The Millionaire and the Bard

by Andrea Mays

  In October, Folger urged Cret that they speak to the American artist Frederick William MacMonnies, a disciple of the great Augustus Saint-Gaudens, “before coming to a conclusion about the nine sculptures on the East Capitol Street front of the Library.” Always the bargain hunter, Folger suggested that they might get a good deal. “I am told that he is in financial straits, and, therefore, eager to secure work, and will make a reasonable charge.”

  Folger also visited the sculptor John Gregory at his studio. He discovered that the artist was a sympathetic book collector, and the two hit it off. According to John Harbeson, one of Cret’s architects who accompanied Folger to meet the sculptor, “The two men were immediately at ease with each other, completely understood one another. When we came out of Gregory’s Studio Mr. Folger said ‘We need not visit any others; I am entirely satisfied to go ahead with Gregory. You fix up the contract, and bring it to me to see.’ ” The penny-pincher in Folger was pleased that Gregory seemed eager for the work. Later, when Henry visited the artist to look at studies for the high-relief sculptures, he liked what he saw, but in a letter to Cret, he suggested changes to the King Lear relief in progress. The Lear was too old, and the Fool too young. He should be “made a little more muscular,” Henry wrote, “to seem more vigorous.” Folger also thought that Lear’s expression should reflect his state of mind. “And I think he might be a little more distraught, because, as you know, he was already on the verge of madness. And yet, whatever changes are made will have to be very slight so as not to go too far.”

  Folger wanted to erect a fountain featuring a freestanding marble sculpture of the sprite Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the west side of the library that faced Second Street, the Library of Congress, and, beyond it, the Capitol. He considered engaging sculptress Rachel Hawks or Harriet Hosmer, who had previously executed a sculpture of Puck. Trowbridge favored another sculptor, Brenda Putnam, who, not coincidentally, was the daughter of the helpful Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam. In a wise concession, Folger deferred to Trowbridge. Later Henry told his consulting architect how pleased he was with the idea: “We are under great obligations to Dr. Putnam, and for that and other reasons will be glad to see the name of his daughter associated with our project.” But Brenda Putnam’s special status did not exempt her from Folger’s artistic direction. He said that he wanted the figure of Puck to appear more or less “embowered in shrubbery.” He got what he wanted: oak branches carved in the marble base of the sculpture create the impression of being in the forest where the trickster Puck gamboled.

  In the summer of 1929, as Henry started considering the words he wanted carved on the exterior walls of what he called his “Washington venture,” he changed the name of his institution. He no longer liked its first one, “Folger Shakespeare Memorial.” Instead, he wrote, “[L]et us, then, put on the building ‘FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY.’ After all our enterprise is primarily a library, and all other features are supplemental.” He ordered that the word SHAKESPEARE be carved on the East Capitol Street façade in letters slightly larger than Folger and Library.

  He chose three quotations to be carved on the wall facing East Capitol Street, typing them exactly as he wanted them to appear.

  This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare,

  That his drama is the mirrour of life.

  SAMUEL JOHNSON

  His wit can no more lie hid, than it could be lost. Reade him, therefore; and again, and again.

  JOHN HEMINGE

  HENRIE CONDELL

  Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,

  And art aliue still, while thy Booke doth liue,

  And we have wits to read, and praise to give.

  BEN IONSON

  Folger supplied these inscriptions to Cret, along with one quotation from Love’s Labour’s Lost for the west wall facing Second Street—“For Wisdomes sake, a word that all men loue [love]”—with the admonition that they be large enough to be easily read from the street, and that “the spelling and punctuation should be followed exactly.” Just to be sure, Folger wrote to him a second time to emphasize the importance of the spelling and punctuation of the quotations. To ensure that Cret did not think that his instructions contained any typographical errors, Folger was precise: “In the First Folio Ben Jonson appears twice in the preliminary pages. The leaf just before the title page, facing the title page, is signed B.I.—meaning Ben Jonson. The page from which our quotation is taken is likewise signed Ben:Ionson. There seems to be another reason: There is no letter that runs below the line, unless the J is used in Jonson. Using the I would not only be fitting, but would be harmonious with the rest of the lettering.” Henry Folger’s library would perfectly reflect his vision. No detail was too small for him.

