PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BIBLIOMANIAC
The introduction to XIX Century Fiction, A Bibliographical Record. London, Constable. 1951. © Richard Sadleir, reproduced with kind permission

In Section II will be found a heading: Anonyma Series, and beneath that heading a list of ostensibly raffish fictions dealing with the fast life of Victorian London. A few pages back, I mentioned as an example of the group-collecting to which I have always been prone, Londoniana of the nine teenth century. I started on this subject early in the nineteen-twenties, with a number of folio periodicals (Renton Nicholson's The Town was the most respectable) which had been the property of the late W. Robertson Nicoll. Continuously (though very slowly, because reliable evidence of what went on behind the facade of early and mid-Victorian propriety is extremely scarce) I extended this collection, and to it the Anonyma novels may fairly claim to belong.

In two respects the formation and possession of this assemblage of London periodicals, chapbooks, night-life guides, crime-sheets, street-maps and what not, has a flavour no other one of my collections possesses. In the first place, when on the prowl, one has no idea, not merely where to look for new material, but even what new material to look for. A Gothic Romance, a three-decker, a yellow-back, however bad as to condition and however unwanted, are manifestly a Gothic Romance, a three-decker and a yellow-back. But data on Under-London may turn up anywhere, may be of any format or pushed into any corner. So the search for them tests the patience and intelligence of the collector to the utmost confronts him, in other words, with a job of collecting in its noblest form. In the second place, while I have collected fiction with the idea of transmuting some of its contents into decor for historical biography, I have from the first looked forward to using predominantly non-fictional Londoniana as decor for fiction. That process began with the writing of Fanny by Gaslight and Forlorn Sunset, and may, I daresay, be further pursued. I find a peculiar relish in thus turning the tables on my own previous practice.To conclude this record of what has been the most exciting continuous experience of my life, there remains to be told the story of the Bentley Fiction File.

In a large brick house in Slough, surrounded by a large garden and looking across the water-meadows to Eton, lived Richard Bentley the Second, the last of the family which in direct succession had for over sixty years conducted the famous publishing firm of Bentley. In 1898 Macmillan purchased the business of Bentley and Son, taking over the firm's publishing copyrights and stocks, and Richard Bentley retired to the imposing residence which his father, George Bentley, had built a few years before his death in 1895. In his retirement Richard the Second became a meteorologist and antiquarian of repute, as well as a prominent figure in various spheres of scholarship and administration. He was President of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1905; Master of the Stationer's Company in 1924 25; for many years Vice-Chairman of the King Edward VII Hospital at Windsor, and an influential member of the Committee of the Royal Literary Fund. Continuously for sixty-three years (the longest period on record in the history of British railways) he held a season ticket between Slough and Paddington. Mr Bentley was a remarkable man, both in appearance and character. Short, very stout, bald-headed and with pure white whiskers of the Emperor-Francis-Joseph type, he might have stepped straight from an illustration to a mid-Victorian novel. Right up to the end of a long life (he was eighty-one when he died in February 1936) he retained his sight, hearing, physical activity and magnificent appetite. In no single respect was Mr Bentley's life a niggardly one. His house was very large and very red and white, the lawns were very extensive and very smooth, the shrubs luxuriant and of many kinds. Inside, the paint-work shone with cleanliness and good quality, the furnishings were lavish, various and ornate; there were books and pictures everywhere. Gadgets abounded service lifts; ingenious cupboards; even electric fixtures to throw beams of light across the garden, should he feel suddenly in gala-mood, or suspect that burglars were lurking in the bushes. In his hall stood a full-size scarlet pillar-box of regulation design, in which letters were placed for posting. In the hall also, an impressive clock, largely labelled: REAL TIME, expressed his disapproval of daylight-saving nonsense. His hospitality was almost overwhelming. Never, between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., have I been pressed to eat so many and such excellent meals as on day-visits to this cordial home.

When he wrote letters (which in reply to my queries he would do most punctually and generously), he not only covered sheets of notepaper of the very finest quality with large and beautiful handwriting, but used red as well as black ink and even other devices to emphasise his points. Here, after a paragraph or two of regulation black, would come three lines in scarlet; here a hand pointing in the margin, or a rigid railway-signal with the word STOP! would jerk the reader sharply to attention. In short, he was a memorable and highly individual figure a very embodiment of full-blooded mid-Victorian security, and the perfect culmination of a publishing dynasty whose productions were more lavish in design and of choicer material than any of their period.I first made Mr Bentley's acquaintance when I was working on Excursions in Victorian Bibliography, and from the beginning found him ready with information and accessible to requests for help. But it was not until I had known him for some years that he really accepted me as a serious student of Victorian publishing. Once that stage was reached, no trouble was too great for him. I do not think I misrepresent him if I say that he actually welcomed enquiries; and I have no doubt whatever that the too-few visits which I was able to pay to Slough were a real pleasure to him. He loved to conduct a genuinely interested visitor from one book-room to another unlocking cases, pulling out volumes, expatiating on this old memory or that.

