University of Virginia Library

I

An exploratory meeting for what was to become the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia was held at 4:30 Friday afternoon, 11 October 1946, in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division of the University Library. According to Linton Massey, who was to serve as the group's president for twenty-six years, in the 1920s such a society had been a gleam in the collective eyes of Randolph Church, who later became the State Librarian of Virginia; of Jack Dalton, then a student but who would rise to the post of University Librarian; and of John Cook Wyllie, who began working in the library as a student assistant during the 1928 Christmas holidays and later became Curator of Rare Books, University Librarian, and Director of University Libraries. The fulfillment of a dream of adequate space in the form of the completion of Alderman Library in 1938 reinvigorated thinking about books, as did the magnificent gift announced at the dedication of that building, the collection of the Detroit philanthropist Tracy W. McGregor. The McGregor books themselves were crucial in forming the perception of the University Library as a site for serious research; but with the collection also came funds for a magnificent room, one begging to be used for scholarly functions.

The meeting in 1946 was at the instigation of Dr. Chalmers Gemmill, a University of Virginia (UVa) pharmacologist. Its venue, on the second floor of Alderman, identified it as in the demesne of Rare Book Curator Wyllie, who in preparation had sent in mid September an invitation and questionnaire to a couple hundred librarians, newspaper editors, printers, collectors, book dealers, and faculty, chiefly in Virginia. The intent was that responses to the questionnaire would help shape the organization, but the letter had to provide at least a tentative indication of its nature. Accordingly, Wyllie began: "At the suggestion of several local bibliophiles I am undertaking the organization of a small group of Charlottesville residents with an object of exhibiting in the Rare Book and Manuscript Division of the University of Virginia Library selections from their private libraries." He announced that at the planning meeting Gemmill would display and discuss examples of his own collection

of Baskerville editions, implying thereby how such a group might proceed.

The questionnaire asked whether respondents were interested in affiliating as active members with either a Bibliographical Society of Virginia or, more specifically, a Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Subsequent questions inquired about dues, publications, exhibits, meetings, and officers, and they solicited names of people who might work on a constitution or be otherwise interested in joining. Wyllie's quietly shaping hand also appeared in notes that he attached to some letters. To a local bookstore proprietor, C. C. Wells, he wrote, for instance: "Would be particularly grateful if you could find time to write me off the names of some Charlottesville non- faculty collectors."

About 110 of the surveys were returned. One interesting characteristic is the number of respondents who were not interested in such a group but who instead of discarding the letter explained why they could not participate (they were usually "too old" or "too busy"). Such considerateness may arise from the manners of an earlier generation, but it might also point to an element that seems to account for the wide acceptance of the proposal--that these were people who were part of John Wyllie's great orb of personal acquaintances.

Whether the correspondents accepted or declined the invitation, their comments tended to reveal their sense of what Wyllie and the others were trying to create. A newspaper editor and stamp-collector from Lynchburg excused himself by saying, "If I were a collector of books, I am sure I would be glad to join an organization of men and women interested in the same hobby." A law professor carefully explained, "I love books for their contents, and old books for their association as well as their contents. That is, it is easy to feel about old books as if they were persons who reflect the mellowness of their years. I have no interest in books simply because of their rarity, such as first editions of current works. Accordingly, I do not believe that I would be a suitable member of the Bibliophile Society."

Those who were interested displayed different degrees of enthusiasm. The head of a Charlottesville dame school wrote, "I will be there on Oct. 11--to see what this is all about." (Her name subsequently appeared on the list of charter members.) A printing company official thought such a society "might be helpful in establishing a company library of carefully selected volumes." The response of a University alumnus in New York must have warmed the heart of Wyllie, who had established the rare book holdings by examining every volume in the general stacks. This prospective member wrote that many people would like to make or encourage gifts to the library. "If such is the function of the organization you propose," he said, "I will do every thing in my power to

be of help to you." Wyllie sometimes wrote back to overcome initial timidity. To UVa graduate Charlton Hinman, in Washington, D.C., he responded: "Your idea about the nature of an active member is clearly different from mine. It seems to me, for example, that a Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia without you and Billy Miller [that is, C. William Miller, another graduate] as members would be a pretty sorry society."

