The Millionaire and the Bard

by Andrea Mays

  Sotheran was wrong. This was precisely the moment when Folger should have dispatched the kind of cable he dictated when the Vincent copy was at stake: “Buy without fail even at ten thousand cash.” A new offer of £5,000 or £10,000 might have compelled Turbutt to succumb. Instead, Henry heeded his agent’s advice and did nothing.

  Sotheran wrote again on January 6, 1906, giving Folger the good news that the library was nowhere close to raising the money. The Bodleian had less than three months left. On February 19, the Lancashire Evening Post reminded readers that the folio would set sail for America in less than two months, at the end of March. The article had little effect. Then, in a masterpiece of propaganda, librarian E. W. B. Nicholson reframed the Bodleian’s predicament into a referendum on British patriotism by publishing a public appeal in the Times of London:

  Unless [the Bodleian copy] can be recovered there will be an indelible blot on our scutcheon. At present about £1300 has been received or promised in hundreds of subscriptions . . . but I do not think that they can raise the total to £2000. That after two and a half centuries we should have the extraordinary chance of recovering this volume, and should lose it because a single American can spare more money than all of Oxford’s sons or friends . . . is a bitter prospect. It is the more bitter because the abnormal value put on this copy by our competitor rests on knowledge ultimately derived from our own staff and our own registers. But from so cruel a jibe of fortune this appeal may perhaps yet save us.

  Nicholson tried to shame donations from Oxford men by taunting them that “Cambridge men have asked leave to contribute and so have men and women from no University” (italics added). Nicholson’s appeal worked. On March 6, the Times of London printed an indignant letter from one Mr. Edmund Gosse: “Who is this millionaire? Why does he offer a sum three times larger than has hitherto been the market value of the book? Is he a private person? Is he a tradesman? Is he a syndicate? Does he offer his prodigious sum that he may add a treasure to his personal collection, or that he may sell again at a profit?” It was bad enough to lose the folio. But God forbid, Gosse implied, that this impertinent American be “in trade.”

  Snobs like Gosse and Sidney Lee might have asked why American collectors like Folger, Perry, and Morgan were so successful at buying English books. At public auction, books went to the highest bidder. Anyone could bid against the Americans. And the London dealers would have been happy to sell books to wealthy Englishmen. Henry Folger was hardly the richest man in the world. Many English gentlemen were wealthier, but not one of them devoted his resources to outbid him or the other top American collectors. Indeed, few Englishmen could be bothered to rally to the Bodleian’s cause. The slow progress of Nicholson’s fund-raising drive was excruciating, and many an Englishman who could have single-handedly saved the First Folio “in one fell swoop” sat on the sidelines in a studied pose of disinterest. In all of Great Britain, not one man or woman volunteered to put up the £3,000 necessary to ransom the Bodleian First Folio and save a national treasure. It was a national embarrassment. Because the English wealthy did nothing to interrupt the one-way, transatlantic trade in rare Shakespeariana, Lee proposed that the government intervene in the free market and provide the money that English gentlemen refused to give. But he was like a zealot preaching to an indifferent congregation.

  Still, the Bodleian’s cause acquired momentum among smaller donors. On March 13, 1906, the Western Daily Press echoed Nicholson’s plea: “On every ground of national sentiment and literary expediency the volume that is now on the market should not be allowed to quit this country.” Even in America, the New York Times Book Review attacked the “reprehensible American millionaire” who coveted this British national treasure.

  Folger had never seen a campaign like this before. His most important previous purchases had been transacted in private, without public attention or pressure. Some of the English papers had groused about his purchase of Titus Andronicus, but the chatter did not amount to much, given that he was taking the book out of Sweden, not England. This was different. It was the time for Folger to confound his foes with a stunning cash offer, impossible to match. But on March 16, Sotheran reassured him that the campaign against him “up to to-day . . . had apparently not succeeded.” The firm prepared to inform Turbutt that its offer was good until Monday, April 2.

  On March 17, the Morning Leader newspaper went to battle and published a contemptuous cartoon depicting a nameless—and faceless—Henry Folger, dressed in a fancy suit and silk top hat, crawling on his belly in pursuit of the Bodleian First Folio. Surrounded by sacks of money, a fat roll of bills, and gold coins strewn upon the ground, the undignified American slithers through his spoils of English treasures—paintings and sculptures—as he grasps for the Bodleian’s pride. Captioned with the boldfaced demand “WHO IS THIS MILLIONAIRE?” the cartoon reprinted from the Times Edmund Gosse’s imperious questions about what kind of man dared to bid for England’s prize.

  By March 24, the Bodleian had collected just £1,967 in donations and pledges. Nicholson resorted to the London Times for a last appeal: “When this book is on the way to America, which I apprehend will be on April 2, some of you will agree with your paper that ‘a grave scandal’ has befallen, and will regret a mistaken confidence in other people’s promptitude hindered them from averting it.” He stated that it was too late now for small donations. Only gifts “from many men who can give hundreds [of pounds] without missing them” could ransom the folio in time.