The house was crowded with books. But the portion of it most attractive to me was the attic; for there was the file of Bentley fiction from (roughly) 1860 onwards, which had been removed to Slough from the offices in New Burlington Street when the firm of Bentley and Son was finally merged in Macmillan. It was not a complete file. It contained only scattered examples from the thirties and forties; a fair representation from the fifties; the vast majority of novels published by the firm from the early sixties to the early nineties; and then again a mere selection from the four or five final years. At each end, in short, it was very imperfect, but the middle period was terrific. I judge that the last years of all had been transferred to Macmillan, for I found several Bentley titles among the Macmillan File Copies from the eighties and nineties, when these were put at my disposal through the kindness of the publishers. 'Proved later to be terrific' I should rather say; for it must be confessed that, owing to the structure of the attic and under the ever-vigilant eye of Mr Bentley, no very clear idea of what was actually there could be obtained. Access to the attic was up a steep ladder and through a trapdoor. You (or rather Mr Bentley, with you in his wake) mounted the ladder, pushed back the trap, grasped a convenient rope (of superlative marine quality) and pulled yourself into a prolonged triangular tunnel, criss-crossed with beams and floored with duck boards laid over joists, between which ran water-pipes. For light you (and Mr Bentley) held an electric bulb on a handle, and crept forward as nearly upright as the available clearance allowed. The Bentley Fiction File was kept in long low book cases right under the slope of the roof. These cases were set so far into the angle that there were, I think, only three shelves to each; and while the hand-lamp shone uncertainly on those immediately to right and left, they stretched away into what seemed an infinity of shadowy distance. When the visite was over (I can only think of those expeditions in terms of an official sightseeing tour of a French chateau), one extinguished the lamp, grasped the rope and clambered carefully downward to a man-height corridor once more. The whole performance was a miracle of agility on the part of Mr Bentley and an uncompleted thrill to the favoured visitor.

In February 1986, as I have said, Mr Bentley died and was buried in the churchyard of St Laurence, Upton, alongside his father and near to the old church for whose antiquarian repute he had worked so hard. Fourteen months later (in April 1937) the Bentley Fiction File came up for sale at Hodgson's Rooms in Chancery Lane. Once again was seen the fabulous sight of the large room lined with novels of the nineteenth century in virtually new condition. This time, however, instead of the muted allurements of pale paper spines and snowy labels, brilliant gold patterning and cloths of every colour dazzled the beholder. No novel publishers of the second half of the century went in so thoroughly and persistently as Bentley and Son for golden ornament, for brilliant cloths, for bevelled boards, for all the panoply of glitter and colour which (perhaps for the last time in the whole history of publishing) signalised a period of prosperity, confidence and peace. The Bentley novels were catalogued in 145 lots, of which the first 140 (comprising over 1700 volumes) were put up for sale en bloc. If as a single lot they failed to reach the reserve, they would be offered separately. The remainder of the lots consisted of sets of Temple Bar, Bentley's Favourite Novels, the works of Mrs Henry Wood and some oddments. The first composite lot represented the Fiction File from the great attic at Slough, plus a number of other novels scattered about the house and now added to the attic-series. A few titles were damp-stained or mildewed, but the vast majority were new. Possibly dust and years had slightly dulled their pristine brilliance, but not sufficiently to disqualify them from being described as in 'mint state'. Thanks to the darkness in which the attic-books had been kept, no one was faded; such fading as had occurred affected an occasional book from other parts of the house. It is not too much to say that nowhere else in the world could such a collection of two- and three-deckers of the cloth period, and in such superb condition, conceivably exist. The opening lot reached the reserve, and all the titles of any intrinsic interest appear in this catalogue. Those whose authors or contents seemed to me irrevocably (or better) forgotten and they were fairly numerous I arranged in exact chronological order in glass cases in my office, where they presented an impressive and glowing picture  of the changes in binding taste, decade by decade, from about 1860 to 1895. Then, in two successive night raids, bombs fell on Garlands Hotel which backed on to our office building. Our top three floors were condemned and had to be cleared of their contents among which were the binding specimens so laboriously dated and set in order. No visual chart survived of mid-Victorian binding enthusiasms from the comparative simplicity of grained cloths, blind-blocked and plainly lettered; through an intensifying orgy of heavily gilt spines with ever more fanciful lettering; through a brief and modish period of floral-or filigree-blocking in gold, silver and pale colours on dark smooth cloths, with patterned edges and a general air of tricksy elegance, to a new severity of unglazed, unblocked linens with straightforward titling on the spines. For a while I planned to reconstitute it, but lacked the patience and leisure to do so. Then more space was urgently needed, and the books were sold.