A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books

by Nicholas Basbanes

  Ten days later Rosenbach wrote Hogan in Los Angeles to inform him he was following up on what must have been a suggestion from the lawyer; he was sending the oil baron’s wife, Mrs. Estelle Doheny, “our four recent catalogues.” He also sent Hogan an inscribed copy of The Unpublishable Memoirs, his collection of his own short stories published in 1917, along with an additional offer: “I note that you expect to be in Philadelphia again sometime in September and I am looking forward to this visit. I wish you would arrange to stop with me for the night at my home on DeLancey Street. My private collection is there, and knowing your appreciation of books I would be delighted to show it to you.” Hogan promptly replied that only an “untimely death could possibly” stop him from accepting the invitation, “though I do think that just before I make that visit you should increase your insurance with coverage for all classes of risks.” Almost overnight, a close relationship had been formed. “It is good to know you,” Hogan wrote.

  On December 30, 1931, Hogan wired the first of many telegrams he would cable over the next thirteen years to extend greetings of the season:

  BEST WISHES FOR A GREAT NINETEEN THIRTY TWO STOP LET US HOPE THAT BEFORE WARM WEATHER THE WORD DEPRESSION WILL HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM DAILY CONVERSATION STOP

  On January 19, 1932, Hogan scolded Rosenbach for causing him to stay awake the previous evening. “For the sleep I lost, you are responsible— or, to speak accurately, creditable. What an evening with the sixteen items from the two sales at Sotheby’s! Like Nevin’s ‘Rosary,’ ‘I count them over one by one.’ And I love them, every one.” Hogan reminded Rosenbach that though he doubted the items could “throw you into an ecstasy,” his own status as a novice warranted a bit of forgivable excitement: “I am an infant hardly more than a year old.” A few weeks later, Hogan attempted to bring his account up to date: “I speak of temporarily getting out of debt: Does a book collecting addict ever get permanently out.” Rosenbach responded by inviting Hogan to attend a talk he was giving at Philadelphia’s Philobiblon Club, and then “come to the house afterwards and meet a few Philadelphia collectors. Do not forget, as Doctor Johnson said BRANDY FOR HEROES!!”

  The friendship flourished, and, precious volume by precious volume, Frank Hogan built a magnificent collection of English and American literature. “I do not want to tempt you,” Rosenbach wrote in 1932, “but I have secured the only perfect copy in existence of Meres’ Palladis Tamia, 1598, the first book to contain a catalogue of Shakespeare’s plays, and the most famous volume of Shakespeareana outside of the Folios and Quartos. Although collectors have hunted for a perfect copy for two hundred years all have been unable to obtain it.” In “normal times,” Dr. Rosenbach declared, the book would be worth “at least” $25,000. His offer: $9,875. “I advise you even in these difficult times to make every effort to obtain this most precious volume, and the greatest addition to any Shakespearian collection.”

  Hogan did buy the Meres, but not for another four years, when he bought it and a first-edition copy of the Faerie Queene, in which Edmund Spenser had written a sonnet to Elizabeth Boyle, for $46,000. “Well, I hope I can pay you some day,” he said when agreeing to the deal, but the times had been tough for everyone. “I am as hard up as the devil and I would appreciate it more than I can say if you send me a check for $4,180 for the last auction purchases,” Rosenbach wrote in 1933. Hogan replied good-naturedly, asking if he could “appropriate to myself your touching words ‘I am as hard up as the devil.’ You are neither alone, isolated nor peculiar. I ask myself why I incur debts when I am, at least temporarily, as frozen as the American Ice Company’s best product.” He enclosed a check for $2,500 with the hope “that this will help a little and, to quote O. Henry, ‘gimme just a little more time, wontcha?’ ”Besides, he added, “I’d hate to be entirely out of debt to you.”

