Newsletternewsletter5.3[flip]-compressed

UNION CLUB LIBRARY NEWSLETTER A library worthy of the name is more than a collection of books; it is, metaphorically speaking, a living thing; that is, it must be nourished, it must be preserved, it must be constantly watched, and particularly the use of it must be noted... - Annual Report of the Union Club Library 1939 SUMMER 2019 5/3

FROM THE CHAIR IN THIS ISSUE: There are many different types of libraries and each has its own “personal- ity,” so to speak. Some are specialized, collecting in only one area. The li- From the Chair brary of the Racquet and Tennis Club, for instance, collects books on sports. The New York Yacht Club, not surprisingly, collects books on yachting. The Union Club Library: Others seek to be all inclusive. The New York Public Library is the largest In the Beginning library in the world that is not owned by a sovereign government. (It is not even owned by the city government, although its magnificent main build- Hanmer’s Shakespeare ing is. The collection is owned by the Astor, Lennox, and Tilden Founda- by Michael T. Kiesel tion.) Library News and Events It has no fewer than 53 million items in its collection and a staff of 3150. But even NYPL is not all inclusive. It doesn’t collect medical literature, for New and Noteworthy instance, leaving that to the New York Academy of Medicine at 5th Avenue and 103rd Street. That library, which is open to the public, is one of the great medical libraries of the world, with 550,000 items. Its rare book col- lection has 32,000 items, including the priceless Edwin Smith Papyrus, the oldest surgical manual in existence, dating to about 1600 BC. LIBRARY COMMITTEE The Union Club Library is more general. Basically, it is what a well-edu- cated and intellectually wide-ranging gentleman might hold in his own li- John Steele Gordon, Chairman brary if he had room for 24,000 books. They range widely from natural history to fiction to sports to history to art to biography to poetry to science Frank B. Arisman to current affairs. Peter deF. Millard Michael T. Kiesel To be sure, we have two concentrations. The library holds over 1000 books Lucius N. Palmer in its New York City collection, and also has an extensive collection of books about World War II. Carl V. Layton Stephen D. Perkins While the Club has never set out to collect rare books, it has a good num- Michael Loening ber, including two incunabula, books published before 1501. (Incunabu- John D. Phillips Jr. lum, in Latin, means “from the cradle.”) Most came to us by donation from generous members, including the 1744 edition of Shakespeare that began David P. Mandy the library in 1837 and which is discussed herein by Michael Kiesel, a Douglas Runte member and noted collector of Shakespeariana. We did, however, purchase William C. Zachary one of the incunabula, a 1473 edition of Plutarch’s Lives, for which the Club paid the munificent sum of ten dollars in the late 1800s. Roberta Munoz, Librarian [email protected] These treasures are displayed from time to time in our display cases and members can always ask the librarian to see one or more of them. 212-606-3413 And, like all libraries, we have our share of oddities. Hillaire Belloc (1870- 1953), for instance, was in his day a very popular and prolific writer (an On the cover: amazing 150 books). He is not much read these days, however, but the Li- Book Night at the Union Club April 1946 brary has a complete collection. The Union Club library continues to evolve, deaccessioning out-of-date and unread books while acquiring the latest publications. A good library not only has a unique personality, but is almost a living thing.