  He asked Cret to tell him what kind of heating boilers would be used, adding that if they were coal-fired, provisions must be made for a room to store emergency stockpiles of the fuel. Or perhaps, Henry speculated, he could buy heat from the Library of Congress and obtain it via underground steam pipes.

  The attention that Henry gave the library never prevented him from buying more books. Shipments of new acquisitions arrived often. In just one example, on September 24, 1929, a letter from the customs house brokers Tice & Lynch, Inc., informed Folger of the arrival of a “Box of Books from [Bernard] Quaritch, Ltd. London,” that had come in on the RMS Aquitania and for which five dollars was due for duty and cartage.

  Thursday, October 24, 1929, the banner headline of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle read, “WALL STREET IN PANIC AS STOCKS CRASH.” The following Monday, the value of the New York Stock Exchange fell thirteen percent and billions of dollars of stock market wealth were lost. It marked the end of almost a decade of increases in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the end of the optimism of the Roaring Twenties. Less wealth meant less buying for cash-strapped book collectors.

  Cret, Trowbridge, and Folger had been planning the library on paper for more than a year. Soon, it would be time to break ground and begin construction. But before that could happen, Folger needed to hire a general contractor to pull down the houses on Grant’s Row. Trowbridge recommended civil engineer James Baird, who had directed the erection of the Flatiron Building, the iconic, steel-framed skyscraper in New York City. In Virginia, Baird had supervised the construction of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Cret advised that they should salvage some of the “brick in these old residences, which could be used in the construction of the walls as a backing for the marble exterior.” Folger must have loved that economy. He agreed on the choice, and in November, Trowbridge wrote that as soon as he received the estimates he was expecting from Baird, the contracts could be negotiated and signed. The first brick was removed from the first house to be torn down on November 11, Armistice Day.

  On December 3, 1929, with serious demolition about to commence, Folger informed Trowbridge that he wanted no publicity associated with the tearing down of the houses: “[W]e would very much prefer, for the present at any rate, to have no sign, or other description, put up in connection with the dismantling for the Shakespeare Library, as suggested by the Baird Company. We are not seeking any advertising—in fact we are doing our best to avoid calling attention to the enterprise.” This was to be expected from a man who, one of his classmates said, lived by three rules: “Never tell what you’ve done, what you are doing, or what you are going to do.” Again, it was a pointless charade. Sign or no sign, everyone knew who owned Grant’s Row and what he planned to do with it.

  That month, Folger met with Rosenbach to examine a group of Elizabethan rarities that were for sale. Folger returned to the dealer all the items save one, noting that he must be “economical in buying books, for a time at least.” The only book he kept from the lot was a copy of Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. The stock market crash and the continuing expenses of building the library limited his acquisition fever.

  After more
than a decade of planning, 1930 promised to be the pivotal year. If all went well, Henry would see construction begin in earnest. Demolition of Grant’s Row was under way, and the site was being cleared in preparation for excavating the foundation. Then, through the summer and fall of 1930, he could watch his Shakespeare palace rise. Baird might finish the job by the end of the year, but if not then, certainly in 1931. It would not be long, Folger believed, before he could reclaim the oil portraits of himself and Emily from storage and hang them in the library. Indeed, by the end of January 1930, he had already chosen the exact spot for their display—the screen at the east end of the reading room, below a replica of the Shakespeare memorial bust at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had even consulted the portraits’ artist, Frank Salisbury, who approved. Henry did not know how significant that spot in the library would soon become.