  Barley a month had passed before Hogan was writing again, explaining in a lengthy letter that he was leaving for Los Angeles to represent Edward Doheny in a proceeding “which involves more money than there is at present in the world’s rare book business,” and if successful, “I will again become a factor among collectors.” With that as a tempting preliminary, Hogan got directly to the point: “There is nothing I so much want as a good complete First Folio.” A famous copy was coming up for sale shortly at Sotheby’s in London, and he wanted Rosenbach’s advice. “I would be willing to blindfold my eyes, stop up my ears, have my mouth gagged and follow your judgment,” he wrote. “I do feel inclined to send you a bid on the First Folio even if I have to mortgage the old home to pay for it.” Nonetheless, if his finances did not improve, then he promised to urge Mrs. Doheny to go after it for her own collection. “I know that I ought to have a worthwhile First Folio and I think that Mrs. Doheny also should be the owner of one. I do not want anything less than a copy the condition of which you would unhesitatingly approve.” Rosenbach cabled Hogan the following month to report that he had examined the book, and found it superb: “Folger has no copy as fine.” He estimated it likely would sell for $42,000 to $60,000, an “outstanding bargain” for a superior item that “in good times” would be worth at least $125,000: “Use every effort to obtain it and you will never regret it,” he declared. “Pawn the crown jewels if necessary.”

  Hogan did not pawn any jewelry, but he did arrange payment through the Riggs National Bank in Washington, and he got not only the cherished First Folio for £14,400 sterling, but also, for an additional £2,440, a Second Folio and a Third Folio. “It gave me a real thrill when I received the cable Friday we had been able to secure the great First Folio of Shakespeare in the collection of Lord Rosebery,” Rosenbach wrote on July 11, 1933. “You are right about your collection of Shakespeariana. Even today it ranks among the greatest in private hands and you have bought them at specially low prices, which is something after all. I am as proud of your collection as you are!” Bogged down in legal matters on the West Coast, Hogan found separation from his new books unbearable. “I am still thrilled beyond expression about the prospect of seeing them, holding them, owning them.”

  Their correspondence continued warmly over the next seven years, with Hogan frequently writing long, thoughtful, erudite letters, despite his workload. Though he began collecting late in life, Hogan immersed himself in the fraternity. When Hogan gave Rosenbach commissions on lots at auction, he included detailed explanations of why he wanted certain books and why they were important to him. His letters also show him constantly asking Rosenbach about other collectors, William Andrews Clark, Carl Pforzheimer, and A. Edward Newton among them. “Fate, and the traveling man’s activities incident to the presidency of the American Bar Association, have been keeping us apart,” he wrote Arthur Houghton, Jr., in 1938, sending a carbon copy to Rosenbach. “Some day in the near future I hope we shall meet because it’s contrary to nature for two so deeply interested in the same fine things as English literature not to personally know each other. I do feel that I know you, though we have not met.”

  It is clear, too, that Hogan was largely responsible for encouraging Estelle Doheny to assemble what in five decades would become the most expensive library ever sold at auction, $37.4 million realized in six sales conducted between 1987 and 1989 by Christie’s in New York. On December 18, 1934, Hogan wrote Rosenbach to thank him for coming up with a splendid idea for the holidays: “I was just casting around (in my mind) for something appropriate to send to Mrs. Doheny for this Christmas when there came to my desk today your letter of the 17th informing me that you have a wonderful copy of the Jensen Bible in the original binding, 1476. While I hadn’t intended to send a Christmas present costing as much as $785, the suggestion is such a good one that I hereby fall.” Fifty-three years later, Hogan’s thoughtful gift for the wife of his most important client went on the block as Lot 89 in the first Doheny sale and sold for $33,000.

  Collectors have always fancied gossip, and though most is passed in conversation, some occasionally makes its way into correspondence. During the hot summer of 1934
, with Hogan working in California on Doheny matters and Rosenbach taking care of business on the East Coast, letters were the only way for them to discuss what was becoming the biggest book scandal of the century. A book with the deceptively innocent title An Enquiry Into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets was about to be published simultaneously in the United States and England, and the weeks leading up to its release were fraught with speculation. John Carter and Graham Pollard, two young British bibliographers, had done something unprecedented: they had employed modern scientific methods to determine that a number of imprints previously thought to be authentic first editions were in fact forgeries, and the evidence pointed to the English dealer and collector Thomas J. Wise, one of the most prestigious bookmen of the age, as the perpetrator.

