CHAPTER EIGHT
Hotspur and Hal
Two Henrys Compete
HOTSPUR: If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.
PRINCE: Thou speak’st as if I would deny my name.
HOTSPUR: My name is Harry Percy.
PRINCE: Why then I see
A very valiant rebel of the name.
I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,
To share with me in glory any more.
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,
Nor can one England brook a double reign
Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.
1 Henry IV, 5.4.59–68
ALTHOUGH FAR MORE CORDIAL than the military rivalry of Shakespeare’s Hotspur and Hal, the bibliographic duels Henry Folger and Henry Huntington intensely fought were not on the battlefield but in auction bids, and not for a crown but for the plays of the very man who created the “Harry vs. Harry” of 1 Henry IV.
Three published biographies and 200 acres in a posh Southern California suburb tell us a lot about Henry E. Huntington. Aided by nepotism, he trained as a railroad executive under the tutelage of his uncle, Collis P. Huntington of New York. Later president of the Pacific Electric Railway, Henry developed southern California rail lines as well as water and power companies. The “king of trolleys” built an extensive network of streetcars in Los Angeles. He inherited, but he also made, a large fortune.
Huntington’s dominance in both art and book markets fascinated the American and British press. When he purchased in New York a two-volume vellum set of the Gutenberg Bible, he paid $50,000—twice the highest amount ever paid for a book at auction. From the Duke of Westminster, Huntington acquired, for $728,000, one of the best-known British portraits, Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. Henry and his wife Arabella planned and constructed buildings on a vast estate among the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains for his spectacular residence, library, and museum, surrounded by 120 acres of botanical gardens that included a nonpareil collection of desert plants.
At first glance, Henry C. Folger and Henry E. Huntington led similar lives. Both blue-eyed boys were born in New York State in the 1850s and died in their seventies. Growing up, both imbibed deep parental values of churchgoing, close family ties, and a strong work ethic. Huntington attended Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn (where Emily Jordan Folger later taught Sunday school). The collectors’ chosen industries—petroleum and railroads—expanded immensely and profitably in their lifetimes. Family or close friends ushered each man into his chosen industry. Unsurprisingly, under these circumstances, they both rose to the top. The two shared impeccable timing that allowed them to play a determining role in pioneer fields begging for creativity and offering wide latitude for imagination, foresight, management skill, and huge profits.
In the late nineteenth century, the public grew to mistrust captains of industry, charging them with predatory practices and immoral behavior. While Huntington and Folger were considered relatively upstanding individuals who avoided the muckrakers’ most vituperative attacks, they lived and worked under the shadow of suspicion over John D. Rockefeller in oil and Jay Gould in railroads—two who shared the title of most hated man in America.
“H. C.” and “H. E.,” as they were called, used steadily growing resources from their businesses to collect books, an avocation that deepened from hobby to lifelong passion for these two avid readers and booklovers. Huntington began collecting in the 1870s, Folger in the 1880s. At first, they assembled their libraries through personal visits to local bookshops, but soon they learned to court owners of private collections and to have booksellers serve as their commission agents at auctions.
Obsessive collectors, both took out loans to finance their purchases, and at times considered themselves close to falling into debt. Huntington bought as many as two hundred entire libraries; Folger many fewer. They both preferred to purchase collections privately before they went on public sale.
As their own libraries grew to hundreds of thousands of items, each man developed plans for a permanent repository. In parallel, they planned, designed, built, and endowed libraries whose designs were honored by the American Institute of Architects. The collectors each arranged a board of trustees to administer their institutions. They distrusted the idea of “politicians” playing a role in library management, yet with a sure public spirit transformed their private capital into a public good; both libraries would be open to scholars and visitors. Huntington and Folger were capitalists with a similar philanthropic bent, to create research centers for academic study, cultural appreciation, and the advancement of learning that would announce America’s arrival as a leading world culture.
Both gentlemen were reserved and modest, avoiding publicity. Huntington granted only one interview in his life; Folger, the same. When Rosenbach wrote both collectors seeking their photos for a book he was writing, he got nothing. When asked whether he would consent to a biography, Huntington replied, “This library will tell the story.” They refrained from creating personal bookplates. They turned down many appeals for financial contributions to concentrate on building their collections. Frequently ill during adult life, both died after a second operation following prostate surgery.