Other letters offered seasoned advice. From the Folger Library, James McManaway, himself a member of the Virginia class of 1919, wrote Wyllie, "If a group of bibliophiles can be organized, their interests will be stimulated by an attractive news letter to announce programs, memorialize gifts to U.Va. and otherwise minister to their self esteem. Its contents should be urbane, rather than learned." Louis B. Wright of the Huntington Library encouraged Wyllie "not to have too many meetings each year. . . . In the intervals between formal meetings you might find it desirable to put on special exhibitions sponsored by the bibliographical society and send out leaflets describing them"--a system that had successfully created interest at the Huntington. The most extensive comments came in an enthusiastic and wise letter from Williamsburg. "I was a member of the Bibliographical Society of America as early as 1901," it said, "when it was the Bibli. Socy. of Chicago, and when I was librarian of old Armour Institute. I attended the meetings, about eight or ten [people] present, and I must say they were insufferably dull." The correspondent pointed out other potential dangers: "The leaders [of the Bibliographical Society of America] have generally been busy men in their professions, and have not had the time to extend the Society's work. Moreover, in recent years, it has gotten into the hands of a small group, and remains in that group." A new society, however, could add to the forces creating bibliographical understanding: "It is a matter of regret that the term `bibliography' is so misunderstood, and especially among librarians, the view being that it is enumerative only, making . . . lists from Readers Guide, and such stuff."

The results of the questionnaire were presented at the October 1946 meeting, at which the group not only heard Gemmill's paper on "John Baskerville, Typefounder" but also designated a six-member committee to draft a constitution. Wyllie was appointed chair; the group also included Miss Lucy T. Clark, a rare-book cataloguer; Fredson Bowers, a forty-one-year-old Assistant Professor of English; Charles D. McCormick, a local resident who earlier had been part of a book-collecting group in Cleveland; Charles W. Smith from the Art Department; and Hugh M. Spencer, a chemistry professor.

On 20 February 1947, John Wyllie sent out a letter announcing that an organizational meeting would be held the following Wednesday

evening, February 26, in the McGregor Room. The thirty-three people who gathered there adopted a constitution that defined the object of their new society to be "to foster an interest in books (including books in manuscript), maps, printing, and bibliography." The group was to be called "The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia." This was the name widely preferred on the questionnaires, not only by Charlottesville respondents but also by a surprising number of others. Some had recommended the more localized term out of caution: if the Society succeeded on a small scale, its scope could be extended. Others recognized that the leadership would arise from within the University, and they therefore found the longer title more accurate. Linton Massey later reported the thinking that predominated: "From the beginning it was decided to identify the Society with the University of Virginia, no matter how dubiously the mother might regard her upstart offspring, because such an association would parallel the English precedent at Oxford, as it did the one at Cambridge later on; and because [paradoxically] such an affiliation would broaden the appeal and widen its scope far beyond that of a mere regional organization." The cumbersomeness of multiple prepositions in the name raised objections from some reviewers of the Society's Papers, but the designation--as well as the association with the University--has endured.

That first official meeting also codified practice in other, albeit less formal, ways. The McGregor Room was to be the standard venue for Society meetings, most of which, like this one, included a talk. At the inaugural session the address was given by Fredson Bowers, whose name would be linked more prominently than anyone else's with the Society. Speaking on "Some Problems and Practices in Bibliographical Descriptions of Modern Authors," he drew on information provided him by Jacob Blanck to prepare a "Description of the six impressions of Washington Irving's `Wolfert's Roost.'" This six-page mimeograph, whose contents would appear as a sample in Bowers's Principles of Bibliographical Description two years later, was distributed at the talk and also circulated with the first number of the Society's Secretary's News Sheet the next month. Though Bowers himself was to address the Society formally a number of times in succeeding decades, his contributions represented only one kind of presentation made at its meetings. On the other hand, although the summary of his talk in the first News Sheet indicates that the evening was less daunting than might first appear, his discussion gave notice that the concerns of the fledgling Society would extend beyond dilettantism.

