The Crown Jewel of Tarquin Tar's Bookcase

To celebrate the holiday season, this week’s featured book is no less than the crown jewel in my collection: a first edition of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s Comedies and Tragedies, published in London by Humphrey Robinson and Humphrey Moseley in 1647. So much has been written about this book that I won’t go into too much detail.

The Beaumont and Fletcher folio, as it is known, is the third of the three great, transformative folio collections of early modern dramatists (after Jonson’s of 1616 and Shakespeare’s of 1623) that marked the transition of plays from the status of ephemera to the status of literature and the transition of dramatists from mere entertainers to recognized “authors”. Beaumont and Fletcher’s posthumous collection was assembled by actors in the King’s Men, who had originally performed the plays (Fletcher, who had trained as a playwright by collaborating with Shakespeare as the bard prepared to retire, eventually took over as the principal playwright for the leading English theater troupe). 

The book appeared in 1647 – five years after the English Civil War resulted in the closing of all the playhouses – and so its publication is generally thought to be as much about the actors trying to make some quick cash as about celebrating the literary reputation of the late dramatists (Fletcher had died in 1625; Beaumont in 1616). Several other plays by Fletcher – widely viewed as one of the pioneers of English tragicomic drama – had appeared in print previously, to great success, and so the publishers of the 1647 made it a selling point on their title-page to emphasize that these works were “Never printed before” and were now “published by the authors’ original copies” (a claim that scholars now view as not entirely true).

Like most large publications from the period, the Beaumont and Fletcher folio enjoys a richly complex printing history. It is estimated that eight or more different printing shops (and so at least as many different compositors) contributed to the printing of the lengthy preliminaries, with each shop employing slightly different practices in terms of setting type, casting off copy, ordering work, and so forth, as well as different sets of type, printer’s devices, and ornamentation (which appears often throughout the book). The result is that none of the surviving Beaumont and Fletcher folios (several hundred out of the original 2,500 copy print-run) precisely resembles any other. A single style of type was used for all the plays, but these too were likely divided up between printing houses in order to increase the speed of production and so the paper stock changes slightly at places in the volume. Another result of this division of labor is that the signatures on the gatherings – to say nothing of the pagination numbers – are hopelessly mixed up. I will spare you the collational formula, suffice it to say the book comprises 223 gatherings. It’s worth noting here that one of the printers involved with the Beaumont and Fletcher folio was a woman, Susan Islip; the book trade was one of the few industries in the period in which a widow could inherit and keep the business after her husband’s death.

The 35 plays and 1 masque that are included are mostly by Fletcher (though it’s missing at least 20, and includes at least 2 that belong to other dramatists), along with a number that were collaboratively written by Fletcher and Philip Massinger (ironically, despite the title, only 2 are Beaumont-Fletcher collaborations; none are by Beaumont alone). In addition to these, the folio includes a lengthy set of preliminaries that includes two prefaces to the reader (one by playwright James Shirley and one by Moseley, dated February 14, 164[7]), the actors’ dedication to Philip, Earl of Pembroke, and 37 commendatory verses and memorial verses on Fletcher and Beaumont from gentlemen, poets, and other writers, such as professional dramatists Ben Jonson and Richard Brome and amateur dramatists Sir Aston Cockayne and Jasper Mayne. Even the stationer, Moseley, contributed a verse. 

The plays themselves are set in double columns with ample marginal spaces and straight rules dividing the columns and used to separate headers for act and scene breaks. Elaborate ornamentation decorates the start of each play above the title (it seems that almost every ornamentation is different, but I couldn’t say for certain). The type is generally roman for speeches and italic for speech prefixes and stage directions, though in some cases the stage directions are also in roman.

