The Millionaire and the Bard

by Andrea Mays

  Coningsby Sibthorp had surrendered in a brief, anticlimactic letter to Sotheran dated January 26:

  The reply to your letter making me the offer of £10,000 on behalf of Mr. Folger for the 1st Folio Edition of Shakespeare in the library at Canwick I write today. I will accept it—On condition that the money is paid me within a week of my placing the Book in your hands. I purpose going to town the middle of next week. I will bring the Shakespeare with me. I request that the matter may be kept secret.

  Given Sibthorp’s prickly nature, Folger was prompt in cabling the £10,000 to Sotheran. He did not want to lose the book a second time. At the conversion rate of $4.873 per British pound sterling, the price, according to a memorandum to Folger from Brown Brothers & Co., 59 and 61 Wall Street, came to $48,732.50. Now only one question remained: would Sibthorp hand over the book, or would he find some excuse to change his mind again? Folger was eager to receive confirmation from Sotheran. The firm cabled that Sibthorp proposed to deliver the book on Wednesday, February 4. Then the dealers cabled Folger to say that Sibthorp had postponed delivery—for a day. Had he reneged? Folger must have wondered. Only a cable from Sotheran relieved Folger’s anxiety: “Safely stored.” Sotheran followed up with a letter:

  In Mr. Railton’s absence for two or three days on business I have the pleasure to inform you as I already have done by cable that I today received from Mr. Sibthorp his copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare paying him at the same time the price of £10000, for which I enclose you his receipt. After you had cabled the money he wrote saying that he would let £5000 remain until April if we would retain the book for him, but we felt that you would prefer to have it at your disposal at once.

  The volume proved as good condition as when we last saw it and I at once took it to the Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, where we have hired a safe to hold it. . . .

  For my own part I would add my congratulations on your securing the most interesting copy of the First Folio which as far as appears now is ever likely to occur for sale.

  Henry had done it. After four years of torturous and delicate negotiations with a quixotic, temperamental, and indecisive seller, after infinite patience and indefatigable persistence, and after, of course, spending a great deal of money, the folio was his. As the most expensive book in the world, it was more costly than even the finest copy of the much rarer Gutenberg Bible, of which only fifty copies had been printed on vellum. Henry and Emily decided to make a triumphant trip to England to carry the Vincent copy home.

  His purchase of the Vincent copy signaled his breakthrough as a great collector. He had learned the price of hesitation and quibbling. He had overcome the psychological hurdle that all beginning collectors confront: spending big money. Some collectors do not obtain their finest pieces until the summit of their careers. Folger achieved many of his greatest triumphs at the dawn of his quest. This was his seventh First Folio (W 59, F 1). Some collectors lose great objects because they take too long to hit their stride. They lack the confidence to recognize opportunities or the will to act decisively, even when they could afford the piece. They possess the financial resources but not the will to deploy them. Great opportunities come too early in their careers, and they do not act. They fail to realize that falling stars are rare, that planets rarely align. Henry learned these lessons early in the game. The Vincent acquisition reaffirmed Henry’s faith in the free market and his belief in an inexorable economic truth. Despite unyielding pride, elaborate manners, a feigned indifference to wealth, and a pose of cultural superiority, an English gentleman could, in the end, once tempted with enough money, usually be induced to part with his treasures.

  Henry Folger was about to “suddenly and secretly” transport his captive prize to America. Railton advised him that the American Express Company, incapable of “sending a parcel out of the ordinary way,” was not up to the job. A special messenger would be too costly. Perhaps, suggested Railton, Henry could persuade an officer on an ocean liner—the purser or the doctor—to deliver the priceless package to America. Oh, no, replied Folger. After what he had endured to acquire this First Folio, and given its great value, he would not assume the risk of trusting his precious, hard-won volume to the hands of a shipboard official. There was only one safe way to transport the folio across the sea—he would sail to England and retrieve it himself. He informed Railton of this in a letter dated May 1, 1903: “I am now planning to come over to London for a few days early in June, for the purpose of bringing back the Folio.”

