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"Amadis de Gaula ... folio, gothic letter, FIRST EDITION, unique ... red morocco super extra, double with olive morocco, richly gilt, tooled to an elegant Grolier design, gilt edges ... in a neat case." A pretty present for a scholarly friend. A nice old book to carry home for one's own library. Two hundred pounds one thousand dollars will make you the happy owner of this volume.
'It was on the morrow of the Epiphany, says the light-hearted artist, 'that after my slumbers were over, and in consciousness of a joyous repast, I lay day-dreaming in bed, and twisting the wheels of my memory round: I thought of a thousand little fancies both grave and gay, and then there came before my mind those antique letters that I used to make for my lord, Master Jean Grolier, the King's councillor, and a friend of the Belles Lettres and of all men of learning, by whom he is loved and esteemed on both sides of the Alps.
Following the Grolier patterns, came another highly decorative style, by the French binders, which was notable for the very delicate gold tooling, covering the whole sides of the book with exquisite scroll-work, and branches of laurel.
He was the banker's chief legal adviser, the banker's rapier of tempered steel, sheathed from the vulgar view save when it flashed forth on a swift errand. "I'm glad to be associated with you in this case, Mr. Paret," Mr. Grolier said modestly, as we emerged into the maelstrom of Wall Street. "If you can make it convenient to call at my office in the morning, we'll go over it a little.
I could picture him charging mace in hand at the head of his vassals, or delivering over a dissenter of the period to the rack and thumbscrew, but not pottering among rare editions, tall copies and Grolier bindings, nor condescending to a quiet cigar among the tree ferns and orchids.
Fudge! There is no evidence that Grolier ever lent any man a book with his plate in it. His collection was dispersed after his death, and then sentimentalists fell a-weeping over his supposed generosity. It would be as reasonable to commend the hospitality of a dead man because you found amongst his papers a vast number of unposted invitations to dinner upon a date he long outlived.
Sentiment is seldom in place, but on a bookplate it is peculiarly odious. To paste in each book an invitation to steal it, as Grolier seems to have done, is foolish; but so also is it to invoke, as some book-plates do, curses upon the heads of all subsequent possessors as if any man who wanted to add a volume to his collection would be deterred by such braggadocio. But this is a digression.
Congress had passed a law to meet this contention, suit had been brought, and in the lower court the government had won. As the day wore on our numbers increased, we were joined by other lawyers of renown, not the least of whom was Mr. Grolier himself, fresh from his triumph over religious heresy in his Church Convention.
In New York, for many years past, every new movement, philanthropic, municipal or artistic, had taken account of his opinion and wanted his name. People said: "Ask Archer" when there was a question of starting the first school for crippled children, reorganising the Museum of Art, founding the Grolier Club, inaugurating the new Library, or getting up a new society of chamber music.
Perhaps we should add Jean Ballesdens, a collector of fine books and MSS., whose library at his death in 1677 contained nine of Grolier's books, and Pierre Séguier, to whom Ballesdens acted as secretary; and as Séguier was the personal friend of Grolier, he may have been the original recipient of some of the volumes in question.
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