Essays in librarianship and bibliography/The late Henry Stevens, F.S.A.
THE LATE HENRY STEVENS, F.S.A.[1]
With the exception of the death of the late Henry Bradshaw, taken away so nearly at the same time, the Library Association could have sustained no loss more sincerely regarded by its members in the light of a personal bereavement than that which it has suffered by the death of Henry Stevens, on February 28. Mr. Stevens's interest in the Association has been so warm, his counsel so valuable, his genial presence and witty discourse such recognised features of attraction at its gatherings, that his loss must be felt as one almost impossible to supply. It must be long indeed before any one can fill Mr. Stevens's place as a link between the librarians of Europe and America, and it may be much longer yet before the happy union of bibliographical attainments with social qualities is witnessed to a like extent in the same individual.
Henry Stevens was born August 24, 1819, at Barnet, Vermont, U.S., hence the initials, G.M.B. (Green Mountain Boy), prized by him, there is reason to surmise, above his academical and antiquarian distinctions. He was sixth in descent from Cyprian Stevens, who had emigrated in the days of Charles I. The family came originally from Devonshire. It had had its share of colonial celebrity and adventure; one ancestor had successfully defended a fort against the French; another had been stolen by the Indians, and ransomed for a pony. After receiving a fair ordinary education at the school of his native village, and two local seminaries, Mr. Stevens, at the age of seventeen, began to teach with a view of obtaining means to take him to college. He received from twelve to sixteen dollars a month, boarding with his pupils' families, "three days to a scholar, except when the girls were pretty, and in that case four." In October 1838 he proceeded to Middlebury College, defraying his travelling expenses by peddling cheeses contributed for that purpose by his excellent mother. His father, a man of literary tastes and culture, founder and President of the Vermont Historical and Antiquarian Society, seems to have been always behindhand with the world, and to have been unable to aid his son to any material extent. It was customary for students thus destitute of support from home to defray their college expenses by teaching in the winter months. Stevens obtained leave to try his fortune at Washington, relying on the patronage of Governor Henry Hubbard, then Senator for New Hampshire. He called upon him accordingly, and though he was a Whig and the Senator a Democrat, he found himself, as if by magic, clerk in the Treasury Department "in charge of the records and correspondence of the Revenue Cutter Service," with a salary of a thousand dollars a year. He was soon afterwards transferred to a clerkship in the Senate, where after a while he was employed as clerk to the Senate branch of the Joint Committee of the Congress for investigating the claims of Messrs. Clark & Force under a contract for publishing the American Archives, which it was desired to terminate. Much time and labour had been expended upon the volumes already printed, but it was generally surmised that the contract would be broken, because, as a Democrat remarked, "it would cost more than the building of the Capitol, and, what was worse, both the editor and the printer were Whigs." The Committee, who seem to have had no taste for literary drudgery, turned the task of digesting the papers entirely over to Mr. Stevens, who on his part, finding the documents intrusted to him insufficient, scraped acquaintance with Colonel Peter Force himself, and extracted abundant information from him without divulging his official position. At length the digest was ready, and the Committee, convoked for the purpose, heard their officer read the whole, up to the entirely unexpected and unwelcome conclusion, "Resolved, that this contract cannot be broken." Stevens was severely taken to task for his presumption, when Daniel Webster, a member of the Committee, interfered on his behalf, and advocated his view with such effect that "the Committee was discharged from further consideration of the subject." The contract was shortly afterwards rescinded. The service Stevens had nevertheless rendered to Force had an important influence on his subsequent career. Quitting Washington, as he had always intended to do, and repairing to complete his education at Yale College, he took with him a commission from the Colonel to collect books, pamphlets, and MSS. in aid of the American Archives, which not only helped to provide the expenses of his University course, but endowed him with knowledge, tastes, and aptitudes qualifying him for future eminence as book-hunter and bookseller. Another main source of income was his fine penmanship, both as transcriber and teacher. He took his B.A. degree in 1843, and in 1843-44 studied law at Harvard under Justice Story, continuing to act as agent for Colonel Force, and forming connections with other collectors. At length, in 1845, he determined to visit England on literary errands, not expecting to be absent more than one or two years. Fortified by introductions from Francis Parkman and Jared Sparks, he took his departure, and in July 1845 found himself at the North and South American Coffee-House, the bearer of a huge bag of despatches for the United States Minister, Mr. Everett, and of a tiny one of