Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm to blame a charcoal boarding and I'm fair, and
Speaker 1: it's probably no secret if you listen to the podcast
Speaker 1: a lot, that we're both really big book lovers. But
Speaker 1: thus far, at least, I haven't been much of a
Speaker 1: book collector. I don't know about you, Sarah. I know
Speaker 1: I would definitely like to at some point, and we've
Speaker 1: talked about this ever since I got my kindle last year.
Speaker 1: I've been dreaming about only buying books that I want
Speaker 1: to collect, first edition exactly, but that hasn't started yet.
Speaker 1: So while I've amasked quite a few paperbacks and some
Speaker 1: random hardback books over the years, you could hardly call
Speaker 1: it a collection. So that's one of the biggest things
Speaker 1: that I learned from researching today's podcasts. Though about George Aaron's,
Speaker 1: a bunch of books, no matter how valuable they are,
Speaker 1: does not a collection, mate, and no matter how much
Speaker 1: you love them, if you only went out and chose
Speaker 1: favorite authors in your favorite books, it wouldn't really make
Speaker 1: a collection, and errants would really know what a collection was.
Speaker 1: He's been called quote one of the greatest contemporary bibliophiles,
Speaker 1: and over his lifetime he created two separate book collections,
Speaker 1: which are now major collections at the New York Public Library.
Speaker 1: One is the Errant's Tobacco Collection, which opened to the
Speaker 1: public in January of nineteen forty four. The other is
Speaker 1: the Arrant's Collection of Books and Parts and Associated Literature,
Speaker 1: which opened in February of nineteen fifty seven. At this point,
Speaker 1: some of you out there, especially if you're not a
Speaker 1: bibliophile yourself, maybe thinking, Okay, so what why do I
Speaker 1: care about this guy who collected books and old books too.
Speaker 1: But what really makes Aaron's interesting, we think, at least
Speaker 1: besides the fact that he was also a businessman and
Speaker 1: an inventor, is the extremely focused approach that he took
Speaker 1: to his collections. He wasn't just collecting first editions, like
Speaker 1: Sarah mentioned before, His initial focus was simply tobacco, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about that a little bit more in
Speaker 1: a bit, of course. The other thing that really fascinated
Speaker 1: us was the process of hardcore book collecting that we
Speaker 1: learned about from researching this. Errands made book collecting into
Speaker 1: kind of an adventure sometimes taking off across the pond
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice to pursue a volume that he
Speaker 1: really wanted. He often compared it to a hunt even
Speaker 1: or a sport. And of course then there's the history
Speaker 1: of the books and the other items, and the collections themselves.
Speaker 1: They have pretty cool stories behind them. Some have even
Speaker 1: come from the hands of the likes of Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: the First So we're going to cover all of these aspects. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to cover all of these aspects, we've decided to
Speaker 1: take kind of an atypical approach to this episode. We're
Speaker 1: going to give you some background on Errand's first and
Speaker 1: how he got into collecting in the first place, and
Speaker 1: some of the stories behind items in the collection. But
Speaker 1: we also had a terrific interview with Michael Inman, who
Speaker 1: is the curator of the Rare Books Division at the
Speaker 1: New York Public Library where the Errant's collection is held,
Speaker 1: and he was a really great resource on the topic
Speaker 1: of Errants, on his life, and on book collecting and
Speaker 1: rare books in general. So we're including parts of that
Speaker 1: interview in this podcast today as well. But of course
Speaker 1: before we get into all that, we need to tell
Speaker 1: you a little bit about Errands and not only how
Speaker 1: he got the collecting bug, but also how tobacco became
Speaker 1: part of the equation, because it seems like a strange
Speaker 1: thing to have a collection centered around it does, but
Speaker 1: it won't in a couple of minutes. George Errands, who
Speaker 1: was technically George Erons Jr. Was born in New York
Speaker 1: City on May seven, five. In a discussion of his family,
Speaker 1: you might find that the names can actually get kind
