Only Collect

Michael Sadleir

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

The Bellew Collection

As I have said, I can no longer observe a strict chronology; but three events of major importance in the story of my bibliomania occurred between 1928 and the middle thirties. The first in enduring influence if not in date was the beginning of my friendship with Richard Jennings, to whom this catalogue is dedicated. Jennings is not a book-collector on a lavish scale, because his standard of 'condition' is so high that acceptable copies of all the books he wishes to possess simply do not exist. He is inexorable in maintaining this standard; and, in consequence, although his collection shows many gaps which on titles alone he would wish to fill, there is hardly a book in his possession whether of the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries which is not in a state of preservation as nearly

Jennings is not a book-collector on a lavish scale, because his standard of 'condition' is so high that acceptable copies of all the books he wishes to possess simply do not exist.

faultless as one could hope to see.
Now I had from the earliest days been a stickler for original condition that is to say, I had never deliberately bought a re-bound nineteenth-century book save for purposes of mere utility, and did not regard such reading copies as part of my collection. A number of re-bound novels were in the Hutchinson library and a few (they are recorded in this catalogue) I retained, because I wanted the texts. Also, as will be seen, there is an occasional bound run of a collected author (e.g. the d'Orsay set of Blessington and the Gaisford set of Peacock) which, in my opinion, carry their own justification. But insistence on 'original condition' had often, until I became familiar with Jennings' books, been too tolerantly maintained. Where, in the attempt to complete some author's first editions, I had been able to find no copy of one or more titles without library labels or marks of library labels on the covers, I had (though reluctantly) incorporated such discreditable specimens in my collection. Henceforward I rejected many books which, in pre-Jennings days (though certainly without enthusiasm), I should have taken.
The second major event of this period (actually the latest in date) was the discovery in the West of Ireland of the fabulous board-and-label library at Mount Bellew. My friend M. J. MacManus of Dublin, whose adventure the discovery was, will some day tell the whole amazing story. My record shall therefore begin when in May 1933 the first MacManus catalogue of Bellew books reached this country. In the course of the present volume will be found descriptions of a Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter, two or three Maturins and a few other novels from Mount Bellew. All are in a pristine condition which has to be seen to be believed. I had many other books from the Bellew Library which, because they are of too early date or because they are non-fiction, have no place in this catalogue; they too were in the same miraculous condition. The library, formed between 1800 and 1830, was a very large one and with certain exceptions of earlier date, consisted mainly of books published between 1770 and 1830. There was a sensational sale at Sothebys of certain high-spot titles which every collector and dealer will recall, including two Jane Austens, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Essays of Elia, several plate-books in parts and other notabilia. Then came three or four more MacManus catalogues, while parcels of minor books made their appearance in quite a succession of Hodgson sales. Practically without exception the books were not only in wrappers or boards as issued (occasionally in full morocco of publishers' origin, cf. Harrison's Novelists Magazine, Section III below) but as clean and new as the day they had first appeared.
I shall never forget the arrival by post of the first slim Bellew catalogue. After tearing through the catalogue's eight pages, I felt so breathless that I had to sit a few moments before I was capable of going through the whole thing item by item. I made pencil-crosses; I drafted a long telegram. Then I commended my cause to Providence and went through the catalogue all over again.
Here are some sentences from a preface which MacManus included in his third or fourth Bellew selection:
BOOKS IN BOARDS
At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century there lived in an old mansion in a remote part of the western Irish seaboard a man whose hobby was book-collecting. Disdaining the fox-hunting tradition of his family and class he devoted his days to literary pursuits and the acquisition of a library. He stored his books in specially-constructed cupboards, dust-proof and damp-proof. Many of them he did not live to read, but even those which he read suffered nothing in the process. When he died, the fox-hunting tradition prevailed once more, and the books, safe behind locked doors, were forgotten for a century.
Here is a wide range of uncommon and attractive volumes, offered in a condition so dazzlingly fine that by their very appearance they will lend distinction to the bookshelves of the most fastidious collector.
Not one word of over-statement do these paragraphs contain. Indeed it would hardly be possible to over-state the perfection of Bellew condition or the excitement of those Bellew days, with parcels from Dublin trickling in and immaculate treasures slowly encumbering my table. Long before the residue of the huge library had been liquidated I went to Dublin at MacManus' invitation and spent happy hours in a warehouse above a furniture shop, where faultless Bellew volumes of every size and kind lay in piles, overflowed from bureau drawers, stood

it would hardly be possible to over-state the perfection of Bellew condition or the excitement of those Bellew days, with parcels from Dublin trickling in and immaculate treasures slowly encumbering my table

close-ranked in shelves. Some were books of extreme dullness; some were books about which nothing was known; some were precisely the sort of scarce but unreputed trifles which I delight to find. But all literally all were crisp and radiant, with labels dead white and perfect, with spines sound and round and flawless at the hinge, with strawboards clear-cut and fore-edges sinuous and sharp. The opening up of the Bellew Library was surely one of the peak moments in the history of modern book-collecting. It is one privilege to have been alive when it happened, and another to have enjoyed the friendship of the man most concerned and therefore to have been among the earliest to hear the news. In Mount Bellew MacManus found a few copies of a private folio catalogue of which fifteen copies were printed for Christopher Bellew in 1813 (that is to say, about half-way through his collecting life). One of those he gave me, and an occasional reference to it will be found in the pages which follow.

Next Page: Yellow-Backs | Main Menu