From Private Passion to Public Virtue: Thomas B. Lockwood and the Making of a Cultural Philanthropist, 1895–1935

Near the end of a period often viewed as the golden age of American book collecting, in 1935 Thomas Lockwood donated his rare book library to the University of Buffalo along with funds to construct its first library building. This article examines the nexus of personal identity, book collecting, and civic engagement that transformed Lockwood's gentlemanly hobby into an act of public beneficence. Lockwood's donation of both an academic library and a rare book collection within the sociocultural matrix of a major American city suggests one way in which book collecting both facilitated modernization and sought to blunt some of modernity's perceived perils.

Thomas B. Lockwood's career as a bibliophile began somewhat inauspiciously. While a student at Yale, Lockwood contracted with Boston book dealer Estes & Lauriat for purchase of a number of unspecified titles. When the bill arrived, however, Lockwood attempted to break his contract; perhaps the deepening Panic of 1893 had eroded his financial resources. The dealer refused, threatening legal action: "While the fact that you are a minor might release you from any legal liability in the contract, yet we do not think that your treatment of us is perfectly honourable if you do not at least reimburse us for our loss in the matter."¹ There is no record of how this matter was resolved, and perhaps the volumes became the earliest in Lockwood's library, which would eventually include a Shakespeare First Folio, a Kelmscott Chaucer, and a first edition Moby-Dick. But the word "honourable" may have haunted him, because four decades later, in 1935, in the midst of another national economic calamity, Lockwood would donate his rare book collection to the University of Buffalo along with $500,000 for the construction and maintenance of a library. In doing so he contributed significantly to the university's modernization while demonstrating a love of the Western literary tradition first exhibited during his student days at Yale.

From its shaky beginnings in 1893 to its civic culmination in 1935, Thomas Lockwood's collecting career coincides with a period often viewed as the golden age of American book collecting. Beginning with America's rise to international economic power and brought to a halt by the Depression, this era saw the creation of some of the greatest book collections in American history, many of which were institutionalized in repositories that still memorialize their collectors, such as the Folger, the Huntington, and the Morgan. Scholars have identified various forces behind this urge to collect, including an imperialist drive to assert American power and an antimodern impulse to escape the frenzy of industrial urban life through a sentimental communing with classic authors.² While Lockwood's career echoes these motivations, his collecting suggests something more: that, in seeking to promote the civic good, he both facilitated modernization and tried to offset some of modernity's perceived perils. His gift of an academic library reinforced the importance of scientific research to an industrial economy, while the donation of his rare book collection signaled his belief in the central role of the Western literary canon in higher education. By closely examining the personal and societal contexts in which Lockwood flourished, the golden age of book collecting begins to look less like an isolated elite phenomenon and more like an intrinsic component of America's cultural evolution.

Thomas Brown Lockwood was born on February 7, 1873, in Buffalo, New York, the first child of Daniel Newton Lockwood and Sarah Brown Lockwood. Behind young Thomas lay a family history that reads like an archetypal American success story. On Daniel's side the family claimed descent from early English settlers in Watertown, Connecticut, but it also had deep roots in western New York, with both sets of Daniel's grandparents migrating from New England to become part of the first generation of settlers on the Niagara frontier. Daniel's uncles brought the Lockwood name into local prominence in the 1850s and 1860s, with one serving as mayor of Buffalo. Daniel received his B.A. from Union College...