My copy is complete, except for the final work – The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn – and the frontispiece portrait of Fletcher; because this highly coveted engraving by W. Marshall is missing, the actual market value of my copy – despite the fact that it contains all the plays and is in excellent condition otherwise – is markedly low (which is also how, of course, I came to be able to afford it). Some pages have been repaired by a professional conservationist and only a few (mainly in the preliminaries) have lost substantial amounts of text because of this damage. One of these, unfortunately, is the peculiar “Postscript” at the end of the commendatory verses in which Moseley mentions a few things he forgot to write into his preface (that the work of printing the verses was divided among several printers, that Beaumont and Fletcher rarely wrote the prologues and epilogues to their own plays, and similar bibliographic details). The verso of the damaged page is the “Catalogue”, or table of contents, and so that too is missing a large portion of text.

The binding is exquisite late eighteenth century gilded green leather that is still, but for a few chips and bumps and some pulling at the top of the spine, in good condition. The page edges have been gilded all around and the book overall measures a substantial 22cm wide x 32cm tall x 6.5cm deep. While there is no substantive marginalia, my copy has clearly seen use by several readers, as evidenced by slight markings throughout (pencil lines and crosses in the margin and underlining, some faint inked crosses in the margins, and so forth). Inside the front cover is the bookplate of Fairfax of Cameron, a Scottish peerage since 1627; the Fairfax family owned property in Virginia and Maryland into the twentieth century, so perhaps that is how this particular copy of this beautiful, historically important, literary treasure came to be in the New World and, ultimately, in Tarquin Tar’s Bookcase.

Pamphlet Warfare in the Eighteenth Century

 

A couple of years ago I gave an example of the dangers associated with judging books by their covers – particularly if it’s an intriguing old book with a less-than-intriguing new binding. This week, I have another example of the same.This item comprises two publications issued in a kind of pamphlet war in the mid-eighteenth century. They have been bound together by an owner in a completely characterless paper cover with a simple black leather band on the spine. A careless eye looking over this outer shell in a bookstore might pass by and never be aware of the treasurers lying within.

The first of the two publications is a pamphlet titled (in full) Letters, On the Spirit of Patriotism: On the Idea of a Patriot King: and On the State of Parties, At the Accession of King George the First. This copy was published by J. Smith of Dublin, whose shop was at “The Philosopher’s Heads” on “the Blind-Quay”, in 1749. The contents begin with an “Advertisement” from the “editor” justifying the publication (iii-vii); this is followed by three anonymous “letters” from 1736, 1738, and (the last) an unspecified year. It runs 216 pages and may be described collationally as 12^o:[A1]-[I11]: $6. 

The second publication is The Impostor Detected and Convicted: or, The Principles and Practices of the Author of a Pamphlet Lately Published, On the Spirit of Patriotism, &c. Set Forth in a Clear Light, In a Letter to a Member of Parliament in Town, From his Friend in the Country. This was published first in London and then reprinted in Dublin in 1754, though the “letter” it contains is dated May 1749, indicating that its author produced it hard upon the heels of the appearance of Letters. The speed with which the Dublin edition was issued is attested to in the garbled imprint: “London: Printed: And / Dublin: Reprinted, in thn Year / MDCCXLIX.” It runs 23 pages and is collated as 4^o: [A4]-[C4]: $1.

The first of these was written (largely in self-defense) by the English politician and sometime-philosopher/historian Henry St. John Bolingbroke (1678-1751). George I’s accession in 1714 was a tremendous political blow to Bolingbroke, who had long backed the opposing Jacobite party. With the rise of his rivals, Bolingbroke fled England and took to writing more than legislating (he gained some notoriety as a followed of John Locke and as an outspoken Deist who was highly critical of Christianity). His Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism predate these writings, however, and set out a remarkably forward-looking (that is, humanistic) and practical (that is, proto-republican) view of politics, for which he was soundly skewered by many of his foes. Fatefully, in his May 1749 Letters, Bolingbroke singled out Alexander Pope for attack and in doing so he attracted the ire of many other writers, effectively triggering a pamphlet war that produced at least six subsequent publications (on these, see, for example, Austin Wright’s “John Spence as Defender of Pope’s Reputation” in Modern Philology 36.2 [November 1938]).

