income, you have your charge accounts in department stores and medium
class shops, in book stores on Booksellers’ Row, as Fourth Avenue
between Eleventh and Fourteenth Street was so justly christened, or
perhaps in one of the many book shops on Fifty-ninth Street. The
merchants here will not pay so very much attention to your wishes and to
your tastes, but try to impress you with the sanctity of the merciless
goddess “Vogue.” The salesman doesn’t care that you detest ruffles and
fringes. They are in season and therefore you ought to wear them or you
are a back number and he treats you with contempt. The department store
book salesman will tell you that Robert Chambers’ last novel is “_The
Best Seller_” and if you tell him that Chambers doesn’t write to your
taste, he will simply pity you, and tell you that “_Everybody_” is
reading it, and that is final.
But if you are poor or your circumstances permit you to expend only a
certain amount of money for your clothes and for your books and you
despise the department store atmosphere with its alluring bargains that
persecute you ever after you were weak enough to buy them, like spooks
of murdered souls, then adventures galore are in store for you,
especially if you live in New York. Because one day surely you will run
across “that marvelous dressmaker” who charges only a couple of dollars
a day, follows your ideas, creates dreams of garments, and makes
dressing a pleasure for you.
And in the strangest parts of the city, like a geranium pot on the sill
of a tenement house, you encounter once in a while a real book store in
New York. Is not the discovery an event in our unromantic lives? Looking
over the dust-covered treasures is an exploration into strange lands,
and usually a talk with the proprietor himself charms us like the fairy
tale of long forgotten childhood.
Second Avenue, around First Street, is the promenade of that part of the
Bowery which has not yet been turned into factories and sweat shops.
Here are delicatessen stores, second-hand furniture dealers, grocery
shops, ice cream parlors, drug stores, moving picture theatres, with
crudely painted advertising boards depicting scenes from
blood-and-thunder dramas. Then there is Kettel’s Theatre, where they
play Shakespeare in Yiddish. Thousands of men and women people the
sidewalks and street. Roumanian, Hungarian, German and Polish with a
Jewish accent are spoken here, and Yiddish, of course, the guttural
sounds of which give the ear the same sensation as the eye receives from
the window display of the foreign looking pickles, fancily prepared
onions, and enormous strangely-shaped sausages of the stores. The women
are without headgear, in underskirts, with blankets or shawls around
their shoulders, their shoes unbuttoned; they have run out to buy
something. Everybody on this street seems to buy or sell, talking
loudly, bargaining with a passion inherited through generations. On the
corner of Second Avenue and First Street is the Municipal Court, with
its crowds of lawyers, of fighting, screaming and excited men and women
on the doorsteps.
Mr. Kirschenbaum’s Shop
Who in this beehive has time or desire to view the book stalls in front
of Mr. Kirschenbaum’s book store? Why did he select this extraordinary
location for his shop? A tall, heavy-set, broad-shouldered Pole, with
blonde whiskers, blue eyes, and an expression of kindness on his face
that doesn’t seem to correspond with the muscles of his arms of which no
prize fighter need be ashamed. And if you walk into his shop you’ll find
almost any time between eight a. m. and midnight, men and women there
like yourself, from all parts of the city, buying all sorts of books, as
recently on a Saturday afternoon when a young girl asked for a copy of
Thomas a Kempis and an old man for a copy of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales.
He has a little bit of everything in his shop, but you have to take the
trouble of looking through it in order to discover the “gems” you are
looking for. Here is Mr. Kirschenbaum’s story in a few words:
“I served twelve years in a Polish regiment of the Austrian army as a
non-commissioned officer. Later on I was an agent of officers and of the
nobility in Galicia. There was nothing that I wouldn’t buy of them or
that I wouldn’t sell to them. If they needed money I got it for them.
One day I decided to emigrate to this country.
