The Bookman's Tale (12 page)

P
eter opened the delicate binding of the
Pandosto
and began an examination that would take most of the night. He started with the provenance. The line of ownership, from the author himself to the mysterious B.B., could be one of the strongest pieces of evidence in favor of authenticity. Peter knew enough of the history of English book collecting to recognize several of the names on the list, but he would need to research the connections between the owners and try to identify names such as Em Ball, Bartholomew Harbottle, and William H. Smith. The list read:

R. Greene to Em Ball

Bart. Harbottle

Wm. Shakspere, Stratford

R. Cotton, Augustus B IV

Matthew Harbottle, Red Bull Theatre

John Bagford

John Warburton

R. Harley, Oxford

B. Mayhew for William H. Smith

B.B. / E.H.

Ten entries. Ten clues that might tell the story of how a priceless volume survived undetected for over four centuries.

From his frequent nocturnal visits to the Devereaux Room with Amanda, Peter knew that Francis never came in after hours, but he always worked in his office from two until five on Saturdays. Special Collections was not officially opened during these hours, and Francis said it was often the only uninterrupted time in his work week. After Peter finished his dinner and confirmed, in his copy of De Ricci’s
English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts
, his memory about the identities of Bagford, Warburton, and Harley, he phoned Francis Leland’s private number.

He did this without thinking that he had not spoken to Francis since leaving Ridgefield. As the phone rang four thousand miles away, Peter also did not think about the eighth item on Dr. Strayer’s list, “Get in Touch with Old Friends,” even though Francis’s phone number was written on the list next to this entry. When Peter had gone to the kitchen to look up the number, he hadn’t even noticed the list, only the scrawled digits in the margin.

Since arriving in Kingham, Peter had not called or written any friends in the United States—not Hank or Amanda’s parents or her best friend, Cynthia, though all had begged him to keep in touch when they had last seen him at the funeral, and all had left repeated messages on his machine. In his effort to escape every reminder of Amanda, Peter had severed all contact with his life in America, and he had given little thought to how those left behind might interpret his long silence. Thus Peter, who was focused wholly on identifying the names on the
Pandosto
’s endpaper, did not comprehend the mixture of excitement and relief in Francis Leland’s voice.

“Peter, thank God. We’ve been so worried about you. Are you well?”

It seemed to Peter a completely irrelevant question, as if Francis had asked what shoes he was wearing. “I’m trying to track down some people,” said Peter.

“Is it the Ridgefields?” asked Francis. “They’re in New York, but they left numbers with me in case you called. I know they’ll be so relieved to hear from you. You can’t imagine what we’ve all been thinking, Peter.”

Frustration crept into Peter’s voice. He and Francis had always understood each other before. Why were they now talking at such cross-purposes? “No,” said Peter, “you don’t understand. I need to track down some people.” Single-minded as he was, he could think of no other way to phrase his request, but without waiting for Francis to respond, he plowed on. “The first three I suspect are Elizabethan or Jacobean. One of them had some connection to Robert Greene. Her name was Em Ball. Then there are two named Harbottle—Bartholomew and Matthew. Matthew had something to do with the Red Bull Theatre. And then there are two much later names, eighteenth or nineteenth century—Benjamin Mayhew and William H. Smith. I know the last one’s pretty common, but he was probably a book collector.”

“Peter, are you all right?”

Had he stopped to consider Francis’s question, Peter would have recognized the tone of parental condescension that used to creep into Dr. Strayer’s voice when Peter was being obstinate. He chose, instead, to ignore Francis. “Oh, and I have some good news. I found a copy of the fourth edition of Johnson’s
Dictionary
. I know you would have bought it, but I’ve decided to give it to the Devereaux collection in memory of Amanda.” Peter paused for a moment and thought of the portrait of Amanda Devereaux. “My Amanda,” he added.

“That’s wonderful. Listen, Peter, are you seeing anyone over there. I mean a doctor?”

“Why would I see a doctor?” said Peter, completely missing Francis’s point. “I’m in perfectly good health. I mean other than getting shot at.”

“Getting shot at?” said Francis. “Really, Peter, I think you ought to—”

“So do you think you can help me with those names?” Peter interrupted.

There was silence on the line and then Francis spoke again, this time in a quieter, calmer voice. The old Francis, Peter thought. “Well, Em Ball was Robert Greene’s mistress,” he said. “A prostitute and sister of a gangster. Rumor was that she showed up when he was on his deathbed and tried to make him admit to fathering her illegitimate son, which he refused to do. Bartholomew Harbottle I’m surprised you don’t know. His name is in one of your favorite books. He was a bookseller, died around 1610 or 1620. His ownership signature is in our bad quarto of
Hamlet
. The other two I’ll have to look up for you, but I do know the Red Bull Theatre was in Clerkenwell. Burned down in the great fire, I believe.”