It would be as tiresome here to recount the particulars of the disgruntled parties as it is to read the actual pamphlets. Suffice it to say that personal, and in some cases literary, egos were bruised more than any strictly political views crossed. Indeed, this was the usual nature of pamphlet wars throughout the period: private polemics boiling over into public discourse. They flared up quickly and died down with little lasting effect. The cheaply produced publications used to wage the war were usually so poorly printed and so widely read that they rarely survive in any great numbers or good condition.

The first edition of Bolingbroke’s Letters appeared in London in 1749 under the imprint of A. Millar and immediately caused a sensation; its republication in Philadelphia (by no less a firm than Ben Franklin and D. Hall – perhaps related to Samuel Hall?) and Dublin (my copy) testifies to its popularity. Subsequent London editions followed from Millar in 1750 and 1752 and T. Davies in 1775. The Imposter was less prevalent: besides my Dublin edition, I have only been able to find a reference to one other edition, published in London by John Barnes of the London Gazette in 1749. There seems to be no reliable evidence as to the authorship of the rejoinder. It’s tempting to guess that the same Dublin publisher issued both pamphlets, but there are sufficient differences in the typography to strongly suggest otherwise.

My copy of the two pamphlets is in rough condition: all the pages are present and all the text is intact, but the edges of the paper were burned as some point and some mildewing and water staining is evident on the paper. The gatherings are effectively free of the spine and some individual pages have separated also. Such damage speaks to the fact that the book has been used in its time. Also standing as evidence of such are the marginal markings. A dealer’s price is penciled on the title page of the first pamphlet ($150!).

A different pencil has added marginal vertical lines and check-marks alongside passages of interest and occasional marginal notes (these appear in both pamphlets), including the note “Timely” beside a paragraph that begins, “As to all thread-bare stale Accusations of Maintaining Soldiers in Time of Peace; of the Nation’s being loaded with heavy Taxes; and that the Publick Money  has been profusely squandered away…” (Imposter, 16; a complaint so generic and applicable to so many time periods, however, as to render the excerpt without use in dating the marginalia). A third pencil has added a “#2” on the title page of Letters, implying that it was at one point part of a larger collection; the same pencil has written “Warburton” (that is, literary scholar and anti-Deist William Warburton) on the title page of Letters and added a note on the title page of Imposter noting “In defence of Pope”.

The only ownership provenance is a name written on the title page of Letters in blue ink: “Walter McIntosh Merrill”. The hand just seems to resemble that of the pencil that added the attribution to Warburton and the marginalia. Born in Evanston, Illinois in 1915, Merrill was a scholar and author who published on American history and especially on William Lloyd Garrison from the 1940s through the 1980s. Before his turn toward the famed nineteenth-century American abolitionist, however, Merrill specialized in – as it happens – the work of Henry St. John Bolingbroke. He completed his Ph.D. dissertation, Bolingbroke’s Deism, at Harvard in 1945 and subsequently published it as From Statesman to Philosopher: A Study in Bolingbroke’s Deism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949). (Interestingly, though from Illinois, Merrill’s mother briefly lived in my old hometown of Salem and in Marblehead, where I went to school. The coincidence has nothing to do with my acquiring of the book, however; it was one of the lots from my June 2011 visit to New England Book Auctions in Northampton, MA.) Merrill was a professor of English at Wichita State University, where he was chair of the department for a time in the mid-1960s. Because he does not mention Imposter in his book on Bolingbroke, I suspect he obtained the pamphlets only after the book was published in 1949.

This ownership provenance helps clear up the presence of the added name “Warburton” on Letters: rather than an ascription of authorship (which would have been completely unbelievable, especially for a scholar specializing in Bolinbroke) I think it indicates Merrill’s knowledge that this particular copy of the pamphlet belonged to the anti-Deist. This makes it possible that Warburton was in fact the author of the accompanying pamphlet, Imposter – a possibility effectively confirmed by the falsely modest “signature” that accompanies the “letter” that is the content of Imposter: “W-------n”.