Speaker 1: of confusing, and it might be confusing if you try
Speaker 1: to look him up on your own, because obviously his
Speaker 1: father was also named George Errands, and later on his
Speaker 1: son was as well. But we'll try to specify if
Speaker 1: we mentioned one of the other Georges in this podcast
Speaker 1: that we're doing so. So Aaron's family business was the
Speaker 1: Alan and Ginter Tobacco Company, which was established by his
Speaker 1: great uncle, Major Lewis Ginter, and this company was known
Speaker 1: for creating the first cigarette trading cards, which were slipped
Speaker 1: into cigarette packs to give them kind of that stiff quality,
Speaker 1: and they also served as a form of advertising. And
Speaker 1: this was even before kids trading cards came around, so
Speaker 1: it was kind of venturing into new territory of a
Speaker 1: sort so because of the family business, Aaron spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time of visiting Richmond, Virginia as a kid
Speaker 1: because that was where the company was based. And in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety Allen and Ginter became part of the American
Speaker 1: Tobacco Company. I'm sure many of you have heard of that,
Speaker 1: but Aaron's family was still very much involved in that
Speaker 1: new company, and he started working there himself in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six between his junior and senior years studying at
Speaker 1: Columbia University. Then in eighteen ninety seven he graduated from
Speaker 1: Columbia and he went on to earn his master's to
Speaker 1: create Syracuse University. But he didn't just rest on getting
Speaker 1: a great education and settling into a comfortable job at
Speaker 1: the family business. He was enterprising and he made his
Speaker 1: own name in that business as well. Around the turn
Speaker 1: of the century, he helped to establish the American Machine
Speaker 1: and Foundry Company and served as a director there. But
Speaker 1: he also got into some inventor he did, and I
Speaker 1: think we mentioned that in the intro of this podcast,
Speaker 1: and one of his inventions in particular was a device
Speaker 1: that made it possible to make cigars with machines. And
Speaker 1: this was widely adopted in the industry. Later it was
Speaker 1: developed into a machine that rolled cigarettes. I mean before
Speaker 1: those cigarettes had to be rolled by hand, so you
Speaker 1: can imagine how it would make mass production possible and
Speaker 1: really kind of revolutionize things. And these patents ended up
Speaker 1: being a great source of wealth for him. So in
Speaker 1: a lot of our podcast we would probably stop with
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, this business life of his, and
Speaker 1: in truth, a lot of podcast subjects stop there too,
Speaker 1: after all, I mean, if you're that accomplished, if you've
Speaker 1: made a name for yourself in business, if you're an inventor,
Speaker 1: why do you really need to do too much all?
Speaker 1: Some people might wonder. Of course, Erin's did have a
Speaker 1: personal life. He was married and he had two kids,
Speaker 1: a son and a daughter. We already mentioned the son.
Speaker 1: But along the way he really went beyond his family
Speaker 1: life and his this this life and took on a
Speaker 1: few hobbies too, mainly because of some advice he had
Speaker 1: gotten from his great uncle, Major Ginter pretty early on.
Speaker 1: And there's an article by Sue Dickinson and Commonwealth Magazine
Speaker 1: where Aaron's actually recounted this advice and a talk he
Speaker 1: gave at the College William and Mary in nineteen thirty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, on one of my many visits, and he's
Speaker 1: referring there to the visits to Virginia to visit his family,
Speaker 1: Major Ginter gave me some advice which I have never forgotten.
Speaker 1: It has added greatly to my happiness and I think
Speaker 1: maybe a value to many of you here. He said,
Speaker 1: when you were young, have many hobbies, but let your
Speaker 1: business or profession come first. As you grow older, you
Speaker 1: will have to abandon some of them. The more you have,
Speaker 1: the less you will miss those that you have to
Speaker 1: give up. So Aaron's really took this advice to heart,
Speaker 1: and he started taking on different hobbies, trying to collect
Speaker 1: as many early on as he could. One was race
Speaker 1: car driving, but that didn't laugh very long for him.