British-born sculptor John Gregory carved the friezes for the Huntington Mausoleum; he also designed the friezes on the Folger Library façade and placed Henry’s funerary urn in its library niche. Huntington librarian Leslie Bliss described Henry E. Huntington as “somewhat shy, and exceedingly gentlemanly, a very fine person,” words that applied equally to the retiring Henry Folger.
Yet the two great collectors also differed significantly. When scholars requested photostats or asked to consult items in their collections, Huntington acquiesced, to the warm gratitude of supplicants. Folger apologized that his library was stored in warehouses, not yet available to scholars. Clearly frustrated, scholar A. W. Pollard wrote about Folger, “I find it hard to be in Christian charity with a man who has had the 1st edition of Titus Andronicus for some years and hasn’t published a facsimile or at least an accurate reprint of it. I can’t complete my Shakespeare work without it & he locks it up in a box.”1 Embarrassed about the inaccessibility of his treasures, Folger longed for the time when he could complete his library and satisfy the requests that streamed in.
As both purchased entire libraries, many duplicates existed among their acquisitions. Folger gave most away to friends, family, students, and college libraries. Huntington, however, traded up, taking his duplicates to the auction house. From 1916 to 1925, he sold more than eight thousand of them at Anderson Galleries in New York, netting more than $550,000. One man’s duplicates became another man’s treasures. Folger obtained from the lots more than one hundred volumes printed before 1700. In 1918, when Folger sought manuscripts and early printed works, he gave up duplicate Shakespeare folios and quartos for them. He even sold a few books to Huntington, including Shakespeare’s Pericles (1609).2
Huntington pursued bargains and avoided “fancy prices,” but he was especially keen on obtaining perfect copies. When Huntington reached his goal of obtaining a flawless book, he shed his imperfect copy. Folger welcomed imperfect copies, as they stretched his dollars. Ahead of his time in anticipating the importance of variorum editions, Folger believed scholars would recognize the usefulness of textual variants. He preferred copies with marginalia—corrections, notes, and comments; they enhanced a book’s usefulness by adding historical context.
Perhaps because he never went to college, Huntington disdained foreign language books. His en bloc purchases inevitably brought his library many such books, which he regularly sold. Excelling in French and Latin in college, both Folgers keenly pursued translations of Shakespeare plays and sonnets. Emily, an excellent student of German, helped her husband chase down foreign books.
Huntington was a loner. He preferred to act and manage alone, after consulting trusted advisers. Financially, Huntington’s fortune allowed him to be his own banker most of the time. He proposed credit terms favorable to himself that were usually accepted. By contrast, Folger worked out his want lists with Emily’s close assistance. He kept small cash reserves and, in order to buy, was obliged to take out loans hastily and move funds around inventively.
Both joined the Grolier Club, the oldest bibliophilic club in North America. The club then occupied a Romanesque Revival building at 29 East 32nd Street in New York, boasting eating and social activities, publications, a library, and regular exhibitions. From time to time, Folger ordered specially printed editions sponsored by the club. He never loaned works to Grolier exhibitions, however. Although reluctant to let treasures leave his library, Huntington once loaned William Blake illustrations to a Grolier exhibit.
In 1911, Huntington and Folger were founding members of the smaller, less formal, Hobby Club of New York. The group met several times a year at the Metropolitan or University Club, or at members’ homes, starting with a sumptuous dinner. Hand-printed Tiffany menus on parchment, sealed in red wax and brown ribbon, adorned each place. Huntington welcomed social interaction with interesting men of means and attended most of these dinners, judging from his frequent signature on menus passed around the table. He hosted two Hobby Club dinners in New York: one to show off his art treasures, the other to give guests a tour of his private library. A reserved man, Huntington ceded the customary speaking opportunities at these banquets to others. Folger simply avoided most social engagements.
Folger and Huntington attended a 1913 club dinner given by George A. Plimpton where the host spoke on “Education before Printing, as Illustrated by Original Manuscripts.” At a later dinner, Plimpton spoke on “the education of Shakespeare as illustrated by the school books of that period.” Only three of thirty-six Hobby Club members in 1916 were listed as collectors of Shakespeare. Elected to the club’s board of governors as vice-president, Huntington displayed a palate eager for delectables well beyond Shakespeare.
