The Millionaire and the Bard

by Andrea Mays

  In this copy of the First Folio, in pencil beside Gilburne’s printed name, someone had written “Samuel Gilburne” in an early—possibly seventeenth-century—hand, leading Maggs to speculate, based on the writing alone, without any supporting provenance, that the copy had belonged to Gilburne and bore his autograph. The tantalizing association excited Folger. He had a weakness for any object that could be associated with someone who knew Shakespeare, and he coveted any First Folio that could be traced back to its original owner in the 1620s. The Gilburne copy promised both. Only two copies in the world enjoyed the elite status of a provenance that reached back to the very year of publication in 1623: the Vincent Folio that Folger had acquired in 1903 and the Bodleian Folio that had eluded his grasp in 1906. If the Gilburne inscription was the actor’s authentic signature, then this folio was the ne plus ultra—the only copy in the world that could be identified as having been once owned by one of the King’s Men and one of Shakespeare’s friends. Without the inscription, Folger might have dismissed the volume as unworthy of his collection. With it, he was willing to overlook its imperfections.

  He cabled Maggs at once, placing an order for the so-called Gilburne Folio. He did not even try to knock down the price. Eight hundred fifty pounds—reflecting the poor condition of the book—was cheap enough. Indeed, Henry Folger considered it a bargain for a First Folio that had been owned by one of the King’s Men. Maggs replied with bad news: the book had already been sold. The catalogue, which Henry did not receive until June, had been printed in May, and slow surface mail had delayed its prompt arrival. Someone else had received the catalogue first, and had already bought the Gilburne First Folio. It was not the first time this had happened, and it irritated him whenever it did. No matter, Folger resolved. More money should do the trick. He wrote a letter to Maggs on July 2:

  I am very sorry indeed to lose lot 594 from your catalogue 377. I cabled as soon as the catalogue was received. A first Folio is directly in the line of my collecting. Can I get you to try to buy it back for me from the purchaser, even at a considerable advance in price? If it happens to have been bought by an American dealer kindly let me have his name and I will negotiate with him.

  Maggs was happy to help such an important collector, and not reluctant to make an extra profit by buying and selling the book a second time. The firm replied on July 18: “We are making inquiries to ascertain if we cannot yet get it to offer you.” Maggs failed, and in October, the book dealer told Henry that they had informed the buyer of his interest, and that “we are asking him to write direct to you.”

  On October 7, 1919, the New York City book dealer Gabriel Wells wrote to Folger, revealing that it was he who had bought the Gilburne Folio. Unfortunately for Henry, Wells had ordered it for a client, not for stock. Unbeknownst to Folger, Wells had acquired the volume for an American collector in Buffalo, New York, Colonel Charles Clifton, president of the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company. The book was already in the customer’s possession.

  In a letter dated November 11, 1919, Folger tried to buy it by disparaging its quality:

  As First Folios go it is a poor copy, as you doubtless know, having a number of leaves at the beginning and at the end in facsimile, but I think it has some special interest for my collection, so that I feel like still making an effort to secure it. Could you induce your client to let me have it for, say, $6000.00, which must be more than it cost him, and really much more than the volume is worth to anyone else.

  Henry flattered Wells by telling him that he trusted his “judgment and expertise” on how best to get the book. He also offered to pay Wells “the usual 10% commission, of course,” but Wells, hoping to curry favor with a millionaire collector and place Folger in his debt, demurred: “If it is in my power you shall have the Folio. . . . I would willingly waive any compensation for my efforts as I am anxious to please you.”19

  In January 1920, Wells offered Folger a “fine perfect copy” of the First Folio for $11,500 less ten percent. Henry seized on the offer as a way to get the Gilburne Folio. Suggest to Clifton, Henry told Wells, that he buy the perfect First Folio. Folger would pay $7,350 for the Gilburne copy, and if its owner put up just another $3,000, he could replace the Gilburne with a much finer copy.20

  Wells wrote back, warning Folger that there was a psychological dimension to a transaction like this. “I shall do my best to secure it; but you know how people are when they are approached about giving back something which they bought. They at once get an exaggerated idea of value, and so the matter must be handled in a very diplomatic way.”21

  In March, Folger wrote to Wells about another copy that the dealer had offered him:

  Thank you very much for letting me see the Borden First Folio, it is a fine copy. Can we not make use of it to secure for me the First Folio from the Maggs catalog. . . . This is certainly a very much better copy, and I should think a collector should prefer to have it. . . . I am willing to pay up to $6500 for the [Gilburne] copy, and if the owner were to use this sum towards buying the Borden copy he would have to pay only $2300 more to get an admirable volume. Can you not arrange this for me?22

  Wells replied that now was not the time: “The gentleman has a serious illness which causes him to remain in the South until he recovers his health. You realize that it would not do to write him about this matter, and that the best way is to take it up with him personally.”23

  Then, on May 21, Folger received a telegram from Wells: “Folio exchange made. Sending volume tomorrow.” Henry thanked the dealer for enduring months of pestering: “I am greatly obliged to you for the trouble you have taken, and the patience shown, in getting me the First Folio. . . . I enclose a check.” It had taken almost one year, but once again, Henry had gotten his way. He believed that he now owned another great treasure—one of only three association copies of a First Folio in the world, and the only one alleged to be associated with a member of Shakespeare’s King’s Men.