The Union Club Library: In the Beginning Book Night at the Union Club April 1946 with works by Lewis Carroll on display In 1837, barely a year after the Union Club was founded, an original member, David Cadwallader Colden, donated to the Club a handsomely illustrated set of “The Works of Shakespear: in Six Volumes” for the purpose of establishing a library. Mr. Colden was a practical-minded man and in his letter of gift, it was specified that “should the Club fail within two years, the books will be returned to him.” One hundred and eighty-two years later, the Union Club still owns and cares for these volumes, which have been handsomely rebound, and our Library has grown up around them. Member engagement and enthusiasm has nurtured and preserved the Library over the years. Books have been donated in many subject areas, creating a collection that reflects our individual member’s interests, passions and areas of scholarly expertise. Our first recorded Library Book Night, which took place on January 20, 1946, was an informal affair that focused on members’ personal book collections. Later that same year in April, the Library hosted a book night which included a display of two prominent collections of Lewis Carroll materials by Union Club members Arthur Houghton Jr. and Warren Weaver. Both Houghton and Weaver contributed substantially to the field of “Alice” research and Weaver went on to write a number of scholarly books on the subject. Many book nights over the years have honored the author whose works form the foundation of our Library – William Shakespeare. The tradition of member scholars has continued and this issue takes a closer look at our original six-volume Shakespeare set in an article by Union Club member, Michael T. Kiesel, a collector of rare books whose personal library contains most of the editions of Shakespeare’s Works that he mentions in his article, as well as other rarities.

Over time, many more books were donated to our Library by members. Titles were also acquired by purchase as the Library matured and collection development became the responsibility of the Library Committee. Over the years Elmer Gantry (by Sinclair Lewis - donated by member William A. Drayton) settled, mostly amicably, on the shelf next to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (by Anita Loos – donated by member Jack Bouvier); a rare first edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird (acquired by purchase) is their improbable neighbor. It isn’t known exactly when the first official Library Committee was formed, but by the 1930s Committee members well understood that this Library and this collection were much more than an assortment of separate items, however disparate they are in subject matter and however random or arbitrary the method of acquistion. A library, as the Committee notes in their Annual Report of 1939, is a living thing. More than the sum of its parts, our Library tells the story of the Club and its members. As a collection, the Union Club Library is as unique as a fingerprint. More than forty years later Umberto Eco in his work, The Name of the Rose, expressed this thought most memorably: “Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves…it was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.”

Hanmer’s Shakespeare by Michael T. Kiesel The Union Club’s copy of the first edition of Sir Thomas Hanmer’s edition of The Works of Shakespear in six volumes (1743-44)1 was the result of a generous gift to the Club from Mr. David Cadwallader Colden, who was listed in the Mother of Clubs2, a history of the first 100 years of the Union Club, as an “Original Member” and a Governor of the Club. In order to appreciate the significance of these volumes, one should understand the place this edition occupies in the development of the Shakespearean canon. The most important point to be made in achieving this understanding is that William Shakespeare (born 1564, died 1616) never authorized an official edition of any of his plays, of his famous 154 Sonnets, or of anything else that he ever wrote.3 Thus, we are left to speculation in our effort to determine exactly what 1 Thomas Hanmer, ed., The Works of Shakespear in six volumes: carefully revised and corrected by the former editions, and adorned with sculptures designed and executed by the best hands (Oxford: Printed at the Theatre, 1743-44.) 2 Mother of Clubs: Being the History of the First Hundred Years of the Union Club of the City of New York, 1836-1936; by Reginald T. Townsend. New York : [Union Club of the City of New York] 1936.173. 3 The only two exceptions to this generalization are his two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis (1593), and The Rape of Lu- crece (1594); we know that Shakespeare himself approved a final version of both of these poems because he included a dedica- tion of each to his benefactor and patron, the third Earl of Southampton, Sir Henry Wriothesley (pronounced “Risley”). This is in marked contrast to his contemporary playwright and friend, Ben Jonson, who approved a final version of his collected plays in 1616, so there would have been precedent for Shakespeare to have produced an official version of his own plays, had he been so inclined.

