for the Athenacum Group 1 William James, Louis Agassiz: Words Spoken by Professor and delivered at its Boston meeting two days after my re- William James at the Reception of the Amen'can Society of turn from Milan. Then it was offered as a brown-bag lun- Naturalists by the President and Fellows of Harvard Colfr;qe, at cheon talk for Harvard librarians. After all the books and Cambridge, on December 30, 1896 (Cambridge: Printed for manuscripts arrived in Cambridge. I took slides and pre- the University, 1897), pp. 9-10. sented it as a slide lecture at the Columbia University School Louis Agassiz, Methods of Study in Natural History (Boston: of Library Service, the John Carter Brown Library, the Ticknor and Fields, I 863), pp. 296-97. Grolier Club, the New York Harvard Club, the University J Idem, pp. I 24-25. of California at Davis, and finally, to a class in the Columbia Rare Book School. Among Harvard's Libraries 5

about that experience, but I will not bore you with a complete account, and I will conclude with some remarks about ourselves and our own libraries, demonstrating how far short of Agassiz's ideal I have fallen and how close you can come if you will try. The purpose of my trip was library acquisitions, but I looked at a few books for other reasons, as you will see. I began my peregrinations with a full day at Bernard Quaritch's, where an energetic, young staff-led by Nicholas Poole-Wilson and Arthur Freeman-with a rich line of credit maintains a marvelous stock of science, economics, continental literature, and Eng- lish literature-among other things. A Japa- nese stock, as they say. And what prices! Everything, whether French romantiques, Humanism, or a Spanish Vives on the edu- cation of women, seemed to be 1 50 percent of retail, sure defense against raids by special- ist dealers on a dependable stock of rarities for collectors and librarians. I left a stack for quo- tation, wondering what we could afford (. !f:t./ ~}_-,;;,-.- among our desiderata. Early books are capi- ,f VKW tal investments nowadays. .,,.,,., -. -- . ·,r;,,*"'fll~ Next day at Pickering & Chatto, now 1ofwtp1',,li:IIJUIK,.,,,._..ffllYlll,i, , owned by Sir William Rees-Mogg, I had the thrill of browsing the remnants of Dudley Massey's lifetime of squirreling away obscure rarities while he supported himself by selling other items. There was a Congreve, probably the last one lacking at Harvard, but it wanted its half-title, and the paper was browned: $2,500 for one of the three copies known on ordinary paper-in addition to the three fine- fiable to those well acquainted with the reli- Samuel Ward, The Papists Powder- paper copies. More to my liking was gious and social history of the day; and a Treason (Germany? 1689?) Bromley's, that is Anthony Wilson's, Cata- wonderful satirical print showing that Sir logue efEngraved British Portraits(1793), with Robert Walpole, though out of office, con- Sir Christopher Sykes's bookplate by J. E. tinued to pull the strings, as if behind a Millais, but owned previously by Sir Mark screen. Also from Dudley's things came a rare Masterman Sykes, who had used it as a cata- survival, a conger document for an early log of his own portrait print collection. nineteenth-century edition of Goldsmith's There, for instance, you find the description Animated Nature. At the top is a draft adver- of the Marshall engraving of Thomas Scott, tisement and at the bottom a list of the share- S.T.B. et Geograph., with Sykes's annotation holders and their parts. Overleaf are the "Gd." We purchased a copy of that very expenses of the edition (note that the print from Dudley Massey's cache: Thomas engraved plates were the most costly item by Scott S. T.B., author of numerous pamphlets more than half), the payments of the copy- whose false imprints or lack of imprint have right holders according to their shares, and puzzled bibliographers. From the same lot the dates and costs of the advertisements. we got an unrecorded German rendition of a Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights Powder Plot broadside, the English original of my first week I spent in the North Library of which rests unique at Harvard; a later anti- of the British Library looking first at La Quaker broadside which proves that no Mettrie, the eighteenth-century materialist number of Quaker books could ever out- philosopher whose bibliography I am essay- weigh a single copy of the Bible; a satire on ing, obtaining a photocopy of a cancellans leaf some evangelicals who are doubtless identi- so I could compare it later with the cancelland 6 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

