Flora V. Livingston: Curator of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, bibliographer, and Lewis Carroll enthusiast The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Imholtz, August A., Jr. 2000. Flora V. Livingston: Curator of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, bibliographer, and Lewis Carroll enthusiast. Harvard Library Bulletin 9 (4), Winter 1998: 56-75. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37363490 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN Flora V. Livingston: Curator of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Bibliographer, and Lewis Carroll Enthusiast August A. Imholtz, Jr. AUGUST A. IMHOLTZ, JR., arvard librarians are not known for cutting up books. Even if she is Executive Editor of the had not partially mutilated the Harvard copy of a "rare" 184 7 Congressional Information edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Reading Sonnets, Flora Service, Inc. H Livingston would be remembered for her bibliographies of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll and other authors. "Mutilation," however, is probably too strong a word. The year was 1932. In England two young bibliographers, John Carter and Graham Pollard, were steadily amassing evidence that quite a number of pamphlets, purportedly extremely rare, were actually forgeries, forgeries contrived by the distinguished bibliographer Thomas J. Wise. John Collins describes the state of their investi- gation of the 1847 Sonnets pamphlet, supposedly privately printed in Reading, up to the point of Mrs. Livingston's intervention: There was no presentation copy (privately printed books tend to have a higher level of inscription than those published commercially); no copy in Browning's library; no copy with any signature inscription or mark of provenance before about 1900; and the account of the history of the book given by Gosse was contradicted by Browning's own letters .... there was no copy of the Sonnets in any public collection in England and the enquirers could hardly go to [Wise's home] and ask for a paper sample.' Flora Livingston provided a sample. On 6 April 1933, she wrote to John Carter: I have had the courage to trim off a little slip of paper from the bottom of a badly folded leaf of the Sonnets. It will never show, and if it does no one will know the who or the why. I have sent it, as you directed, to Messrs. Cross and Bevans. I am very much interested, especially as you are working on all the pamphlets together, George Eliot, Browning, Arnold, etc. Does that include also the Ruskins, and Tennysons? They are all alike. Please look into the two Kipling pamphlets, The White Man's Burden, and White Horses. They belong to the same or later a group, including the Swinburne's, Borrows, and such. I John Collins, The Two Forgers: A Biography of Harry Oak Knoll Books, 1992), 243. Buxton Forman and Thomas James Wise (New Castle: Flora V Livingston and the Bibliography of Lewis Carroll 57 It is not necessary that my name should appear. The scrap of paper came from America, that is enough. And I hope I gave you a piece big enough for analysis. With every wish for success.' Mrs. Livingston's surgical excision from the Harvard copy of the Sonnets, when chemically analyzed, revealed a "significant proportion of chemical wood pulp." Since wood pulp was not used in British book production until 1874, any book, like the Reading 184 7 Sonnets, containing it could not have been printed before 1874. Carter and Pollard, thus confirmed in their suspicions ofWise, went on to determine even the identity of the typeface that Wise employed in constructing the Browning forgery and his many other productions. They published their results in a work that has become a bibliographic classic: An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets. A female librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Collection, who did not even insist on recognition, had helped, as it were, to cut down the great Thomas James Wise after he had fooled wealthy book collectors, distinguished scholars, and professional bibliographers on both sides of the Atlantic for so long a time. Nor was the Browning volume the only one Flora cut. In her letter of December II, 1933, to Carter she wrote: Also I enclose a little snip of the paper from Morte D' Arthur. I did not know it was so scarce. Those little suspicious Tennysons all came on the market about the same time. I am curious to know what Mr. Wise thinks about it. He may not say anything until he publishes a new volume of his catalogue, then he will call you names. Just the same, he knows more about them than he has ever told. After Carter and Pollard's volume exposing Wise was published, Flora wrote to Carter on August 15, 1934: The comments people make about [An Enquiry], especially those who never bought a book, are curious and humorous. Every collector thinks he has some of the forgeries, as well as some you have not mentioned or discovered. It is the best detective story ever written. It is curious that all the forgeries are of the authors of whom our friend [Wise] has made bibliographies. Who was this librarian with scissors? Born Flora Virginia Milner in Montana in 1862, she began her lifelong association with books by first working, like her future husband, in a bookstore, taught school for a time, and then returned to the world of books where she remained. The story of how she came to Harvard, and indeed of most of her adult life, is closely interwoven with the life of another Widener librarian from the northern Midwest, also a Lewis Carroll scholar, and likewise a formidable woman of independent ideas, Florence Cushman, who in 1883 had married Flora's brother, Samuel Milner. It was Florence Cushman Milner and Samuel Milner who brought Flora Milner together with her future husband, Luther Livingston. In her autobiography (on which we must depend for many of the biographical details of Flora's early life), Florence Cushman Milner recounts how she helped bring Luther and Flora together: 2 Although the first paragraph of this letter has been Collection which was sold at auction at Sotheby's on quoted before (Collins 243;John Carter in the notes to December 5, r 967. The letters are now in the possession the Pariser Sale Catalog 82), this is, I believe, the first of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Collection time the whole letter has been printed. At the bottom at the University of Texas. Unfortunately, Carter's letters of the page, Carter writes "Acknowledged April 20." to Flora Livingston, which span more than fifteen years, Eight letters from Mrs. Livingston to Carter were are not in the Wise material purchased by Texas nor are acquired by Sir Maurice Pariser for his Thomas J. Wise they preserved among the Livingston papers at Harvard. HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN On a visit to Grand Rapids one time, [Luther Livingston] met with a bicycle accident and was housebound for some weeks. I visited him often and at my sug- gestion Flora wrote to him. Eventually the romance blossomed and they were married in our apartment in Grand Rapids [in I 898 I.3 Livingston was a largely self-taught man, and also what some today would call "an independent scholar." In addition to their passion for books, Flora and Luther shared a great love of flowers and plants. Before their marriage, Luther's knowledge of botanical names and his informed acquaintance with rare species had gained him the job of compiling catalogs for the greenhouses of Pitcher and Manda of Short Hills, New Jersey, after presumably growing weary of his earlier employment as a shipping clerk at Dodd, Mead & Co. In this work his aptitude for precise statement and for the clear differentiation of peculiarities found ample scope. The printed catalogues compiled by him have become classics among horticulturists. His descriptions set a standard which rival establishments unable to attain and .... thereby contributed to the spread of his unrecognized influence upon American gardening. 4 Of such high quality was his work that the nursery had sent him to South America for eighteen months to collect orchids and other exotic plants-a work he performed assiduously with concurrent production of additional detailed catalogs. But the panic of l 893 sharply reduced the market for orchids, so Luther returned to Dodd and Mead where he worked his way up to becoming head of their rare book department. In 1910, however, when the firm decided to concentrate its efforts on publishing, Robert H. Dodd and Luther Livingston left the company to establish their own rare book firm of Dodd and Livingston. Presumably, during these years Flora was assisting him with the bibliographic work for which he became famous. Harry Widener became one of Livingston's best customers, and a strong friendship developed between the young collector and the older bibliographer-rare book dealer. When Widener lost his life on the Titanic, his mother, Mrs. George E. Widener, selected Livingston to become the first librarian of her son's collec- tion of first editions and rare books to be housed in the library she was building in his honor at Harvard. However, Livingston's health was in decline. On April 14, 1912 (ironically, the same day the Titanic sank), Livingston had fallen, fracturing bones for the second time in six months.