The roster of original officers and Council members of the Society reveals the range of interests that found a welcome here. Chalmers Gemmill, who had illustrated his talk with his own books, was elected the

group's first president. His involvement appears to have arisen from his collecting interests; besides the Baskervilles, he owned a library of Nonesuch Press books, which were exhibited at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg in 1970. Gemmill, who was Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, was also a medical historian. His collecting and historical interests came together in an article he published as from a "Correspondent" in the London Times on 12 May 1965, "Coin-buying in the Middle East." He had long been in pursuit of the ancient wonder drug silphium produced from a plant pictured on old coins but now believed extinct. Of the first four Councilors, Hugh M. Spencer from the Chemistry Department also had a historical bent, and in 1983 he was to publish a history of that department, just as Gemmill had done for Pharmacology in 1966. According to Spencer's wife he was an eclectic collector, and his books were, she says, "a great source of pleasure to him." Miss Lucy T. Clark was the rare book cataloguer of the University, one whose tenure went back to the Rotunda days of the Library and who had trained herself in her vocation when she was unable to obtain suitable Library of Congress cards for old books. She eventually was the chief cataloguer of C. Waller Barrett's collection of American literature that he donated to the University Library, and she published a number of checklists based on portions of that hoard. The third Councilor, Charles W. Smith, was the first chairman of the University's Art Department and an artist known especially for his work in book design and wood-block printing and painting. Many of his cuts of local scenes even now grace University publications. In the 1960s he was a chief part of the Society sub-group called the "Typogs" that set up its own printing establishment, the Cockescraw Press, in the basement of Cocke Hall at the end of the University Lawn.

The remaining three original officers--Linton R. Massey, Councilor; Fredson T. Bowers, Vice-President; and John Cook Wyllie, Secretary-Treasurer--were to play the most fundamental and the longest- lasting roles in the Society. But before considering these founders in greater detail, it is helpful to identify the other Councilors of the first decade; they too helped to shape the Society at a crucial time, and their varied interests reflect the attraction the Society held. Atcheson Hench, who served as President in 1950, was a UVa professor of early English literature. A modest man whose motto was "If Hench can do it, anybody can do it," he was an omnivorous collector--of books, of manuscripts, but especially of words. By recording the language of his colleagues, his townsfolk, and his newspapers he ended up contributing to seven major dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of American Regional English; his work accounts for the 195 quotations in the OED from the Charlottesville Daily Progress and another

fifteen from the local student paper The Cavalier Daily. Willis H. Shell, Jr., of Richmond privately operated "The Attic Press" (in his attic), but as a representative for the William Byrd Press he designed the early volumes of Studies in Bibliography and arranged their publication at virtual cost. Mrs. Vincent (Eleanor) Shea, who tended to many of the Society's local arrangements, was a collector of garden books, someone very interested in crafts such as printing, and a consultant in prints to the University Library. Joseph M. Carrière, Vice-President in 1951, taught French at the University, was twice president of the American Folklore Society, had been cited by H. L. Mencken (along with Hench) for his work on the sources of the American language, and had been named a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. Mrs. Randolph Catlin collected books of the Derrydale Press and editions of Somervile's poem "The Chace," both of which collections she eventually gave to the University Library. Arthur F. Stocker, Professor of Classics and sometime head of the Society's Publications Committee, was drawn to the Society because of the interest he shared in textual study with Fredson Bowers. Jack Dalton was University Librarian; he left in 1956 to become director of the American Library Association's new office for overseas library development and eventually became head of the library school at Columbia. Philip Williams was a former dissertation student of Fredson Bowers who returned to teach English at the University. William B. O'Neal was a professor of Architecture and a book and print collector. Finally, Sears Jayne was an English Department professor with a special interest in library catalogs of the English Renaissance.