  Or was it? In 1920, when Folger acquired it, there existed no other known specimens of Gilburne’s signature or handwriting. Thus, it was impossible to authenticate the signature in the book by comparing it against another example. The evidence supporting Gilburne’s association was circumstantial at best. And the list of actors was an odd place to locate an ownership signature. Such a mark would more likely be expected on the first leaf, and not several leaves deep into the preliminaries. To this day, no other examples of Gilburne’s handwriting have been discovered, making it impossible to verify that his own hand penciled his name in this First Folio. Indeed, there is no evidence that Gilburne was literate; many actors of the time could not read or write, and memorized their parts by hearing them read aloud. Today most scholars, skeptical of the evidence, doubt that the “Gilburne” Folio ever belonged to Samuel Gilburne. If not, then Henry Folger had made a huge mistake. In his zeal to obtain the copy, he had sacrificed a far superior First Folio to obtain an inferior one whose story was better than the book itself. Without that story, the book loses its magical resonance and falls to earth as just another flawed volume. The book still reposes in Henry’s collection. Perhaps one day some new discovery will validate his high hopes for the volume’s provenance.

  Chapter 11

  “I Am an American”

  —HENRY CLAY FOLGER

  IN THE SUMMER of 1920, Henry Folger turned sixty-three years old. He had worked more than forty years in the oil industry. He had begun his fourth decade of collecting. He looked ahead with excitement to the 1920s and to the next stage of his life. He could retire. Or he could spend the next decade doing what he had done since the turn of the century—advancing his stellar business career and pursuing his Shakespeare obsession. He was in good health. He could still work, and he possessed the skills and competitive drive capable of advancing him to the presidency and even the chairmanship of Standard Oil. And he still possessed the collector’s insatiable appetite for more. He had already built a spectacular stockpile. Despite his penchant for secrecy, he was th
e most famous Shakespeare collector in the world. He possessed many more First Folios—fifty-nine—than any institution or individual, along with an overwhelming hoard of thousands of other rare books and manuscripts. If he stopped collecting then, his collection would still rank as the finest private collection of Shakespeariana in history. But there were always more treasures to pursue. Even the $100,000 Pavier Quarto, which many bibliophiles would have treated as the capstone acquisition of their careers, had only whetted Folger’s appetite for more.

  Henry Folger prepared for the final push that would propel him to the peak of his career and anoint him as a captain of American industry, and also secure his legacy as a great Shakespeariana collector. He saw a future filled with opportunities for even greater wealth and more exquisite books. But by 1920, he decided that in addition to his ongoing pursuits, it was time to act on something he had been thinking about for a long time. Henry Folger considered the future of his collection. What, he wondered, should he do with his vast and priceless hoard?

  By combining his passion and wealth with three decades’ worth of ingenuity, perseverance, and patience, Henry Folger had built the greatest collection of First Folios in the world, plus a spectacular literary and historical library of books, manuscripts, maps, broadsides, art objects, and ephemera from Shakespeare’s time. And he was not finished. But now what? His friend Horace Howard Furness had pleaded with him to build a first-class home library: “Would that this taste of putting your books to their befitting use would induce you to stop piling up any more hard food for Midas. Build yourself a fine library wherein you and Emily may ensconce yourself into a corner, like a couple of industrious mice, and nibble at the contents of your treasures and let the rest of the world share in your pleasures.”

  Unlike other major American collectors, Folger had never built the monument expected of a man in his position: a grand Manhattan mansion with dozens of rooms and, of course, a spectacular library. Thus, Henry Folger had never enjoyed the collector’s privilege of seeing all his books shelved together in one place. His eyes had never danced from spine to spine, shelf to shelf, and case to case, beholding in one sweeping, exquisite moment the sum of what he had achieved. It was the secret pleasure known to only the greatest collectors—that rapturous sensation when one experiences for the first time the joy of the tout ensemble, that instant when one realizes that the climax of a lifetime’s passion has exceeded the sum of its parts—that you did this, and that no one, no matter how wealthy or determined, can ever duplicate your singular triumph.

  Folger possessed the books, but no physical library to hold them all. That unified library was an abstraction existing only in his imagination, and on the countless pages of his catalogues and inventories. Once Henry and Emily had stuffed the rooms and closets of their modest home full of Shakespeariana, they had to banish the bulk of their treasures to warehouses, perhaps never to be seen by them again. It would have required several thousand feet of shelf space to keep just their books at home, to say nothing of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and more. Folger knew what he possessed, he could summon a mental picture of his books, but he had never seen all of his possessions together. But he had seen what could become of collections unanchored to a permanent place in the world once their owners died.