“Listen,” said Peter, “can you leave a message on the machine if you track down Matthew Harbottle or William H. Smith? I may be out.”

“Peter, what’s this all about?” asked Francis.

“I think I may have found the Holy Grail,” said Peter and hung up.

So Robert Greene had given this copy of
Pandosto
to his mistress. It was easy to imagine that she would have sold it to Harbottle and he would have sold it to Shakespeare as the source material for
A Winter’s Tale
. There had never been any proven connection between Shakespeare and Robert Cotton, but most scholars agreed that it made sense that the playwright might have consulted Cotton’s library. Perhaps the
Pandosto
had been a gift? And Cotton was a notorious lender of his books. Perhaps the Red Bull Theatre had mounted a production of
A Winter’s Tale
and this Matthew Harbottle borrowed the book and never returned it. This bit of conjecture seemed less likely to Peter. After all, seventeenth-century theatrical troupes didn’t hire dramaturges, and this scenario wouldn’t explain the coincidence of the name Harbottle.

Peter spent the night making a careful transcription of the
Pandosto
’s marginalia, stopping only for a nap before breakfast. The rear endpaper was crowded with a hodgepodge of scribbles surrounding a preliminary version of the song performed by Autolycus in Act IV of
A Winter’s Tale
. It took Peter hours to sort out the mess, and even then he wasn’t sure of the meaning of many of the markings and abbreviations. Peter detected a short phrase, almost obscured by other writing across it, just above the words to the song. With the help of a strong light and a magnifying glass, he finally managed to decipher it. “B. Harbottle = Autolycus.”

If Bartholomew Harbottle had been the model for the merchant and knave Autolycus, a number of possibilities for how the
Pandosto
moved from Robert Cotton’s hands back into the Harbottle family now presented themselves. Bartholomew Harbottle might have borrowed it with no intention of returning it or simply stolen it.
A Winter’s Tale
was written late in Shakespeare’s career, when he was an established playwright. If Harbottle suspected the volume might be valuable someday, he might have passed it on to a relative.

As Peter fell asleep on the sofa in the sitting room, he felt he had a reasonable handle on the journey of
Pandosto
from Robert Greene to his mistress, to an unscrupulous bookseller, to William Shakespeare, to Robert Cotton, and finally to the unknown Matthew Harbottle. But if Matthew had been alive when Bartholomew died—not later than 1620, Francis had said—it was unlikely he lived much past the great fire of 1666, and the book would almost certainly have been out of London by then. Yet the next name on the list was John Bagford, a collector and dealer who was at his peak of activity around 1710. So where had
Pandosto
hidden for forty-five years? And if the book had belonged to Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, why hadn’t it ended up in the British Museum with the rest of his collection?

J
ohn Warburton took a long drink of whiskey and set down his glass. While it was true that whiskey had lost him his job, if tonight’s meeting went well, he should have enough money to keep him in drink and under roof a while longer.

On the large table in the center of his library he had created two piles of manuscripts from his ever-growing collection. On the left were those he anticipated would bring him five hundred guineas by night’s end. They were medieval works, including some fine examples of Anglo-Saxon and Early English writing—just the sort of thing to tempt his dinner guest. On the right were manuscripts he did not wish to sell—his collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. Several of these he had bought from his old friend, now departed, the bookseller and great collector of printing samples John Bagford. He remembered well the day that Bagford had arrived on his doorstep with a cache of Elizabethan materials he had found languishing in a manor house near Exeter.

Warburton spent the afternoon compiling a list of the plays represented in his collection. This he would keep in his desk, while the plays he would hide elsewhere, to protect them from the prying eyes of his guest. The list ran to fifty-five titles, including works by Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare. All but a few of the plays were unpublished, and most of Warburton’s copies were unique.

After completing the catalog, he picked up the pile of manuscripts and carried them into the kitchen where he would store them in the highest cupboard—an unlikely place for even the most persistent bibliophile to go hunting for treasures. He did not realize that one item from his theatrical collection—a printed volume with marginalia by William Shakespeare—remained on the table next to the medieval manuscripts.

—

H
umfrey Wanley, keeper of the library for Robert Harley and his son, Edward, arrived at the home of John Warburton at eight o’clock.

“Mr. Warburton,” said Wanley, extending his hand. “A pleasure to meet such a distinguished collector.”

As the two men entered the library after dinner, Wanley did his best to hide his enthusiasm, for although many of the manuscripts laid out on the library table were quite ordinary, several were exquisite.

“This, I think, must be the finest example of ninth-century English in any collection,” said Warburton, opening a codex of extracts from the Gospels.

“Fine, to be sure,” said Wanley, “though certainly not the finest.”