Huntington collected the early masters of printed books, decorated manuscripts, and incunabula or incunables (books printed before 1501). He embraced all of Americana, particularly Californiana. He cherished the one-of-a-kind book treasure. He had a taste for the personal possessions of political or literary figures, acquiring Jefferson’s account book and Hawthorne’s love letters. Folger thought little of “fine bindings,” which attracted Huntington. Huntington was more interested in perfect objects, Folger in the literature within the bindings. Huntington esteemed first editions and asked that Hardy’s and Conrad’s works be purchased automatically for him as soon as they were published. Folger professed no interest in modern first editions.
Folger thoroughly scrutinized all potential purchases. He rarely bought sight unseen. Huntington may not have developed the patience to look over the merchandise when his staff could. George Watson Cole, bibliographer of the prodigious E. Dwight Church Library, worked for Huntington for a decade. Assisted by a stenographer and typist, Cole cataloged the collection of what grew to more than 150,000 volumes. He employed a professional staff of eight bibliographer assistants. In contrast, the Folgers performed all the bibliographical work themselves (granted, without producing a catalog). Alexander Welsh helped with correspondence, ran errands to New York bookshops, and became the Folger collection’s institutional memory after twenty years as Folger’s personal secretary. But the contrast between the two Folgers and Huntington’s staff of nine for roughly the same exacting work indicates the couple’s extraordinarily focused obsession.
The two men involved their spouses in their collecting in different ways. Arabella Huntington took charge of art purchases while Henry ruled book acquisitions. She handled the household; her husband planned and supervised the gardens. She showed great interest in the design of the Huntington Museum and Library, dealing directly with the architects. While Huntington was clearly happiest on the West Coast, Arabella preferred the East, where she frequented art galleries and could visit her son Archer from her first marriage. The Folgers formed a closer collaborative team, consulting together on all acquisitions and record-keeping.
The widest gap between the Huntingtons and the Folgers was in their style of living, partly due to their disparity in wealth. Like banker J. P. Morgan and entrepreneur Jay Gould, railroad man Henry E. Huntington traveled the country in a private railway car. Deciding finally to move his home and books from New York to California, he built a ranch complex on 600 acres in San Marino at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles. He and Arabella spent summers in New York or abroad at Chateau Beauregard, a 400-acre estate he leased near Versailles. When they dined with company—or even alone—Mr. Huntington wore a cutaway suit and Mrs. Huntington a long, formal black dress; they were served by butlers and liveried footmen.
By contrast, the only property the Folgers bought consisted of an inland two-acre lot on Long Island, near a railroad station. While the Folgers had no children and rarely entertained, Huntington had four children from his previous marriage. His mansion was often full of family and friends, plus, periodically, art dealer Joseph Duveen and bookseller A. S. W. Rosenbach. Mrs. Huntington had a personal secretary and a maid, her husband a private secretary and a valet. The Folgers lived more simply, with Irish maids Mary and Bridget and a driver named Smith.
Archives reveal no correspondence from Huntington to Folger, and only one letter in the other direction. Since Huntington preceded Folger by a few years in designing, legally establishing, and executing a permanent home for his collection, Folger benefited from his example. He expressed his appreciation directly to Huntington, recognizing that his own collection paled in significance. “Thank you for the copy of your Deed of Trust for the Huntington Library and Art Gallery and thank you still more for the courage and judgement you have shown in establishing this very significant benefaction. It is at once an inspiration and a guide for others who may wish to do something of the same sort, but much more modestly.”3
The Folgers may have heard that Henry E. Huntington suffered some losses in transporting his possessions to the West Coast. Huntington traveled to California in his private railway car with the most valuable possessions, while the bulk of his collection traveled separately in freight cars. Huntington insured only part of his load, but he collected reimbursement when oak panels were destroyed along the Rock Island Line’s portion of the trip.4 When Mrs. Folger organized the transportation of their collection from New York to Washington, by contrast, she used armored vans.
People who cross the threshold into the arcane world of antiquarian books learn quickly about the Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In 1926, British bibliographers Alfred W. Pollard and Gilbert R. Redgrave produced this exhaustive list (referred to often as the STC) of 26,143 books published between 1475 and 1640. As a competitive collector with the wherewithal to acquire the best, Huntington told his staff to count the number of STC volumes in his library. When he learned that he had acquired 8,726 of them, or more than a third, he was encouraged. He was delighted to be told that, of that figure, 668 items could be found only in his collection. When informed that the British Museum and the Bodleian Library in Oxford each possessed more STC titles than he did, however, Huntington’s ego suffered a wound. Since Folger kept his collecting figures under wraps, Huntington had to guess about his holdings. There was nothing to fear, for the Folger library tallied approximately six thousand in the early 1930s. Today, both libraries own virtually the same number of STC titles—around 13,700.
