of the United States.” Of course that argument was final, and I wished
him luck with his purchase.
1918
II.
Strange to say, most of the bookshops in New York with individual appeal
are modern places only recently established, and their proprietors
young, often very young people. Most of them are up-to-date business men
who had their training in different lines. They were lovers of books,
they realized the possibilities of a “bookshop with a soul,” they opened
shops after their own hearts, and are meeting with success.
The Oxford Book Shop
Alfred Goldsmith’s is the youngest of New York’s book shops. This is to
be found on Lexington Avenue near Twenty-fifth Street, in an
old-fashioned basement, with pillars and nooks, near some of the oldest
auction rooms in the city, just the place for a book shop.
Shelves all around the walls filled with a few thousand well-selected
books, comfortable chairs to sit in here and there, a sacred case of
first editions, all other books well dusted and in neat rows, modern
authors mostly, scarce translations of authors whose names, perhaps, you
have never heard before, but who will be your good friends when once you
have made their acquaintance.
Mr. Goldsmith is a young man, a college graduate with a successful
business career in the print paper industry behind him. He always was a
great reader and buyer of books. One day this fall he decided to open a
book shop, and to get married. He did both, and is well satisfied with
both ventures.
Book collectors are gifted with a sixth sense. It is not necessary to
send them announcements. Some day they are sure to drift in, and if the
atmosphere is congenial they come again and again.
“I love books,” said Mr. Goldsmith, who is a great philosopher and an
excellent talker. “Book selling is a game. The sort of books I am
selling are hard to be found, and quite easy to sell. My great pleasure
is to go about town picking up my books. Once I place them for sale on
my shelves they quickly go. It is wonderfully interesting to observe the
people that come in here to buy books. Of course you know all about the
peculiarities of collectors. But since I have opened my shop I have
discovered some new species of book shop habitues. Let me tell you about
them.
“There is Mr. Pimple, a big, stout, uncouth man of about thirty, who
looks like a butcher and pretends to be a highly educated lover of
books. His specialty is the autograph game. He writes letters to living
authors which read something like this: ‘In a treasured niche of my
favorite book shelf in my library, is a volume that I prize more than
any other book. It is your novel. You would earn the eternal gratitude
of an old book worm if you would have the goodness to autograph it for
me.’ The author receives the letter and imagines some old devoted book
crank, autographs the copy, and returns it to Mr. Pimple at his (the
author’s) own expense. Mr. Pimple makes the rounds of the book dealers
and sells his treasured autograph copy to the highest bidder. Worse than
that, he throws the very letter which he received from the author,
promising the book, into the bargain. Gertrude Atherton, Richard Le
Gallienne, Katie Douglas Wiggins and many others have autographed whole
sets, forty and fifty books at one time, for Mr. Pimple, who went so far
as to take advance orders for such sets.
“How little he really thinks of the authors to whom he sends his stock
admiration letter the following story evidences: One day he asked me if
eight books of Upton Sinclair, first editions, would bring good money if
autographed by the author. I answered in the affirmative. Pimple looked
up the address of Sinclair, wrote him, received a favorable reply and
found that it would cost forty cents to send the books by parcel post to
Pasadena, Cal. ‘Too much money,’ he remarked. He tore out the fly
leaves, sent them on, Mr. Sinclair autographed them, Pimple pasted them
carefully back into the books and sold the whole set on the very day.
“But the best trick was the one he put over on the publishers of Ambrose
Bierce. After Bierce’s disappearance, collectors were hot after his
first editions and autographs. Bierce’s publishers had a good many
letters and presented one to each purchaser of the author’s collected
works. Mr. Pimple paid them a visit, talked for more than an hour of his
admiration for Bierce, mentioned once or twice that circumstances did
not permit him to purchase one of the sets, and finally declared that
the ambition of his life was to own a letter in the handwriting of ‘the
greatest writer and artist in the world.’ The sincere enthusiasm of
Pimple, his insistence, the pleading of poverty, finally induced the
publisher to give him a short letter of Ambrose Bierce as a gift.