Speaker 1: He drove a Mercedes which was car number five in
Speaker 1: the first Vanderbilt Cup Race, which took place on Long
Speaker 1: Island in October of nineteen o four. He was twenty
Speaker 1: nine years old at the time. It was his first race,
Speaker 1: but he got into an accident that left him pretty
Speaker 1: badly injured and actually killed his mechanics. So that was
Speaker 1: the end of that, perhaps kind of proving his uncle's
Speaker 1: point that you're going to have to abandon hobbies along
Speaker 1: the way. One of his other hobbies, though, book collecting,
Speaker 1: of course, proved to be far safer than race car driving,
Speaker 1: and he did stick with that throughout his life. A bookseller,
Speaker 1: William Everts, warned Errants early on that he should specialize
Speaker 1: when he came to book collecting. According to an article
Speaker 1: that Arrants prepared for Syracuse University students called book collecting
Speaker 1: as I have found It, Everts said, do not buy
Speaker 1: some sixteenth and seventeenth century plays and poems, some nineteenth
Speaker 1: and twentieth century novels. That is not a collection. It
Speaker 1: is just a lot of books. Decide on a subject
Speaker 1: which interests you, and stick to it. Someday you may
Speaker 1: find that you have formed a great collection, or at
Speaker 1: least one which will always interest you. So Aaron's didn't
Speaker 1: have to think long and hard about what that focus
Speaker 1: of his collection would be. Obviously, in that same William
Speaker 1: and Mary talk we mentioned earlier, Aaron said, quote, what
Speaker 1: could be more natural for me, with the background of
Speaker 1: tobacco and my family than to specialize on books relating
Speaker 1: to the divine herb? So once he chose tobacco, he
Speaker 1: really went for it. But there's a bit of discrepancy
Speaker 1: regarding what work he started with and when exactly he started.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his life he gave all sorts
Speaker 1: of ages, all pretty much on the younger side. But
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk to Michael Inman, what's the deal
Speaker 1: with us? What was his first book he bought? Here's
Speaker 1: what he had to say. Aaron's was in his early
Speaker 1: twenties when he bought his first book on tobacco. He
Speaker 1: bought his first book in h and there is a
Speaker 1: discrepancy as to which work was the first book that
Speaker 1: he published. By most accounts, it was Selections for Original
Speaker 1: Contributions by James Thompson to Coax's Tobacco Plant, which had
Speaker 1: been published in nine But there are other works, actually,
Speaker 1: a couple of other works, which at one time or
Speaker 1: another he said that he had bought first. The discrepancy
Speaker 1: probably lies partly in his memory, and then also it
Speaker 1: lies in the fact that in his accession ledger, which
Speaker 1: he kept fairly careful notes in as to what he bought, uh,
Speaker 1: he did list the Selections from Original Contributions by James
Speaker 1: Thompson to have been the first book that he bought.
Speaker 1: When he began collecting. So UM, that's the book that
Speaker 1: I've always thought was probably Um was the first, or
Speaker 1: at least the first one of which we can be,
Speaker 1: you know, relatively certain. So once Aaron's collection, his tobacco collection,
Speaker 1: got underway, he started out with the types of books
Speaker 1: you'd expect, things with tobacco in the title or as
Speaker 1: the main subject. But even these focused works covered a
Speaker 1: broad range of takes on tobacco. There are history books,
Speaker 1: their le egal documents, books about the chemistry of tobacco,
Speaker 1: even medical texts. The oldest book in this collection is
Speaker 1: the first Latin edition of an account of Americo Vespucci's travels,
Speaker 1: which also contains the first reference to the New World
Speaker 1: as America. While tobacco isn't mentioned by name in this work,
Speaker 1: the book describes native people off of what is now
Speaker 1: Venezuela chewing green leaves, so the assumption is that they
Speaker 1: were chewing tobacco. Another early piece from the collection includes
Speaker 1: the first mention of the Aztec read cigarette and the
Speaker 1: first reference to tobacco smoking. And it even includes the
Speaker 1: first youth of the word tobacco, which I think would
Speaker 1: have made a good good find for our Oxford English
Speaker 1: Dictionary episode. But there are all sorts of items, Like
Speaker 1: you said, other items focused on herbals. For instance, one
Speaker 1: is a four book that doesn't actually mention tobacco by name,
Speaker 1: but it contains the earliest illustration of it. So Arrants
Speaker 1: really was willing to look broadly at this. In his
Speaker 1: essay Tobacco leaves Eron's also talks about how he tried
Speaker 1: to collect books or documents that contain source material about
Speaker 1: the history of tobacco, like notes from the English Privy
Speaker 1: Council meetings, which I think is really interesting. It's through
Speaker 1: these documents that historians can trace the interlocking histories of tobacco,
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about the economic, history, social, or political.
