Ralph Heyward was born on July 2, 1890 in New York City, New York, United States, the son of Henry Heyward Isham, president of the Marietta, Columbus and Cleveland Railroad, and Juliet Calhoun Marsh Isham, a poet who published several volumes of verse.
Isham was educated at private schools and attended Cornell University (1908 - 1909) and Yale College (1910 - 1911). He also enrolled in the New York Law School but never took a degree.
After traveling to Mexico and the Malay Peninsula to hunt big game, Isham returned to New York, where he wrote a series of newspaper articles that brought him the epithet "The Millionaire Reporter. "
In 1915 Isham enlisted in the British army as a private. He was later commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, serving on the staffs of field marshals Sir William Robert Robertson and Douglas Haig.
After the war, when Lord Haig was commander in chief of the Home Forces in Great Britain, Isham was instrumental in averting a mutiny by disaffected troops and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. After returning to New York, Isham was associated with several firms, including Trumbull Securities Corporation, of which he was president. While at Yale, Isham had become interested in the writings and lives of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson and had begun to collect their works. As he put it, "That's when I started on the 'downward' path. "
After World War I, collecting became a commanding avocation. Early in 1925 rumors began to circulate in the rare-book world that some Boswell manuscripts were preserved at Malahide Castle, near Dublin, the seat of James Boswell, sixth Lord Talbot de Malahide and great-great-grandson of the biographer. In the summer of that year Chauncey Brewster Tinker, a professor at Yale who had published an account of Boswell's early years and an edition of his letters, was shown some Boswell manuscripts at Malahide but was not given access to them. A. Edward Newton, a collector of books and manuscripts, especially those by Boswell and Johnson, also heard about the cache and mentioned it to Isham. Isham immediately wanted to buy and publish the papers, a project for which he was well suited. Preliminary approaches to Lord Talbot through a London attorney resulted in an invitation to visit Malahide on June 15, 1926. The delicate transactions concluded fourteen months later with an agreement that Isham would purchase "the collection of papers, manuscripts and letters, by, or belonging to James Boswell, inherited by me as his great-great-grandson and otherwise, " as well as the publication rights to them. He refused to divulge what he had paid for the collection. The 584 items included diaries by Boswell, manuscripts and letters by him, letters to him, manuscripts not written by him, and a few printed pieces. These appeared to be all of Boswell's archives that could be found, although it was known that there were other papers somewhere at Malahide, including two cases that had not been opened since they were shipped from Boswell's home at Auchinleck, Scotland, shortly after 1905.
Between 1930 and 1971 about a dozen additional parts of Boswell's manuscripts were discovered at Malahide; at Fettercairn House in Scotland (home of Baron Clinton of Maxtock, descendant of Sir William Forbes, one of Boswell's literary executors); at Auchinleck; and at other places connected with Boswell. Other manuscripts, such as Johnson's letters to Boswell, were still missing twenty years after Isham's death. In 1938 the courts awarded him a half-interest in papers found at Fettercairn in 1930, and after World War II he managed to buy the other half. The persistence with which Isham sought and secured new material, either by further agreement with Lord Talbot or by purchase after long and expensive litigation, is an achievement unequaled in the history of collecting.
For Isham's income had fallen sharply during the Great Depression and he had privately published a sumptuous eighteen-volume edition of the manuscripts then in his possession, The Private Papers of James Boswell From Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt. -Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham (1928 - 1934). A catalog (1931) and an index (1937) also were issued. The costs of printing the Private Papers and of his purchases of the seemingly endless finds stretched Isham's resources to the utmost, but he never abandoned his dream of bringing together and publishing Boswell's papers.
To raise money Isham lectured on the papers, reluctantly sold most of his own books and a few Boswell manuscripts, agreed to commercial publication of the manuscript of Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides (1936), and appealed to his friends. James H. Van Alen, a wealthy sports-man, lent him nearly $150, 000. Another indispensable friend was Donald F. Hyde, a New York attorney who collected Boswell and Johnson manuscripts.
The history of the sale of the papers is almost as complicated as that of their assembly. Many potential buyers had been daunted by the price and by the legal complexity of obtaining title to the collection. Finally, on June 28, 1949, the papers were sold to Yale University for $450, 000; $300, 000 of that sum was a gift to Yale from the Old Dominion Foundation established by Paul W. Mellon, and $150, 000 came from the purchase of the publishing rights by the McGraw-Hill Book Company. In May 1950 Isham sold Yale important additional material that he had secured from Lady Talbot. His dream was realized. The substantially complete collection has been preserved and is available to scholars, and its publication is proceeding; by 1976 ten volumes of a trade edition and three volumes of a research edition had been issued, with a total of forty to fifty volumes projected. Isham's literary and artistic interests were not confined to Boswell.
A close friend of T. E. Lawrence, he aided the latter in his publications and preserved their correspondence. Three sales of Isham's books (American Art Association, 1927 and 1933; Sotheby, 1930), which included works by authors ranging from Bacon to Wilde, offered evidence of his concern to preserve works in immaculate condition and his love for evocative association.
Isham's last years were shadowed by the absence of his manuscripts and the loss of attention this entailed. He had long suffered from the effects of a shell explosion in World War I, and his chronic asthma worsened. He died in New York City.
Ralph Heyward Isham will be remembered as a collector, who found most of the papers at Malahide Castle or at Fettercairn House, Scotland. None surpassed him in singleness of purpose for twenty-five years; in the devotion of his labor, his pleasure, and his purse to that one end; and in the completeness of his achievement. He also was the author of The Private Papers of James Boswell and secured the commercial publication of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1936).
(First edition, limited to 415 copies. Printed by William ...)
Isham wrote as he talked, with wit and grace. Tall and spare, he exhibited the careful carelessness of the upper classes; tense and almost painfully concentrated in his emotions, he was as quick to respond to empathy in others as he was to brush aside feelings he did not share. He also could be royally generous or imperially demanding. The mixture of elements in Isham's character was not of the usual sort; the great and the small were both powerful.
British in speech and manner, Isham had many influential English connections and was an instinctive manipulator and a skillful negotiator.
Quotes from others about the person
The epitaph on Samuel Johnson fits him equally well, for "no man can be said to put you in mind of" Isham.
In January 1914 Isham married Marion Gaynor, a daughter of New York Mayor William Jay Gaynor; they had one daughter. The couple separated in 1915 and were divorced in 1920.
In 1924 he married Margaret Dorothy Hurt; they had two sons. The marriage ended in divorce in 1933.
Later Isham married Christine, Viscountess Churchill; they were divorced in 1938.
He married a long-time friend, Sarah Lummus McAdoo, in 1949.