“When I arrived here, I got a push cart, went through the streets of New
York, bought up everything people had no use for, and then I sold it in
the Bowery from my cart. They called me the “Siegel Cooper of the East
Side.” Soon I specialized in books. I didn’t know books and their value
and I sold them as I am selling them today, as merchandise. I buy them
for a certain price and I sell them at a certain profit, and I don’t
care how much they are really worth. I haven’t got time to look real
values up. I’m too busy selling in quantities. One of my sons knows
books. He opened a shop on Fourth Avenue, but I’m satisfied to turn over
my stock as quickly as I can. I always had known big people in the old
country, and some of them I met here in influential positions. I had a
hard time during my first years in America, and they offered me great
positions in some branches of business that they knew I was an expert
in, but the first demand they made was to shear off my beard: I knew
what that meant. I looked too Jewish to them. My beard was never touched
by a razor and never will be as long as I live, and my insisting upon
the preservation of the exterior of an orthodox Jew made me impossible
in any leading position of a business organization, so you see I had to
start an independent business. That’s how I happen to be here.”
Mr. Kirschenbaum’s shelves and tables contain something of everything in
all languages about all subjects. To spend a couple of hours in his shop
will prove that there is nothing new and original in this world that has
not been written about by somebody years and years ago.
A Specialist in Excitement
If you think that the sensational paper novel, the mystery story in
installments printed on newspaper, the dearly beloved Nick Carter
stories, are things of the past because you don’t see them in the
regulation book stores where “intellectuals” meet, you are mistaken.
They are as widely read as ever, and Mr. Joe W. Knoke specializes in
these delights of certain old ladies, of boys and young girls. His
little store on Third Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets is filled
up with the most gruesome experiences in crime and adventure.
“I have been here for twelve years,” he said recently, one could hardly
hear his words, so great was the noise of the elevated thundering on its
structure and the heavy delivery wagons rumbling over the old-fashioned
cobblestones.
“I know my customers well. Some are reading detective stories
exclusively; they don’t want anything but detective stories. The younger
generation prefers old magazines with short stories to paper novels. I
buy them by the pound from rag dealers, from the Salvation Army and
everywhere I can get them. People pay as much as five cents for such
back numbers. Once upon a time lots of Irish people used to live in this
neighborhood and many Irish ladies still come to my shop to buy the
works of Charles Garvice and of Bertha M. Clay. These are clean, good
love stories. After they are through they bring them back and I allow
them a few pennies on their next purchase, but in a few months they ask
for the same books again, and some of my customers read every year the
same books over and over.
“Then there are the shop girls from near-by department stores. They buy
Street and Smith paper novels. The thicker the book the quicker they
take it. They tell each other about the most exciting of these love
stories, and they, too, read the same books constantly. Over there,” and
he pointed to a whole shelf full of mysterious looking pamphlets and
books, “are my dream books, books on palmistry and on fortune telling.
Old ladies buy them. There are just as many dream books as cook books,
and each of these ladies sticks to the same brand for almost a
life-time. Often they bring in old torn, finger-marked copies in which
the printing can hardly be distinguished, and they wish to get another
copy of the very same book. Perhaps it hasn’t been printed for the last
thirty or forty years, and you should see their disappointment if I tell
them so, and how suspiciously they eye other dream books before they
decide to buy one. Young girls also often are purchasers of dream books
and books on palmistry. They use them for entertainment at parties and
take them along on picnics. One old gentleman comes along every once in
a while early in the morning, buys a magazine for a nickel and then
spends a considerable length of time before my dream book shelf. I
always wonder if he is looking up his last night’s dream. Once I
suggested to him to buy a copy, but he got indignant “because he didn’t
believe in such superstitious humbug.”
The Man Who Knows His Books
A spotlessly clean little store on Thirty-eighth Street near Sixth
Avenue, book shelves all around the walls, friendly pictures right
beneath the ceiling. In the middle of the room a little desk, and in a
chair before it Mr. Corbett, who prides himself on having read every
book that he ever sold. Jack London used to spend hours here whenever he
was in New York, and Edwin Markham received a good deal of inspiration
from Mr. Corbett’s suggestions. Literary hack writers are his daily
visitors; to call them customers would be too optimistic. He dreams of
magazine articles, he invents titles for them and he sells you for a few
pennies all the material to write them if you happen to be a journalist
on the lookout for suggestions.
