Adrian H. Joline

Born to Charles O. and Mary Hoffman Joline in Sing sing, New York, Adrian H. Joline was a prolific author, as well as lawyer and autograph collector. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1870, and Columbia Law School in 1872, gaining admittance to the bar that same year. He was a member of the law firm Butler, Stillman, and Hubbard from 1881 to 1896, and later in 1905, became a partner in the firm Joline, Larkin, and Rathbone. He and Mary E. Larkin Joline married in 1876. Among the books he composed (c.1894-1912) were the unpublished Dictionary of American Political Biography (apparently composed in his own hand and consisting of twenty-one volumes), the published Meditations of an Autograph Collector (1902), and a large collection of learned correspondence, primarily to W.R Benjamin, which was focused on autograph purchases, history and politics. Some of Adrian H. Joline’s handwritten letters can be found here:

Joline as Collector

“We poor bourgeois collectors, as William Carew Hazlitt calls us, find ourselves hopelessly left at the post, and our humble bid is swept out of sight by the bid of Croesus. We are forced to lie in ambush, swooping out now and then whenever an unsuspecting and un- expected ” find ” comes in our way, or we betake ourselves to the secluded shop on the side street, or to the quais of Paris, where we indulge in the delusion that we may discover those bargains which long since have been mere dreams, not to be realized in this incarnation.”

Adrian Joline, The Diversions of a Book-Lover, pp. 88-9

Because of Joline’s particular predilection for the general study of history and autograph collection especially, we figured that he was likely to have acquired Barnard 01 at some point in his career. Hoping to find a record of the acquisition of Barnard 1, we extensively studied his relationship to his business partner, W.R. Benjamin, to learn about both the circumstances of his life and the way in which manuscripts were typically bought and sold by collectors such as the Jolines’ at the time. Though most of our investigations uncovered the obsession with American politics and the type of transactions we expected to see, we could also clearly see the personality of Joline in the letters he wrote. Based on some of his writings, one can tell that he was both racist and not particularly patient with those around him. Though perhaps such attitudes are to be expected for a wealthy white male lawyer of his time, it is important to acknowledge the sometimes problematic history behind the acquisition of documents. For Joline, manuscripts and autographs were in effect an intellectual playground and a rich man’s passion. He boldly shared his opinions on the different manuscripts he acquired and also the American presidents, which is the context in which he said racist obscenities. The way he ordered manuscripts also seems to have been from a position of extreme privilege, considering he simply sends Benjamin the lists of the autographs he wants, alongside the prices presumably that he is willing to pay for each of them. Below is a collection of a small sample of his epistolary body.^* These letters primarily reveal Joline’s manuscript and autograph purchase transactions, and give us a glimpse into the collecting world of the late 19th century.

Discovering Barnard 1

As his memories of shopping at the quais of Paris suggest, Joline also ventured into Europe himself — and when he did, he would return with new literary finds.

“The word “uncut” recalls to me a small duodecimo of only one hundred and forty-two pages, which I picked up at a book-stall in London.”

Adrian Joline, The Diversions of a Book-Lover, pp. 50-51

Despite all the time we spent with Joline’s correspondence, the closest we ever came to catching a glimpse of what may be Barnard 1 was not in a list of books ordered through Benjamin, but in a recollection of a manuscript bought in Denmark:

Some years ago I brought over from Denmark an illuminated musical manuscript of the fourteenth century which was literally bound in boards, the wooden covers fully half an inch thick and the back studded with iron nails. The intelligent custom-house person who greets us hospitably upon our return home, sagely classed it as “old furniture,” imposing duties accordingly […] What sort of an article of furniture did he suppose my manuscript to be? No one will ever find out.

Adrian Joline, The Diversions of a Book-Lover, pp. 52-53

Though there is no way of knowing for certain whether the manuscript described above is truly Barnard 1, several factors combine to make it a possibility. Barnard 1 is a fourteenth century illuminated musical manuscript with thick wooden covers, and though the manuscript does not now feature iron nails at the back, there are two explanations: Joline might mean the spine of the book, which is studded with nails throughout — or the binding might have been changed once the Ms came into his possession.

• 

• 

In any case, a liturgical manuscript of this size would have been a rare find, so for Joline to have owned more than one such would be rather unlikely. Though our research is ongoing, so far we have seen no other specific mention of a similar manuscript in any of Joline’s books, or in the catalogue of items from the auction held after his death. While this proof is not definitive, it does offer a compelling narrative for the manuscript’s life in the early 19th century. It is possible — though by no means certain — that Barnard 1, resting in private hands in Italy since the Napoleonic wars, could have been purchased by a collector in Denmark, and, from there, wound up in the book-hungry hands of Adrian Joline, to travel with him across the pond.

Joline Among Friends

Joline’s letters to Elizabeth Jordan, a New York-based journalist, editor, author, and suffragist who was also an associate of Henry James, show a different side of his character.

• 

• 

Close to the end of his life, Jordan writes:

New York Nov 2, 1911

Miss Elizabeth Jordan.

Dear Elizabeth — 

… As I am only an elderly invalid man I do not get out much and I haven’t seen you in an age — and you never come here — too busy and too much occupied socially I fancy — I hear you are “looking fine” as the newspapers say.

With many thanks for your goodness

Yours faithfully

Adrian H Joline

At the end, Joline also adds a passage from a book he read recently which mentions one of Jordan’s own books. This Adrian Joline — one whose handwriting has gotten steadily worse, ‘an elderly invalid’ who misses his friends — is the other side of the avid collector.

(Extract from a book I was reading last night).

“Directly across the street is the World office, and looking from the windows, so high up that the city looks like a Lilliputian village, you have the view that Elizabeth Jordan looked upon during the ten years she was getting inspiration for the Tales of a City Room.”

*All images taken with permission from the NYPL Special Collections.