Speaker 1: And things aren't always positive either or pro tobacco, as
Speaker 1: he might expect from somebody who had made his career
Speaker 1: in the tobacco industry right and one of Aaron's most
Speaker 1: prized works was actually King James, the first counterblast to tobacco. Apparently,
Speaker 1: while Elizabeth, the first James predecessor and kinswoman, enjoyed tobacco
Speaker 1: after Sir Walter Rawley helped popularize it in her court,
Speaker 1: James was not a very big fan himself no, and interestingly,
Speaker 1: Aaron's own copy was one James must have been pretty
Speaker 1: proud of because it's part of a specially bound set
Speaker 1: that he had made for his wife, Queen Anne. Although
Speaker 1: Aaron's believed that the works were in such press dean condition,
Speaker 1: he had a hunch Queen Anne must have never actually
Speaker 1: read her husband's works. Another major tobacco opponent was John Smith,
Speaker 1: who was the author of a General History of Virginia.
Speaker 1: In it, he called tobacco quote the heathenish weed, since
Speaker 1: it would drive settlers to waste their time planting that
Speaker 1: finicky crop instead of food that they actually needed to survive.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about that connection between tobacco and Virginia
Speaker 1: before in an earlier episode. The episode on the shipwreck
Speaker 1: that Saved Jamestown really one of my favorites, where John Role,
Speaker 1: famous for being Pocahontas's husband, managed to smuggle some Central
Speaker 1: American variety of tobacco seeds into Virginia and started producing
Speaker 1: the more popular crop there where it really thrived and
Speaker 1: completely changed the economy of Virginia, and it really changed
Speaker 1: economies across the globe. To tobacco became kind of like
Speaker 1: an international currency of sort. Eventually, Aaron's began to expand
Speaker 1: his collection to include titles that dealt with tobacco in
Speaker 1: a more tangential way too. For example, he collected baseball
Speaker 1: cards from cigarette advertising, including a Honus Wagner from These
Speaker 1: are considered the most expensive baseball or honest Wagner apparently
Speaker 1: was not into having baseball cards made of him. But
Speaker 1: there are also things that I think would appeal to
Speaker 1: a lot of you guys. Alice in Wonderland that's included
Speaker 1: because there's a caterpillar who smokes a hookah and Aaron's
Speaker 1: collected a first edition of it. Moby Dick, The Wonderful
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn all included
Speaker 1: in that collection just because they have some scene or
Speaker 1: some mention of tobacco that he thought was important enough.
Speaker 1: So of course this made us really think of I mean,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that Oxford English Dictionary the William C. Minor
Speaker 1: podcast earlier, and that made us wonder, how did he
Speaker 1: find these reference system of which aren't really that obvious,
Speaker 1: And so we asked Michael Inman that very question, and
Speaker 1: here's what he had to say. Well, some of them
Speaker 1: he came across um quite likely just in the course
Speaker 1: of his reading and in the course of collecting, he
Speaker 1: would find references to other works related to the subject um.
Speaker 1: But I think it's safe to say that a great
Speaker 1: many of these works came to his attention through the
Speaker 1: the advice or um, through information that was related to
Speaker 1: him by various book collectors and auction houses and so forth.
Speaker 1: And he had people out there in the antiquarium book
Speaker 1: world who were on the lookout for items which had
Speaker 1: a tobacco connection, however slight, and as those items came
Speaker 1: into their stock, they would then contact him and ask
Speaker 1: if it was something that he was interested in acquiring,
Speaker 1: and and then the transaction would take place. So it
Speaker 1: sort of went in both directions in terms of his
Speaker 1: own research on the subject and then also people on
Speaker 1: the lookout for things for him. One of the most
Speaker 1: notably missing figures though, of this more tangential type of
Speaker 1: collection is William Shakespeare, and it's kind of strange because
Speaker 1: of that opposition from King James. There was apparently a
Speaker 1: lot of references done during Jackman drama. You know, people
Speaker 1: like to talk about what was considered taboo, and Errant's
Speaker 1: even compared this to the multitude of alcohol references during prohibition.