He has his own peculiar ideas of what people should read and what they
shouldn’t read, and it is not an unusual occurrence that, for instance,
a young girl should enter his shop and ask for a certain book, and he
would answer: “Yes, I have it, but you shouldn’t read it, and I won’t
sell it to you.” And then he will tell her about some other book, and
picture it in such desirable colors that she will change her mind and
buy it instead.
“You know,” he told me once, “the bookseller has a very important
mission in life. The writer writes his books, but he doesn’t know into
whose hands they will fall, the publisher sells them as merchandise to
dealers all over the country, but we little shop-keepers come in contact
with the real readers. It’s up to us to place something in their hands
that might be decisive for their future career, that might inspire them
to great and noble thoughts, and that might make criminals out of them.
A few pennies that we might gain might mean the perdition of lives and
souls.”
The Farmer-Bookseller
Mr. D. L. Haberson is now on Saturdays only in his little book store
that seems so lonesome and solitary on Twenty-third Street near Eighth
Avenue in the midst of cheap rooming houses and the noise of the subway
excavations and constructions that are going on day and night. After
years of toil he has arrived at the goal of his ambition. He has bought
a farm on Long Island. One of those small farms on which one has to be
an artist in order to make both ends meet. But he was in the book
business for such a long time that almost nothing seems impossible to
him, and he used to display many curious books in his shop. Especially
out-of-the-way magazines, edited by out-of-the-way people, were his
hobby. A small man, pale and slender, with the eyes of a philosopher,
what strange desire must have taken possession of him to wish to till
the soil? He installed an assistant in his shop, surely not a lucrative
job, but this man told me: “I like it here. I can read all day and can
save the money that I used to spend for books.” That’s the stuff most of
those little book dealers are made of. They don’t aspire to commercial
success. If they make a living and can read, can read constantly, that’s
their reward in life.
A Night Bird
On Columbus Avenue, between Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth Streets, near
Healey’s Cabaret, a window is lighted no matter at what time in the
night you may pass by. If you look into the narrow shop you will see a
man sitting in a very small space, surrounded by heaps of books, smoking
a long cigar, reading. His store remains closed in the day time and I
don’t imagine that the people who spend their nights in Mr. Healey’s
Cabaret buy books before they go home, or to some other place, but he
doesn’t seem to mind and is perfectly happy with his books, which grow
all around him and make the space in which he can move freely smaller
from day to day. He sits there all night and reads his books and is
delighted to discover some long-forgotten writer, to point out his
charms to you, and doesn’t even ask you to buy.
And there is Mr. Lawson, somewhere far west on Forty-second Street, who
travels about the country picking up old books in farm houses, and Mr.
Schwartz, who used to be a waiter, and who started a book shop near
Astor Place. He wanted to cater to the discriminating readers of the
spices of life, but Mr. Sumner interfered with his intentions and twice
he made the unpleasant acquaintance of the Society for the Suppression
of Vice. He had to pay a fine and do something more painful than that,
and now if a prospective customer asks for one of the proscribed books,
he shudders piously, brings out an old edition of Shakespeare and
recommends the English bard as a suitable substitute for some French
writer.
Jim Gillin, who had threatened for the past eight years to sell out his
book shop on the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Lexington Avenue,
has done it finally, and moved out to his place somewhere in Jersey in
order to breed rabbits, the study and the dream of his life. He had
delved in books for so many years that nobody would have supposed he
would ever change his profession.
Then there is old man Johnson, who prints catalogues every once in a
while and sends them out broadcast from his basement store on
Twenty-eighth Street near Broadway, and who is constantly and
mysteriously busy at his desk, day and night, writing in a big folio.
Perhaps he is writing the adventures and tribulations of a New York book
dealer.
Mr. Stammer, Their Great Patron
Do you ask “How do all these people manage to earn a livelihood?” Mr.