On the tenth anniversary of the Society, Linton Massey characterized the Councils of the first decade this way: "So far from being a small group of intellectuals lost in a bookish world, they were then and are now, mere bibliophiles reasonably expert in some specialized field, qualified to hold office at least in the broad sense that they are able to read and write and are willing to meet twice yearly in an atmosphere of modest and genteel worldliness"--that is, convening at the Masseys' estate Kinloch, east of Charlottesville in Keswick, and after the Council session enjoying an elegant dinner and the notable fruits of Massey's cellar. Each Council member seems indeed to have made important contributions to the Society, but it was the efforts of Massey, Wyllie, and Bowers that were utterly essential and profoundly formative. All remained active in the Society until their deaths (Wyllie on 18 April 1968 at age 59, Massey on 9 November 1974 at 74 years, and Bowers on 11 April 1991 at 85), making their passings of particular importance in the Society's life.

Linton Massey served as President in the Society's second and third years, 1948 and 1949, and then from its fifth year, 1951, up to his death

twenty-three years later. His vocation was supervising a large farming operation on the 500-acre Kinloch estate and landscaping eleven beautiful gardens there. His avocation, or perhaps his other vocation, was book collecting. Interested in twentieth-century fiction, he early came to appreciate William Faulkner and began forming what Fredson Bowers described, in a breathless sentence for a breathtaking collection, as "the prototype of all single- author collections for depth and variety of original works, manuscripts, letters, clippings, memorabilia, and works of criticism and reference, so rich and varied that the Special Collections of the Alderman Library have had to invent a wholly new system of classification to do justice to this extraordinary collection." When Faulkner moved to Charlottesville he and Massey became fast friends, and Massey was instrumental in persuading Faulkner to bring his own manuscripts and working papers to the University Library, where they now reside with Massey's complementary collection. The friendship also led to the formation of the Faulkner Foundation, of which Massey was the first president (and Wyllie Vice-President). The Foundation supervised the Faulkner manuscripts, concerned itself with the education of black college students in Mississippi, awarded plaques to American writers of special achievement, and sponsored the translation and publication in English of Latin American novels. On his death Massey was honored by being one of the few non- academics to have a memorial resolution (prepared by Bowers) read before the University faculty.

The eloquence and urbanity of Massey's letters preserved in Society files come as little surprise when one realizes that already in the 1920s H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan had accepted one of his short stories (published January 1924) for the Smart Set. What is striking about his correspondence is the impression it gives of his daily attention to the affairs of the Society and the application of his clear-headed business sense to its organization and publications program--all this while maintaining esteem for the value of bibliographical scholarship. His alertness to activities in all corners of the bibliographical world is pleasantly symbolized by the fact that he and Wyllie were the first American members of the Bibliographical Society of Glasgow when it was revived in 1960.

What is even more striking, however, is the passion with which he insisted that his gifts to the Society in support of its work be anonymous. Over the years those gifts amounted to tens of thousands of dollars, starting at a time when postage for announcements of the Society's meetings cost one twentieth of what it does now. It was Massey's quiet contributions that tipped the scales into solvency in the early years, that financed awards to student book-collectors, that helped republish copies of Studies that had gone out of print, and that sponsored receptions in

the Society's name when groups such as the Grolier Club visited Charlottesville.

