A Bibliophile on the Titanic, or the Fate of Harry Elkins Widener

Dear bibliophiles, good evening,

The night of 14 to 15 April 1912 was fatal for some 1,500 passengers who had taken their places aboard the Titanic… and for an unknown number of old books which one may presume were precious. They were travelling, indeed, with young Harry Elkins Widener, 27, who was one of the most pampered and most promising young bibliophiles of the early 20th century.

Born in 1885, Harry Elkins Widener developed a taste for bibliophilia very early, cultivated it after his time at Harvard in 1907, and his parents’ immense fortune allowed him to build on it very quickly despite his youth. Thus, at only 27, he owned (almost)… a Gutenberg Bible, as we shall see below.

His tastes were fairly wide, and led him rather towards English-language authors of the 19th century in first editions (Dickens, Stevenson, Brontë, etc.), without disdaining the great classics, since a Gutenberg Bible had come into the family, which is today the pride of the Harvard Library. It is, moreover, a well-known copy, which belonged successively to Pierre Henri Larcher (Paris, 1814), Lord Ashburnham (1840), whose son sold it to Bernard Quaritch (1896). Shortly afterwards Robert Hoe became its happy owner (he shelved it, by the way, right next to my Hoe copy, which therefore carries a little Gutenberg Bible dust, smile), then Quaritch again, before Harry Elkins Widener’s grandfather bought it. The copy was handed over to the library in 1944.

It particularly struck young Harry, who mentions the Bible in a letter to his friend Luther Livingston, a bookseller in Philadelphia, on 10 March 1912, a month before the tragedy, in which he writes that he is about to make a quick trip to England aboard the Mauretania, before returning on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. He ends his letter with these words: “a secret… grandfather has bought the Hoe copy. Isn’t it wonderful? I was hoping it would be for me, but it isn’t!”

Bibliophilia and the acquisition of new old books was, moreover, one of the reasons for his trip to Europe. He was travelling with his parents and we know that he notably acquired a second edition of Bacon’s Essays (1598). After England, the family visited France before re-embarking for the United States via Cherbourg and the new flagship of the White Star Line, the Titanic. The famous liner indeed called at Cherbourg: having left Southampton on Wednesday 10 April 1912 at noon, the new floating palace was to reach the port of Cherbourg a few hours later and make its entrance through the western pass at 6:30 pm. Beyond the prestige, this call made it possible to take on 274 additional passengers, among them the Widener family.

The family and servants occupied first-class cabins C-80-82 (ticket number 13503, price 211 pounds sterling). And on the night of the disaster the Wideners were, in fact, taking part in a dinner given by the captain for the richest passengers. At 11:40 pm the Titanic struck an iceberg on the starboard bow before sinking at 2:20 am off Newfoundland. Between 1,491 and 1,513 people perished. Witnesses report that Harry Widener helped his mother into lifeboat no. 4 before turning back to wait for the departure of the main boat, which unfortunately decided his fate, since he disappeared with the liner. The wreck was located in 1985. It lies at a depth of 3,843 metres, 650 km south-east of Newfoundland, and is currently the subject of excavations.

An anecdote that Mrs Widener never confirmed claims that Harry turned back to fetch his Bacon.

What is certain, however, is that Mrs Widener made a gift of 2 million dollars to build, within the grounds of Harvard, a library that would house her son’s collection and serve as a memorial. That library opened its doors in 1915, still exists, and was designed to house 3 million volumes on several dozen kilometres of shelving.

À lire ensuite

An Untold Poe Story: The Gold Bug and a Binding in Human Skin

Dear bibliophiles, good day.

Apart from books on the occult sciences and a few French illustrated Gothic-letter books (gothiques à figures), I buy few books outside these themes. Last year I departed from this line of conduct: I bought a book that was apparently harmless.

Judge for yourselves. It is a small-format volume, half-bound, of a text by Edgar Poe: “The Gold Bug”. The edition is of little interest (Paris, Dentu, 1892). On the substance, it is true that one spends a pleasant little moment discovering this story of treasure, but there is nothing here to make a collector’s item. Yet I did not hesitate for a second, holding my bids until the victorious fall of the hammer. The sale took place in San Francisco last year.

Edgar Poe having died in 1849, the copy could not possibly have been enriched with an autograph inscription. It is a note on a flyleaf, in another hand, that discloses all its interest. It is signed C.E.S.W. No doubt it is Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852–1944), American author, attorney in Portland, Democratic politician.

He gives the book to his friend “John”, with the following note:

“Dear John, what a tribute to the morbid death-loving Poe to bind the « Gold Bug » in human skin, or is it an attempt at a pun ? Poe humani en peau humaine.” C.E.S.W.

Wood asserts to his friend that the book is bound in human skin. At a glance one sees that the skin is not quite so ordinary. The binder took care to decorate the spine with motifs drawn from the story: from the orbit of a skull set on a branch hangs a thread at the end of which swings the gold bug (an illustration of a key moment of the tale); at the foot of the spine, a scythe and a spade (tools used in the search for the treasure).

The binder signed his work on the inside board, taking care to state: “Relié en peau humaine. G. Rykers” [Bound in human skin]. A wholly unique precision. Gustave Rykers, of the Royal Academy of Belgium, was a master binder at 18 rue la Paille in Brussels at the end of the nineteenth century.

Though the photograph is not dazzlingly sharp, one can make out the lozenge pattern on the skin, a sign that one is indeed facing human skin and not pigskin, whose pores form triangles.

I cannot bring myself to run an analysis to answer the question: is it really human skin? Two reasons for this. The first: the evidence suffices to convince me that it is authentic. The second: it would require taking a sample that could damage the binding.

So why, you will ask, buy such a book at all? There are surely several reasons. Here is an object of high curiosity, morbid to be sure, that I like to leave for a moment, revealing nothing of its nature, in the perplexed hands of friends who come to discover my library. It is pleasant to watch their reaction when I confess what they are really holding between their fingers: the surprised faces, and in the end, curiosity satisfied.

How much skin do we brush against every day? Have you never touched a dead person? Is it because skin is so familiar to us that we can find it shocking to cover a book with it? Its touch, you can believe me, leaves a strange sensation. The book is diverted. It takes flesh. It puts on a skin that is not its own but is ours. Unconsciously, this is perhaps what really shocks: that a piece of life can thus be diverted to the making of an inanimate object. That said, I do not believe the binder was moved by so profound an intention, acting on a par with a god giving life to what has none. I see in it simply, like Wood, the curious expression of a pun: a binding in “human skin” (peau) on a book “by Edgar Poe”.

F.