‘I will never part with this treasure. I will always carry it in my
portfolio, near my heart,’ were his parting words. He came directly to
my shop and told me the story. We were talking about Bierce as a
customer entered and soon took a hand in the conversation. ‘I’d like to
get a letter of Bierce,’ he explained. ‘I would be willing to pay seven
dollars and a half for a short note in his hand.’
“I hardly believed my eyes! Mr. Pimple took out his portfolio from near
his heart and offered his treasured letter of Bierce for the seven
dollars and a half.
“This man is known to every rare book dealer in the city. And he isn’t
the only one of his clan. He is tolerated because he produces inscribed
copies of authors that are hard to get.
“Then there are the habitual book thieves, whom I love to watch. I once
had an occasion to do a friendly turn to one of these gentlemen who are
on our blacklist. He calls himself Van Southall, and in an outburst of
gratitude he made the following confession: ‘I like you, Goldsmith. You
don’t need to be afraid of me. I’d never take anything in your shop. It
is quite different with other dealers. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of
them. If I can slip something in my pocket it is my own business and
their lookout. But you can feel quite safe. I know that you are an
ambitious young man who loves books and I should never harm you.’
Mr. Goldsmith reads a great deal, books as well as human nature. He
rarely makes a mistake in suggesting books to his clients. He likes
people who write books, he likes their personality, and no author can
find a better apostle than Mr. Goldsmith, provided he is congenial. If
you wish to know what authors Mr. Goldsmith does not like, look at his
ten-cent stand in front of the shop. Extraordinary values can be had
there for one dime, because Mr. Goldsmith does not like the books.
Washington Square Book Shop
Just a while before the time when certain people got the ambition to own
a tea shop in Greenwich Village, the very same people thought it the aim
of their lives to be the proprietors of book shops in the vicinity of
Washington Square. Still more ambitious were they. They wanted to print
their own books. The Boni Brothers (now Boni and Liveright) started
their Glebe magazine there, and published pretty little books by all
sorts of authors; Kreymborg here printed his booklets; and many others,
whose fame was too short lived to be recorded, half a dozen of them. One
sold out to the other and finally Egmont Arens purchased whatever there
was left from pretty Renee LaCoste. His became _the_ bookshop of the
neighborhood.
Arens is a born publisher, a litterateur, himself, a connoisseur of good
books, and an excellent business man, to boot. So he became the first
successful business man in Greenwich Village. His shop is crowded with
intellectuals from the whole town. He invites geniuses as well as buyers
of books. His series of plays--there are seven of them published to
date--are the first plays of men who are making their way in the great
theatrical world, and who gave life for a time to the Little Theatre
movement in New York. Arens is a good business man, as I said before,
and so he recently purchased a printing plant and is printing his own
books. His Whitman book is the best on the market, and his next
publication shows his daring spirit.
To publish a verbatim translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s famous
“Reigen,” is surely a courageous undertaking in our times of
Comstockery, Sumnerism and superprudery. These ten dialogues caused a
considerable stir throughout the civilized world. They were translated
into every language, including Japanese, but excluding English. No
English or American publisher cared to give these exquisite silhouettes
of real life to the reading public.
Some months ago a young writer who is known for his imbroglios with the
vice censor (from which he invariably emerged as victor) gave a private
reading of the plays before an invited audience. Arens was there and at
once decided to undertake the publication.
“The publisher ought to be a book seller and should spend most of his
time in his book shop. That is the only way to feel the pulse of the
reading public,” is Mr. Arens’ motto.
It isn’t a bad maxim for a modern American publisher.
A German Bookseller
High upon Lexington Avenue, near Fifty-seventh street, is the book shop
of Mr. E. Weyhe. His specialties are books on art, rare prints, etchings
and books on laces.