“Still, that alone should be worth a hundred guineas,” said Warburton.

“Let’s not talk of price just yet, my dear man. How about some more of that excellent port?” Wanley saw to it that the wine continued to flow as the hour passed midnight. He took only a sip for every glassful downed by his companion, so that by the time the two men had begun to pack the manuscripts into an empty chest, Warburton was weaving on his feet. The host finally collapsed into a chair, letting Wanley finish the job.

Wanley saw that now was the moment, and though there were a few items on the table he had not yet examined, he swept everything into the chest and shut the top firmly.

“I can give you cash,” said Wanley.

“Five hundred guineas,” said Warburton, slurring his speech.

“Not quite that,” said Wanley crisply. “You’ll need to sign the bill of sale here.” He laid a piece of paper on the desk and placed a pen in Warburton’s hand.

“How much then?” said Warburton, squinting at the paper. “Three hundred?”

“A hundred guineas,” said Wanley. “It’s a fair price, as you well know.” It wasn’t an unfair price, thought Wanley, though it was certainly a bargain.

“A hundred?” said Warburton. “But I can’t—”

“It’s that or nothing,” said Wanley. “Shall I leave them here?”

“No, no!” cried Warburton, for he was not too drunk to realize that his arm lay across a pile of bills that a hundred guineas would more than settle. He picked up the pen and dipped it into the inkwell, scrawling his name on the bill of sale. The next morning he awoke with his head on his desk and a hundred guineas clasped in his hand.

—

A
year went by before Warburton had occasion to seek out his sequestered theatrical manuscripts. Pushing open the kitchen door he saw the ingredients of one of Betsy Baker’s pies laid out on the table. Betsy, his cook, made superb pies. Reaching into the high cabinet where he had hidden his manuscripts from the prying eyes of Humfrey Wanley, Warburton was surprised to find barely a handful of papers in place of the armload he expected. He was just beginning to canvass the other cabinets for the missing manuscripts when Betsy came in from the garden.

“Morning, Mr. Warburton. Not enough for breakfast then?”

“No, no,” said Warburton, “breakfast was lovely.”

“Ooh, thank you, Mr. Warburton,” said Betsy, relieving him of a page of
The Queen of Corsica
from the manuscripts he held. “I do get so tired of reaching into that high cabinet to get to them papers.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Warburton. “Do you mean to say . . . ,” he started to ask, but he found he could not finish his sentence.

“Them papers as you put up there for me. Have to strain me back every time I need one. It’s the secret to a perfect pie, you know,” she said, pressing the page into the pie pan. “You’ve got to line the pan.”

—

H
umfrey Wanley pulled the last few Warburton books out of the chest and noticed one he did not remember buying—a tatty and marked-up copy of an old romance. Since there were markings on the endpapers, he did not place the library’s bookplate in the volume but instead added the name of his employer to a list of previous owners—“R. Harley, Oxford.”

Before Wanley could more closely examine the old romance and enter it into the library’s catalog, Lord Harley entered the room with a visitor, a collector from Cambridgeshire.

“Mr. Wanley,” said Harley. “My friend here would like to borrow a few items from the library to assist in his research on Elizabethan costumes.”

“Of course, my lord,” said Wanley. “The library is completely at his disposal.”

“Excellent, Mr. Wanley,” said Harley, and he swept out of the room, leaving the librarian and the visitor alone.

“I think you’ll find what you want just over here,” said Wanley, indicating a shelf above the table where he had been unpacking the manuscripts.

“Thank you, my good man,” said the visitor. “I shan’t take a minute.”

It did, in fact, take little more than a minute for the visitor to find the books he sought. He showed them to Wanley, who carefully recorded the titles in a log of borrowed books. As he did so, the visitor picked up the slim volume lying on the table. It was a romance called
Pandosto
. He fancied he would take it up to his room to read before retiring that evening.

As it happened, Robert Harley entertained his visitor well into the evening and the port that followed dinner was of such quality and quantity that the guest felt neither the inclination nor the ability to read before turning in. The next morning he departed for home with
Pandosto
in his bag.

Six years later, in 1726, Humfrey Wanley was dead. The library he had spent much of his later life building for Robert and Edward Harley was one of the great collections of books and manuscripts of its time. The manuscripts were eventually sold to the nation in 1753 and were one of the foundation collections of the British Museum and later of the British Library.

But the slim volume that a visiting collector had borrowed one summer day in 1720 never returned to the Harleian collection. The man who had borrowed it died two weeks after returning home, leaving the book on his desk next to the three volumes on Elizabethan costumes that bore the bookplate of the Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. His grieving widow returned the costume books, but the other volume she shoved onto a shelf in the house’s library and there it remained, nearly invisible between two thick folios, for more than a hundred and fifty years.