As I turn toward revising (really wholesale rewriting) my own dissertation this week, it seems fitting to discover that one of the items on my shelf hearkens back to similar work done by a scholar of an earlier generation (even if he did acquire it only after his work on the subject was published). I’m glad – and not ashamed to admit a bit sentimental – that the book that sat at the center of his research passion is today still extant and part of my own collection. Perhaps some day I, too, will own one of the actual texts that I study.

Boston and the Country Adjacent, 1894

Since my wife and I are heading back to the Boston area for a holiday party this weekend, I thought it would be fitting to do a brief post on an item with links to Boston. The item in question is a Map of Boston and the Country Adjacent, From Actual Surveys, published by the firm of Damrell & Upham, located at 283 Washington Street in Boston – the self-titled “Boston Map Store” – in 1894. This version of the map was essentially a reprint of the 1892 map published by George H. Walker & Company. 

As travel became easier for more and more members of the general public, the turn of the century saw a marked increase in the number of pocket maps showing routes that could be travelled by bicycle, train, or the new automobile. The technologies used to survey land and measure distances were also improving exponentially.

The map folds out to approximately 62cm x 90cm and is on a flimsy stock. For protection, one corner of it was pasted into boards of pebbled brown cloth with blue paper on the interior (10.5cm x 17cm). This binding – really more of a folder – bears the gilded title “Damrell & Upham’s New Road Map of Country Around Boston”. Inside the front cover is an advertisement for the store:

Boston Map Store

Damrell & Upham,

“Old Corner Bookstore,”

283 Washington, cor. of School St.,

Where everything in the way of Maps may be found.

Beneath this runs an advertisement for the map in question:

 

We have just published

A NEW AND MOST COMPLETE MAP

of the

COUNTRY AROUND BOSTON,

Useful for Driving, Wheeling, Walking, Boating and Fishing Purposes.

The map was sold in two sizes: a large version for wall mounting and spanning thirty miles north and south from the city, and a smaller version for pocket use and spanning fifteen miles north and south. Mine is of this second version; it retailed for 50 cents (about $13 in today’s money).

The map itself is colored to demarcate the borders between towns. It also shows parks (in green) and bicycling routes (in red). The scale is one-inch to the mile, and the area covered stretches from north Salem down to Cohasset and from the islands of Boston Harbor (all the way out to Outer Brewster) to Sudbury in the west. There is some slight damage to my copy – a modest tear on two of the folds and the complete separation of most of the map from the folder in which it was once pasted (the corner that was pasted into the folder – consisting mostly of Acton – is still glued into the folder). The pebbled cover has some marks that are likely the result of having been reinforced by tape at one point. Many of the corners of the folds have also been reinforced in the back with scotch tape.

As with all old maps, the best part of this Damrell & Upham map is casting an eye over known landmarks, seeing what was once there, what is still there, and how much the land with which I’m so familiar has changed over the years. I don’t know who owned this copy, or whether they used it for “wheeling” (bicycling) or perhaps fishing, but its damage indicates that it did certainly see use in its day.

A 1711 Collection of a Politician's Poems, with a Salem Pedigree

After a nine-month hiatus to deal with the crescendo of work associated with the final stages of my dissertation and the first stages of going on the job market, I’ve decided to return again to Tarquin Tar’s Bookcase.

This week I’m looking at a good copy of an antiquarian book that was part of a lot that I acquired from New England Book Auctions in Northampton, MA, back in June. The book is a late edition of Edmund Waller’s Poems, Etc. Written upon several Occasions and to several Persons…To which is Prefix’d The Author’s Life. The book was published in 1711 by the formidable Jacob Tonson of London and sold at his shop, “Shakespear’s Head,” opposite Catherine Street in the Strand.