Speaker 1: But William Shakespeare is missing from Elizabethan from jack Bin
Speaker 1: Drama entirely, and there's a good reason for that. It's
Speaker 1: because he never wrote about tobacco. And Arrants at one
Speaker 1: point related a pretty funny story about Shakespeare and the
Speaker 1: lack of tobacco connections by talking about how he agreed
Speaker 1: to buy a Shakespeare first folio at one point if
Speaker 1: and only if a mention of tobacco could be found,
Speaker 1: and he got a little nervous about that promise afterwards
Speaker 1: because he was expecting there wouldn't be any mentions, and
Speaker 1: he knew that even for him, buying a Shakespeare first
Speaker 1: folio would be kind of a hurt, put a hurt
Speaker 1: on his bank act expire, certainly. But the best anybody
Speaker 1: could find was a passage from A Midsummer Night's Dream
Speaker 1: about pipes. Unfortunately for Errants, it turned out to be
Speaker 1: about Oberon playing pipes of corn, different pipes, different kind
Speaker 1: of pipe. But I think it's so fascinating that Errant's
Speaker 1: familiarity with all of these tangential references allowed him to
Speaker 1: actually draw some literary inferences from it. That total lack
Speaker 1: of tobacco references in Shakespeare's work contrasted with the frequent
Speaker 1: mentions of tobacco in Roger Bacon's work and ended up
Speaker 1: being proof enough for errants that Bacon did not write Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: So finally, one of the most interesting lines of study
Speaker 1: in the collection is not just the history of tobacco,
Speaker 1: but the history of how tobacco was used. For example,
Speaker 1: a book by Christopher Columbus's Natural Son contains stories from
Speaker 1: Columbus's travels, including one describing Cuban Indians smoking cigars. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the sailors didn't know what was going on and thought
Speaker 1: perhaps the Indians were perfuming themselves with these cigars. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't long, obviously, before the sailors took up smoking
Speaker 1: and started to take it back to the old world.
Speaker 1: Even though folks back at home were pretty puzzled at first,
Speaker 1: you know what was really going on, and one of
Speaker 1: the interesting items Arrant's collection includes as a record of
Speaker 1: a Spanish sailor being arrested during the Inquisition for smoke
Speaker 1: coming out of his mouth because he was having a
Speaker 1: smoke and folks thought that he must be possessed by
Speaker 1: the devil for something so horrifying to to be happening.
Speaker 1: But by the time he got out of prison, he
Speaker 1: found that everybody around him was smoking. It had become
Speaker 1: commonplace during just that that time he was put away.
Speaker 1: The first sailors seen smoking in London created a riot.
Speaker 1: People thought that they were actually drinking smoke. But a
Speaker 1: smoking caught on in England. Some elegant men felt that
Speaker 1: they actually needed smoking teachers, people who would teach you
Speaker 1: how to look good. Not that it was okay at
Speaker 1: the time to walk around and smoke. Men would actually
Speaker 1: have to duck into apothecary shop, have a smoke, and
Speaker 1: then hit the streets again. So it made sense that
Speaker 1: tobacco was still considered medicinal by many, and that's why
Speaker 1: connection there exactly. So it was like you had an
Speaker 1: excuse to be smoking. Obviously, tobacco and smoking can be
Speaker 1: a really controversial topic today for health related reasons. Because
Speaker 1: of health related concerns, some of Aaron's inclusions reflect how
Speaker 1: it was controversial even throughout history. His collection contained critiques
Speaker 1: of tobacco through the ages, the earliest of which criticized
Speaker 1: the non medicinal use of what was believed to be
Speaker 1: and that's when you think about today. It reminded me
Speaker 1: a lot of the Radium Girls podcast that we did
Speaker 1: last fall, and how people would thought that radium was
Speaker 1: medicinal and they would use it even to treat cancer
Speaker 1: and things like that, and then later they figured out, oh,
Speaker 1: it's actually causing cancer, and uh, it's similar sort of
Speaker 1: thing here with tobacco. One of the items that is
Speaker 1: in the collection, Tobacco Tortured from sixteen sixteen, focuses on
Speaker 1: a degenerate family man who's ruined his life through tobacco.
Speaker 1: His wife pleads, quote, Oh, my husband, my husband, why
Speaker 1: dost thou so vainly preferred a vanishing, filthy fume before
Speaker 1: my permanent virtues? Have I not here brought forth an
Speaker 1: army of children into they And the descript and of
Speaker 1: just this ragged man who's been destroyed by tobacco kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of the classic After School special almost
Speaker 1: except that it's from sixteen sixteen. But thinking about all
Speaker 1: the controversies that have surrounded tobacco throughout the years and
Speaker 1: even up to today, made us really wonder about how
Speaker 1: a collection of the sort is perceived. So we asked
Speaker 1: Michael about that. We asked Michael Inman, and he noted
Speaker 1: that they haven't really received a lot of flak for
Speaker 1: the tobacco collection, but that's probably because it's mostly historical.