The Quakers Bookes at the Bibliotheque Nationale; then begin- Some sight. One came later on from (London, ca. 1685?) ning to look at the elegant philosophical Theodore Hofmann. But for us at Maggs's works of the late eighteenth-century amateur there were ephemeral pamphlets and broad- Hemsterhuis. There, in the auction catalogue sides of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- ofHemsterhuis's library, sold in shelf order, I tury: feigned visions, counterfeit revelation, found his red-ruled copies of his own books false miracles, horrid impieties, lying dying- listed just before his copies of La Mettrie. His speeches of the Jesuits; a broadsheet describ- books, wide-margined and heavily-leaded, ing an earthquake in Oxfordshire; another are illustrated with emblematic head- and tail- anti-Quaker broadside; the dying words of the pieces, engraved after designs by the author last English printer to be executed for who explains them in the text. Already I can seditious libel. see that copies occur on both fine and ordi- Along with the ephemera in Maggs's base- nary paper. More variations may emerge as I ment was a disbound treatise on color by one check out more copies-while filling out of the members of the Sowerby family, Harvard's collection. The first collected which dominated the production of color- works printed posthumously but employing plate books in some of the sciences in the the original copperplates, came from Andre nineteenth century. Jammes later in the trip. At Alan Thomas's I admired, as before, a At Maggs Brothers on Berkeley Square I thirteenth-century astronomical tract manu- saw for the first time full shelves of script on vellum from North France. Later Colquhoun of Lus books from a recent sale, with Stanley Kahrl's help we purchased it- all as new in full eighteenth-century calf some four years since I had been looking at it Among Harvard's Libraries 7

admiringly but hopelessly out of funds. At its possible union with the Roman. This trip, Marlborough Rare Books there were vellum- as before, I left her flat with two sacks ofbooks: bound Fletcher of Saltoun copies of Italian sixteenth-century imprints from Antwerp, books of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- Zurich, Turin, and Rome with some more tury and translations into German or Italian of exotic ones from monasteries to the East. theoretical and practical art monographs. Shown here, for instance, in what is prob- Also, a wonderful survival of an English book ably a Romanian binding, gilt with a cruci- of 16 12: a strip of paper perhaps one and a half fixion on the front cover and stamped in silver inches wide was folded over the spine, on the back-you can find Christ and count stabbed through and stitched, as first offered the twelve apostles-is an imprint of 1698 for sale. But too expensive for us. from Jassy in Romania, only the 105th book At the W ellcome Historical Medical to be printed in that country. Also illustrated Library I caught up with a few more of La is an imprint of 1744 from Albania- Mettrie's cancels. When you find a cancel in Moskopoulos now Voskopje-St. Luke on the third copy you examine, you must back- the title-page and worn blocks in the text track and explain the differences between the from sources that could be traced. Another revised page of text and the unrevised one. purchase is a Viennese imprint of 180 5, a Oh, joy of bibliography! guide to the conduct of life by one of the Madame Ketty Arvanitidi is the widow of a Mavrokordatoi. Arvanitidi thought so much collector of books on the Greek Church and of it that he had Poseidon's trident and the

Above: Crucifixion stamp gilt on the front coverof the Romanian binding.

Left: Pagefrom the 13th centuryFrench Astronomical,WS. 8 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

TheophilusKorydalleus, Tou Sopho- tatou Kuriou (Voskopje,1744).

dolphins from his bookplate gilt and painted little pamphlet is by Orazio Grassi, one of on the covers. Galileo's detractors, the one lampooned in Il Albi Rosenthal's stock at Oxford is in tran- Saggiatore,and it is important enough to be sition from the firm's specialty of Portuguese collected in the Galileo works of 1655 and to books-last time I bought a vast number of rate a full entry in the Galilean bibliography seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth- of Cinti together with a reproduction of its century books and pamphlets at five to twenty title-page. pounds apiece-and his daughter Julia's new That noble Catalan of Oxford, John Gili, interest in French books. Among other offered the usual Lyell and Heredia copies of things, we tried on general principles a stack Spanish books. One of the most interesting of comet tracts which turned out to contain finds this time was a study of Provern;:al and its De tribus cometis (Rome 1619). Back at the influence on Lingua Toscana, printed at library the searching report showed that we Rome in 1724 by one of the de Rossi with the had only a Bologna reprint of 16 5 5. That of device of the Roman Arcadian academy on course is the place and date of the first col- the title-page. lected edition of Galileo. Sure enough, the Among Harvard's Libraries 9