The first two editions of Waller’s collected works were published in 1664 by Henry Herringman, with subsequent editions from Herringman in 1668, 1682, 1686, 1690, 1693. In 1694 Herringman and Tonson co-published the eighth edition, but it was described as the sixth edition – presumably because beginning with the edition of 1668 the text had been substantively expanded with new material by the author. Herringman died before the “seventh” edition (ninth true edition) appeared in 1705 and so it was published by Tonson and the “assignes” of Herringman. My copy is of Tonson’s “eighth” edition (tenth) in 1711. He published further editions in 1712 and 1722. The book was, in short, quite popular and remained in demand through the Restoration. This was probably more a factor of the author’s political celebrity than his poetic skill.

Waller was an outspoken royalist in Parliament in the waning years of the reign of Charles I and was banished from England when Cromwell came to power; however, he was eventually allowed to return to political life and temporarily reconciled with the Puritans, even writing a poem of praise for Cromwell. When Charles II was restored to the throne, he again returned to the royalist side and was reconciled also with the king’s party (he wrote a poem of praise for Charles, too; when the king demanded to know why Waller’s poem to Cromwell was better than his poem for the monarch, Waller – ever the artful politician – observed, “Sir, we poets never succeeded so well in writing truth as in fiction.”) Beside his considerable success as a politician, Waller wrote a range of poetic styles and is generally recognized as one of the poets responsible for the return of the heroic couplet to fashion in English verse.

The book begins with a frontispiece showing Waller at age 23. After the title-page there are two prefaces from the printer (both are evidently from earlier editions) and then the biography of the poet (i-lxxxii). This is followed by an engraving of Waller at age 76 and a rather macabre engraving of his tomb, complete with black cloth and skulls. There is then the table of contents and the contents of the book (poems, translations, lyrics, prologues and epilogues, a play, political speeches, etc., paginated 1-423 with several errors in numbering). It includes laudatory poems on various English aristocrats and writers, such as Ben Jonson (whose poem is marked by inky thumbprints, perhaps hinting that someone was holding the book open to that page while copying from it). Beside the portraits of the author and his tomb, it also includes a portrait of the Countess of Carlisle (facing p. 23), General Montague, the earl of Sandwich (facing p. 192), the lady Morton (facing p. 169), and one of the woman whom Waller fell desperately in love with, the Countess of Sunderland (facing p. 98). None of the plates are integral to their gatherings.

The pages measure 12cm x 19cm and are of a fairly cheap stock typical of the turn of the century. There seems to be no watermark on the paper, but there are 3cm vertical chainlines. It may be described collationally as 8o: [A4] a8-f4 B8-2E4: $4. I’m quite pleased that the book is in its original binding of paneled calf with decorative blind tooling, with only moderate wear on the boards and some pulling and chipping on the spine. Inside the front cover are pasted two descriptions of the book; neither bears a date. One of these is clearly cut out of an undated dealer’s catalogue and offers the book for $25.00 (a later dealer has penciled $200 on the facing blank). The second sticker turns out to be from the Catalogue of the Library of the Honorable William C. Prescott of Salem (published by George A. Leavitt & Company, 1881).

Prescott’s library was auctioned by the George Leavitt Company at Clinton Hall in New York in December 1881 and the catalogue was prepared to advertise the items available. Prescott had served as a Justice of the Peace, Salem’s “counselor” to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of the Commonwealth, Salem’s representative in the state legislature, where he sat on the education committee (fitting, then, that he owned a copy of Waller’s poetry), and had been appointed special justice of the Police Court of Salem. He needed to liquidate his possessions, and raise some cash, in advance of moving to Europe.

It was a tremendous auction with thousands of works of fine art, exquisite rare and antiquarian books from the 14^th through 19^th centuries, and other exceptional items. Included in his collection were numerous collectible works on the occult and witchcraft, dating back to the Renaissance, as well as (for example) a first edition of John Smith’s General History of Virginia and of Audubon’s Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. As the auctioneer puts it in his catalogue, “Surely after such an array of bibliomaniacal nuggets and gems, words are utterly useless to enhance the value of the lots, one and all, in the Prescott Library.” It was a pleasant surprise to discover, in the course of preparing this week’s blog entry, that this copy shares my own roots in Salem, MA. It was particularly apropos given that this entry was largely researched and written while visiting my family back in Salem for the post-Thanksgiving weekend.