TABLE 5.
Folger and Huntington Bid/Win Record for Lots in Huth Sales, 1911–1917
Source: Archival information provided to author by Richard Linenthal, former director of Bernard Quaritch, in email messages of June 29, 2010, and January 29, 2011
Like Henry Folger, E. Dwight Church was a Brooklyn businessman who became a major book collector; he specialized in English and American literature. Also like Folger, Church was a shy man who kept his purchases under wraps. Shortly before his death, Church hired bibliographer George Watson Cole to prepare a catalog of his library. The seven-volume opus revealed two thousand distinguished titles in impeccable condition—including twelve Shakespeare folios and thirty-seven quartos. After Church’s death in 1908, bookseller George D. Smith canvassed several serious collectors to try to form a syndicate of New York buyers. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Henry E. Huntington contacted the executors of the Church estate directly and bought the Church library en bloc in a private agreement. His competitors were aghast when Smith announced the news to the press with characteristic bravura, inflating the purchase price by half a million dollars.5
From time to time, auction houses judged private libraries so extensive and rich that they strung out the sales over time. Sotheby’s disposed in this fashion of the library of British book collectors Robert Huth and his son Alfred, taking seven years. Folger and Huntington were avid bidders, occasionally competing for the same item. Table 5, produced largely from old “commission ledgers” preserved in London’s Quaritch bookshop, attests that both collectors harbored high hopes; their take-home record demonstrates how one buyer overshadowed the other.
Both Folger and Huntington were nonplussed when news reached them that—on the day before the auction—all Shakespeare items were withdrawn from the first sale. Alexander S. Cochrane, a carpet manufacturer from Yonkers, New York, had secretly purchased them. The Henrys suffered the same fate they had so often arranged for other buyers.
In the third sale, Folger bid on twenty-one items but won only three, all pre-1640 items, one of which contained Shakespeare’s poems. Huntington walked away with fifteen items Folger had bid on. Folger lost out on other pre-1640 titles that were attributed to Shakespeare, contained a quotation from a Shakespeare play, or included an epigram dedicated to Shakespeare. Henry and Emily were aware of these references because Sotheby’s catalog had described them in fine print. The couple spent many laborious hours combing through Huth catalogs, each running about 1,000 pages.
In the fourth Huth Sale, Folger bid £1,800 on a King Lear quarto (1608). Although this figure was high for Folger, Quaritch exceeded it by bidding up to £2,470 to obtain it for him. Huntington did not bid on the item. Instead, he walked away with several Ben Jonson titles, a collecting area well within Folger’s purview. At the same sale, Folger bid only £75 for a Jonson lot, #4064, which sold to Huntington for £900. Huntington submitted as many bids with commission agent George D. Smith as he did with Quaritch; consequently, the above table does not tell the entire story of their bidding and winning.
Table 5 shows the massive scale at which Huntington bid: seventeen times Folger’s number of bids, or 1,849 to 110. Of the 110 lots Folger bid on, he obtained only twenty-five, or 23 percent. Huntington’s comparable record was 55 percent, or 1,017 wins from 1,849 bids. In the Huth sales, Huntington walked away with forty times the number of prizes Folger acquired, 1,017 to 25. Folger won substantially less than Huntington throughout.
At the same period, another story of hot competition among book collectors circulated. In early April 1912, young Philadelphia book collector Harry Widener bought at Quaritch’s a tiny volume, the second edition of Bacon’s Essayes (1598). Widener paid £200 for the book, which had belonged to Henry Huth. Harry’s farewell to the bookseller was, “I think I’ll take that little Bacon with me in my pocket, and if I’m shipwrecked it will go down with me.”6 Soon after, he boarded the Titanic for America with his parents George and Eleanor. As the craft was sinking on April 14, father and son accompanied Eleanor Widener and her maid to lifeboat no. 4. George and Harry stayed aboard and went down with the ship. Harvard dedicated the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library in 1915. At Bernard Quaritch’s request, Henry E. Huntington agreed to let six volumes he had wanted from the second Huth sale go to Eleanor Widener, as they had been on her son Harry’s wish list. A competitive collector could still have a heart.