  In the meantime, he had many more important decisions to make. On February 4, 1930, Henry wrote to Trowbridge about the cost of the building’s systems:

  I am just in receipt of a copy of Mr. Cret’s letter to the Baird Company, Feb. 1st, approving a sub-contract for Heating, Plumbing and Ventillating, to the Standard Engineering Co., $150,000. Was the estimate, upon which the total figures of cost were based, as large as this sum for Heating, Plumbing and Ventillating? It is a satisfaction to find the work progressing, but as the totals grow I am concerned to learn whether we are going to keep within our figure of total expenditure.

  It was Folger’s habit to read every single work order, invoice, and approval connected to the project, and a week later, he asked Trowbridge to clarify something he did not understand: “May I trouble you to send just a line, for information, as to what is meant by the expression ‘Air-Conditioning,’ in Approval #20, sent the James Baird Co. February 11. I presume it is something in connection with the ventilation.” Trowbridge explained that it was a new process to cool the air and reduce the temperature inside a building. Folger was curious and wrote back:

  Thank you for your letter of the 14th, explaining the contract for “Air-Conditioning”; but I am surprised that anyone will undertake, in a building of that size, in Washington, to secure a temperature of 85° in the Summer with a 50% humidity. We will certainly have a popular room if this is accomplished. What cooling medium are they planning to use? Knowing the conditions in Washington in Mid-summer we had supposed it might be necessary to close the building for several weeks.

  In May, Cret informed Folger that soon it would be time to lay the cornerstone. It was the usual custom to mark the occasion with a ceremony. Did Henry want to plan one? No, he replied, “our preference is to postpone any ceremony until the dedication of the building at its completion. And we think a stone, with the date, 1930, but without a box [a time capsule], will be the best. Let it go into the structure whenever convenient, without ceremony.”

  Folger was more interested in selecting the final quotations and symbols for the library’s interior than in what he believed was a premature ceremony. And, of course, such an event would certainly involve dreaded publicity. Henry Folger acquired a booklet, A Complete Collection of the Quotations and Inscriptions in the Library of Congress. He did not wish to copy any of them, but was keen to see how another institution had adorned itself. Then he made a list of the inscriptions he wished to have in his own library, planning each one, and again instructing the architect not to change the archaic spelling or punctuation of the words. He chose passages about Shakespeare and by his acolytes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Garrick, Victor Hugo, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others.

  In Folger’s last letter about the inscriptions, he gave Cret a quotation that summed up the meaning of both the whole enterprise and Henry’s genial character. Henry asked that it be carved above the door in a vestibule that led into the exhibition hall. Anyone who entered the building there would, even before they approached the reading room, see these words. It was the shortest of all the quotations to be inscribed anywhere inside the library or on its exterior walls. And, of course, it was by Shakespeare: “I shower a welcome on ye. Welcome all.”

  Having finished with the inscriptions, Henry selected the final symbols. He wanted crests—lots of them. He wrote Cret instructions to place the crests of England and the United States, at opposite ends of the exhibition hall, facing each other. He also wanted the crests of Shakespeare’s two monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. To these he added those of Shakespeare patrons the Earl of Southampton, the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, and the Earl of Warwick. And, of course, Folger wanted these symbols to appear exactly correct: “It seems to me that all these crests can well be colored, as used by their owners. We doubtless can find, and send to you, copies in colors, of all.” William Jaggard, Isaac Jaggard, and Edward Blount are also commemorated in stained glass in the reading room.

  Three months after Folger’s first correspondence in February about air-conditioning, he still had not made up his mind. On May 2, he wrote Trowbridge that he would be satisfied if limited air-conditioning were used only for the “book stacks and the vaults—that they were making no attempt to ‘Condition’ any other part of the building. I was quite satisfied that they would not be able to accomplish any satisfactory results if they attempted to Condition the Main Library itself.” Then, three days later, he wrote again, wondering if they should bother with any air-conditioning at all: “It seems that this is the first Library installation which they have secured, and I am inclined to think it will be better for us to let some other Library do the pioneer work, and later, if it is successful, consider installing it in our building.”