Shakespeare wrote, armed only with the following: the few frail and flimsy copies of the quarto4 editions of individual plays that have survived the ravages of time and constant use, the four seventeenth century folio editions of the collected Works (printed in 1623, 1632, 1663, and 1685), and the efforts of a few mostly eighteenth century editors, dedicated literary giants, who undertook to reconcile the apparent conflicts that existed, or were perceived by each of them to exist, among the texts that had been handed down from editor to successive editor. For them, discerning “fair copy” from possible prompt book, and those from mere transcriptions by various actors of what each of them remembered from his or her role, was no easy task for any of these early editors. Among the more famous eighteenth century editors of the collected Works was Sir Thomas Hanmer, 4th baronet of Mildenhall, a politician and Speaker of the House of Commons from 1714-1715 and Member of Parliament until 1727. Sir Thomas conceived of his edition as a “monument” (in his own words) to the Bard.5 As Andrew Murphy said of the first edition of Hanmer’s Shakespeare, in Shakespeare in Print: “Monumental it certainly was: complete in six lavish quarto volumes, with thirty-six illustrations, and published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford University.”6 According to the noted bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Hanmer’s was the first edition “…which appeared in any splendid typographical form. The first edition was a popular book and was proudly displayed in the libraries of the great and fashionable.” 7 Sir Thomas Hanmer; 4th baronet, as Speaker of On its publication date in 1744, Sir Thomas’ first edition the House of Commons by Sir Godfrey Kneller took its rightful place among what was already a number of distinguished editions by previous editors, including one ca. 1713; Parlimentary Art Collection notable poet in his own right. These previous editors included (with the date of publication of their first and second editions) lawyer Nicholas Rowe (1709 and 1714), poet Alexander Pope (1725 and 1728), and attorney and literary scholar Lewis Theobald (1733 and 1740).8 Hanmer himself was to publish six other editions of the collected 4 The terms folio and quarto refer to the “format” of a book, and refer to the number of times the original sheet was folded after it was run through the printing press; a folio edition is a very large book (sheet folded once), a quarto edition is smaller (sheet folded twice), about the size of a regular book today. These quarto editions of the individual plays were sold unbound and were not built to last, and, by and large, have not lasted. 5 Hanmer, v. 6 Andrew Murphy, Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2003)110. 7 Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Library Companion: Or the Young Man’s Guide and the Old Man’s Comfort in the Choice of A Library (London: Printed for Harding, Triphook, and Lepard, 1825, 2nd ed.) 794. 8 There ensued a famous and very fierce literary battle between Pope and Theobald after Theobald produced a quarto edition entitled Shakespeare Restor’d, one year after Pope’s first edition, in which Theobald made many criticisms of Pope’s text. It is obvious that Pope took many of these criticisms to heart, however, because he adopted almost all of them in his second edition of 1728 (presumably without due attribution to Theobald). Pope responded to Theobald’s criticisms by pillorying Theobald in his satirical work, the Dunciad.

Works (in 1745, 1747, 1748, 1750, 1760, and 1771), and was, in turn, to be followed by even more gifted editors, including Doctor Samuel Johnson (of Dictionary fame) (1765), attorney Edward Capell (1768) (Capell and Pope were the only editors of Shakespeare to break with the conventional approach of working from the received text from the previous editor, and both, especially Capell, worked mostly from the rare and fragile earlier quarto editions of the individual plays; Pope also considered the earlier quartos.), George Steevens (with Dr. Johnson) (1773), and the great Irish Shakespearean scholar and attorney, Edmond Malone (1790), whose edition has been considered the foundation of many modern editions of Shakespeare.9 Perhaps as would be appropriate for a “monumental” edition of the collected Works, Hanmer’s edition featured thirty-one illustrations of the text designed by Francis Hayman, an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768, and which were then engraved by Hubert-Francois Gravelot, a French engraver who emigrated to London in 1732, who added five other illustrations, which he himself designed. Each scene was designed as a frontispiece to each play and depicted a dramatic moment in the play. Sir Thomas himself paid for the entire cost of the engraving of all the plates. Despite the impressive size of the volumes, dressed as they were in their opulent bindings, and containing beautifully engraved illustrations by a gifted artist and engraver, Hanmer’s edition did little to advance the development of the text contained in each volume. It is fairly well established that his edition pretty much followed the received text from Pope’s first edition, with few useful additional emendations. Unfortunately, Hanmer did not indicate where in the text he made changes, and from what sources he derived his changes, a serious fault. To be fair to Sir Thomas, undertaking such a project at all took a certain amount of courage on his part, as he was opposed in that effort by Jacob Tonson and the printing cartel led by Tonson and his sons, in their claim to have the exclusive right to publish Shakespeare’s Works, since the English law of copyright was not completely clear on this point at that time. A 1774 decision of the House of Lords ended any claim to “perpetual copyright” claimed by Tonson, or anyone else, to the Works of Shakespeare and firmly placed them into the “public domaine.” No doubt Sir Thomas and the venerable Clarendon Press of Oxford felt that they were now free to publish the collected Works; or perhaps the Tonson cartel, despite 9 This is obviously not a complete list: there have been countless editors of Shakespeare. This list reflects only this author’s opinion of the most significant editors, mostly from the eighteenth century.