Huntington and Folger jousted not only for books. Sometimes an oversized piece of furniture attracted both. Bookseller George D. Smith thought of his best-paying customer, Henry H., when he purchased ninety-five volumes of Knight’s pictorial edition of the Bard’s works in 1914. With the deal—for merely $6,000—came a curious colossal bookcase, ten feet high. The wood of the elaborately carved bookcase came from forty different buildings mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays or associated with the playwright. Five years later, Folger wrote Smith, asking him to ask Huntington if he would be willing to part with the bookcase. Not a chance. Today it still looms over staff and researchers in the Huntington Library reading room.
While Folger must have been dismayed to witness Huntington snapping up collections big and small, a major consolation was that he had entered the Shakespeare market earlier than Huntington. Also, their voracious appetites meant that lesser collectors were chased away from Shakespeareana. William K. Bixby of St. Louis, who had made a fortune building railroad cars, dropped Shakespeare to focus on Americana. The two Henrys, as dominant collectors, practiced cordiality. Rosenbach wrote Folger, “You will be glad to know that before Dr. Huntington left for California, he relinquished in your favor his bid on the first edition of Lodge’s Rosa-lynde (1590).”7 Realizing the need to keep his two prime customers happy, Rosenbach walked a fine line between profiting from their purchases and flagrantly pitting one against the other. He wrote, “I never used the bids of Mr. Folger and Mr. Huntington competitively; they acceded to each other’s wishes in a most generous way and thus avoided excessive and costly competition.”8
Huntington and Folger met again over a 1609 quarto edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, during the 1919 sale of the library of Minneapolis newspaper owner Hershel V. Jones. Huntington had sold his copy to Jones for $20,000 before staff from the Anderson Galleries preparing for auction noticed that it contained two facsimile leaves. Just the man for a bargain, and someone who did not insist on perfection, Folger purchased the volume at auction for $10,500.
The same year, Rosenbach purchased the Shakespeare collection of Marsden J. Perry, a railroad magnate from Providence. Perry had the finest Shakespeare collection in America at the turn of the century. After the Panic of 1907, however, he was forced to part with much of it. Henry Folger was the lucky buyer then. After World War I, Perry could not resist getting back into collecting. But frustrated over losing the Duke of Devonshire’s Shakespeares to Huntington, Perry decided to quit the chase altogether and sell out. Although George D. Smith hoped he would be lucky enough to buy the Perry collection for resale, Rosenbach won it.
Shortly thereafter, Rosenbach sold the cream of Perry’s collection to Folger, J. P. Morgan, and Joseph Widener, Harry’s uncle. Only later did he write Huntington a white lie regarding some Perry volumes: “Would like to give you first offer of Shakespeare quartos not in your collection.”9 Before Huntington had time to respond, Rosenbach arrived in San Marino toting the remaining treasures. Huntington bought the lot for $121,000, paying only $21,000 immediately. The remaining $100,000 he paid over eight months, the way he liked to arrange payments. An elated victor, he wrote the bibliographer George W. Cole, “It makes quite a reduction in the number of plays I have to secure to be even with the British Museum.”
Huntington paid Rosenbach a total of $4,333,610 during their years of commercial exchange.10 Folger’s comparable figure was $1,388,990.11 Rosenbach had an uncanny ability to remember the major books already in both gentlemen’s libraries. Himself a scholar of the Elizabethan period—and one thoroughly knowledgable of the book market in America and England—he befuddled and bemused Huntington and Folger, leading them by the nose to purchase after purchase. It was as though Dr. Rosenbach were developing their libraries for them; they only had to sign big checks.