  Henry Folger complained to his contractor, James Baird, that a newspaper had published a front-page photograph of the construction in progress. He did not want that kind of attention. By this point, his paranoia about publicity was utterly absurd. Baird pointed out the obvious in a letter to Folger’s secretary, A. G. Welsh: “[T]he building [is] rapidly rising, and [anyone can] take their own photographs and publish them whenever they pleased.” He repeated a request from Trowbridge to allow photographs and information about the project to be made available. “The building is taking shape,” Baird reminded his patron, “and the thousands who pass the site every day can see it in plain view, and it is a very difficult matter, and going to become [an] even more difficult matter, to maintain secrecy about the project, for it is in plain view and occupies one of the most prominent sites in the city.” What Baird wrote was rational. But Henry’s instinctual abhorrence of publicity sometimes clouded his otherwise rational and brilliant mind.

  In late May, Henry left his home in Glen Cove, Long Island, and entered St. John’s Hospital in Brooklyn for what he and Emily believed would be a minor operation. After prostate surgery, performed under local anesthesia, he was confined to bed. While Folger was recuperating in the hospital, Rosenbach visited him, bringing him grapes he had brought across the Atlantic from his recent trip to England. In a temporary arrangement, his secretary Welsh took over Folger’s correspondence. On May 28, 1930, Welsh wrote to Trowbridge informing him that Henry had just signed the agreement with Brenda Putnam to commence the Puck sculpture: “I have forwarded the contracts with Miss Putnam to Mr. Cret, duly signed by Mr. Folger. Mr. Folger is still laid up, in bed, but I am able to take important matters up with him.” On June 5, Welsh informed Trowbridge that Henry was still not well: “For your information, personally, Mr. Folger has been confined to bed for the last three weeks, or more, and, outside of the Library, there are few matters I can take up with him. But, for the Library, he wants me to keep in touch with you.” That did not stop Henry himself from writing to Trowbridge the same day. As so often over the past two years, it was about the little details. Folger inquired what the “special allowance ‘G’ [for] Lighting Fixtures . . . covers?”

  Trowbridge answered on June 10, explaining the charges for the fixtures and adding that he was “sorry to hear of your illness.” It is the last letter in Folger’s personal files on the
construction of his library. Henry Folger would never reply to this letter.

  His doctors determined, three weeks after the first operation, that he needed a second. He had survived the first, but could not bear the strain of another, and on June 11, he succumbed to a pulmonary embolism. He was a week shy of his seventy-third birthday. What would Folger’s death mean for the future of his library? Would laborers show up on schedule the next morning at East Capitol Street, and would work go on? Would it ever be finished? And if the building were completed, would it ever open its doors as a library? How badly had the October 1929 stock market crash affected his investments? Perhaps his estate no longer possessed sufficient assets to complete the building, establish the library, and endow its future. Perhaps the collection would have to be sold at auction. Henry Folger was the Folger Shakespeare Library. In the aftermath of his death, who would carry on?

  The obituary in the next day’s New York Times summed up his life in four efficient headlines: “H. CLAY FOLGER DIES AFTER AN OPERATION/ Resigned as Head of Standard Oil of New York to Plan a Shakespeare Memorial/ HAD RARE BOOK COLLECTION/ Proposed to Make Works of Dramatist and Poet Available to Students of Literature.” It must have quenched Rosenbach’s thirst for publicity to see that he made an appearance in Henry’s obituary: “In 1919 [Folger] paid the Rosenbach Company . . . $100,000 for the unique Gwynn volume of nine plays, published in 1619.” The Times made no further mention of the future of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Soon Rosenbach would write a substantial monograph on Henry as a collector.

  The funeral was held in Brooklyn on June 13 at 8 PM, in the chapel of the Central Congregational Church on Hancock Street, near Franklin Avenue. Its pastor and Henry’s close friend, the Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, presided. After the service, Emily Folger did not bury her husband of almost forty-five years. She chose to cremate his remains. But she did not scatter the ashes. She had a special place in mind for Henry. It would, she vowed, be ready soon.