That my copy was, indeed, Prescott’s own copy (lot 1279 in the auction, up for sale on Tuesday, December 20 – the last night of the six-day auction) is confirmed by a reference in the description to an “Autograph signature of ‘Lucy Greene’ on the title.” This inscription does indeed appear on the title page of my copy; aside from this signature, there is no marginalia in the book. It’s not extremely rare to find a book from this period with evidence of a woman’s ownership, though it is relatively uncommon and certainly a rarity in my collection. The handwriting seems to be of the late eighteenth century, though it is impossible to say for certain. The name is, of course, so common as to be virtually – alas – anonymous.

Bromidic Humor from the Inventor of the Blurb

The title of this week’s book jumped out at me during an auction several months ago. It’s not particularly rare, but it struck me as bizarre enough to warrant adding it to my collection.

Are You a Bromide? was the work of American humorist Frank Gelett Burgess (1866-1951). It first appeared as the essay “The Sulphitic Theory”, published in the April 1906 issue of the literary magazine The Smart Set, and was first printed in book form by Ess Ess Publishing in October 1906. The copyright was then held by B. W. Huebsch (better known as the American publisher of James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence). Subsequent editions of Are You a Bromide? appeared in November and December 1906, February 1907, and June 1907. My copy is of this fifth printing, in June 1907.

The full title of this piece of classic early twentieth-century humor is Are You a Bromide? Or, The Sulphitic Theory: Expounded and Exemplified According to the Most Recent Researches into the Psychology of Boredom, Including Many Well-Known Bromidians Now In Use. Burgess dedicated his book to one “Gertrude McCall” (not sure who she is), whom he credits in his typical ridiculous way as “Chatelaine of Mac Manor and Discoverer of The Sulphitic Theory”.

Burgess (below) was a native New Englander who moved to San Francisco to be a part of that city’s growing bohemian scene in the early 1890s. He gained fame as a humorist, illustrator, and editor of the magazine The Lark.

Perhaps his most well known writing is “The Purple Cow” (1895), a bit of verse used by generations of English teachers as the classic example of “nonsense verse”:

I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!

The poem was immensely popular in Burgess’s time and he spent much of his following career trying to escape from its shadow. Also of note is Burgess’s role in advancing the marketing of books by coining the term “blurb”, which he defined as “a flamboyant advertisement” -- he used the term as part of a flashy advertisement at the front of the first edition of Are You a Bromide?, in which a “Miss Belinda Blurb” is seen yelling at the potential buyer. Sadly, this historic ad is not part of the fifth edition.

Besides these activities, Burgess wrote the successful children’s book series (and associated comic strip) The Goops (1900-1951). He once held the record for the most synonyms for “drunkenness” (surpassed in 2009 by Paul Dickson’s Drunk: The Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary). Unrelated to these activities (probably) he’s credited with founding the first Boys and Girls Club west of the Mississippi.

Are You a Bromide? is a satire of the many pseudo-psychology books that flooded the early twentieth-century book market following in the wake of Freud’s influential theories. Many of these are predicated upon simplistic and wholly manufactured binaries, rather than nuanced scientific study; in that vein, Burgess makes his book a treatise about identifying the “Bromide” and the “Sulfide”. The “Bromide” is described thus:

In this our world the Bromides constitute, alas! by far the larger group. In this, the type resembles the primary bodies or other systems of classification, such as the Philistines, the Conservatives, the Bores and so on, ad nauseam. The Bromide does his thinking by syndicate. He follows the main traveled roads, he goes with the crowd. In a word, they all think and talk alike--one may predicate their opinion upon any given subject. They follow custom and costume, they obey the Law of Averages. They are, intellectually, all peas in the same conventional pod, unenlightened, prosaic, living by rule and rote. They have their hair cut every month and their minds keep regular office hours. Their habits of thought are all ready-made, proper, sober, befitting the Average Man. They worship dogma. The Bromide conforms to everything sanctioned by the majority, and may be depended upon to be trite, banal and arbitrary. [17-8]