their power, merely felt intimidated by such formidable opponents as Oxford University and a baronet who had served as the Speaker of the House of Commons. For whatever the reason, the Tonson cartel chose not to oppose the publication of Hamner’s edition.10 Returning to the literary merit of Hanmer’s edition, in order get a sense of the early reception of the work, one need only consider a few contemporary comments. Edmond Malone dismissed the edition with a single sentence: Of Sir Thomas Hanmer it is only necessary to say, that he adopted almost all the innovations of Pope, adding to them whatever caprice dictated.11 Both the University of Oxford and Cambridge University went on to produce very erudite and distinguished editions of the collected Works in the nineteenth century. In the Cambridge Shakespeare, we find the following comment on the Hanmer edition: [Sir Thomas Hanmer is a] …country gentleman of great ingenuity and lively fancy, but with no knowledge of older literature, no taste for research, and no ear for the rhythm of earlier English verse [who] amused his leisure hours by scribbling down his own and his friends’ guesses in Pope’s Shakespeare.12 Harry Carter, the historian of the Oxford University Press itself, the original publisher of Hanmer’s edition, characterized Hanmer’s edition as “…an edition fit neither for scholars nor for schoolboys. It was a luxurious edition fit only for bibliophiles.” In 1933, the distinguished literary scholar and bibliographer Ronald Brunlees McKerrow stated, with respect to the Hanmer edition, the following: Hanmer seems to have known little and cared less about such matters as early editions or the language of Shakespeare’s time, and attempted to reform the text by the light of nature alone, with the result that though his conjectural emendations are sometimes ingenious and seem at first sight attractive, the work as a whole can hardly be regarded as a serious contribution to Shakespearean scholarship.13 10 Other would-be editors of the Works were not so lucky, and they faced the full ire of the Tonson cartel in the form of legal challenges by which the cartel sought to enforce what it felt was its exclusive right to publish the Works of Shakespeare. They included Robert Walker, Edward Cave, and John Osborne, with whom the cartel was forced to eventually reach a settlement that involved the cartel’s buying Osborne’s entire edition and reselling it under its own name, using a so-called “cancel” title page and substituting Tonson’s name in the imprint. 11 Edmond Malone, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare (London: C. Baldwin, 1790) lxvi. 12 William Clark, John Glover, and William Aldis Wright, The Works of William Shakespeare (Cambridge and London: Macmillan & Co., 1863-66) xxxii. 13 R. B. McKerrow, The Treatment of Shakespeare’s Text by his Earlier Editors, 1709-1786 (British Academy Annual Lecture, 1933) 133.