“I am a German,” said Mr. Weyhe. “I can’t do anything about it. I simply
have to make the best of it in these times of war. I always have been a
bookseller. I was an apprentice to a bookseller in Germany, and I
learned the trade in the old German way. I worked from six o’clock in
the morning until ten o’clock at night for three long years. I loved to
travel and was employed in shops in Germany, Italy, and finally I
settled in London. There I opened a shop. Unfortunately for me the war
broke out. I had to close up and the next best thing to do was to come
over here. The British Government most courteously gave me permit to
leave, and I will never forget the kind words of the policeman who took
me to the steamer. ‘I hope you will soon come back and not stay in
America’.”
Mr. Weyhe caters to moneyed collectors exclusively. People who buy books
on laces for $250.00, or a history of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ work for
$350.00, people who want rare things and to whom money is no object. He
is a friend of the artist and writer, who are welcome in his shop, to
whom he lends books on chance acquaintance, because he believes in human
honesty and has unbounded faith in his fellow-men.
“People trust me. Why shouldn’t I trust them,” was his simple remark. It
seems quite wonderful to think that Mr. Weyhe came to America four years
ago as a refugee and without funds, and owns today a choice stock of the
rarest books, the confidence of his clients and credit wherever he
desires it.
Mr. Gerhardt’s Den
Opposite the library on Forty-second Street, high up in a medium sized
sky-scraper, is Mr. Gerhardt’s den. Christian Gerhardt is a specialist
in out-of-the-way books by out-of-the-way authors. He issues catalogues
every month, and these catalogues are indexes of curiosities of
literature. Pamphlets by well known authors, perhaps their first
literary products, books by fanatics, and by poets whose songs were
never known by the world. Individualistic magazines of whose existence
you have never heard, fill long rows of his book shelves. But whenever I
think of Mr. Gerhardt I remember that unhappy singer of our East Side,
of Zoe Anderson, who called herself the “Queen of Bohemia,” who founded
the Ragged Edge Club, and presided for years at its unique sessions in
the “old Maria.” Miss Anderson struggled for years with printers, paper
dealers, and news companies in order to give us her little magazine.
_The East Side_, a fearless free-lance sheet, in which she attacked
everyone and everything. The champion of the outcasts and sweatshop
workers of the East Side, living among them, writing about them with
greater understanding than any contemporary writer, poor Zoe ended her
own life as cheerfully as she had lived after telling all about it in
the then current and last issue of her magazine. Zoe Anderson had been a
well known newspaper woman on the staffs of many metropolitan papers,
including the _New York Times_.
Gerhardt was her lieutenant, the moving spirit of her Ragged Edge Club,
master of ceremonies of the jolly dinners she used to give, and master
of ceremonies at her funeral, where they carried out her last wishes:
The same band that had played merry dances for her while alive, played
the same merry dances during the burial ceremonies. “The East Side is
mournful enough. I have always tried to make them happy. Let them be
merry to the tune of gay music while they are burying me,” were her own
directions.
Gerhardt became her literary executor and her few books, together with
bound copies of her magazine always occupy a place of honor in his den.
1918
III.
Forty-second Street loses its brilliance on Seventh Avenue and shows all
the way down to the West Side ferries the sad degeneration of a New York
street that was once a fashionable residence section. Glaring electric
signs from Fifth to Seventh Avenues. High life after dusk. Eighteen
theaters. Cabarets galore. The amusement center of the metropolis around
Broadway. The seat of learning in one whole block on Fifth Avenue. The
moment you cross Seventh Avenue, cheap rooming houses, tenement
dwellings, sweat shops. Wealth and poverty rub elbows. Puritanical
decency on the borders of the city’s mire. Lunch rooms, garages, plumber
shops, dirty Jewish and Italian groceries, loan brokers’ offices,
everywhere signs “Rooms to Let,” gaudily dressed women emerge from dark
house entrances on whose stoops laborers read their evening papers.
Children everywhere, ragged, uncared for children.
In the midst of this typically American panorama, pinched in between a
repair shop and a restaurant, is Mr. Lawson’s book store. He sells
books, too, but I would rather call his place of business an
“intellectual exchange.”
“How can you sell books in this neighborhood?” I asked of Mr. Lawson on
my first visit to his shop. I knew him a dozen of years ago in Chicago.