The other members of the de facto triumvirate recognized Massey's contributions in all their forms, and they were grateful. After a Council meeting in 1955, Bowers wrote Massey (on 5 October) an appreciative note, praising

Wyllie shared those sentiments. When in 1952 he received the University's Raven Award, he wrote Massey (on 15 May 1952): Massey's response is interesting, both as an example of his own eloquence and for insight into how he viewed his position. He wrote:

The respect in which Linton Massey held John Cook Wyllie was widely shared. Even three decades after Wyllie's early death, his name spurs passionate assertions of affection from those who knew him. He, like Massey, held only a bachelor's degree (though he took all the graduate English courses the University had to offer), but he rose through the ranks locally and also became an important figure in the national and international book worlds. Like Massey, he sought heroically to serve other people and causes rather than to advance his own name, and as a

consequence that name is not as widely known as it deserves to be. Wyllie's career was devoted to libraries, editorial projects, and what one friend has called "academic entrepreneurship." His association with the University Library that began as a student assistant in the 1920s continued unbroken until his death--except for the hiatus in World War II when he served in the North Africa and China-Burma campaigns and received decorations from three governments. In 1948 the University president called on him to reorganize the University Press, an assignment made in recognition of his extensive orchestration of printed works bearing the imprint of the University and one that foreshadowed his central role in developing publications of the Bibliographical Society--in both situations, usually without a mark to identify his contribution. The citation for the University's Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award that he received in 1948 captured his character:

Some of his great energy found expression in historical and bibliographical scholarship. The rare book stacks he maintained were populated, according to a biographical account by Matthew Bruccoli, "with what lesser curators described as duplicate copies." He was familiar with all aspects of bookmaking and of bibliographical methodology and apparatus: during the summer of 1937 he did apprentice work under master bookbinders at the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library; in the 1960s he experimented with beta-radiographs of watermarks in the papers of Thomas Jefferson, assisted by local nuclear physicist Reed Johnson, who had earlier done the technical work for Allan Stevenson's experiments with watermarks in Chicago; he devised a system for relaying pages of books to other University libraries by television; and he was responsible for bringing to the library one of the first six--perhaps one of the first two--Hinman Collators ever made, a device that served to entertain visiting bibliophiles and that also facilitated the work of Fredson Bowers and his graduate students in comparing texts. Wyllie himself was long interested in the typography of the Bay Psalm Book, a subject of his Rosenbach lectures in March 1960. His early theory was that this volume known as the first book printed in the American colonies might actually have been printed in England. When the Princeton historian Julian Boyd caught wind of the suggestion (through a letter that Frederick Goff at the Library of Congress had mistakenly mailed to Boyd instead of to Wyllie), he had proposed that Wyllie spill the beans at the forthcoming meeting, in 1952, of the Bibliographical Society of America

in Charlottesville. Wrote Boyd, "What a reception for the New Englanders that would be!"

As Secretary-Treasurer of the Bibliographical Society for the first fifteen years and as Treasurer after that, Wyllie was the most common point of contact between the Society and the world. His work was crucial in the most visible activities of the Society: preparing its newsletter, the Secretary's News Sheet, from March 1947 on; coordinating its publications; and arranging speakers for its meetings, a task made easier by his active participation in the major bibliographical organizations of the country. Wyllie's popularity and his notable service made his early death in 1968 all the more stunning. In the preface to tributes collected in the 27 April 1968 issue of AB Bookman's Weekly, Sol Malkin wrote of the difficulty of reconciling himself to the fact that Wyllie was gone. Waller Barrett spoke of Wyllie's indispensable help in forming his collection of American literature, but above all for his revivifying assistance and encouragement. Howard Mott wrote Massey that the "loyal friendship, help and encouragement of John Wyllie" were crucial factors in his decision to stay in the book business. James J. Kilpatrick recalled that in the ten years John Wyllie was--amid his other duties--Book Editor of the Richmond News Leader, "We were then running the best damned book page in the entire country, the New York Times not excepted. God, how we miss him."