Whether its frontispiece is friendly or un- 1s, either Latin or Old Florentine dialect)- friendly, apt or inept, I can hardly say, for "ma non con questa moderna favella"-but thrust into a handsome tall old library, with its not in this modern speech. Corinthian capitals over the columns which A list of Provern;:al and Catalan authors, separate the cases, is an ugly squat modern arranged by Christian names, goes so far as to secretary, half filled with huge fat works of the analyze the contents of manuscripts at the moderns: Tasso, Varchi, Bembo, etc. Above Vatican and Laurentian libraries. Concluding is an expression from the Paradiso, "Con my Oxford Sunday and my first week abroad, questa moderna favella"-in this modern lan- Diana Parikian showed me Italian books, guage-taken from one of the books in which mostly obscure ones with illustrations, includ- Dante questions his great great grandfather ing a tiny emblem book, another de Rossi Cacciaguida about his own family and imprint, honoring the ninetieth birthday of Florentine families of the good old twelfth Pope Clement XI in I 702. The emblems are century. But Dante says that his ancestor tucked into little floral pockets. addressed him "con voce piu dolce e At Andrew Stuart's in Bourne I put aside a soave"-in a voice sweeter and gentler (that stack of grubby Italian, German, and French

Frontispiece in Antonio Bastero, La Crusca Provenzale (Rome, 1724). IO HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

translations of English books: European Bri- James Burmester, who had recently joined tannica. They looked as if they had been Paul Grinke in London, had a fascinating lot rummaged out of Dutch stocks, exactly what of provincial English printing, literature, sci- they say Stuart does, on a bicycle. Typical of ence, and popular books. One, in a falsely- them is a French translation of Thomas grained leather binding is my favorite. It is an White's Peifect Christian, printed at Quevilly Italian translation of William Collins's Odes (which I take to be a suburb of Rouen) in printed at Piacenza in I 8 14, dedicated to the 1674 by Jacques Lucas, Sign of the Globes, English soldier Robert Wilson, whose copy, who has adopted Plantin's "Labor" and com- the dedication copy, it is. passes in his device. Lucas declares that Labor E. P. Goldschmidt always has wonderful joins both sides, showing us how it is possible copies of illustrated books, but it is sometimes to link both a terrestrial and a celestial globe, difficult to find books there for Harvard. This joining heaven and earth. Alexander Rogoy- time there was a Russian Parmacopoeia, a sev- ski at Long Sutton offered his usual attractive enteenth-century attack on Inquisition cen- stock of Continental books on many subjects, sorship, and an eighteenth-century illustrated all inexpensive and useful and well described. dialectic from Freiburg im Bresgau, 1771. I On its face one appears to be a technical trea- wonder if the title-page vignette could stand tise, but when you begin to look at it you see for Johann Andrea Satron, the publisher. that it is really about, as my assistant puts it, Anything is possible in a Baroque book like "coneheads on the moon." Well, when they this, including wonderful plates like this ren- start talking about squaring the circle, you dering of the Gateway to Wisdom. As you know the book isn't serious, right? see, we progress by meditation to the liberal

Engraved illustration in J.B. Horn- stein, Dialectica Analogicis lmagi- nibus !llustrata (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1771). Among Harvard's Libraries II

