Huntington Library Corrals a Horse Racing Collection

Library operators know it’s best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Which explains how the highbrow Huntington Library now has one of America’s largest collections of horse racing books alongside such treasures as the 1455 Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio.

A call came out of the blue last year offering to donate the 7,200-volume Edward Lasker collection to the private San Marino research and cultural center.

Lasker was a noted Los Angeles attorney whose career took him from an advertising agency and the decks of a World War II destroyer to Hollywood studios and eventually the boardrooms of some of this country’s largest corporations.

But Lasker was also a fan of the sport of kings.

As a young man he had been a compulsive racetrack gambler. For the last half of his life he was a compulsive collector of books about thoroughbred horse racing and breeding.

At the time of his death two years ago at age 85, Lasker had filled specially designed shelves of his Bel-Air home with endless bound volumes of racing forms, stud books and histories of the world’s greatest turf competitions.

Lasker left the collection to his wife, along with instructions on how and where to sell the books.

Cynthia Lasker did not want to tear apart his life’s work, however.

“I couldn’t bear to break up the collection,” she said. “It meant so much to him.”

She said she decided to offer all 7,200 to the Huntington because she had met its chief rare book curator, Allan Jutzi, and was impressed with his passion for his work.

But she acknowledges that Jutzi was initially lukewarm to the horse racing books.

“I don’t think he was that interested in the very beginning,” she said. “I don’t think he realized the depth of the collection.”

Jutzi, who has worked at the San Marino library for 28 years, admits he’s hardly an equine aficionado.

“Yes, I’ve wagered on horse races, but I’ve never won,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth: I never met a horse I didn’t dislike. I cannot ride a horse--horses and I don’t mix.”

His first glimpse of Edward Lasker’s books gave him a new appreciation of the world of thoroughbreds. And of horse racing fans.

Over here was a book in Latin about horse care written in 1497. Over there was a 1565 book in English titled “The Fower Chiefest Offices Belongying to Horsemanshippe.” It listed the four main elements of horsemanship as breeding, raising, riding and horseshoeing.

Back with the bound editions of the Daily Racing Form from 1897-1979 was a curious seven-volume set of scrapbooks compiled by an eccentric 1930s track scholar that traced the career of William Clift, one of the earliest jockeys to ride at Newmarket, England. Stuffed inside were original forms detailing such things as race results from an Aug. 4, 1729 turf competition (“Mr. Bathurst’s chestnut, Robinson Crusoe And His Man Friday, won 100 guineas in the first heat.”).

Lasker’s library contained breeding histories, auction records, steeplechasing results and books on equestrian law from the 19th and 20th centuries. There were volumes about Persian, German, Russian, French, Italian, Australian, South American and Asian racing.

Won over, Jutzi agreed to have the huge collection stabled at the Huntington.

These days, the horse books are being cataloged and prepared for public exhibition in about three years. Meanwhile, they are already attracting attention.

“I’m finding that more people than I ever knew are interested in horses,” Jutzi said. “It’s surprising how many colleagues have told me they’ve spent a lot of time at the track.”

Huntington officials predict that the collection will draw scholars--not racetrack touts--when it is made available to qualified researchers. They say Lasker’s books are a window on an era when horses were part of everyday life and commerce.

Bill Brown, head of special collections at the University of Miami’s library, said he plans to apply for a Huntington fellowship so he can study the collection.

“I’m just thrilled that the Huntington is able to keep this collection together,” he said. “It’s a perfectly appropriate place. It’s one of the great rare book depositories in this country and it’s between Hollywood Park and Santa Anita--and Del Mar’s just down the road.”

Corralling the horse books is “a real coup for the Huntington,” said Laura Rose, librarian at the National Sporting Library in Middleburg, Va. She said most libraries give sports books the short shrift compared with, say, the early works of Walt Whitman.

But she’s betting that won’t happen with the Lasker collection.