Annual News&Financial Report - The Mount

Christopher Tugendhat discusses Wharton’s books in
the Ramsden library.
Christopher Tugendhat recounts his pivotal
role in the library acquisition
Christopher Tugendhat played an essential, behind-the-scenes role in bringing
Wharton’s library back to The Mount. Stephanie Copeland asked Lord
Tugendhat to write an account of his part in the story so that it would not be
lost to history, and he has graciously given us permission to print it here.
In the summer of 004 my wife, Julia, and I paid a visit to our old friends
Robert and Elisabeth Wilmers at Stockbridge that changed my life and
that of The Mount. Unbeknown to them I had for many years been a great
admirer of Edith Wharton and collected first editions of her works. “Would
it be possible to visit The Mount?” I asked. “Better than that,” they replied.
“We know the President of Edith Wharton Restoration, Stephanie Copeland.
We will introduce you.” She and I immediately took to each other and the
following day Stephanie gave Julia and me a personal tour of the house and
garden. I was hugely impressed with all that I saw, by the way in which Edith
Wharton’s spirit was being reincarnated in a modern idiom, and by the plans
Stephanie and her team had for the future. “Is there anything I can do to
help?” I asked.
She then told me the story of Edith Wharton’s library. How on her death in
France in 19 7, Wharton had bequeathed the architecture and garden books
to her young friend William Royall Tyler and the literary ones to her godson
Colin Clark; how both the beneficiaries had moved their books to England
and that while Tyler’s were destroyed during the War in the London Blitz,
Clark’s had survived and been sold many years later to George Ramsden, a
bookseller in Yorkshire. Stephanie greatly admired George for the scholarly
bibliography of Wharton’s works that he had produced (a copy of which I
already possessed), for the way he was maintaining the books, and for his
unceasing efforts to find volumes that had gone astray. The problem was
that while she would love to acquire his collection for The Mount, where they
could become the centrepiece of Wharton’s old home as they had been of her
life, she and George had been unable to come to terms.
Numerous contacts had, I was told, taken place, but to no avail. Price was
an issue, but by no means the only one. George knew that he had in his
possession a unique literary archive and wanted to see it go to its spiritual
home at The Mount. But over the years he had invested a vast amount of
time as well as huge commitment. He had also become deeply devoted
to the memory of Edith Wharton and drew inspiration from the presence
of her books in his house. Besides which he had costs accumulated over
many years to cover and capital tied up in the collection. Naturally he wasn’t
prepared to let the books, and all that he had put into them and that they
meant to him, go for too little. He had perhaps been strengthened in this
resolve by the manner of various well-known booksellers who had from
time to time come forward to value the collection. Instead of appreciating
its unique literary value as a totality, they had tended to see it as simply an
agglomeration of individual items to be priced accordingly. Whether The
Mount was to buy it or anybody else, George wanted it to go to and be valued
by a buyer willing to put a financial price on its literary value.
Stephanie Copeland and her committee at EWR understood all this very
well. Nobody knew better than they that the collection was unique, that its
value derived from its completeness, and that bringing it to The Mount would
be like putting the coping stone onto an edifice. But they were stymied.
Whatever the collection’s value to The Mount as the centrepiece of its
restoration and as a fundraising tool might be, potential donors had not been
forthcoming. An impasse had been reached. I therefore volunteered to use
my best efforts to find a way round.
Although I possessed his bibliography and therefore knew of him by repute,
I had never met George. However, once I started making enquiries it turned
out that we had many friends in common, including the well known London
bookseller, John Saumarez Smith whose customer I have been since the
1960s and for whom he had once worked. I also learned that he was
the son of Sir James Ramsden with whom I had been a colleague
some 0 years previously when we were both Members of the British
House of Commons. So it was with hope as well as trepidation that
one cold February day in 005 I took the train from London to York.
George met me at the station and drove me to his old stone rectory in
the village of Settrington near Malton. Except that we were in England
rather than New England, the weather was such that at any moment
I might have expected to see Ethan Frome come looming out of the
snow-covered countryside.
When we arrived George showed me to the upstairs room given
over to the Wharton books and left me alone with them. It was a
most astonishing experience. The completeness of the collection and
the way he had arranged it provided a window into her mind as well
as an understanding of the influences that had formed her. It was
almost as if she had been brought to life. And not just her. Through
the inscriptions in the books they had exchanged, her friends and
contemporaries, such as Henry James, Henry Adams, and Theodore
Roosevelt, were also in the room, as well as her rather nefarious
lover, Morton Fullerton, thanks to the book he had written and
dedicated to her.
When after communing for some time with these ghosts I was called
to the delicious lunch prepared by Jane Ramsden, the three of us
had plenty to talk about. Mostly we discussed the books and Edith
Wharton. But in due course George and I turned to money and terms,
with me making clear that I was not an emissary of The Mount so
much as a facilitator trying to bring the two sides back into contact
with each other. In that I was successful, but a gap remained. It was
as if George on the one side and Stephanie and her board on the
other were reaching out to each other across it with arms extended
but still unable to touch hands.
It was a few months after this that Robert Wilmers re-entered the
scene with a crucial intervention. He had kept in touch with what was
going on and decided that decisive action was required. Would a deal
be possible, he asked, if the financial means were forthcoming, or
were there other factors in the way? I told Stephanie I was sure a deal
was attainable since I believed we had won George’s confidence on
all the non-financial issues. With the backing of Robert and Elisabeth a
revised proposition was then produced, designed to enable the hands
not just to touch but to shake. So again I took the train to York, again
I was let loose among the books and again Jane prepared a delicious
lunch. This time though the denouement was very different. When I
told George what The Mount had in mind, he immediately indicated
that so long as the lawyers and accountants were happy a deal would
be forthcoming. And so it was.
Thus it was that in December 005, shortly before Christmas, I
made my third trip to Settrington. This time I was accompanied by
Stephanie and the London correspondent for The New York Times,
Alan Cowell. People from The Mount were already at George’s house
to help with the packing up of the books, the deal was ceremoniously
signed and cameras and videos recorded the event. Another delicious
lunch was eaten and champagne was drunk. Shortly afterwards the
Edith Wharton library crossed the Atlantic followed in due course by
George to see the books into their new home and to arrange them to
the best effect.
Finally on a showery spring day in April 006, less than two
years after Robert and Elisabeth had hosted that fateful lunch at
Stockbridge, the last act in this literary drama was played out. The
First Lady of the United States came to The Mount to welcome back
to her own country the library of the First Lady of American Letters.
Jane Ramsden (2nd from left) offers a toast to the absent
benefactors after the signing.
George Ramsden (right) explains The Mount’s library layout to
Robert Wilmers (center), Elisabeth Wilmers, and Lord Tugendhat.
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