forty sovereigns of his own. Mr. Everett's influence opened the State Paper Office to him; and ere the sun set on his first day in London he had visited the four great second-hand dealers of the day, Rodd, Thorpe, Pickering, and Rich. The last-named had just acquired the valuable library of M. Ternaux-Compans, and Mr. Stevens immediately purchased £800 worth on behalf of Mr. John Carter Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, from whom he had a general commission to forage, and who showed wisdom as well as spirit in ratifying his agent's decided action. Those were the golden days of speculation in books relating to America, when rarities could be obtained for hardly more shillings than they now cost pounds. Mr. Stevens probably contributed more than any other man to terminate this happy state of things. While, on the one hand, he ransacked the chief European capitals as agent for wealthy American collectors, on the other hand he drained America on behalf of the British Museum, then for the first time entering into the market to any considerable extent. Mr. Panizzi had just prepared his celebrated report on the deficiencies of the Museum Library, in which he had said: "The expense requisite for accomplishing what is here suggested—that is, for forming in a few years a public library containing from 600,000 to 700,000 printed volumes, giving the necessary information on all branches of human learning, from all countries, in all languages, properly arranged, substantially and well bound, minutely and fully catalogued, easily accessible and yet safely preserved, capable for some years to come of keeping pace with the increase of human knowledge—will no doubt be great; but so is the nation which is to bear it. What might be extravagant and preposterous to suggest to one country may be looked upon not only as moderate, but as indispensable in another." With such views on Panizzi's part, he and Stevens fortunately encountered. Ere they had been long acquainted, a proposal came from the former, that Stevens should undertake the agency for the supply of American books. Stevens at first hesitated; he had not contemplated remaining in Europe. He soon saw his way to accept it, and, in his words, "an exodus of American books to the British Museum commenced that has not ceased at the present time."
It would be impossible within the limits of this notice to enumerate all the important transactions in which Mr. Stevens was engaged, or the numerous instances in which his ready and inventive intellect was exerted for the furtherance of bibliography. One of his most important enterprises was the purchase of Humboldt's library, which resulted in disappointment. The Civil War supervening, his American patrons "shut up like clam shells," and most of the books were ultimately destroyed by fire while warehoused in London. A portion, however, had been previously separated, and the British Museum possesses numerous presentation copies to Humboldt, with the autographs of the authors. Members of the Library Association who were present at the Liverpool meeting will long remember Mr. Stevens's humorous account of his dealings with Mr. Peabody, and of his dismay when the collection formed by the philanthropist for presentation to his native town, at an average cost of one shilling a volume, was described in the local paper as the special selection of that intelligent bibliographer, Henry Stevens, Esq. Mr. Stevens's relations with the most important of all his customers, Mr. James Lennox, have been so recently detailed to the Association that it is needless to do more than allude to his narrative as one of the most racy of literary monographs, affording an excellent idea of the writer's quaint, shrewd, and anecdotical conversation. It has been republished by his son in an elegant volume. Another remarkable passage in his life was his active share in originating and organising the Bible department of the Caxton Exhibition, when he propounded views respecting Miles Coverdale which involved him in many a polemic, and devised for the two different recensions of the Bible of 1611 the appellations of "Great He" and "Great She" Bible, which they seem likely to retain. The most interesting, perhaps, of all Mr. Stevens's achievements was his redemption of Franklin's MSS. from oblivion. Bequeathed by Franklin to his grandson, they had been only partially published, after a long delay and with suppressions which exposed William Temple Franklin to the unjust imputation of having disposed of a great part of them to the British Government. In fact they had been put aside and forgotten after Temple Franklin's death in Paris, and had eventually come into the possession of an old friend of his who repeatedly offered them for sale, but could find no customer, from the universal belief that they had already been printed and published. Mr. Stevens acquired them in 1851, and after thirty years' delay, and spending a thousand pounds over and above the original price in cataloguing, binding and adding to their number, ultimately disposed of them to the United States Government. Their eventful history, involving a complete vindication of Temple Franklin and the British Government, is told in a privately printed volume of his own, accompanied with beautifully engraved portraits and a valuable bibliography of books by and concerning Franklin. The collection is also the subject of an article in the Century for June 1886.