  “I am sure you will enjoy the first published report on the Wise forgeries which will shake the literary world,” Rosenbach wrote on July 2, then boldly added that “it has been an old story to me.” He claimed that about fifteen years earlier, he had determined that a privately published edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese was a forgery, “and I blamed it on Mr. Thomas J. Wise.” Rosenbach bolstered his contention by noting how he advised Carl H. Pforzheimer to sell his copy of the pamphlet, and that the New York collector realized $1,000 in the transaction. “The reason I never said very much about it was that Thomas J. Wise is an old friend of mine and I do not like to injure anyone’s reputation.” Rosenbach’s offer to send Hogan an advance copy of the new exposé was accepted immediately by cable. A few weeks after sending the book, Rosenbach wrote again: “I do not think there is any doubt that Wise was the forger of the pamphlets,” he declared, and wondered, “As you are a keen judge of the evidence I would like to know your opinion, not necessarily at the present time, but after I have supplied you with additional comments as they appear in the press.”

  A week later, the man regarded as America’s finest trial lawyer sent Rosenbach his opinion: “Manifestly Pollard and Carter endeavored throughout to be ultra-conservative. I approached the reading of the book hoping they would not prove their case. I laid it down, after a most careful reading of every page, knowing that they had fully proved it. With sorrow and reluctance I came to the conclusion that the evidence overwhelmingly proved not only the forgeries but that Thomas J. Wise is the forger.” Even though the information was largely circumstantial, Hogan concluded that

  by a process of elimination, and an overwhelming mass of evidence, the authors pointed accusingly and unerringly to Wise in a way to leave no doubt in the mind of the careful reader, first, that Wise did the forging; and second, that Pollard and Carter knew that fact as certainly as anything can be known from a convincing chain of circumstances. Circumstantial evidence is often more convincing than is direct evidence. Witnesses often lie, circumstances seldom do.

  Rosenbach replied with a three-page letter of his own. “I have known Thomas J. Wise for over twenty-five years,” he wrote. “I hate to admit it but an old and dear friend is the forger.” Once again, he claimed that he had been “the first to suspect him.” Wise, he also explained, sold many of his bogus pamphlets to American collectors such as John H. Wrenn, John A. Spoor, Luther Livingston, and William Harris Arnold, leading Rosenbach to opine: “I do not like to think that he thought American collectors were more gullible than the English, but he did nevertheless.” Though Rosenbach found it “a pity that a man of Mr. Wise’s really fine attainments should have stooped so low,” he thought there was room for compassion. “There is one thing about Mr. Wise, however, that will appeal to the collector’s softer nature. It is his great love of books—no one loved them more than he and it was on this account I think and not a purely mercenary one that he committed these forgeries. He would go to any length to obtain a fine item that would add luster to his collection. While we do not admire his tactics we cannot but have a spark of sympathy for him!”

  Hogan wrote back in agreement, and suggested that Wise’s motive was not money but recognition. As long as the scheme remained undiscovered, “the possession of a complete run of these unusual ‘firsts’ (almost pre-firsts, if such a thing could be) would be to Mr. Wise’s prestige as a collector.” Then he made a character judgment: “No one can read the introductions to the separate volumes of the Ashley Catalogue without realizing that Wise gloried in adulation. To be referred to as the first of modern collectors was quite apparently the man’s ambition. To be looked up to as the supreme authority, the last word, in the authenticity of rarities, was something he greatly prized.” Few people outside the book world knew anything about Thomas J. Wise. “I do not know the man and of course never heard of him until I began to court bankruptcy by entering the ranks of collectors,” Hogan allowed. “Some strange mental quirk led him to do a really petty thing which henceforth forever will cloud his name and make odious his memory. Few will recall that, this unexplainable deviation aside, he undoubtedly was a real lover and great collector of books.”