He’s a book man of the old school. He knows books, is well read, well
known among the members of his guild. Americana had been his specialty
and many a scarce and rare item had he discovered in days gone by.
“What a strange place you have selected here in New York.”
“Stick around for a couple of hours and you will see yourself that book
stores of my brand are actually needed in this sort of neighborhood in
New York,” was his off-hand answer, while he continued counting green
and yellow tickets, assorting them by their colors.
“What are they?” I asked.
“Coupons,” was the answer. “All these people in my neighborhood insist
on getting coupons with all their purchases. So-called profit-sharing
coupons. They get them with their cigars, with their soap, with their
butter, with most of their victuals. Each of these coupons represents a
certain cash value. Here in this catalogue,” and he showed me a
voluminous book with many pictures, “you can see what they can exchange
for their coupons if they choose to save enough of them. Here lies the
point. They never save enough of these coupons. Most of my customers
live from hand to mouth, often they are in actual need of ten or fifteen
cents. I buy their coupons. At other times, again they come down here to
buy coupons in order to complete the needed number of the slips and to
exchange them for some household article, but mostly for ‘gifts.’ You
would be surprised how they like cheap bric-a-brac, phony jewelry and
most of all, cut-glass--imitation cut-glass, of course. Most of my
business is done after 6 o’clock in the evening.
“See the music rolls over there? A player-piano concern established some
time ago a branch in this section and got rid of hundreds of
instruments. And whenever the people need money they bring me their
music rolls. I pay a few cents for them. But that’s just what they need.
They sell them on Thursday and Friday. On Saturday, after they receive
their pay checks, they buy new ones. It is a part of their life’s
routine.”
An old woman came in with a bunch of magazines, Mr. Lawson bought them
for a few cents.
“She keeps a rooming house,” he explained. “Her roomers are cheap
comedians, who never stay longer than a couple of days or so, and always
leave magazines when they move. She sells them. She also sends her
roomers down to me to buy magazines if they get lonely in the evening
and inquire for something to read.
“You see that man?” and he pointed to an old fellow who was examining
carefully a big heap of magazines. “He’s the news dealer from the
corner. He runs in several times a day and buys lots of magazines. The
American News Company grants him the return privilege on certain
magazines for 30 days and others for 60 days. He buys any standard
magazine of the current week here for a nickel, some even cheaper, and
then he returns them to the news company at full value. For instance, he
buys a 20-cent magazine for a nickel and the American News Company
credits him with 15 cents upon its return.
“There is nothing on earth that you can not sell in this neighborhood,
and on the other hand, you would be constantly surprised what people
will offer you for sale.”
The store was crowded. Boys wanted detective stories, women dream books,
foreigners dictionaries, somebody was trying records on an old
phonograph in the back of the store. A woman who still showed traces of
great beauty wanted to get rid of hundreds of photographs of herself,
showing her in exotic stage costume.
“But how about these oil paintings?” There were some magnificent
pictures in one corner and really good books right next to trashy
novels. “That’s the other side of my book business,” answered Lawson.
“Dealers come in from all parts of the country and I have the whole day
to myself to attend auctions, to visit collectors. A good many gems have
drifted in here. Doesn’t it look like a junk shop? And I dare to say
that very few dealers in New York have such valuable books, autographs,
prints, paintings and etchings as I have at times right here among all
this junk.”
A procession of strange people continued to pour in. Everybody bought
something, sold or exchanged something, half a dozen languages were
talked simultaneously and the cash register rang merrily through the
noise and constant chatter.
“There must be lots of money in this novel game of yours?” I asked of
Lawson. “Of course there is,” he answered cheerfully. “The individual
purchases are small, but judge for yourself how many people are coming
in and then don’t forget that every one of them is a steady customer,
coming down here almost every other day. Buying or selling, but I am
always the winner. And I dare say that these people would miss me. I
provide for them amusement, pleasure, and even education, and do they
not come to me in their need?”
