Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-10-11


to perish today the bulk of the worlds store
of rare books and original manuscripts would
be lost forever.
In their tiers of upholstered seats, on hard
chairs around the baize-covered table, in the
martS of a dozen capitals, sit the book-hunterS,
Winking nodding, occasionally murmuring a
figure the auctioneers chant. Behind these
men and beyond the martS where they assem-
BILE to chatter looms the enormous and newly
rich land OF mass production and millionaireS:
America, the tireless ard aggressive collector
of the postwar age. At every big sale now
whoever buys, the cream of the books, rare
manuscripts ard literary relics is invariably
destined for home IN the New World.
HE dominance of the American buyer for the
private collection, the museum and the
library may be gagged by tine typical instance
of a recent Sotheby's sale. at which American
purchases accounted for $4,000 of the $1O4 600
paid for part Of the books from an old Buck
tnghamshire library. In the last decade it is
estimated that nearly 100000 600 has been
spent on American account on books from the
inexhaustible mine of the Old World most OF
the purchases being made in England.
The treasure troyc of the little island is only
partly due to the fact that literature has -four
ished there fer many centuries. The chief
explanation is that for over a hundred years
England played the collecting role which
America plays today. From the middle of
the eighteenth to the middle of the nine
tenth century Europe was in fux. Thrones
were falling. Great mobiles were fleeing their
ancestral castles. Rich men were being ruined
or caught short and forced to sell their &C
cumulated possessions. Libraries and art col
lections being dispersed and sold. England,
inviolate behind her barriers of the sea, had
grown vastly rich over this whole period. Her
aristocracy, her merchant princes, her nabob5
fresh from the loot of India, her new industrial;
leaders were gorged with surplus cash. They
bought. outbidding everybody. America is now
taking her share with something over, from
British native literature by way of interest.
But although the American collection al
ready probably surpasses all others, England
will always be great library, for she has a
nlatchleSs treasure Of books manuscripts and
records tightly cemented in the great Libraries
of the British Museum, of old university col
leges, in the patent Office and the public rec
ords Office (where they preserve the original
Domesday Book and where a professor re-
Gently turned up several Shakespeare which
the librarians did not know they had) in Ed
inburgh, in the libraries at the several seats
of the old princes of the church at Canterbury,
Peterborough Lambeth and in the entailed
libraries of old families who have preserved in
the imminent rooms of their ancestral abodes
records dating back sometimes to the Con-
queror
Outside of these inviolabe preserves there
are still thousands of valuable volumes tucked
away in dusty corners and old chests and atticS
in England unknown to their owners. These
buried treasures are continually coming to light,
either accidentally or by deliberate search on
the part of the hard-up owners, and the Amer
lean collector Is continually profitng by such
finds.
In collection in the United States, for in
stance there lies 10-page pamphlet
entitled New England's Trials" The date is
1920 Two copies were known and coveted by
the great collectors of Americana. But they
Or1oT iV1t ao Qrdl m
the other in the British Museum. Whence,
abruptly, came this third copy? 1t had lain
for three centuries among collection OF old
tracts in a small English library before some
one by chance turned it over and recognized its
worth 1t came into the auction room, and, ex-
changed for $4,000 of American money, passed
from obscurity to the light of day in place
accessible to scholars and students
b, q ..,.-sas ~. .4aA saAa2z=azsssAss $50
THE Venus and Adonis" which now reposes
in the Huntington Library discovered
by similar chance. bookseller of London
was on a visit to Lamport Hail. the ancestral
home of the Ishams. Booksellers and book
dealers are among the most inquisitive OF NOR
tails. This one, noSing about, came upon an old
lumber room which apparently nobody had
entered for long years. Over stacks OF wood
and discarded furniture dust had settled thickly.
Cobwebs dimmed the pale light coming through
one small, grimy window. Mice ran boldly
about the floor.
One may be sure that these signs Of neglect
and decay only spurred the curiosity OF the
bookman. He poked among the dusty piles to
see if there were any old books or papers
about, and discovered a stack of volumes, dirt
grimed many chewed by mice. For long time
he turned them over without finding anything
of particular importance. But suddenly his eye
was arrested by a volume of peculiar size and
shape He seized it. A venus and Adonis" OF
Shakespeare! It was unknown fourth edi-
tion of 1899 printed for William Leake dwell
ing in Paules Churchyard at the signe Of the
Greyhound"