  Toward the end of the 1930s, with another world war at hand, Hogan’s collecting began to slow down, though Rosenbach kept enticing him with rarities. Hogan admitted that the mention in one letter of a Paradise Lost in its original binding gave him “a thrill. That item has eluded me successfully since I began collecting.” A pristine copy of Milton’s epic poem eventually entered his collection in December 1937. To the public at large, Rosenbach described “my dear friend Frank J. Hogan” in one of his magazine essays as an “energetic and unregenerate book-lover.” People found out just how much the eloquent trial lawyer loved books shortly after his death on May 15, 1944, when his will was read. Hogan did not have to explain to anyone why he chose “to sell at auction in the City of New York” his magnificent library, but he did nonetheless:

  I had thought of bequeathing my valuable books and collection of autographs and literary manuscript material, including my collection of first and rare editions of English and American literature, to some institution to be permanently kept together as a collection, but this idea I have abandoned in favor of a plan that will accomplish their dispersion among those coming after me, who will experience, as I have felt, a profound happiness and satisfaction in possessing these precious monuments of human thought and progress. There is something sacred in the spiritual and intimate companionship of a book, and I do not deem it fitting that these friends of many happy hours should repose in unloved and soulless captivity. Rather, I would send them out into the world again to be the intimates of others whose loving hands and understanding hearts will fill the place left vacant by my passing.

  The American Golden Age of Book Collecting effectively ended with the Crash of 1929, but collectors such as Lessing J. Rosenwald, Thomas W. Streeter, Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., Robert H. Taylor, H. Bradley Martin, Estelle Doheny, Seymour Adelman, William H. Scheide, Clifton Waller Barrett, and Donald and Mary Hyde quietly but effectively continued gathering with spirit and with taste. Some libraries returned to the marketplace, others went to institutions, and a few remained in private hands. But the cycle continued.

  In 1933, when America was mired in the Great Depression, Paul Jordan-Smith, a California critic and bibliophile, advised his readers to pay attention and have faith:

  This is no time for the collector to quit his books. He may have to quit his house, abandon his trip to Europe and give away his car; but his books are patiently waiting to yield their comfort and provoke him to mirth. They will tell him that banks and civilizations have smashed before; governments have been on the rocks, and men have been fools in all ages. But it is all very funny. The gods laugh to see such sport, and why should we not join them?

  Part Two

  6

  To Have and

  to Have No More

  For ten years near the end of the millennium, a phenomenon known as the 1980s created unexpected opportunities for book-collecting enthusiasts and evoked stirring images of the good old days. Bolstered by a robust economy, aggressive new collectors s
atisfied their taste for beautiful objects with a ready willingness to acquire them, whatever the cost. In response, many established owners found temptation too enticing to resist, and rarities once thought out of circulation forever suddenly appeared on the market. Price records were broken, most dramatically in antiques and the fine arts, but just as impressively in books.

  Private libraries were no longer the exclusive preserve of the few. While soaring prices made paintings too costly for most people to own, books were relatively affordable, and as antiquarian fairs gained in popularity, they were much easier to obtain. For many participants, collecting meant acquiring the first trade editions of favorite contemporary authors: proven novelists such as John Updike, Anne Tyler, William Kennedy, and Toni Morrison, respected poets such as James Merrill, John Ashbery, and Amy Clampitt, or popular genre writers such as Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Sara Paretsky.

  For all the excitement, though, what recalled the grand spirit of the Golden Age most was not the new wave of collectors, but a thrilling sequence of auctions that offered bibliophiles and dealers a few rare chances at coveted treasures. Three remarkable library sales—two occasioned by the deaths of prominent collectors, the other precipated by a mysterious partnership under a veil of intense secrecy—created terrific excitement. While the numbers are impressive enough in their own right—$37.4 million in 1987–1989 for the Estelle Doheny collection, $35.7 million in 1989–1990 for H. Bradley Martin’s collection, and $16.2 million in 1989 for the Garden Ltd.—what made the auctions especially memorable was that so much superior material became available over so short a period of time.