  There remained one piece of unfinished business between Folger and Sotheran: settling upon the firm’s fee for the supreme effort it spent in capturing Coningsby Sibthorp’s First Folio. When Folger or other collectors engaged dealers to represent them at auctions, the custom was to pay the successful agent a fee of five percent of the purchase price. Bidding did not consume an inordinate amount of a dealer’s time, and participating in an auction did not involve long and protracted negotiations. But this transaction was different. Sotheran had invested a huge effort in Folger’s cause—holding numerous meetings and conversations with Sibthorp, writing dozens of cables and letters to Sibthorp and Folger, and holding Henry’s hand through four years of emotional negotiations.

  In 1899, when Folger thought that he had bought the folio for £5,000, he offered Sotheran the typical commission of five percent. But that was for a deal that promised to be short and simple. Now, in 1903, Folger’s triumph came after a marathon that had exhausted him and the Sotheran firm, especially his point man there, Railton. In a gallant gesture, Railton wrote Henry that the firm would allow him to set its fee. Folger sent a gracious reply:

  I appreciate fully your kindness in writing that you and Mr. Sotheran were disposed to leave to me the determination of a fair commission for the purchase of the Sibthorp Folio. . . . If I do not write more fully next week, we will decide the question when I see you [in June].

  In view of the superb quality of professional service that Sotheran had provided, and given the spectacular result the firm achieved, it was not unreasonable for Messrs. Railton and Sotheran to expect Folger to express his gratitude and reward them with some largesse. They had just seen him open his wallet and spend more money on a book than anyone in history. Now they were about to see another side of Folger. In Henry’s files there survives a copy of the check from him to Sotheran, issued through Brown Brothers on June 11, 1903, “in commission for the Sibthorp Folio.” The check was drawn for $2,438.75—or £500. For all their work, Henry Folger had paid them only five percent commission.

  When the Folgers sailed to England to pick up the folio, they made their first visit to Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford, returning to New York carrying the book in Emily’s suitcase. Years later, when it came time to assign individual catalogue numbers to all the First Folios he had acquired, he designated this one as “Folger #1.” He would look back on this folio as his most difficult acquisition, but also his favorite. By tradition, the finest copies of the First Folio often bear the names of one or more of their noteworthy owners. Sidney Lee’s Census had called this folio the “Sibthorp Copy.” Folger renamed it, but not after himself—he was too modest for that. Instead, he declared that henceforth it would be known as the “Vincent copy,” in honor of its first owner. That homage offered the added benefit that never again would Henry Folger have to speak the name Coningsby Sibthorp.

  The Vincent Folio aroused Folger’s most profound passions and transported him through time to the moment of its creation. “We are carried back at once,” waxed Henry, “nearly three hundred years to the splendors and struggles of the reign of Elizabeth and James, when poets sang a glorious note, full-throated, when felonies were punished by branding the hand that stole, and ears were shorn to discourage eavesdropping where royalty conferred. Such is the curious history of the Vincent First Folio.”11

  Henry’s pride of ownership caused him to violate his own code of secrecy. An intensely private man, he rarely wrote for publication. But a few year
s later, in November 1907, he could not resist writing an article, “A Unique First Folio,” for The Outlook magazine about the amazing history and rediscovery of Augustine Vincent’s First Folio, which he heralded as “the most precious book in the world.” Henry mailed the piece to Sotheran, which took the bookseller by complete surprise:

  I have within the last hour received . . . the two copies of your most interesting article on the Vincent First Folio. I was startled to see you disclose your ownership as we—and I, since Mr. Railton’s death—have most scrupulously kept the secret; but you have certainly had a strong temptation to do so, as it is indeed as you say the most valuable book in the world. I see however that you still do not mention the price and that will still remain a secret as far as I am concerned.

  The article, which revealed that the firm had discovered the book, startled Sotheran into believing that Folger had also identified himself as its owner. But a careful reading of the text shows that Henry never disclosed his ownership. On the other hand, why would an important collector write about the discovery of a book that he did not own?