Stammer, the great book dealer from Fourth Avenue, whose specialty is
hunting up every book that anybody in the United States might desire, no
matter when and where printed, and who knows the most obscure book
dealer in the most obscure part of New York, answered this question:
“Because two-thirds of the book dealers in New York are selling
exclusively almost to the remaining third. The big book dealers very
rarely buy books from private sources. These little book shops are our
vanguards, that collect the honey for us and we come and take whatever
we can use, or they bring it to us, and we are glad to have them come
regularly.” Mr. Stammer makes his round to these small book dealers
almost constantly every day. He is their educator and patron. He tells
them what books are worth money, and he pays a good price whenever he
can use them. He is a welcome figure on rent day, and most of the
treasures of these cobwebbed corners wander to the comfortable shelves
of his palace on Fourth Avenue.
1918
Dealers in Literary Property
Letters of celebrated men and women, dead and alive, can today be
purchased in the open market. The more private they are and the more
they incorporate of the writer’s soul, the higher the price.
There is no atmosphere of romance in these transactions. The autograph
dealers sell because they wish to make money. The purchasers buy because
they desire to possess something unique and because they know that the
letters and autographs of celebrities are an excellent investment. Let
us put aside untimely sentiment and assume that it is perfectly proper
to sell at auction Shelley’s love letters, or that a letter of Poe’s
grocer demanding in rude terms immediate payment of two dollars and
fifty cents for food supplied, is a fitting library ornament if
expensively framed together with the poet’s portrait, and let us visit a
few of the important dealers in such literary property in New York.
Mr. Benjamin’s office is situated on the third floor of the Brunswick
building facing Madison Square. This building occupies the site of the
old Brunswick Hotel, once famous as New York’s resting place for the
literati who visited the United States.
The walls of this place of business are lined with enormous safes, a
solitary typewriter clicks solemnly; the dignity of a broker’s office
prevails, such dignity as obtains where deeds are executed involving the
transfer of millions.
Behind an enormous table Mr. Benjamin is seated. Nothing here reminds
one of an antiquarian’s cabinet or of a collector’s museum. It is the
working table of a bank president, whose chief motto is “efficiency.”
“No, there is mighty little romance in this business,” Mr. Benjamin
began, and there seemed no reason to doubt his statement.
“I purchase autographs, manuscripts, signed portraits and all kinds of
literary property in order to sell again. There is an art in buying and
a greater art in selling; it requires knowledge and a certain instinct
or ability to associate events and people so that the value of the
materials increases while in my possession.
“I deal exclusively in gilt-edged autographs of those men who have made
history, literature and music. Our great statesmen are my specialty.
“No museum or library in the world has at present more authentic
original material relating to our War of Independence and the Civil War
than you can see in these safes of mine.
“Framed portraits with short letters by men of note are the side lines
of book and art dealers. You cannot find them here.
“I am the only exclusive dealer in autographs in the United States. I
have been thirty years at the game and I have made a quarter of a
million dollars. Oh! Yes! I have about twice that amount invested in
autographs.”
“How does one become a dealer in literary property? How does one buy and
sell?” were my next questions.
“I can tell you how I did it, but as for the others--I would refuse to
guarantee results--unlike the detective correspondence schools.
“I did not want to be a dealer in autographs as a young man, but about
forty odd years ago I had dreams that some day my own autographs would
be valuable, or that at least I should be able to sell some of them to
publishers and editors. My father, Park Benjamin, had been a literary
man and a poet of note. He successfully edited big daily papers in New
York. I graduated from Union College, served my apprenticeship on
country magazines and was at the age of nineteen, editor of the
Schenectady _Daily Union_.
“I made good and went to New York. I worked for eleven years as reporter
for the Sun, several years directly under the great Dana.
“Interviews with big men were my specialty and some day I shall write my
reminiscences, which will, I think, make interesting reading. I
inherited the poetical vein from my father. A book of my poems appears
this month. In the book store of my brother, who sold once in a while an
autograph of a celebrity, I met several collectors and studied their
hobbies. I saw wide possibilities in the field if the business were
handled scientifically, and I devoted myself to it exclusively.