The third of the powerhouses that propelled the Bibliographical Society from the start was Fredson Bowers. A full account of his life and work has been furnished by G. Thomas Tanselle and published by the Society in 1993, a chronicle that Michael Dirda of the Washington Post Book World has called "a model `academic' biography." Bowers is indeed the best-known person associated with the Society, not because of immodesty on his part (he too applied himself behind the scenes to all aspects of the Society's activities) but because he published widely and because his name necessarily accompanied the journal he edited for the Society, Studies in Bibliography (popularly known as Studies or SB). Bowers had completed his doctoral work at Harvard in 1934, chiefly under the person he referred to as "my master Kittredge." He stayed there to teach until 1936, when he moved to Princeton for two years and then on to Virginia, where as a scholar and eventually as chairman of the English Department and Dean of the Faculty he would play crucial roles in the institution's rise to prominence. His reasons for leaving Princeton are not clear, though scuttlebutt holds that his colleagues were tired of him placing his offprints in their boxes. In 1937, for instance, he published ten notes and articles, ranging from pieces for more popular consumption in the Times Literary Supplement and the Sunday

New York Times to a lengthy essay in Studies in Philology and two more in JEGP. As Tanselle documents, in 1936 Bowers also published his first bibliographical piece.

Why Bowers came to Virginia is only slightly more apparent than why he left Princeton. The explanation of one of Bowers's early students, Irby Cauthen, is simple: "Because of Dean Wilson." It seems that Dean James Southall Wilson had in mind that Bowers would take over, as he did, the courses of John Calvin Metcalf, who was about to retire. Metcalf, according to Cauthen, had recognized Bowers's abilities at once, and Bowers also seems to have liked Wilson immediately. As signs of that friendship, Bowers edited a festschrift for him in 1951, dedicated his edition of Leaves of Grass to him in 1955, and prepared the official memorial resolution when Wilson died in 1963. At that time he wrote Wilson's widow, "I have always loved and revered him. He was the cause of my coming to the University, and he was an important reason why I stayed, perhaps the most important reason. I have always said that he was one of the three or four authentically great men whom I have known in my lifetime." Colleagues who were present at the 1969 dedication of Wilson Hall, a new building to house the English Department, say that it was the only time they ever saw Bowers weep.

Bowers joined the UVa English faculty in 1938 and within a couple years had established courses in the study of books as physical objects and in textual criticism. His work too was interrupted by wartime service, in this case in Washington, D.C., as supervisor of an intelligence unit deciphering enemy codes. His group was, in the words of William H. Bond, a "dismayingly bright bunch." Among its members were a number of people now well known to the bibliographical world: Bond himself, Giles Dawson, the classicist Richard Lattimore, and Bowers's former student Charlton Hinman, who in the course of his work conceived the idea of his collating machine. Bowers meanwhile had been designated one of bibliography's promising stars in F. C. Francis's account of the first fifty years of England's Bibliographical Society, published in 1945. Like Wyllie, he returned to the University ready for business--which included, as it turned out, the establishment of a society and journal that would occupy him for almost another half century.

The successful establishment of the Bibliographical Society, then, was first of all the result of the collocation of these specially gifted individuals in Charlottesville. But another sine qua non was the backing that local residents provided. Although the Society's publications, especially Studies in Bibliography, would quickly propel it to international attention, not all of the Society's organizers envisioned (and those who did could not safely assume) a world-wide constituency. What was crucial

to the undertaking was a core of supporters who could assist in whatever projects the Society might undertake and, through their annual dues, provide a regular source of income for those activities. The Society that came into being that winter evening early in 1947 listed 130 charter members--most of them from Charlottesville, and nearly all the rest from Virginia as well. Charlottesville and the surrounding Albemarle County then had a combined population of only 50,000, and the University was a quarter of its present size. The testimony of people who recall that era is that the dynamics of a small community prompted people to follow with attentiveness- -and with their presence--the ventures of their acquaintances. The early life of the Society quite naturally reflected the interests of those who had chosen to associate in this way, but it also established the patterns of activity that have been followed to some degree or other ever since.