He maintained friendships with a number of significant individuals, including Siegfried Sassoon, the novelist Forrest Reid and the uranian poet and librarian Charles Sayle.

At the age of 17 he found a job as "Second-Class Assistant" at the University Library at Cambridge (then housed in the mostly medieval Old Schools building), and started work on 29 January 1900 earning 10 shillings a week.

In his youth, he had been a member of the circle of handsome (and sometimes homosexual) young men who congregated at Charles Edward Sayle's house in Cambridge, including Rupert Brooke, George Mallory and Geoffrey Keynes, who remained a close friend throughout his life.

[4] Charles Sayle, employed at Cambridge University Library since 1893, became one of the chief figures in his life, taking the young Bartholomew under his wing.

But they remained friends until Sayle's death in 1924, by which time Bartholomew (now in his early forties) now suffered from similar anxieties of growing old in an ever-youthful university city.

[7] In 1909 he bought a copy of the Doves Press Shakespeare's Sonnets at a cost of £1 10s (which he called 'a horrible extravagance') and in November that year was sounded out by Sydney Cockerell about becoming Emery Walker's assistant.

A. Symons, founder of the First Edition Club, published a piece on Rolfe in 1926 which focused on the more scandalous aspects of his life, and for reasons which are unknown, Bartholomew eventually gave up on his projected biography.

At Bartholomew's death his precious scrapbook (now at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas) was lent to Symons, who used it extensively for his 1934 biography of Rolfe, entitled Quest for Corvo.

To this he added his knowledge of books and prints, and with these he decorated his house (including his portrait, by John Wells, now hanging in the University Library), and so began to enjoy a well-deserved domestic comfort.

The task of writing Bartholomew's obituary fell to Keynes, one of his executors (along with Brian Hill and W. J. H. Sprott)[12] who wrote: He combined in a remarkable degree the qualities of human sympathy and common sense, and these with his imperturbable temper and wide knowledge made his small room in Cockerell's Building a constant place of call both for readers and for other members of the Library staff.Bartholomew's diaries (covering the period 1904 to 1925) are housed at Cambridge University Library (MS Add.8786/1/3-14), and he also appears frequently in the diaries of Charles Sayle (CUL MS Add.8501-8510).