VISIT OF BOOK SAVANT

Evening Star, Issue 22032, 18 May 1935, Page 25

VISIT OF BOOK SAVANT

ADVENTURES OF THE COLLECTOR HOW EARLY * TAMERLANE ' WAS MISSED [Special to the 1 Star.’] AUCKLAND, May 17. A dealer in rare books one had imagined as a little, bent old man in horji-rimmed spectacles, with something of the must of old and weighty tomes about his person and in his manner. Instead of that, Mr William Todd, who arrived by the Monterey th.is morning on a fortnight’s fishing holiday, is an upstanding American with the air of an athlete, combined with the knowledge of the savant. Mr Todd deals in books in a business way. Ho buys to sell, rather than to collect, although at the same time he has a library of from 4,000 to 5,000 books himself. He told of one of “ the worst tragedies ” he had heard of. One expected to hear of five or six people killed. “It was “this way,” he said. “It occurred right near mo. A little bookseller who did not know much about hooks was called to inspect some books m an attic. Ho looked at them, divided them into the sheep and the goats, and made his purchase. When he got back to his shop he read that the sum of 26,000d0l had been given for a copy of ‘ Tamerlane,’ the rarest of the works of Edgar Allen Pot.” That work, Mr Todd explained, was a small pamphlet written anonymously by a “ Gentleman of Boston.” Only five copies were knp.wn to exist. “ Tlio little bookseller,” continued Mr Todd, “ remembered having seen that name somewhere. He thought hard, and then recalled that it had been in the attic ho had just left. He rushed back, only to find there that the remander of the volumes had been sold to a waste paper factory. Still, he got the address of the factory, and thither ho hurried,' only to find that the precious pamphlet was at the very moment in the process of being ground up to pulp. There had been only five in existence. If only the book seller had known! All that money ground up!” “ What is the most prized book that has passed through your hands?” lie was asked. He replied: “A first edition of ‘ Champlain’s Voyages.’ Champlain was a Frenchman who had travelled extensively in Canada in the very early days of the history of that country. He was, in fact, the second man to visit Canada. The book was published in ICOB. I found the book in Florence, Italy, of all places, and 1 sold it for a high figure the very day I arrived back in America.” Besides books, Mr Todd also collects documents and letters. -The rarest he had handled, he said, was a single sheet of paper which he had sold for £SOO. It was the announcement of the Battle of Lexington, fought on April 19, 1775, the first of the American War _ of Independence. The document was signed’by the Committee of Safety, but its value Jay in the fact that it bore the signature of Middleton. The rarest signature was that of Button Guinnett, because he was killed in a duel immediately after the revolution, and very few of his signatures had survived. One had been hold by auction in 1928 for 36,000d01. There was a great interest in Pacific voyages. 'Mr Todd said, and for such books there was N a constant demand. Books concerning the mutiny of the Bounty sold well. He had “ run across ” an interesting book in England. In the early days it appeared that the quarter-master on a British man-o’-war had taken out a book on the Bounty adventure to Pitcairn Island, and had secured the autographs of the children or the grandchildren of the mutineers, Mr Todd prized that book. Mr Todd is travelling with Mr Bayard \Dominick, who said Mr Todd possessed one of the largest libraries in America on early voyages to America. Another American whose specialty was books on Indian captivities' (that is, accounts by people of their captivity to Bed Indians) had spent some £IOO,OOO on his library. Mr Todd’s home is at Mount Carmel, Connecticut, near Yale University. In passing, Mr Todd said he was well acquainted with Hr Peter Buck, who was thought very highly of. in America. Dr Buck holds the_ chair of anthropology in Yale University.