This is, of course, social satire dressed up in the then-topical rhetoric of psychiatry; modern self-help books, that attempt to categorize people by personality “type”, are no different. In addition to defining and giving examples of “bromidic” people, Burgess offers sample quotations of things Bromides are likely to say. He also breaks down the two categories into gradations and subcategories, gives their histories, and even applies the terms to things beyond people (for example, vegetables).

The book is bound in gray paper-covered boards. An illustrated title appears on the front. Throughout an ornate red border decorates each page and red devices of different types -- designed by Burgess himself -- separate the various sections. Excluding an unpaginated front flyleaf and back flyleaf, it runs [1-8] 9-63. Frequent foxing appears throughout, but it is otherwise in good condition.

On the recto of the front fly there was once a pencil inscription that is now either erased or faded to the point of illegibility. The book bears two other signs of its provenance. The first is a bookseller’s sticker in the lower inside corner on the inside of the back cover. The sticker is for the firm Belknap & Warfield, a stationer and, for a while, publisher based in Hartfield, Connecticut around the turn of the century.

The other piece of provenance is a bookplate on the recto of the front flyleaf. The plate shows two ducks taking flight over a woodland pond and bears the words “Ex Libris Forrest Gracy”. Gracy was a resident of my neck of the woods -- western Massachusetts -- living in West Hawley. He was born on June 12, 1923 and died at the age of eighty-five on May 27, 2009, a resident of the Cozy Corner Nursing Home in Sunderland.

His obituary from the Greenfield Recorder paints a picture of a contented, sustainable, and intelligent rural life:

Mr. Gracy was born in Canton, Conn., June 12, 1923, the son of Byron and Ruth (Vining) Gracy. He attended Canton High School and was a WWII veteran, having served for three years as a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific.

Mr. Gracy was a great naturalist, gardener and woodsman who loved tending his gardens and forest on the Chickley River in West Hawley, where he lived self-sufficiently for many decades. He loved opera and classical music, was an avid reader and also enjoyed writing. He had been a machinist by trade.

Though they may not have known Mr. Gracy by name, many residents of West County recognized him as the old gentleman who rode his bike along Route 8A and the Mohawk Trail between Charlemont and Greenfield on his trips to fetch supplies and services away from his beloved Chickley River hollow. Mr Gracy was a thoughtful, gentle, solitary man who lived respectfully on the land and who was admired and respected by all who had the opportunity to know him.

Mr. Gracy was predeceased by his ex-wife, Sarah Jane (Adams) Gracy of Rowe, with whom he maintained a life-long friendship. Survivors include his sister Beatrice Gracy Sabatino of Bridgeport, Conn,; a niece Elaine Ruth Sabatino of Soquel, Calif.; and a step-daughter Marianna Erho of Brownington, Vt.

The auction at which I acquired this book -- held in Amherst, Massachusetts -- included other papers and ephemera from the Gracy estate (his two tracts of property in Hawley were sold to a couple from the nearby city of Northampton). Amongst the papers were many books -- as the obituary notes, Gracy must have been quite the “avid reader” -- and many written documents, ranging from journals and poems (he “enjoyed writing”) to several lots of correspondence between him and his mother, Ruth, during his time overseas in World War II. His love of nature certainly explains the bucolic waterfowl scene on his bookplate.

Gracy’s obituary gives a brief synopsis of the man -- an abstract, if you will. But walking through that auction and seeing both his own writings and the kinds of books he once owned, read, and cherished, filled out that abstract with nuance, complexity, and -- as my copy of Are You a Bromide? attests -- a bit of quirky humor as well.

Dam!

No post this week as Tarquin Tar is busy trying to break up ice dams on the roof of his house in order to prevent leaks that might damage books.

It's time for this winter to end.