arts, sciences, wisdom, and finally to the holy of holies in which Idea, Judgment, and Rea- son are revealed-all amidst balconies, tow- ers, and emblems that would baffie Escher. In England my last bookshop visits were with Stuart Bennett and Theodore Hofmann, American expatriates from California. Things from Bennett include a broadside poem of i::; 1683, inscribed at the foot "Knowledge is No Burden"-doubtless a writing teacher's catch: a sermon of Harvard's Tutor Flynt printed in Boston in 1 729 by Samuel Gerrish who has inscribed it to Isaac Watts, whose Logic was used at Harvard College and who sent to its library copies of his books as they were pub- lished; a Dublin-printed astronomy of 1732 with engravings printed in sepia; a country book printed on thick paper, Bible poems to be memorized, Norwich 1711; and an anony- l mous book: Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats, the Author of Endymion. By its heavily patterned binder's cloth we can date it to the 18 3os but whether it is British or American is hard to say. Could that be Philadelphia? No, Wakefield, England, 183 8, with poems to Shelley as well as to George Washington, so far as we can tell quite unknown. Finally, a regency binding in smooth calf from Boston, not ours but the other one in Lincolnshire. Theodore Hofmann, one of the great experts, offered me the second revised edi- tion of Dodsley's Collection of Poems-just the sort of thing he discovers so usefully for The laughing god born of a startling collectors and libraries. Also, he conveyed the Variant drafis of "Letter V" from the answer notebooks and papers of William only real perception that any of the English (Cymbal of clash in the divided Empson. booksellers could give me this visit: there is glanccr no designated second edition for many eight- Forcing from heaven's the force of eenth-century English books. They skip from earth's desire) an undesignated first edition to third, fourth, etc. Such books were often issued in both descending and descending, large and small paper which the publishers All living blood, and whatever blood counted as two editions instead of one. He makes wine.4 is busily filling out the British Library hold- ings of these books, with either small or large and finally the notes delivered flat like a BBC paper, many of the possibles coming from the announcer Colquhoun of Lus collection. A mythological chemical operation I spent part of my last evening in England to distil drink is going on for the first with the widow of Sir William Empson, four verses .... 5 whose papers we hoped to purchase: count- ing notebooks, letter files, checking annotated I barely retained my composure. books. She played for me the BBC tape of With Ted Hofmann's help we later con- Empson reading that excruciatingly difficult cluded the deal. Here are some samples: poem "Bacchus," each strophe beginning on ''Not locus if you will but envelope." Messy, a high pitch: but wonderful.

4 William Empson, Collected poems (New York, Harcourt ' Idem p. ro4. Brace, 1949), p. 42. 12 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

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Benjamin Roubaud, Grand Chemin Across the channel I ranged through three Gautier just behind, Lamartine in the clouds, de la Posterite (Paris, 1842?) bookshops in my first afternoon in Paris: the the elder Dumas with a pack of titles on his poor remnant of Marc Lolice's stock-he is back, Balzac just behind his left foot, the play- dead six years now-the lively modern stock wright Scribe, chugging along at fifty horse- of his son Bernard, and the quite miscella- power with a tenderfull of collaborators-all neous stock of Robert D. Valette. Thanks to of them travelling the High Road to Poster- the enterprise of Louis Bothuel, Mme. Marc ity. Valette also had a wonderful collection of Loliee's young manager, there were a few engraved folio-size advertisements of the new things to be found. One was an astrol- eighteenth century, including one for a ogy text by Chrisogone with its title-page toyshop at the Sign of the Monkeys. border so well suited to the new film "Laby- Andre Jammes offered a book with a fron- rinth," printed in Venice by the da Sabbio in tispiece after Verlaine, Hailer's advice on 1528. It concludes with a paper instrument forming a library (1771), the Portuguese edi- to help you find your house, for which the tion ofOsorio's Letter to Elizabeth ofEngland privilege from the Venetian senate is printed inviting her to return to the Catholic faith, underneath. Louis also had a letter by the and a copy, as new, of the plates to illustrate Belgian artist Ensor, written to Gelderode, La Nouvelle Heloise, 1761. Not only is the partly unpublished, and illustrated with an un- Epistola a splendid example of European published drawing. At young Loliee's there Britannica, but it also shows the continuing was a grandpapier George Sand which you can use of Geoffrey Tory woodcut borders which barely sec through its chemise. It is printed Anne Anninger has traced from their arrival at on that crinkled paper stock which goes back Lisbon in the 1520s through the hands of at least to the days of Byron. many Portuguese printers over the years. Later, on Ascension Day afternoon, young More than anyone else, perhaps, Andre is Loliee offered me from his private collec- responsible for the serious acceptance of pho- tion-"! don't like to sell my MSs," he said- tographs in museums such as the Getty, and I a 200-page manuscript of Georges Bataille. tried to get him to speak for us at Houghton Actually it is a tract manuscript, made up of for the fall. When I told him of Hugh Amory's individual texts like "Dirty" and "Sky Blue." plan to make an exhibition with me on Au- Valette had a colored copy of that wonderful thority in books (crosses, crowns, imprima- folding caricature of authors and other French turs, mimicry, forgery, etc.), Andre said, celebrities of the Romantic period of which "Why not include Liberty?" Good idea. an uncolored copy hangs in the Balzac house. Jean Hugues combines an art gallery and Here astride his Siren Pegasus you see Hugo bookshop with the publication of painter's in the lead-"Ugly is Beautiful"-with books, so he could show me wonderful Matta, Among Harvard's Libraries 13