Notwithstanding the engrossing nature of his pursuits, Mr. Stevens was always striving to aid bibliography by his pen. For this, in addition to his knowledge and acumen, and a cultivated taste which served him admirably on questions of typography, he possessed the qualifications of untiring industry and great facility of composition. He did much, and would have done more but for the sanguine temper which led him to undertake more than he could complete, and the fastidiousness which indisposed him to let work go out of his hands while anything seemed lacking to perfection. He left several bibliographical or biographical memoirs wanting hardly anything of completeness but the final imprimatur. Among them may be mentioned a life of Thomas Heriot, the mathematician, and a friend of Ralegh; an essay on Columbus's administration in the West Indies; and an account of the newly discovered globe by John Schoner. Another work of which he frequently spoke, a volume of British Museum reminiscences supplementary to Mr. Fagan's life of Sir Anthony Panizzi, existed, it must be feared, only as a project. It would have required leisure which he never possessed. The most purely literary and perhaps the most important of his publications was his Historical and Geographical Notes on the earliest discoveries in America, a subject on which he was most enthusiastic. His catalogue of the American literature in the British Museum to the year 1856 is also a valuable publication, as are likewise his Bibles in the Caxton Exhibition, already mentioned, and his catalogues of the bibliographical curiosities relating to America in his own possession, issued under the title of Historical Nuggets, in 1862. A second series was in course of publication at his death. He had devoted great attention to the reproduction of title-pages and frontispieces by photography and photo-gravure. His admirable paper on the subject, read in 1877, will be fresh in the memory of members of the Association, as also the companion essay entitled "Who spoils our English Books?" read at the Cambridge meeting, a characteristic example of his humorous manner, not intended to be taken quite au pied de la lettre. His letters from Europe to his father are, we trust, destined to see the light. He was a frequent contributor to the Athenæum, especially on the history of the English Bible and early discovery in America, and his communications were always highly valued.
It is unnecessary to enter at length into Mr. Stevens's personal character when addressing a public to most of whom he was personally known. Perhaps his most distinguishing characteristic was his eminent large-heartedness. He had room in his mind for every individual and every interest. He was cheerful, genial, expansive, and preserved his buoyancy of spirit under circumstances the most trying and vexatious. He possessed great sweetness as well as great liberality of disposition; his combativeness was devoid of every particle of rancour; shrewd and crafty, he was yet open and candid. Intent, as he could not help being, on his own advantage as a trader, the interests of his customer had a very definite place in his mind. He worked for his patrons even more than for himself, and prided himself more upon having made another man's library than he would have done upon having made his own fortune. As a man of business, his principal defect was an over-sanguine temper; the spring, nevertheless, of his enterprise, and hence of his success. "Si non errasset fecerat ille minus."
Mr. Stevens died of a general decay of constitution resulting in dropsy, against which his vigorous constitution and indomitable cheerfulness contended with great hope of success to the very last. He had been married for upwards of thirty years to a highly accomplished lady, whose daughter by a former marriage is the widow of Mr. Hawker, the celebrated Vicar of Morwenstow. His son, Mr. H. N. Stevens, succeeds to the direction of his business, and inherits his literary and bibliographical tastes.
- ↑ Library Chronicle, vol. iii., 1885.