“In September, 1887, I started a monthly paper, _The Collector_, and I
have published it ever since. It reaches not only my customers and
people to whom I might be able to sell, but librarians and historians as
well, and it is largely quoted in biographies as I reprint unique
letters and documents which otherwise would not be accessible to the
public.
“So you see I am an editor and my paper is the oldest trade paper in the
United States--if you can call it a trade to sell literary property.
“An autograph collector graduates from the ranks of book collectors.
“He usually begins by buying letters of his favorite authors to insert
in their works, or to frame with their portraits. Bit by bit he becomes
a regular collector. He finds that autograph letters take up little
space compared with books, and that they are far less liable to injury
by worms or decay. A well-selected collection of autographs will nearly
always prove profitable at an auction sale. The sale draws in wealthy
buyers whom the dealers never reach and their competition ensures high
prices.
“Genuine autograph collecting has nothing to do with autograph fiends
and their collecting of signatures. A large collection of signatures
well arranged and illustrated with portraits and clippings, is a good
thing--but albums of miscellaneous signatures with no system, and begged
from annoyed celebrities, are little better than trash. When I buy such
a collection I break it up at once. Notes responding to requests for
autographs are no better than signatures. They are out of place in a
good collection. A letter should contain some of the original thought of
the writer, and, if possible refer to incidents of his life or to his
writings.
“My regular customers, people who buy constantly whenever I have
something to offer them in their special line, are not the movie
millionaires you can meet in the art shops and book shops on Fifth
Avenue. They are usually retired business men, and physicians,
well-to-do or of moderate means, university professors who have to save
in order to be able to buy autographs. Every one of them has made a
study of some literary or political celebrity, or is interested in some
period of our own history. All documents or letters needed to complete
their collections are welcome. But I also count among my patrons of long
standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their
collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations
rather than part with their treasures.
“Some people are greatly interested in minor literary men of bygone
days, whose autographs were never thought worth saving. I have a search
department for such cases, and I am often curiously successful.
“You would be surprised to find how almost anything you may want can be
found if you do not tire in looking for it and if you know how and where
to advertise.
“I advertise everywhere, and constantly. The smallest country paper
sometimes means more to my business than the big city paper.
“I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the
garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard
of--called there by some heir, who read my advertisement in the paper
and who preferred to sell the literary remains of his grandfather to me
rather than to the ragman!
“And here is the secret of success in this business: constant and wise
advertising.
“Of course the autographs of our best writers are in constant demand.
They have a market price, a price, however, which fluctuates almost from
day to day.
“For instance, if a man dies, his value goes up instantly, if his fame
has not been an overnight popularity. On the other hand, the signature
of the favorite actress will lose all value at her death and will be
forgotten by the public as well as by the autograph dealer.
“On the very day that James Whitcomb Riley was prostrated by a paralytic
stroke and it became known that he would never be able to use his right
hand again, the prices of his manuscripts and letters almost doubled.
“Living English authors, like Kipling or Wells or Chesterton, fetch
higher prices here than in England. Kipling especially brings almost
five times as much here as he does in his own country.
“Of course we buy at auctions. The Anderson Galleries are noted in New
York for their sales and so is the American Art Association. Both appeal
to the collector rather than to the dealer and prices are often
prohibitive.
“Values are being created there and it very often happens that some
collector pays five hundred dollars for something that he refused to pay
fifty for to the dealer.
“One of the hobbies of American collectors is a page with the unbroken
lines of all the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Another
favorite object is the signatures of the presidents of the United
States. I pay a good deal of attention to the latter, having collected
them myself. Do you want to hear my opinion of the handwritings of our
various presidents and some natural conclusions reached as to their
character?
“Most of them wrote a good clear hand. At seventeen years of age
Washington wrote a clear, round hand, upright with a tendency to
ornamentation of the capital letters. In 1760 he wrote a smooth, running
hand, and during the war of the Revolution this changed to the large
beautiful round hand, the finest specimen of writing of which I have any
knowledge. This persisted to his death.