SPILT MILK

NO TEARS REQUIRED

ON NOT FORMING A COLLECTION OF BOOKS

Corogatio Nugarum

The Study/Library

                                   ON NOT MAKING A COLLECTION

When is a “collection” not a collection? For me in the simplest sense it is not a collection when it is simply a “gathering” a “corogatio” so to speak. If it does not have a single concrete unifying theme such as “English 17^th Century Academic Drama” then it is not a collection. It may well have a more metaphysical organizing principle such as “Books I Happen to Like”.

This is an exhibition of books that I like and have acquired apart from my two major “Collections” – Italian Drama and Academic Drama.

When I first started “collecting books” in the broadest and loosest sense of this term I had no collecting theme or particular object in mind. I knew what materials (books principally) appealed to me (Old) and I went about gathering this random assemblage. I first acquired what happened to be early American imprints – Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, early American Almanacs (mostly Connecticut printed at Hartford) and other miscellaneous books such as an early octavo German Bible with interesting woodcuts and an engraved title page. Sadly, I no longer possess any of these as they were stolen from my parents’ house during a break in.

A more serious phase of buying books I liked ensued during my early to mid 20ies when I discovered “proper bookshops” such as Stonehill, Quaritch, Goodspeed’s and Hofmann and Freeman when Arthur Freeman was running that business out of Harvard Square, first from a dingy office in a building belonging to one of the Final Clubs on Mass Ave and latterly from an apartment on Trowbridge St.  It was in Freeman’s apartment on Trowbridge St. that I first had a vision of what I wanted! There in the sitting room was a back wall with floor to ceiling leather and vellum bound volumes. I knew that someday I wanted to possess many books to fill a case. It was here also I first tasted a single malt Scotch that I was offered. I was simply too intimidated by the books and Freeman to refuse!

At this period, I knew that I did not just desire “old” books but that I wished to acquire 17^th century and earlier English books. When asked what I collected I was hard put to answer, stumbled about and finally said “Bacon”! I purchased from Arthur a mid-seventeenth century copy of Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientiarum in a 19^th century binding. My acquisitions continued in this vein – random authors and random titles – Pedantius – my first academic drama (later to become a major collecting interest of mine) but at this time was simply a random purchase from Hofmann and Freeman. About the same time, I acquired my first Italian 16^th century play, La Lena by Ariosto, from P.N. Pool Wilson of Quaritch in London along with Lytton Strachey’s copy of the Aldine edition of the Metamorphoses of Ovid.

Eventually I had formed a gathering of books. I recall lining them up in a feeble effort to imitate Freeman’s wall of volumes at Trowbridge Street. Sadly, it made a poor showing but one of which I was proud. However, I had not yet acquired a bottle of single malt Scotch.

About this time, I decided not to continue study for a higher degree at Harvard but rather to seek admission to Cambridge University. In order to help pay my first year fees, I sold my books. I offered this non-collection - assemblage - to Goodspeed’s. I eventually convinced Mr. Goodspeed that I came by the books honestly, and he purchased them enabling me to go up to Cambridge.

So I went up to Cambridge without even the small gathering of books I had started with. But Cambridge, London, Oxford and the surrounding country towns were to prove a rich hunting ground. It was here that I began what might be strictly termed a collection. I concentrated my efforts on academic drama from the two ancient universities and Italian 16^th century drama. And therein lies another story.

Yet I continued to buy outside these areas and have continued to do so.  

The Desk&Notebook