DE LA POSTERITE

Miro, and Michaux books-things for when not to buy, he says-good advice for Graphic Arts Curator Eleanor Garvey to con- bookbindings. Schiller opens his cases for you, sider. In a limp vellum wrapper is a modern laden with pure, unsophisticated books from classic, Affat ( 1940), one of the sixty-four cop- the seventeenth-century back to the earliest ies, its text by Ilya Zdanevich from Tiflis (the Arabic and western gilt bindings: touch it, Forty-First Degree), who came to Paris call- take it, open it, he says. What a host. ing himself Iliazd. Who would dare to illus- Christian Galantaris, once an active dealer trate such a text? Who would know what it is in nineteenth-century books, is now expert in all about? (See the illustration overleaf). the book auctions, so he cannot work on his Hugues also showed me bindings by two stock and I can have a good look at petits active French artisans: Jean de Gonet and romantiqucs, a multi-volume Eugene Sue Monique Matthieu. Where cord crosses hinge novel in printed wrappers, stacks of books at Gonet makes a knuckle joint out of metal, affordable prices. fiber, screen, plastic, and he has devised a At Garnier-Arnoul I bought collections of supple, articulated binding of vertical plates popular plays, 1780-1820, formed by the play- mounted on a flexible material. A new struc- wrights themselves. Among them were quan- ture. Matthieu has created what I came to call tities of minor theatrical works written by relieure cracke, for she arranges fissures be- Gersin, bound at his order for a family mem- tween her onlays of sombre autumn colors. ber in five volumes, decorated on the spine Both binders are superb craftsmen, unlike so with lyres and with the masks of comedy and many of the designer bookbinders whose tragedy. Also from him I bought for my friend work is publicized these days. Also at Hugues Carlo Alberto Chiesa a Commedia dell' Arte was a book I had never seen before, the mask, just to remind C.A.C. of a common Meidosems of Henri Michaux. Regular per- interest of ours. haps in its published form with the plates Coulet ct Faure, the first-edition dealers, cropped close; rather more exciting in the were disappointing; but afterward I spent a Hughes-Harvard copy with its extra suites pleasant evening with Monique Matthieu of printed in yellow, green, and red. the relicures crackcs, her husband the poet That evening I spent with Henri Schiller, Andre Frenaud (whom we must start to col- the industrialist who began to collect book- lect), and a book curator from the Louvre, at bindings under the tutelage of Georges a dinner arranged by J. E. Gautrot. Twenty Heilbrun. He knows more about his field years a clerk at Blaizot, Gautrot was to open a than any other collector I have met: where shop on rue de Seine in October, and we all the books and manuscripts are, all the classic had a good look at his growing stock-inclu- types. The secret of collecting is in knowing ding Matthieu bindings of course. 14 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