  Folger’s purchase of the Vincent copy unleashed a flurry of First Folio buying. In May 1903, he bought three. The first, for which he paid $2,250 (W 75, F 17), was made up from at least two other copies, the title page fashioned of pieces of a Second Folio title page, with the portrait in the third state. That month he also purchased via Sotheran for $1,750 (W 114, F 56) a patchwork of leaves from multiple copies of the First Folio, almost every page remargined to a uniform size to create the illusion that all the pages had come from a single copy. Folger’s last folio purchase for the month of May 1903, also from Sotheran for $1,250, is missing its preliminaries, but contains one rare and coveted page: the proof sheet for a page of Othello, with the proofreader’s corrections (W 105, F 47). The mistakes include the deletion at the top of a page of the phrase “and hell gnaw his bones” from Rodrigo’s speech, and a misprint (“neither lip”) in Emilia’s (Iago’s wife) line, “I know a lady in Venice would have walk’d / Barefoot to Palestine for a taste of his nether lip” in the uncorrected proof.12

  In June he purchased another two, for $825 (W 91, F 33) and $400 (W 106, F 48). The first contains its original title page, but someone cut out the portrait. Another engraving, removed from a Second Folio, has been inlaid in its place. This copy, acquired at auction through Sotheran, had sentimental meaning to Henry and Emily. This was the very volume used to make the Chatto & Windus facsimile—also known as the Halliwell-Phillipps facsimile—that Henry had bought for Emily early in their marriage.13 The second was a ragged copy, described as “much tattered,” lacking all preliminaries, and missing the plays The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Measure for Measure. In addition, pages were missing from Antony and Cleopatra and Richard III. This volume contained one prize: a proof page of King Lear marked with corrections.

  Sometime in 1903, Folger bought another First Folio for $850 (W 103, F 45). It was another medley of genuine leaves taken from various copies of the First and Second Folios. The original Second Folio page numbers, which were not the same as the page numbers in the First Folio, were eliminated. And in December, he bought the cheapest folio he would ever acquire, paying just $220 (W 122, F 64) for an inferior, incomplete copy missing hundreds of pages. The preliminaries are absent, as are The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and parts of Measure for Measure, The Winter’s Tale, and Titus Andronicus. Perhaps it would be shorter to list which plays are complete. The pages that remain are cropped. Only a man in Shakespeare’s thrall could have cherished this shabby relic. It had been a remarkable year in which he had bought his best copy, and several of his worst.

  Chapter 8

  “A Shakespeare Discovery”

  —THE NEW YORK TIMES

  IN OCTOBER 1904, McLure’s published the last installment of Ida Tarbell’s marathon, nineteen-part attack on the Trust. If Rockefeller and his colleagues were tempted to sigh in relief, Tarbell disabused them of that notion. The next month, in the most successful act of literary revenge in American history, she published a two-volume book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, which resuscitated all her charges against the firm. Her innuendos were visceral and hardly unbiased. Her hatred of Rockefeller had become an obsession, as intense as Henry Folger’s obsession with Shakespeare. More than any other executive at the company, Folger knew how one book could change history. Tarbell had set into motion forces that would, over the next seven years, alter the destinies of Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller, and, with them, Henry Folger.

