26 
H o u s e 
Garden 
& 
The Conidack of Stowe 
missal is bound in 
wood covered over 
■with brass plates and 
ornamented with jew¬ 
els, pearls predomi¬ 
nating 
COLLECTING THE OUTSIDES 
OF A BOOK 
The Story of Beautiful Bindings Is a Fascinating 
for Bibliophiles and Connoisseurs 
Chapter 
GARDNER TEALL 
A binding in Persian lacquer of 18 th 
Century workmanship. Courtesy of 
the Metropolitan Museum 
Ruskin’s Ethics of the Dust, A volume bound in pink 
bound by Zaehnsdorf, in crushed levant by Cedric 
brown levant with gilt tool- Chivers, of Bath, England, 
ing. Brentano’s Brentano’s 
I KNOW there are those im¬ 
pressive and intolerant per¬ 
sons who hold that a book 
ceases to be the book when 
once its original binding, 
whether it be leather, boards, 
cloth or paper, has been sup¬ 
planted by another. I will 
grant you that with many 
books nothing is more delight¬ 
ful than to come across them 
just as they outwardly ap¬ 
peared from the publisher’s 
hand. But I also insist that 
the sentiment of association 
plays a greater part in such 
acceptance than does an 
esthetic perception. Only a 
vandal, I think, would destroy 
the original covers of the parts 
of Pickwick Papers to have 
new and leather bindings give 
them their place. But who, 
with a particle of taste would 
call the original w'rappers beau¬ 
tiful? Only the bibliophile, 
that lover of books to whom all interesting 
and some good books are as one’s own children, 
the ugly-featured as beloved as the beautiful. 
Occasionally I spend an evening with 
Biblio. We often talk these things over. I 
think it would be impossible for me to spend 
an hour in his library if he 
were not there. That is be¬ 
cause with conversation for the 
raison d’etre we can find much 
in common, but if I were to 
turn to his books, it would be 
hopeless for me to find solace 
therein, and all because I 
doubt if there is one of them 
that has uncut leaves! Do not 
imagine that Biblio is illiter¬ 
ate, or that he orders from his 
bookseller by the pound, with 
no intention of exploring the 
intellectual realms to which 
such purchases might admit 
him. Quite the contrary, he is 
as well versed as any man I 
know in belles lettres. 
Frankly, it has always been 
a matter of mystery with me 
that this is so, because I my¬ 
self have never seen Biblio 
with a book that could be read 
in hand. I suppose he reads 
at his office in the Bank, or in 
his comfortable car coming and going. But 
what he does do is to collect the excessively 
rare first editions of excessively rare books 
and give them place in a library that they 
create. All that were well and good were it 
not that my friend Biblio will not consider 
Fulcher’s Gainsborough, bound by 
Riviere & Son in gray and gold with 
a miniature by C. B. Currie 
A copy of the Imitation of Christ 
bound by Bayntun, of England, in 
blue crushed levant, brown and gold 