As Murphy points out14, there may be more of value to the Hanmer edition than the dismissive comment from McKerrow, supra, might suggest: it was the first to be published outside of the London coterie of publishers and the first to be published by a distinguished university press. It was a huge commercial success (unlike even Pope’s edition of 1725), quickly selling out its print run. As Murphy also states, after the publication of these volumes, the Tonson cartel, which believed that it had an exclusive and perpetual right to publish the Works of Shakespeare, “…indignant at what they saw as an encroachment on their private property…”15 immediately responded to the threat by reissuing the text of Hanmer’s Oxford edition in a cheap octavo edition in 1745. Murphy states: “Hanmer’s edition thus became part of the important larger-scale battle over copyright which raged during the course of the eighteenth century.”16 That battle ended, as I have stated above, in the 1774 decision of the House of Lords that ended the stranglehold of the Tonson cartel on the publishing rights to Shakespeare’s Works and placed the Shakespearean canon safely in the realm of the public domain, making possible countless later editions of the complete Works. While the literary merit of Hanmer’s edition may fairly be debated, Sir Thomas Hanmer should at least be given credit for facing down the Tonson cartel and risking incurring its wrath by undertaking this project at all, and for persevering and sparing no expense in its production. In the end, Hanmer gave the world an impressive “monument,” to use his own description of his work, to the greatest playwright and poet of modern English literature, whose plays and other works are still read by devoted followers, more than 400 years after they were written, both for their beautiful language and for what Shakespeare had to say about the human condition and timeless human issues that have not changed very much since Shakespeare originally wrote them. Manual on Intaglio Printmaking by Albert Bosse 1745 [Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library] 14 Murphy, 6. 15 Id. 16 Id.

Library News In June members and Union Club members in front of the famous “Beinecke Book Tower”. The tower guests had the opportunity is part of the innovative design of Gordon Bunshaft of the architecture firm for a one-of-a-kind behind-the-scenes tour of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and consists of a six-story glass-enclosed column the Yale Libraries. Our of book stacks, holding approximately 180,000 volumes. group of library enthusiasts traveled to The Beinecke, which opened in October 1963, is as famed for its architecture New Haven where we as it is for its collection. The book tower is located inside a cube with large heard presentations by “windows” made of translucent Vermont marble panels. The marble panels experts and curators from protect the collections from damaging direct sunlight while absorbing and re- the Sterling and Beinecke Libraries, and viewed a flecting the exterior light. special selection of extraordinary items that were chosen and exhibited especially for us. It was a dream day for bibliophiles. We were treated to a presentation by Peter Leonard, Director of the Yale Digital Humanities Lab, followed by tours of the Gilmore Music Library and the Beinecke Rare Book Library. Mr. David A. Richards, who is writing a comprehensive history of the Yale Libraries, gave a presentation in a special room of the Beinecke where many rare, and rarely seen, treasures could be examined up close. A very special thanks to Ms. Lynn Hanke who made the day possible.

The Union Club that Never Was … On Thursday, December 21, 1899, a headline in the New York Times announced “Union Club Goes Up Town.” After a long period of lively discussion among its members the Club publicly revealed its intention to move from its home on 21st Street and the first step was purchasing three lots facing 5th Avenue at the corner of 51st Street, and two lots behind, for its new Clubhouse. Although contracts for the land were signed within months, fierce debate about the design was just beginning. An architectural competition was announced and, according to Club Historian Reginald Townsend,17 twenty-seven submissions were received. Fifty-first Street Elevation: A Competitive Design for the Club House of the Union Club, New York Barney & Chapman, Architects October 6. 1900; American Architect and Building News 17 Mother of Clubs: Being the History of the First Hundred Years of the Union Club of the City of New York, 1836-1936; by Reginald T. Townsend. New York : [Union Club of the City of New York] 1936.