Speaker 1: He said, most of the volumes are actually pre nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred well, and he also shared because of the huge
Speaker 1: number of items that aren't really about tobacco, they just
Speaker 1: have that mention of it. About fifty percent of the
Speaker 1: people who use the collection, who consulted for their research,
Speaker 1: aren't really interested in the tobacco content at all. You know,
Speaker 1: they're interested in that Alice in Wonderland copy or the
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz or whatever it may be, something completely
Speaker 1: apart from tobacco. But tobacco wasn't all that Errants was
Speaker 1: interested in. As we mentioned in the intro to this podcast,
Speaker 1: in he started his second book collection, Books and Parts,
Speaker 1: So it was about a quarter of a century after
Speaker 1: he started that initial tobacco collection, and it just made
Speaker 1: us really curious. I mean, we had a sense of
Speaker 1: what Books and Parts are, but we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to Michael a little bit about what that entails. The
Speaker 1: Books and Parts collection is, to my knowledge, is a
Speaker 1: unique collection. I mean, there are other rare book collections
Speaker 1: out there that have books and parts material material and parts,
Speaker 1: I should say, but what makes the Errants collection of
Speaker 1: Books and Parts so special is that, so far as
Speaker 1: I know, it's the only collection of its kind that's
Speaker 1: solely predicated on collecting material in parts. And by parts,
Speaker 1: I mean these are original works of literature and a
Speaker 1: great many genres which are still in their original serialized form,
Speaker 1: and the individual paper wrappers that they came in. The
Speaker 1: practice would usually have been to those individual parts bound
Speaker 1: up into one binding, but in fact these actually remain
Speaker 1: in their original serialized form. I think that that probably
Speaker 1: was part of the appeal for Arrans. That here, just
Speaker 1: as had been the case with the tobacco part of
Speaker 1: the collection, which also I believe is fairly unique in
Speaker 1: the sense that it's solely predicated along those lines of
Speaker 1: just dealing with tobacco, here was another aspect of book
Speaker 1: collecting that Arrants could could focus upon that really was
Speaker 1: something that was the other people weren't collecting at that
Speaker 1: time at any rate. Michael also went on to theorize
Speaker 1: that starting the second collection really allowed Errants a great
Speaker 1: avenue for a perfectionist to take. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: a perfectionist, and if you collect books and parts, you
Speaker 1: can gradually assemble not just a complete set, but a
Speaker 1: perfect set, something that was really appealing to Arrants. But
Speaker 1: another another reason why he might have started the second
Speaker 1: collection is that it allowed him to pursue the chase,
Speaker 1: you know, like we talked about earlier, the hunt behind
Speaker 1: book collecting. It allowed him to maintain the paith of
Speaker 1: book collecting he'd gotten used to. It was really an
Speaker 1: adventure for him. As we mentioned, I mean, Sarah and
Speaker 1: I were really taken with one part of an essay
Speaker 1: we read where it said that Aaron's would learn of
Speaker 1: a book that he wanted to get in London and
Speaker 1: he would just decide on the spur of the mount
Speaker 1: on a boat, take off, get on a boat, and
Speaker 1: go get it. And that really excited us. So we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to Michael a little bit about that
Speaker 1: thrill of the chase and ask him what his favorite
Speaker 1: story or what are some of the most interesting stories
Speaker 1: of how Aaron's obtained a volume, And here's what he
Speaker 1: had to say. One that comes to mind is that
Speaker 1: for a great many years he had had a nearly
Speaker 1: complete set of hackle It's voyages and not only was
Speaker 1: this is this isn't terribly important work in terms of
Speaker 1: North American history, in terms of voyages and travels, uh,
Speaker 1: and in terms of printing history, but also the particular
Speaker 1: set that he had acquired had belonged to Queen Elizabeth
Speaker 1: the first It bears her coat of arms on the binding.