At I' Arsenal I took in the show of nine- Paris bookcases solid with nineteenth-century teenth- and twentieth-century Belgian French books. For us there were an early Jules bookbindings arranged by the Bibliotheca Verne, published before the voyagesimaginaires, Wittockiana, Brussels. Included was a beau- and many a plaquette associated with one of tiful modern binding of August Kulche, our collected authors. And talk of books: how sprayed with silver, reminding one ofOdilon can a reader understand Balzac without seeing Redon's orientalia; pastiche bindings by how the author cast out his lines in those Hague; and truly imaginative publisher's marginous, widely-leaded, multi-volume octa- bindings-cartonnages d'editeur-by J. Cas- vos; the Belgian contrefa<;:onsand even today's terman et fils, ca. I 8 50, one of them in silver Pleiade give the wrong impression. The and blue paper, another a rococo binding of duodecimos of Moliere show that he was con- gold on white. The rest were French bind- sidered only an amuser, while the noble quar- ings made in Belgium. Too bad the show tos of Corneille demonstrate the serious esteem didn't begin with those emblematic plaque in which he was held. bindings of the 1530s or with truly early From Bazy's crowded shop to Pierre bindings so one could disentangle Belgian Beres's expansive home across from the from French. Rodin Museum, talk switched to that day's Claude Blaizot's stock is in transition from sale at Monaco. Beres had picked a bargain, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century an unknown French devotional book of French literature to contemporary printing, 1683, a 12mo in vellum wrappers, gilt with binding, and illustration. For generations the arms of the author's wife, illustrated with Blaizots have expertised auctions and pub- ten engravings, seven of them incorporating lished text editions, bibliographies, and livres the family arms. A very elegant production. d'artiste. M. Blaizot took me down to the After supper one could look at French liter- basement stock which Gautrot had shown me ary manuscripts, royal bindings, a stunning five years before; then I had found a Zola I Poliphilus while Beres explained his theory had hunted for years and a Valery I never of how that strange book came to be printed hoped to find. Not so good this time. by Aldus. Illustrationby Pablo Picassoin Affat Later in the same afternoon I called on Next day at the Bibliotheque Nationale I (1940) by Iliazd. Maurice Bazy, who has packed Maggs's old resolved my problems with La Mettrie's cancels

. ·:(tt' .~- --, ' :.. )/ t .}:i\_\;. Among Harvard's Libraries 15

-ff- qu'1l v1vra1t en pleine I:=..,quelque part du c8te de ~1brev1lle, ,-S du bob ...... vende.nt de la pac/otille aux 1nd1gbes. 4'~ A peine ti I ] 1P./ Timar ae pr6oip1ta1t vera une facto~ ·1111teuae aurmont6e du IIIOtSac ova. Il • •avanqa1t, la main tendue, •·11 ..,J.t..,..;;&j!i....·~ .. 11 v:~•un• I • E'.• • ::::s~i~~~rl\< •"l.e d1rocteur? •• , ncbantel Je 1111a le nou'f'el emplo 1 w 0 ,. ..~. ;..:-.•,, - Employ6 de quoi, de qui, l quoi? 'ildA ni.,_, - ii•

1l besoin d'employe, moil i . .,.._ !5Pas. ! ...,,.,.d.J/~·~ ,,.,.,..,...... ,.s-• •--• Timar n' avait pas &1 , L 11 V $ • -~ ~, l,., - '\.--4 ~-r- .6,. ,,_..,,. i--= .c... 1•Mt1 £ ere I SVUttrli It ...... : ...... ~e- ~·. J ~-=- ..,...._:.,..- .,,._. 1 r nr -,-.. • -;..,,_ ..... l:ouJou"a la vieille llistoil'el Lea bureaux de Pron,;e qui H .t..-/,,..:.,.~..A 1118lant de df,riger 1at, %Ad II I Le poate q11•on avait promiS l T1mar? Il ~tait l dilt jours de pinaase, tout au fond de la r1vUret Or, preC11arement, la p1naue 6ca1t 1u~• - ...._' :,,.,.~ 4,. ,;.,,.,. ,_.,__ CL · · avant unmob; •eux1amement, le posre l,tait :::::::1: e:;;ri: i z~i:,tz¥¥i: ~:--- ,,,....= - -4..,.• -~.

