The Collector

The other day, when I unwisely told my wife that I needed a project, she suggested that I undertake the sale of her grandfather’s stamp collection. Her grandfather (1880 – 1955) was a noted obstetrician and gynecologist, a president of the New York County Medical Association, and the author or co-author of occasional articles published in medical journals. But in the ten pages that Google’s search engine yielded about him, his role as a book collector was cited much often than his contributions to medicine.

At the height of his career, he delivered 1,000 babies a year. How he found the time and energy to devote to collecting in a deep mystery. He must have possessed enormous energy. His collections of the works of D.H. Lawrence and John Steinbeck, including letters and page proofs, now reside at Columbia University’s rare book and manuscript library. His collection of early medical books is now in the library of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. His collection of Lincoln photographs, letters, and ephemera, begun by chance when a patient gave him a photograph of Lincoln, has been dispersed, part of it given to Columbia, some of it sold, and some of it in the hands of his grandchildren.

In his “The Physiology and Pathology of Book Collecting” (1949), he wrote about his book collecting passions and about some of the incidents related to them. Alas, our copy is in storage, where I can’t consult it. I only remember one incident. A book collector came to view one of his collections. As he was leaving, my wife’s grandfather noticed that his visitor had pocketed one of his volumes. Drawing his visitor’s attention to this lapse, he then gave the book to him. Whether this shows greatness of spirit or the exquisite infliction of humiliation or a little of both, I leave to you.

His stamp collection at present consists of many volumes of first-day covers – letters postmarked on the first day a stamp was issued - several volumes of sheets of stamps, and a one-volume collection of stamps related to medicine. My father-in-law, who sold the valuable stamps, told my wife that what remained was worth very little. My recent conversation with a representative from a firm that makes appraisals, after I had described the collection and answered his questions about it, confirmed my father-in-law’s statement as to the remaining stamps’ value. But value can be measured in many ways. Building the collection must have been, for my wife’s grandfather, an enjoyable past time, and as the ads for Mastercard say, that’s priceless.

So now my wife and her sister must decide how to dispose of those stamps that they can’t use as postage. Can they bear to throw them out? It seems a shame to dump a collection that was lovingly formed by a beloved grandfather, but it does take up a lot of space. Will they can find a collector who might like to have them or a school willing to take them for use in art or history classes?

It's ironic that my wife’s grandfather, so distinguished and honored for his work as a physician, should be remembered today primarily for his collections of books. But being remembered beyond one’s family circle for anything at all, especially something positive, is no little thing.

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