Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Harry Elkins WIDENER
He has been described as "undoubtedly the most able, intelligent and discriminating of all American book collectors".
Harry Elkins Widener (Jan. 5, 1885-Apr. 15, 1912), collector of rare books, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., of a wealthy and cultivated family. He was a grandson of P.A.B. Widener and William Lukens Elkins [qq.v.]. His father, George Dunton Widener, and his mother, Eleanore Elkins, fostered the boy's love of books. Having prepared for college a the Delancey School, Philadelphia, and the Hill School of Pottstown, Pa., he entered Harvard College, where he pored over "Book Prices Current" and learned the joy of collecting. Graduating in 1907 he decided to make collecting his life work. He acquired a profound knowledge of bibliography, not only storing up details of rare editions in his retentive memory but seeking out volumes that had human interest. Cowper's "The Task", a copy once owned by Thackeray, had the novelist's note: "A great point in a great man--a great love for his mother"; Widener's frequent reference to this sentiment bears on the close bond between him and his mother. One of his favorite books was the Countess of Pembroke's own copy of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" (1613). Stevenson's work made a great appeal to him; "Treasure Island" was always with him on his travels, and in 1912 he prined privately Stevenson's "Memoirs of Himself." In 1913 Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, who started him on his career professionally, printed privately a catalogue of his Stevenson collection.
Widener passed days in the auction room, rummaged through dusty alcoves of book shops and under book-laden tables, and spent happy evenings in conversation with Bernard Quaritch and Rosenbach. Yet he realized clearly that mere gathering of books leaves no permanent profit to mankind. He once told A. Edward Newton that he did not wish to be remembered merely as a collector of a few books, however fine, but in connection with a great library (Newton, post, p. 352). With this aspiration , he went to London in March 1912, and spent much time with Quaritch and at Sotheby's. At the Huth sale he obtained Bacon's "Essaies" (1598), saying to Wuartich, "I think I'll take that little Bacon with me in my pocket, and if I am shipwrecked it will go with me." He then set his face homeward. In the early morning of Apr. 15, 1912, he stood on the deck of the stricken TITANIC while women pushed off in boats, his mother among them, and at 2:20 he went down with the ship. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard College was given by his mother and was opened June 24, 1915. A portrait of Widener by Gilbert Farrier is in the library.
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