- T1rez votre plan! Moi, ga ne me regarde pas! Il y avait quatre jours de cela, quatre Joura qu.e Joaepb Timar etait en ArriqW>, Il conna1eaa1t "'1brev1lle miellX . ,.:.:.1~...:.-- que L• ilocbeUe, I fi J I &: long quai de cendree rouge, bord6 de cocotiere, l!Nec le merch6 indigane en plein vent et une tac torerie toua lea cant ml\trea; /"111&q11elq11ea vUlaa, l 1 •t cart, dallll la verdure...... Il la pinaase fond - erev6. Page from the MS. of Le Coup de Lune by Geroge Simenon. while checking some troublesome books Elephant from Histoires Naturelles of Jules published by Ronald Davis, an Englishman Renard-the text that equally inspired Ravel who made fashionable among the French aris- and Toulouse-Lautrec (the accompanying tocrats the collecting of modern first editions drawing is by Renard and not Lautrec)-and during the time of Sylvia Beach and Adrienne a 202-page typed manuscript inscribed with Monnier. (I am making a list of his imprints.) red and blue layers of revisions, of the 19 3 3 Also I looked at some Hemsterhuis, and some novel, Le Coup de Lune, by Simenon. You of the books of J.-C.Brunet, the great bibli- see he did revise his texts. ographer. At the end of that bibliographical That Wednesday I worked the stock of day I met Beres at his shop. While he intro- Lucien Scheler, science and literature, and duced me to the editor of the Diderot edition left Italian, German, and French books for he is publishing I formulated the expression: quotation, begging Lucien to help us find La bibliographie materielle, c'est la folie Eluard's second book (two years before he anglaise et le malaise americain! Anyhow, had sold us the first and third). His young while Monsieur Editor viewed an unknown successor Bernard Clavreuil had for us an Diderot manuscript that was to come up for Arabic grammar from the Cairo branch of auction soon, I looked up a number of the Napoleon's national printing house, and an other manuscripts. Consulting by phone with unfindable little technical manual by Dr. Manuscripts Curator Rodney Dennis that Louis Destouches, a.k.a. Celine. Friday night, I telephoned bids to Beres from At Jean Viardot's there was humanism, in- Milan on the Monday, and a cable two days cluding an early edition of Melanchthon's after my return announced success. We had Loci communes, with extensive contemporary bought a 234-page working manuscript of manuscript notes, and a reprint of the standard Paul Adam (1891); 2½ working drafts of The Renaissance guide to Muscovy by Herberstein. r6 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