Rosenbach often showered them with fawning congratulations. Upon his purchase of Edward Gwynn’s Shakespeare quartos, Folger became the proud owner of “THE FINEST SHAKESPEAREAN VOLUME IN EXISTENCE,” Rosenbach assured him.12 And Huntington was offered a lot that he had to consider beyond a doubt “the greatest bargain of the year.”13
The collectors responded well to Rosenbach’s stroking. From Huntington: “I do not see how you could have done better than you did.” From Folger: “I very greatly appreciate your interest in my Shakespeare collection, knowing that at times it even affects the profits which you might otherwise make on certain of your sales.” Rosenbach smiled twice.14
Rosenbach was not above browbeating a buyer for ignoring his expert advice. To Folger: “I greatly regret for your own sake (but not for mine!) that you did not purchase the Legge, as it was offered to you at a very reasonable price.”15 He was referring to one of the manuscripts of Richardus Tertius (1579) by Thomas Legge the book dealer had billed as one of the sources of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Rosenbach had warned Folger that if he did not purchase it, the manuscript would be in the doctor’s luggage when he traveled to see Huntington. Rosenbach did sell the volume to Huntington in a big lot.16
Rosenbach worked hard to convey that he esteemed the collector’s library as much as the collector himself. After a classic Rosenbach softening up, Folger received an irresistible proposition regarding a rare set of books: “As I would like to see this small lot in your library, I shall make you a very special price.”17
Rosenbach was not above pitting one collector against another. He would offer a book to Folger that might appear all the more seductive because Huntington had never seen it. Folger would know he had to scramble to come up with cash to accept such an irresistible proposition.
He also endeared himself by offering the occasional favor: sending Folger an autographed signed letter by Edmond Malone; a children’s book exhibition catalog for Mrs. Folger’s attention; photostat copies of Benjamin Franklin letters, as Rosenbach knew that Franklin’s mother was a Folger. For Huntington’s seventy-fifth birthday, Rosenbach sent him a naughty letter from Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton.
In 1947, Rosenbach gave a talk in the Folger Shakespeare Theatre about his experiences with rare books and book collectors. He began with one of his favorite stories about Henry Folger.
Mr. Folger was very fond of the number thirteen. He was on the thirteenth floor of the Standard Oil Building, 26 Broadway or twice thirteen. He often liked to buy books where the price was thirteen. I recall one time that I spoke to him about this and I told him that sometime when the price was $14,000 I liked to make it thirteen to please him. He looked puzzled and said to me, “I imagine you do that occasionally but I suppose when the price is twelve you often make it thirteen!”18
Rosenbach adored books and, perhaps even more, profits. Huntington and Folger maintained a constant brisk business with the 10 percent commission on most auction sales. Under other circumstances, Rosenbach was not averse to accepting higher returns. With a straight face he said, “I do not consider 400% a large profit, or 10,000% large.”19 However, the dealer kept his earnings secret.
The only invoice slipup in the house involved Huntington. Inadvertently, a packer included in the envelope not only the cost invoice to the collector but also a letter containing the amount the dealer had paid. Too late, the staff realized this egregious error, but the letter was heading west. After initial curses and lamentations, Rosenbach did something he had never done before and hated to do: he climbed into an airplane. Once in San Marino, he went straight to Huntington’s private secretary, George Hapgood, who opened the mail. “No, Doctor Rosenbach, no letter has arrived.” Rosenbach was relieved.
Just as Duveen bribed and cajoled Andrew Mellon’s servants to inform him about which loaned paintings appealed to the collector and when he might be in a buying mood, so Rosenbach had ingratiated himself with Hapgood via cigars and favors. Several days after his flight, Rosenbach reappeared in his Madison Avenue bookstore. Although he smugly kept the results of the trip to himself, the accountant later noticed an entry of $1,000 to George Hapgood as an expense voucher. Rosenbach’s trade practices remained a secret to the outside world.
On occasion, the cordial competitive duo stretched into a trio. When Rosenbach traveled to London in February 1922 for a five-day Britwell sale at Sotheby’s, his pockets brimmed with bids for the first edition of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1598). The top three buyers he represented were Folger, Huntington, and William A. White. Resisting a temptation to run up the price by bidding one against the other, Rosenbach purchased the coveted item. In deference to White’s advanced age, Rosenbach explained, many years later, that he sold the Marlowe gem to him. Both Huntington and White died in May 1927. The White family thoughtfully contacted Folger and sold him the volume.
Always attuned to his clients’ peculiarities, Rosenbach pulled off one unparalleled three-way deal. It started when Huntington wanted a copy of Pericles (1609). Folger owned two copies, one vastly superior to the other. He confided to Rosenbach that he was on the lookout for an upgrade. William White owned a fine copy of the Pericles he was willing to sell for $25,500. A situation such as this would prompt A. S. W. Rosenbach to move into high gear to find a formula to satisfy everyone, including himself. First, he bought White’s copy. Second, he sold it to Folger in exchange for his inferior copy of the Pericles plus the sum of $18,500. Third, he sold Folger’s reject to Huntington for $32,500. While Huntington was averse to paying “fancy prices,” he was also a collector who often did not haggle. The doctor walked away with a handsome profit of $25,000. After this exploit, Rosenbach went fishing for most of the summer of 1922.