Speaker 1: He had a complete set of that work. It's a
Speaker 1: multi volume set except for one volume that he was missing,
Speaker 1: and finally persistence paid off. He had been searching for
Speaker 1: it for years and years and it finally turned up
Speaker 1: at at auction and he was able to acquire that
Speaker 1: missing volume. But this is something that transpired over a
Speaker 1: great many years that he doggedly pursued this one missing
Speaker 1: volume out of a multi volume set. Uh. He he
Speaker 1: was sort of like a dog with a bone. He
Speaker 1: wouldn't let go of something, and he always tried to
Speaker 1: to acquire the complete work, as I mentioned earlier. So
Speaker 1: that's one example. Uh, he went to great lenks to
Speaker 1: acquire all sorts of items. Another example, it's something that
Speaker 1: he tried to come by over a period of years.
Speaker 1: Were very lucky in the Errant's collection to have the
Speaker 1: original manuscript, the original four act manuscript of us. For
Speaker 1: wild it's the importance of being earnest and that's something
Speaker 1: that again he had to search for the complete set
Speaker 1: for a number of years, or the multi volumes because
Speaker 1: it's written in several notebooks and he had to search
Speaker 1: for several years until he was able to assemble uh
Speaker 1: that those two works. I think another thing that surprised
Speaker 1: us during our research was that this is not a
Speaker 1: static collection. It's something that's grown, and it's something that
Speaker 1: has been added to even after Aaron's's death, and the
Speaker 1: library still I don't know. Michael talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about what acquiring books is like today and he said, well,
Speaker 1: he hasn't jetted to London to to obtain materials. There
Speaker 1: is still that kind of thrill of the chase element
Speaker 1: to pursuing a book that is just perfect for the collection,
Speaker 1: something that has high research value but is also incredibly unique.
Speaker 1: And he said that they need to always, of course
Speaker 1: focus on things that have a link to tobacco. That
Speaker 1: is the prime quality vacation for anything that's going to
Speaker 1: be in the collection. But it really does need to
Speaker 1: be important. It can't just mention tobacco. It has to
Speaker 1: almost live up to all the items that are already
Speaker 1: in the collection. Right he mentioned research value in particular,
Speaker 1: the items that they get must have some sort of
Speaker 1: research value, must have some sort of research value to them,
Speaker 1: I should say. And so, of course talking about all
Speaker 1: of these volumes and their value made us really wonder
Speaker 1: what are Michael's favorite things in this collection as the curator,
Speaker 1: And so we posed a kind of interesting scenario to
Speaker 1: him with nightmare scenario, probably a nightmare actually for a
Speaker 1: curator like him. We asked, if the building were burning down,
Speaker 1: what would he take with him? The importance of being
Speaker 1: earnest is one of my favorites, certainly. There is a
Speaker 1: handwritten letter from Queen Elizabeth the First to Charles the
Speaker 1: ninth of France, in which she writes in French, uh well,
Speaker 1: in response to charles offer he had offered his brother's
Speaker 1: hand in marriage to Elizabeth in order to forge alliance
Speaker 1: between France and England. And so she wrote back to
Speaker 1: him in this very sort of flowery circumlocutionary pros, oh,
Speaker 1: I love France and I adore you, and I think
Speaker 1: your brother is great. And she goes on and at
Speaker 1: the very end of the letter she says rather tersely
Speaker 1: sort of thanks but no thanks. That's a good example
Speaker 1: again of arrances, very broad mindedness in terms of collecting.
Speaker 1: For years I wondered why that letter was in the
Speaker 1: collection because there's no connection to tobacco that I can
Speaker 1: discern at all. And finally, after a number of years,
Speaker 1: I was able to find some notes that Errans had
Speaker 1: written where he explained that he had acquired that item
Speaker 1: simply because Elizabeth was the first modern female monarch who
Speaker 1: was known to smoke. So the connection there even was
Speaker 1: somewhat tenuous. But I suspect he saw that letter at
Speaker 1: auction or someone offered it to him and it was
Speaker 1: just too tempting to pass up. So that's how he
Speaker 1: was probably able to justify acquiring it after the fact.
Speaker 1: So that letter, I think there are several others um
Speaker 1: from Sir Walter Rawleigh and several other individuals from that
Speaker 1: period that are quite magnificent. There is another item that
Speaker 1: I really love is the first edition of the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz that Frank Baum inscribed to his mother. Very
Speaker 1: touching little inscription there where he writes a note to
Speaker 1: his mother. So that's that's certainly wonderful. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to sort of draw the line just two or three.