  In 1904, Folger was promoted to assistant manager of Standard Oil Works and he continued to collect First Folios at almost the same pace he had the previous year. In March, he purchased a copy for $1,100 (W 92, F 34) and in April he paid $2,625 for another (W 78, F 20). The first copy, bound in “crushed crimson morocco” by Bedford, a renowned English binder, was purchased from London booksellers Pickering & Chatto. During conservation, several damaged leaves were removed and saved. The copy was trimmed closely at the head margin, making it one of the shortest copies Folger owned. The second copy included the very desirable genuine portrait, in state two, but removed from another First Folio and inlaid in the title page. It is a made-up copy, containing leaves from one or two fragments of First Folios. Folger offered booksellers Maggs Bros. £515 for the copy, which they declined, having offered it to another American for £665. Apparently that sale did not happen, and Folger received the book from Maggs “on approval” for £550. In what would become a classic Folger move, Henry wrote out a nitpicky list of the copy’s imperfections, and pointed them out to the dealer. They ultimately agreed to a price of £525. In July, on his annual summer trip to England, he acquired another copy for $1,254 (W 115, F 57). He saw it in Sotheran’s shop in London in sheets, and asked that it not be bound. Hundreds of leaves had been replaced from another copy, pages had been remargined, and all the preliminaries were in facsimile. One of the previous owners had handwritten a list of characters appearing in The Merry Wives of Windsor. In November, he purchased from New York bookseller George H. Richmond his last folio of the year for $1,850 (W 104, F 46). One of the quirks of old books is that they may contain remains or traces of items belonging to previous owners. This copy contains the rusty outline of a pair of eyeglasses, once long ago left between the pages.1 Their modest prices alone reveal that none was a spectacular copy. By now Henry knew that if he limited himself to buying only the best copies, he would end up with a very small collection of First Folios indeed. Compared to other iconic books such as the Gutenberg Bible, the survival rate of the First Folio was high. Only eighteen percent of the Gutenberg print run had survived, while more than thirty percent of the First Folio print run had survived. But that number was deceptive. Of more than two hundred First Folios, fewer than thirty-five copies are complete with the title page/portrait, all other preliminaries, and all text leaves.

  The next year began with the emergence of another great Shakespeare rarity, one as exciting, in its own way, as the Vincent First Folio. On Wednesday, January 11, a brief story in the New York Times grabbed Henry Folger’s attention. The headline proclaimed in boldface capital letters: “A SHAKESPEARE DISCOVERY.” It was an era when papers followed news from the literary and rare book worlds with an interest nonexistent today. One never knew what amazing finds the newspapers might herald—an important presentation copy of the First Folio, a rare Shakespeare autograph, a hitherto unseen quarto, or the Holy Grail, a manuscript of a poem or play in the master’s own hand. Folger’s eyes raced to the follow-up headline: “Hitherto Unknown Edition of ‘Titus Andronicus’ Found in Sweden.” So it was a quarto. The story was brief, just eight lines: “LONDON. Wednesday, Jan 11.—The Morning Ledger’s Copenhagen correspondent reports the discovery at Lund, Sweden, of a book containing the text of Shakespeare’s ‘Titus Andronicus,’ printed in London in 1594. The oldest edition hitherto known is the 1600 quarto.�
� Henry cut the announcement from the paper and studied the little 1.5-by-2-inch clipping. If the story was true, this was an earthshaking discovery—the first printing of Shakespeare’s first play. The existence of this 1594 quarto edition had been reported in the 1600s, but because no example had ever been found, it had been dismissed as lost or apocryphal.

  The discovery attracted worldwide attention. Two days later in London, The Standard published more details in a long article headlined: “ROMANCE OF A SHAKESPEARIAN QUARTO. EXTRAORDINARY FIND IN SWEDEN.” The story revealed that the book had been discovered in the house of a “countrywoman,” which later gave rise to the myth that the quarto had been rescued from a Swedish peasant’s cottage. The discovery was less romantic. A Swedish postal clerk in Malmö, Petrus Johannes Krafft, had inherited it.

  “It is a find,” reported The Standard, “that the most level-headed bibliophile can be excused for raving over, for no single copy of this first edition has ever been known to exist.” The quarto’s owner had placed it in the temporary care of the librarian of Lund University, who had alerted an English bibliographer to its existence. That man, so the story said, had offered £100 for it, which was refused. Then he offered £300. The Standard scoffed at these lowball offers: “But it would probably fetch much more—anything between £600 and £1,000.” Quoting the unnamed bibliographer, the story warned readers that this cultural treasure might not find a home in Shakespeare’s land: “Will it come to England? Yes, I expect so; but, I fear, not to stay. It will probably be put up at Sotheby’s and find a home in America. It is a dreadful pity, but the British Museum can’t afford to buy it at a high price.”