  A man like Henry Folger was more than a serious collector. He lived through his collection. Such a man wants to possess his hoard forever, and he does not wish to part with it, even in death. The collection is a living thing that has its own demands. Folger knew what could happen if he died without a plan. The collection might be sold and dispersed. What he had devoted much of his lifetime to build, an auctioneer would dish out over a few days in public sales, serving as undertaker and gravedigger. Like Henry, the collection would die. His life’s work would be obliterated. Death, taxes, need, greed, reversals of fortune, and familial apathy had eviscerated some of the finest art, antique, and book collections in history. Indeed, had Henry not benefited countless times by taking advantage of such calamities and feasting on the carcasses of many fine, once-loved libraries?

  If Emily survived him, her passion, as profound and expert as his own, would carry on the collection. But with neither children nor a trusted protégé to succeed her, what would happen to the collection after her death? Henry had thought about the problem as early as 1910, when he was in his early fifties, after envisioning what kind of collection he hoped to assemble. Perhaps one day, he mused, he would build a library to hold all his books.1 It would not be a private library in his home, but an incomparable resource, a public institution for scholars—a center of Shakespeare studies. In the years that followed, the Folgers mulled over the idea of what kind of library to build, and where they would locate it.

  Sentiment could not be the only determining factor. Money would influence the choice too. Henry did not possess unlimited resources. He would always have to be much more careful with a dollar than John D. Rockefeller, Henry Huntington, or J. P. Morgan. Such a project would call upon Henry’s business expertise: careful, hands-on management, a strict budget, and long-range financial planning. More than any other factor, the availability and price of real estate would dictate Folger’s options. The location of the library was in no way predestined, and he considered a number of locations, weighing where his dollar would go further. In Amherst, Massachusetts, he noted, the real estate he needed would cost only $25,000. He also considered Nantucket, the ancestral family home of Peter Folger. The new University of Chicago, financed in 1892 by John D. Rockefeller, offered to construct a building to house the Shakespeare treasures if Folger agreed to donate the collection to the city.

  Folger even considered Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, but ultimately decided against repatriating his collection. “I am an American,” he concluded. Perhaps it was a delicious retort to all the Englishmen who had for years scorned rich American collectors for pillaging Great Britain of her literary treasures. After all the trouble and expense Folger had gone to get them out of England, he wasn’t going to send them back. He had not forgotten the Bodleian brouhaha, and its insulting newspaper articles and the accusatory “Who is this millionaire?” cartoon. Nor had he forgotten the lobbying campaign of that English pest, Sidney Lee, to prevent First Folios from falling into his hands. Returning his hard-won collection to England—as a gift, no less!—would be an admission that the critics were right, that America was not good enough for these treasures. No, Folger might have reasoned, England did not deserve to have them back.

  After eliminating several locations, Henry focused on New York City. Sentiment favored the location—it was his birthplace and his home. Manhattan was a practical choice, too. It was a convenient and accessible destination for scholars, and New York was fast becoming a cultural center for museums and libraries. Manhattan also offered Folger unrivaled personal convenience. He could supervise the project from his Standard Oil office at Twenty-Six Broadway, and if he built his library close enough, he could make frequent trips to the construction site. But New York presented formidable obstacles; in no other American city would land prove more difficult and expensive to obtain.

  In Henry Folger’s private papers, undated holographic notes document his frustrated inquiries about Manhattan real estate. Most of the prime locations had already been developed. And few single lots were large enough to accommodate the size of library that Folger had in mind. He needed a parcel one city block long and half a block deep. That meant he would have to assemble a large parcel by purchasing multiple lots from individual owners of some of the priciest real estate in the country, assuming they were even willing to sell. Then he would have to demolish the existing structures, some of them tall commercial buildings, and break ground for the library.

  Folger wrote detailed notes about several locations in Manhattan.2 The most expensive, at $550,000, comprised a group of properties at Eighty-First Street and Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a short walk north o
n Fifth Avenue from coal magnate Henry Clay Frick’s mansion, and also a short walk south from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s recently completed Fifth Avenue palace.

  Folger engaged brokers to attempt to assemble parcels on Fifth Avenue between Eighty-First and Eighty-Third Streets. His hand-drawn map of the layout of the avenue documents his attention to detail. Gould House is prominently marked on the map drawn in his own hand. Less than a mile down Fifth Avenue from the Carnegie Mansion, and a short walk from Frick’s, was the mansion of the son of scion Jay Gould, one of the Gilded Age’s barons of business who controlled Western Union Telegraph, the New York Elevated Railroad, and the Union Pacific Railroad. He was as despised an industrialist as Rockefeller. If Folger could acquire the property, he would not live in the home that stood there. He would do what Frick had done to the Lenox Library: tear it down and replace it with something bigger, more suited to his purpose.

  But every New York location that Folger considered suitable suffered from the same defect: the real estate was too expensive. He had hoped to spend no more than one million dollars on the entire project, and that figure included not just construction but the land, too. He knew that he could never spend half a million or more on land and still build the library of his dreams for just $450,000 or $500,000. Folger gave up—New York City was too expensive.