  On Thursday, March 29, the Morning Post published a notice that should have alarmed Sotheran. Folger’s opponents were closing the gap:

  The fund to restore to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, its First Folio of Shakespeare has reached £2594. A London resident (not an Oxford man) has guaranteed £300 for himself and relatives. Just over £400 must now be guaranteed by the librarian by Saturday to save the volume for Oxford and this country.

  It was an emergency, but Sotheran failed to cable a warning to Standard Oil headquarters in New York City. Instead, Sotheran asked Henry to cable only £3,000 to London so the firm would be ready to close the sale on Monday, April 2.

  But on Friday, March 30, the Times of London announced a stunning reversal of fortune. A notice headlined “SHAKESPEARE AND THE BODLEIAN” carried a triumphant message from E. W. B. Nicholson: “The Shakespeare is saved.” A handful of pledges, including £200 from Turbutt himself but foremost £500 from Donald Alexander Smith, Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal, High Commissioner of Canada, had put the Bodleian over the top. Nicholson admitted that not all the cash was on hand: “Nearly £1000 of the total is in promises, some of them running in terms which render payment a matter of uncertainty.” But the Bodleian had done it.

  Back in New York, Henry Folger knew nothing of these developments. He waited out the weekend assuming that Monday would bring a cable from Sotheran telling him that he had won the Turbutt Folio for £3,000. Just as he expected, a cable arrived on Monday, and he tore open the sealed envelope to read the good news: “Regret owner sold to Bodleian their subscription completed at last moment.” Sold? How could this be? Sotheran had assured him that the situation was under control. The words stunned Folger. Perhaps, he murmured, the Bodleian did not deserve to get its copy back. It was the library employees’ own foolishness centuries before that had led to the loss of the book in the first place. There was only one thing to do: apply more pressure. He sent an urgent cable to London: “Offer Turbutt 5,000 if transfer is not finally closed.” He had just raised his offer from almost $15,000 to almost $25,000.

  No further word came from Sotheran, so Folger retired on the night of April 2 not knowing whether his new offer had won the prize. The news came by cable the next day: “Transfer final.” He had lost the book without having had his best offer laid on the table. And whose fault was that? Sotheran had underestimated the library’s campaign and Folger had suffered the loss of the book. Few things can infuriate an obsessive collector more than losing a coveted object
not because he could not afford it, but because a rival had outmaneuvered him. It was now in Sotheran’s interest to convince Folger that his quest had been impossible from the start. After the Vincent Folio and Titus Andronicus triumphs, they knew they had disappointed him. They did not want to lose him as a client. The odds had always been against him, the firm explained in a letter of April 4. Remember, the firm told him, Turbutt was “an old Oxford man with his son present at Magdalen College”—the Bodleian was their sentimental favorite. And “with Lord Strathcona in reserve the Bodleian was bound to win.” Sotheran tried to appease Henry by suggesting that they had already obtained for him the best folio in existence, the Vincent copy: “The present matter leaves your own immeasurably finer and more interesting copy absolutely unique in the world.”

  Sotheran’s consolations failed to assuage Folger’s frustration. He wanted the Turbutt Folio and refused to accept defeat. On April 9, he cabled his agents to propose a bizarre scheme: “See librarian and offer 1500 pounds cash for privilege of having book in my collection during my life to be completely protected thus relieving subscribers making sacrifices. If I had purchased I would have willed book to Bodleian. Wrote you fully Saturday.”

  It was a strange cable. Sotheran had never seen Folger go to such fevered lengths to obtain a book. The cable concluded with an even odder concession: “If necessary book may remain permanently stored in London.” In other words, Folger would not even demand that the folio be sent to him in America. He would be satisfied with the knowledge that he “owned” the book in the abstract without ever having it in his possession. This was a psychological portrait of the mind of an obsessive collector.

  Sotheran called upon Nicholson, who rejected any arrangement with Folger. The librarian had the upper hand now, and he enjoyed playing it. He refused Sotheran the courtesy of examining the book, and would not even take it off the shelf. According to Sotheran, “He said that the Bodleian had determined to have the book six months before our offer, and . . . he had resolved to guarantee any necessary amount himself out of his private pocket.” That was big talk for a man who just a few days before had not publicly pledged one pound of his personal funds to save the folio. Nicholson’s “private pocket” was not as deep as Folger’s, and an offer of five or ten thousand pounds would have exposed the librarian’s false bravado.

  Sotheran advised Folger to forget about this folio: “You can at least feel that everything possible has been done, but the fact that the matter has been made a national one would have stood in the way of an even larger offer.” But Folger would not stop writing to the firm. His persistence caused Sotheran to send him its final letter on the subject: “As I said in my previous letter, I fear we really never had a chance, even at the highest possible price, owing to its being considered a national matter.” Folger came to his senses, realized that it was hopeless, and abandoned his pursuit of the Bodleian First Folio.