In an article in April of 1904, long after the completion of the 51st Clubhouse, the New York Times recounted some of the conflicts that plagued the process. The designs seem to have fallen into two general categories. The Times states that “It was generally known that the older members strongly favored a duplication of the Twenty-first Street house, where they had felt at home for years, and that any marked departure from the general plan of the old structure would meet with their opposition.” Other designs envisioned an entirely new structure with few traces of the original building. In the end the Building Committee narrowed down the field to three finalists. But they were deadlocked and they called upon the expertise of esteemed architect Charles McKim of the firm McKim, Mead & White. McKim was not a member of the Club and his firm had not submitted an entry. The judging was blind and the plans were presented under false names. McKim chose two of the three to consider seriously; the plan code-named “Major Pendennis” (named after the snobbish social hanger-on in a novel by Thackery) and “SPQR”. McKim favored the more traditional design of “Major Pendennis” but, as he told the Times reporters “My recommendations were not followed”. Instead, the Building Committee chose Cass Gilbert (presumably the architect of SPQR) to erect the new Clubhouse. Fifth Avenue Front; The Union Club New York Cass Gilbert, John DuFais Architects

McKim was somewhat vindicated by the reaction of many Union Club members after the move. Dissatisfaction was widespread. The headline for the April 1904 Times article reads: “Union Club Members Object to New Home: View of Alley, Instead of Avenue”. The window lights in the lounging room at 51st Street, which ran across the easterly end of the structure, did indeed face an alley. McKim is quoted as saying “No one denies that the Union Club is a monumental structure of symmetrical dignity. But equally no one who knows attempts to deny that the interior is decidedly faulty.” In time, members moved on and talk of a gut renovation of the interior died down. Many of the competition designs that were not chosen were published in architectural magazines of the period. The Club owns a beautiful framed elevation of a potential 51st Clubhouse created for the competition by the Barney & Chapman architects, published in American Architect and Building News on October 6, 1900. Several of our members have donated additional drawings. Prints showing an elevation, interior and floorplans by the architect Donn Barber published in The American Architect on June 8th 1901 were recently donated to the Club by Mr. Frank Hamilton. Mr. William Zachary donated a matching print of the interior and floor plans by Barney & Chapman, and Mr. Russell Burke donated a competition print by the firm Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen published in American Architect and Building News on September 1, 1900. Who knows how many more visions of our club there might be? The search continues, and one by one we will gather them in to become a part of our history. From the Archives: Letter to the Building Committee from Charles F. McKim regarding the design competition for the 51st Street Club House; 1900

New and Noteworthy Attention all avid Union Club gamers! Via the generous donation of Art Committee Chairman Russell Burke the Library has acquired: A Catalogue of the Cary Collection of Playing Cards in the Yale University Library by William Keller, 1st edition 1981 This is a complete catalogue of the playing cards, card sheets, wood blocks, metal plates, ephemera, and prints acquired by Melbert B. Cary, Jr., and bequeathed to the Yale University Library by his wife, Mary Flagler Cary. Included in the catalogue are cards from all over the world, including Italy, Germany, Korea, and Iran. In addition to the card collections themselves, other materials related to the act of playing card games are described, including various rulebooks and a variety of gaming counters. The collection is one of the most distinguished in the world, and includes more than 2600 packs of cards, 460 sheets of uncut card papers, and 150 wood blocks for printing cards from as far back as the early 15th century to the present.

Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey In 1842, the pioneering French photographer Joseph-Philibert Gi- rault de Prangey (1804–1892) set out eastward across the Mediter- ranean, daguerreotype equipment in tow. He spent the next three years documenting lands that were then largely unknown to the West, including Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, in some of the earliest surviving photographic im- ages of these places. Monumental Journey, the first monograph in English on this brilliant yet enig- matic artist, explores the hundreds of daguerreotypes Girault made during his unprecedented trip. With its beautiful full-scale repro- ductions of Girault’s photographs, Monumental Journey presents an artist of astonishing innovation whose work occupies a singular space at the border of history and modernity, tradition and invention, endurance and evanescence. The author is Stephen C. Pinson, Curator in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Acquired via the generous donation of a Union Club member.

LIBRARY COMMITTEE John Steele Gordon, Chairman Frank B. Arisman Peter deF. Millard Carl V. Layton Lucius N. Palmer Michael Loening Stephen D. Perkins Michael T. Kiesel John D. Phillips Jr. David P. Mandy Douglas Runte William C. Zachary Roberta Munoz, Librarian [email protected]