BOOK TRAMP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1940, Page 8

BOOK TRAMP

FINLAND’S GREAT EXPERT. A tramp who was one of the greatest lovers of old books, a homeless vagabond with a collection of printed works so precious that they now enrich four libraries, a connoisseur who had the merest smattering of education. this man must be astonishing, surely. Was there ever such a man?

We may hear of him in Finland, for he was Matti Pohto who was born there in 1817, the son of a poor farmer.

Matti, who had a wandering spirit, ran away from home before he was five, but was soon taken back. At eight he was thrown on the world with so little knowledge that though he could read the printed word he could not (and never could) read handwriting. He kept himself by doing odd jobs. He was often taken by the police for being a vagrant, and :ffor all one winter he was a prisoner in Helsingfors. But later he learnt how to provide himself with necessary papers, and making an income of a few shillings a week by binding old books, he began an astonishing career. He would travel hundreds of miles up and clown Finland, calling at great houses and small, at cities and lonely farms, asking if anyone had any old books to bind. Often he would buy up for a penny or two old printed books which people regarded as lumber, and as the years went by this ignorant tramp became Finland’s greatest expert on the old books of his own country. He gathered four thousand of them, and had then stored in the houses of a few friendly farmers. He never spent a penny on pleasure. He never ate anything more than dry bread, never drank anything but water.

For ten years he gathered books for the library at Helsingfors. He knew how to tell the valuable books from the worthless ones. He knew just where the printers’ errors were to be found. He could date an undated book. He was invaluable as a collector, but he was ever a wandering fellow, and though he was never known to have had an enemy he was killed in broad daylight while resting at an inn. He was only 40. but his amazing collection of books found permanent homes in Finland.