My father Anthony Hobson, whose books are to be sold at Christie’s in two sales next week, claimed that the book collector’s greatest joy was the sight of an empty shelf: a vacuum begging to be filled. Such a thing was a rare occurrence in our home, so freighted with literary matter, mainly upstairs, that the advice of a structural engineer had to be sought: were we all about to be buried beneath an avalanche of bibliographical rarities?
On the landing stood the vast tomes on Renaissance book binding, my father’s lifelong study – serried dark objects stamped with words that sounded to my young self like spells: Sigismondo Boldoni, Aldus Manutius. But in the library itself, where my father used to read us bedtime stories, the large glass-fronted cases were filled with his friends. A shelf of Connolly, his step brother-in-law, immortalised for me after I watched ET with my mother: ‘But he’s just like Cyril!’ Bruce Chatwin, the languid boy who lay in a deckchair on our lawn. Kingsley Amis, husband of my godmother Elizabeth Jane Howard, Anthony Powell, VS Naipaul – all frequent lunch and weekend guests, some more benevolent towards children than others. Growing up in such an atmosphere of bibliolatry, my teenage rebellion took the horribly effete form of reading first editions of Lord Berners in the bath. I may have also sipped Cinzano. I don’t think I ever dog-eared a page.
Since my father’s death aged 92 last year (only ten days after his last review was published in the TLS) my brothers, sister and I have spent the winter packing up his library, his pictures, his furniture – a more final goodbye, it has sometimes seemed, than seeing him gently lowered into the ground on a glorious July day. The latter felt natural, after such a long, rich, productive life and a short bout of pneumonia; the former still has a whiff of sacrilege. Even dropping Lord Berners in the drink would not have been so wicked, I can’t help worrying, than scattering this lovingly gathered collection, these precious marks of friendship abroad. And yet I am comforted by the memory of his cheerful remarks on the subject.
‘After I’m gone, you must arrange a sale with a beautiful catalogue, and let other collectors have their turn.’
Somewhere there are empty shelves waiting to be filled.
Comments
Comments will appear under your real name unless you enter a display name in your account area. Further information can be found in our terms of use.