A True Bibliophile

“Books have the happy faculty of being a third person without making a crowd.”

Edwin Jackson Lowell to Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1876

Of all places, I came across this striking quote during my recent first time visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. I’d been intrigued by the infamous art heist of 1990 and was quite curious to see the empty frames left behind by such brazen thieves. That the crime remains unsolved only heightens the fascination.

I was expecting to be wowed by the extensive collection of masterpiece paintings and rare artifacts, tapestries, ceramics and sculptures accumulated by the devoted patron of the arts. And indeed I was. But I hadn’t been prepared for Isabella Gardner’s deep passion for literature, having assembled nearly 1500 volumes in her collected works, including some very rare first editions. Although not available for viewing at the time, she acquired a first Florentine edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, illustrated by Botticelli. On exhibit was her first edition copy of Hawthorne’s A Scarlet Letter, which I was thrilled to see along with correspondence between Isabella Gardner and Henry James, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, a few of the many authors with whom she’d corresponded.

It was as I viewed the precious items displayed in protective cases ~ including a lock of Shelley’s hair or was it Keats ~ that I spotted the quote of Edwin Jackson Lowell, a Massachusetts lawyer and historian who obviously shared Isabella Gardner’s love of books.

Although the discussion of books is a nearly constant aspect of my life, I’d never thought about it in such a deeply reflective and personified manner as Mr. Lowell so eloquently stated. However, I find it to be a lovely and perfectly accurate sentiment.