Casement’s Book Emporium
Book stores, like mushrooms, never grow solitary. Only a few doors south
is another book store. Nothing but books and magazines. Mr. Casement is
the proprietor. Somebody told me once that Mr. Casement is a second
cousin of Sir Roger Casement. But Mr. Casement denied any relationship
with the great Irish patriot. He could not deny, however, his Irish
origin. “I sell magazines mostly to my neighbors here, detective stories
to the boys and Meade’s books to the girls. But the dealers from all
over town come here and pick out whatever they want.”
All his books are alphabetically arranged and I don’t wonder that many a
scarce book can be found amongst his stock. Mr. Casement is a solitary
figure among the book dealers of New York. Very silent, always kindly,
smiling, obliging and unassuming. Often in the twilight, when he drinks
his cup of coffee, and eats his herring with rye bread, I love to drop
in and watch his self-content and real satisfaction with his life and
with his lot. He is the only happy man among all the book dealers in New
York--from hope and fear set free--content among his books.
The Madison Book Store
The only uptown book shop that keeps open in the evening. The visitors
here are quite different from those on 42d street. But I guess they are
as lonesome and often as helpless as the people who come to Mr. Lawson’s
shop. There are the strangers from the big hostelries on Fifth avenue,
the girls from the Studio Club, and a good many physicians from the
nearby clinical buildings. Mr. Alexander A. Salop is the master of the
mansion. A young man, studious looking, perhaps because he wears eye
glasses. A shrewd business man but books are not only merchandise to
him. He reads much in several languages, has his likes and dislikes in
literature and keeps always a great variety of modern German and French
books. A little room in the back of his shop is consecrated to the
bookworms. A few comfortable chairs, reading lamps, library tables, it
looks very homey and too inviting to simply buy and go. Peter Stammer,
who calls himself “The Original New York Book Hunter” and who knows
_the_ book if it was ever printed anywhere and at any time in this
world, comes here often in the evening to pick up books, but mostly to
chat, to “swap” experiences.
Mr. Stammer ought to write his memoirs for the benefit of contemporary
literature. Here are a few interesting bits gleaned from him several
days ago:
“Did you ever know,” he asked, “that Henry James had a sister? She must
have been a literary woman of great ability. About 40 years ago I was a
typesetter in an English town. I remember the most curious job I ever
had to do was a book by Miss James. It was a sort of autobiography most
extraordinary. A big book of several hundred pages, very intimate and
outspoken. Only three copies were to be printed. The type was destroyed
and even the proof pages had to be returned. I wonder what ever happened
to that book. I wish I could have made a copy of its contents. I set up
the first edition of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol.’ That was in
Boston while I worked for Benjamin Tucker.
“You would naturally think that a book printed in many millions of
copies could never become scarce. I thought so, too, until I ran across
a poem by Bret Harte, his _Excelsior_. I didn’t find the poem among his
collected works. Bret Harte collectors didn’t seem to know of its
existence. I started inquiries to investigate and I found that this poem
had been written as an advertisement for a well known soap, had been
printed in millions of copies, distributed free of charge all over
America. Curious enough, my copy was the only existing one outside one
in the files of the soap concern.”
Mr. Stammer knows books and people so well, has met so many writers, he
really ought to retire from business for a year and write his
reminiscences.
1918
IV.
Book dealers and dressmakers are very much alike. Both supply us with
things most necessary in daily life, and with its useless luxuries. If
you are rich you walk into an exclusive dressmaking establishment on
Fifth Avenue. You tell the dressmaker: “I want to look slender, I like
such and such a color, I want long skirts or short skirts.” You ask for
an evening gown or for a street dress or for an afternoon gown. And if
you are rich and wish to buy books you’ll go next door to the exclusive
book shop, you will tell the salesman: “I want a novel or a biography,
something serious or something humorous; I don’t want it too free.” The
salesman will size you up and will bring forth the books which you will
wish to take with you. At your next visit, dressmaker as well as
bookdealer will have your “size” and your “number” and you will not have
to repeat your special desires.