Alone among the six hundred booksellers with whom Folger corresponded, Rosenbach felt confident in urging his client to expand his collection into new areas. Other dealers were content to send out catalogs and point out potentially appealing lots or merely respond to Folger’s requests. It goes without saying that part of Rosenbach’s spiel consisted of self-marketing. Nonetheless, Rosenbach appears to have been genuinely troubled by the removal of Huntington’s books to the West Coast. In 1922, Rosenbach wrote Folger a plea of sorts:
I have long thought over the great loss to American students on the removal of Mr. Huntington’s Library to California. There is no collection in the East where a student is able to consult a comprehensive collection of books of the original source books of Elizabethan-Jacobean literature … If I were you, and I hope you will pardon this, I would try to fill out the authors of the period beginning with the earliest times until the Restoration in 1660s. There are many volumes that can be obtained at most reasonable prices today.20
Rosenbach realized that the expenses of building a library would necessarily make a major dent in budgetary priorities for his collectors. The dreaded command had arrived from Huntington starkly: “Stop book buying until further notice.” Folger sweetened the unwelcome news with his courteous literary style:
I trust you will not think me unsympathetic with the splendid work you are doing discovering new Shakespeare allusions, nor unappreciative of your kindness in making me the first offers of your discoveries. I am neither. But just now, starting in with our developments in Washington, I think we had better get our bearings more certain before making considerable expenditures for new books.
Not all families would allow booksellers to visit prime clients on their deathbeds. Rosenbach visited Huntington in a Philadelphia hospital after his prostate operation, and Folger in a Brooklyn hospital following his. Feeling chipper before the surgery, Huntington summoned several former business colleagues, Rosenbach, and art dealer Joseph Duveen. Huntington looked up from his hospital bed to see Rosenbach on one side and Duveen on the other. The two were known not to get along as they vied for the collector’s attention and commissions. An awkward situation shifted to wry discomfort when Huntington stretched out his arms and cried, “I remind myself of Jesus Christ on the cross between the two thieves.”21
Rosenbach brought the ailing Huntington appetizing food cooked in his own kitchen, hoping to improve his spirits. When Huntington died, with family by his side, Rosenbach was the one who notified library staff. Rosenbach sent British grapes to the hospitalized Folger, who received the book dealer in his room and exclaimed that the grapes were one of the few foods he could eat.
When, many years later, Rosenbach lay dying from an infected kidney, only his brother, Phillip, and shop assistants attended him. Often his needs translated into a bottle of whiskey. Once, the patient managed to sneak out to the movies. Shortly before Rosenbach’s death, his assistants were busy disposing of material in his last storage warehouse when, in a corner under some furniture, they found two dusty cartons of French pornography. This was a real dilemma, because the company did not advertise or sell pornography. At length they decided to sell the finds to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose best seller, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, had just hit the stands. In an exchange of letters, Kinsey admitted, “this rare collection has certainly strengthened my collection.”22 When the Rosenbach Company received a check from Kinsey for $2,250, the staff toasted each other for their insightful contribution to medical science.
Rosenbach was the most erudite rascal in the book business. He enjoyed three names. His staff referred to him as “the Doctor.” His intimates called him “Rosy.” In the trade, he was known as “Dr. R.” Already as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, he was president of Bibliophiles Club and wrote for the Jewish Encyclopedia. Rare among booksellers, he obtained a doctoral degree, writing his thesis in 1901 at Penn on “The Influence of Spanish Literature in the Elizabethan and Stuart Drama.” He later established the Rosenbach Fellowship in Bibliography at Penn. He influenced the Folgers regarding the contents as well as purpose of a Shakespeare library. Rosenbach christened his cabin cruiser yacht First Folio.
Today, with considerable assistance from Dr. Rosenbach, the Huntington Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library are two of the most prominent private research institutions in America, attracting scholars from around the world. Visitors admiring Shakespearean objects on display or retrieved from the vaults in each library can only guess at the fiercely competitive struggle to secure them, as two titanic collectors built their monuments.