Speaker 1: I think we're you know, Goodness forbid, the building I
Speaker 1: were on fire, I would probably be in the building
Speaker 1: much longer than it was probably safe to be, trying
Speaker 1: to grab as many things as I could. But certainly
Speaker 1: those would be a few of the top picks that
Speaker 1: come to mind. Um, he would ask me the same
Speaker 1: question tomorrow, I probably would give you a completely different list,
Speaker 1: and you know, to keep going on for the next
Speaker 1: several months. So that drastic scenario, you know, the building
Speaker 1: burning down, what are you going to save? Kind of
Speaker 1: led us to a less drastic scenario one of how
Speaker 1: how are these material is preserved? How do people use them?
Speaker 1: And it was interesting to hear that because this is
Speaker 1: a library a lot of these museum where the items
Speaker 1: are available to the public. You know, you can apply
Speaker 1: to to consult with these materials and look at them yourself.
Speaker 1: Something I think, touch them, we have touch them, something
Speaker 1: that I think really sets rare book libraries like this apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Michael told us a little bit about the preservation
Speaker 1: and how meticulous they have to be to make sure
Speaker 1: that these volumes do stay intact so that people can
Speaker 1: use them. In the future as well. And so that's
Speaker 1: a big aspect of keeping the collections there. It's not
Speaker 1: just curating them and finding the right volumes and the
Speaker 1: thrill of the chase. It's making sure that they're they're around,
Speaker 1: that they're around for a while. And uh, to that point,
Speaker 1: we also talked to him about the future of these collections,
Speaker 1: thinking about you guys especially, I mean, will these ever
Speaker 1: be available for people to see even if you can't
Speaker 1: make a trip all the way to the main building
Speaker 1: of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. And
Speaker 1: he mentioned that there is a digitization project going on
Speaker 1: at the New York Public Library, as I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are in many libraries around the world, and they're slowly,
Speaker 1: i think, converting all these volumes or as many as
Speaker 1: they can, to digital versions. So someday you may be
Speaker 1: able to look us up from the comfort of your home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that really does have to two values to it.
Speaker 1: One that if you have these high quality reproductions digital reproductions,
Speaker 1: not as many people need to touch that first manuscript
Speaker 1: of importance of being earnest if they're researching it. But also, yeah,
Speaker 1: people who can't make it to New York can can
Speaker 1: take a look at some of this stuff, take a
Speaker 1: look at that baseball card or the counter blast or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. Obviously that holds a lot of
Speaker 1: allure for us. We always need more materials for research,
Speaker 1: and so this was kind of a little bit of
Speaker 1: a vanity podcast for us, I guess in that sense
Speaker 1: because or maybe that question in particular was because we
Speaker 1: we really would love to have access to these. But
Speaker 1: that's about all we have for this episode on George
Speaker 1: Arrants and his collection. Um, I would love to know
Speaker 1: if any listeners out there have their own collections books
Speaker 1: or otherwise that they've started as hobbies, side projects and
Speaker 1: have seen grown throughout the years. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: really I have hobbies, but my hobbies are like playing
Speaker 1: soccer or have been playing music or whatever. I haven't
Speaker 1: really collected anything ever, and that has always held a
Speaker 1: lot of fascination for me. Well, and I really liked
Speaker 1: the idea of a focused book collection because it meant
Speaker 1: that Arrants, even even when he was young, even when
Speaker 1: he didn't have a lot of money to spend on
Speaker 1: some of these more magnificent items or money to go
Speaker 1: off to London and collect a huge amount of work.
Speaker 1: He had a collection even with just a few items,
Speaker 1: and that was the appeal. You know, if you have
Speaker 1: this fox gus to your collection, even a few books
Speaker 1: are a collection that you don't need an entire library. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's a more hopeful way to look at it.
Speaker 1: So if you do have, if you've started, even if
Speaker 1: it's with just a few books, book collection, or any
Speaker 1: sort of collection, and you want to share that with us,
Speaker 1: please write us wre History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also look us up on Facebook or on
Speaker 1: Twitter ATMs in history. And we also have a great
Speaker 1: article out there for all of you guys who are
Speaker 1: trying to choose the prime things you'll be adding to
Speaker 1: your future collection. It's called top ten rare Book. Then
Speaker 1: you can find it by searching on our homepage at
Speaker 1: www dot house stepp works dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how stepp Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The Houstuff Works iPhone
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