This particular copy passed from the great Manuel. Later that morning in Rousseau- French collector Etienne Baluze into the Girard' s basement I could find nothing but a hands of one of the Duperrons and then into few tracts by Chateaubriand. I used to have a seminary for missionaries to foreign parts. such good luck there, but poor Rousseau- Its woodcut map is revised. Also at Viardot Girard is hospitalized with Alzheimer's and was a rare Nifo (Venice I 504), explaining to Madame is heroically getting the catalogs out physicians and others the right day for action. ail by herself Upstairs there was an early Peters- It has one of those registers that is based on burg Euler, 1730s, that I did not recall, which the first word on the recto of each bifolium: we turned out to have, and some Italian and omnes sunt duerniones. German translations of eighteenth-century Felix Polanski, our Russian agent, had scientific works by English or French scholars. Pasternak's second book for me, this one from Among them was VegetableStatics as rendered Centrifuge press, and he had located a com- into Italian and printed at Naples in 1756. parably good copy of the first, which I Sunday I flew to Milan for just one book- ordered on the spot. Also, he had two fasci- seller, Carlo Alberto Chiesa, in whose stock I nating ABC books: the one by ballet designer spent all day Monday. "Don't you ever get Alexandre Benoit, pre-revolutionary, is influ- tired oflooking at books, Roger?" he begged enced by Crane, Caldecott, and Greenaway; at seven o'clock. "The richest stock of all," I the other, revolutionary, is ammunition in the told him. Three volumes, "Pezzetti Varii in Soviet campaign against illiteracy, but it is a Rima," contained over one hundred eigh- rare edition, mentioning Trotsky. teenth- and seventeenth-century popular On the way back from supper that books from many cities, mostly in verse. Wednesday night I found the Galantaris' s toil- Therein, sold on the Rialto in r 766, is The Life ing away at ro:oo, so I knocked on their win- of the Empress Flavia and, printed for distribu- dow and got their list of the books they had tion at Venice and Bassano to say nothing of put aside for me. other places in 1687 by the Remondini On Thursday, Ascension, I called again on (manufacturers of paper as well as dealers in Jean Hugues to see more illustrated books, books), is a reminder of the great victory over on the widow of the great bookseller the Turks. Serving to remind us that wormy Georges Heilbrun to pay respects, and on "le woodblocks were used just as often in Italy as colonel Sickles," to keep in touch. Sickles, an they were in France or Germany or England American expatriot, is the great collector of is the Fall efNaples, with a very ancient cut of nineteenth-century French literature. One a scholar. Beside these were three V cnetian learns from his copies. His proudest new pos- chapbook editions in Modern Greek. One session is a copy of the Younger Dumas's La shows Aesop hunching his back over his book Dame aux Camelias from the czar's collection of fables in an unrecorded V cnetian edition by at Tsarskoe Sela-not in the usual Russian Nicholas Glukis, and another is one of two red or green plaque-stamped fake morocco, popular books also printed by Glukis about a but in a half French binding and in perfect folk hero who seems to be called Mpertoldinos condition. Sickles berated me for the way in but who turns out to be an import to Greek which I had used Beres as agent to purchase culture, Bertoldo. As you see from his hairy the manuscript of Mort a Credit by Celine at flanks, he is none too swift a character; indeed his auction sale two years before. he is covered with flies as he journeys to call Thiery Bodin, in whose shop I began work on the king. Perhaps Chiesa's greatest book is Friday morning, expertises autograph sales. the dissertation of Vico, the true beginning of Like Galantaris, he must neglect his stock, so it the Scienza Nuova, r 709, a copy inscribed to was full of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twen- one Biagio Garofalo. But another one isn't so tieth-century philosophical, musical, scientific, bad either: the prospectus for the Italian lend- and literary manuscripts. Albert Rousscl's first ing library to be operated by Mozart's librettist symphony, a Morand manuscript on big plac- Lorenzo da Ponte, subscribed to by all the lite- ards-just like the Elder Dumas's. We did well rati and cognoscenti of New York, including with him. For me there were two letters of Professor Anthon and Clement Clarke Moore. J.-C. Brunet: a late one about a collector- A treat to see, a joy to buy. "such books are only rare in the cabinets of We projected a Houghton exhibition made collectors who refuse them"-and an early of beautiful books no larger than Tory's one to an Elsevier bibliographer who was Champjleury:Aldus's de Aetna; some Lyonnese quarreling with Brunet's statements in the books of literature r 540-r 560; Holbein's Among Harvard's Libraries 17

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Dance of Death; a Mardersteig post-war with, and what did they do with it afterward? Woodcut illustrationsin the Modern book; some of the German fine printing be- Then identify the text, then take notes and Creek Bertoldo(Venice, 1818). tween the wars. I titled it at once: Small make comparisons. Librarians and collectors Enough to Handle, Big Enough to Read. may be the most disinterested viewers in their Watch for future developments. We were still own libraries, for their approach is not nar- talking about books on the way to the airport rowed by specific reference and research Tuesday morning, Carlo Alberto promising needs. And they are insiders. H.-J. Martin, to wear his Punchinello mask while drinking Monsieur Book History, confided to Andre the California wine I had brought him. Jammes that ifhe were not a librarian he would never have been able to make the enormous There, I've passed it along-but Looking ... number of comparisons among books and Leaming. Agassiz would not be pleased with genres on which his work is based. You have the me and my friends in hot pursuit of articles Martin advantage.I encourage you to use it, and densely packed with intellectual or artistic pass it along in exhibitions, bibliographical beauty. No disinterestedness there. No notes, lists, articles, talks, conversations-any "myriad worlds in the vague nebulous spaces way you can. Perhaps you will speak, as Agassiz of heaven." Not all bad, but back in the li- did, on motion in Families, about the sweep- brary, things settle down and a narrow point ing and choppy courses of handwriting, the of view can broaden and round out. stance of printing types, the colors and shapes How do you really look at books so as to of text blocks, the stiff or supple structure of learn from the encounter? Perhaps you refrain bookbindings, the configurations of annota- from identifying the text so that you concen- tions, the play of picture and text. Please, come trate on size and shape, covers and paper, types along with me: just Look at Books, Learn from and arrangement, picture and ornament. What It, Pass It Along. did people make the book look like to begin