  The London Standard assailed the gravitational force that American wealth exerted over Shakespeare rarities. When Sidney Lee spoke at an annual banquet commemorating the playwright’s birthday he rejoiced that the Bard was more popular than ever “in the life of the nation” and that his fame “was one of rapid and triumphant advance.” But Lee had detected a “discordant undertone,” and the next day the London Standard reported his warning—the Americans were spoiling everything. “On the adverse side of the account must be set the recent triumphs of American collectors in stripping this country of rare early editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poems—editions which had long been regarded among its national heirlooms.”

  Lee recited a roll call of lost prizes: “The unique first quarto of Titus Andronicus, which had lately been discovered in Sweden, was promptly secured at an enormous price by an American enthusiast.” Indeed, England was losing entire collections:

  More lamentable was the sudden flight to the shop of a bookseller in New York of the surprisingly rich library of the late Mr. Locker-Lampson, of Rowfant. At one fell swoop the country has been deprived by this transaction of as many as twenty-seven copies of the lifetime editions of Shakespeare’s plays, with much else of almost equal rarity and interest.

  The Americans operated by stealth, Lee complained:

  Never in the history of English book collecting had this country lost suddenly and secretly such a treasure of Shakespeareana. . . . Before the officers of any public institution like the British Museum or the Bodleian Library, before any British private collector had any suspicion of their impending fate, these Rowfant volumes crossed the Atlantic never in all probability to return.

  Lee was honest enough to point the finger of blame in the right direction—at wealthy Englishmen who had done nothing to save England’s heritage:

  While we admired the superior enterprise of the American collector, we could not but grieve over the insensibility of our own rich men who allowed these heirlooms to leave our shores without making any effort to retain them here. One smaller and more flickering shadow had been cast across the brilliant page . . . of Shakespeare’s fame.

  Henry Folger’s inability to acquire the Bodleian copy was the first time that anyone in England had ever defeated him in pursuit of a First Folio, and even then he had been outmatched, but not outbid.

  Chapter 9

  “Do . . . Devise Some Way to Get the Books”

  —HENRY CLAY FOLGER

  NINETEEN HUNDRED and six was a slow year for Henry Folger’s Foliomania. He bought only one First Folio. It was made up from several copies, and it came as part of a set that included copies of the Second, Third, and Fourth Folios. He acquired it through the Boston dealer Charles F. Libbie in February 1906, at $6,500 for the set (W 101, F 43). Such a pedestrian example offered little to compensate for his failure to seize the illustrious Bodleian copy.

  For consolation, Folger turned to Shakespeare himself. For most of his life, whatever his circumstances or state of mind, Henry found in the plays relief, catharsis, pleasure, humor, and perspective. He kept a volume or two as almost everyday companions, and he was a faithful reader. He and Emily also loved live performances. Beginning in 1906, and for almost the next quarter century, her plain green buckram-covered diary—PLAYS I’VE SEEN—recorded more than one hundred of the performances that she, and sometimes Henry, attended. The diary provides a glimpse into the theatrical world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Perhaps inspired by Samuel Pepys’s diary of seventeenth-century London, her theater journal is a gifted amateur’s record of the thespian scene, particularly Shakespearian, at the turn of the century in New York City and its environs. She did not limit her attendance to Shakespeare plays; many others, including Peter Pan, appear in her handwritten notes. She included her impressions as well as her husband’s—“Henry did not applaud,” she recalled one night. At a performance of Hamlet at the Garden Theatre in New York City, she found the play “well-acted & well put on as to costume & scenery to next to nobody in that barn of a theatre. . . . The audience was so small that one can expect, we fear, only a short run of the Shakespearian parts promised. . . . The Avenue and Street were filled with autos, taxis & hansoms for the Horse Show.”1 She made other observations too. Did the actors make good eye contact? Or an odd one, asking whether or not the actors were “lispers.” Emily was keen on visuals and production values, and her diary teems with related questions: Were the costumes historically accurate? Were the theater acoustics adequate? Was the scenery “elaborate”? The final entry in the diary, dated February 5, 1930, mentions not a live performance but a film—the “talkie” Taming of the Shrew, starring Mary Pickford as Katherine and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. as Petruchio. It was the dawn of a great age to come for Shakespeare in the cinema. As always, Emily noted her companion for the evening: “[went] with Dick and self.” (She was using her affectionate nickname for her husband.) Emily Folger found the film to be a bargain: “It is not Shakespeare, but . . . amazing what can offer for 35 cents per!”

  Henry loved the culture
and history of theatergoing. So he became an obsessive collector not only of the most rare and valuable books but also theatrical memorabilia, from Shakespeare’s time to his own. He accumulated an enormous hoard of ephemera—advertisements, diaries, scrapbooks, cast lists, ticket stubs, broadsides, playbills, and more. Indeed, his staggering collection of playbills, none of them worth more than a few dollars each at the time he acquired them, includes more than half a million examples. This collection preserves a now priceless history of live Shakespeare performance over time. The material ranges from eighteenth-century pieces advertising some of the earliest performances of Shakespeare in America, to a glorious broadside announcing a one-night-only performance in New York City of Julius Caesar starring the three Booth brothers, Edwin, Junius, and John Wilkes.