life, and gradually growing larger until the individual letters were
bigger than those made by any other president. At the end, when his
sight failed, his writing became an irregular scrawl--on and off the
line.
“Thomas Jefferson started with a fluent running hand, and this
characteristic his signature retained throughout his life. Shortly
before the Revolution his hand changed to a round, upright form and so
continued.
“James Monroe wrote a very running hand, crowding his letters together
and often going off the line. He fancied a heavy writing pen.
“John Quincy Adams wrote a plain, perpendicular hand with no
ornamentation, almost a backhand. In late years it showed much trembling
in the letters, but remained clear.
“James Buchanan wrote a round, running hand, sometimes large and
sometimes small, with each letter well formed. His writing continued the
same all his life.
“Abraham Lincoln wrote at first a plain running hand with letters well
made and words well spaced. As years passed it became more upright until
at the end it was straight up and down.
“Ulysses S. Grant wrote an unformed school-boy hand when he left West
Point. This improved and became firm, but was never a good hand. Of late
years it was a running hand, with letters incomplete and other marks of
haste. On the whole, one of the poorest hands of the lot.
“James A. Garfield wrote a handsome running hand when a general in the
army. The letters were well formed and the words well separated.
Altogether a fine, clerkly hand. Later it became irregular and tended
towards the upright, and lost its beauty.
“Grover Cleveland began with a large, angular, running hand, and
gradually changed to a small, lady-like hand of great regularity. At
first it was like Madison’s.
“William McKinley wrote a fine plain running hand, with letters well
formed and a tendency not to lift the pen between words.
“Theodore Roosevelt has written the worst hand of any of the Presidents.
The letters are badly formed, the lines in poor alignment and altogether
they have a very scratchy appearance. They bear marks of haste, of a
mind outrunning the pen.
“William H. Taft has a fine, handsome, regular, large running hand.
Altogether a handsome letter.
“Woodrow Wilson writes a very handsome hand, with letters well made,
freely running in straight lines--altogether of the copperplate order.
His letters seem to be written with deliberation and care.
“Washington and Polk wrote the handsomest letters, and Roosevelt and
Grant the scratchiest.”
Mr. Benjamin is the great pioneer in his chosen field, the prince of the
autograph-dealers. The money he makes in autographs he invests in real
estate. He owns a magnificent summer home, and all because he knows how
to buy and how to sell letters of dead and living celebrities.
The Market Price of Some Autographs
S. L. Clemens $11.50
Thos. De Quincey 18.00
George Eliot 23.00
Eugene Field 31.00
Alex. Hamilton 50.00
John Paul Jones 280.00
Rudyard Kipling 24.00
R. L. Stevenson 100.00
Alfred Tennyson 28.00
Wm. Wordsworth 21.00
Ben. Franklin 132.50
Geo. Washington 227.50
John Adams 57.50
Thos. Jefferson 37.50
W. H. Harrison 24.00
Zachary Taylor 90.00
Andrew Johnson 120.00
Wm. McKinley 67.50
Theo. Roosevelt 12.00
W. H. Taft 55.00
A. Lincoln 210.00
Mr. Madigan’s Interesting Shop
A complete change of scene. The most fashionable shopping district of
New York, just around the corner of Fifth Avenue in Forty-fifth Street.
A window filled with expensively framed autographs marks the sanctum of
Mr. Francis P. Madigan. He is a jovial man who has all the qualities
which make for the success of our Fifth Avenue art shops. He knows when
to stop talking, he knows when to say “the word” which closes the deal:
he sells to his customers, they do not buy from him. The high walls are
hung with innumerable autographs in appropriate frames, signed portraits
of great celebrities; some little drawings and sketches by lesser known
artists--Mr. Madigan also dabbles in art. His specialty is selling books
signed by their authors. He is one of the few men who realized Oscar
Wilde’s importance at a time when no one paid much attention to this
unfortunate poet. In the course of years he collected a mass of Oscar
Wilde material, and he is now reaping the harvest.
I spent an afternoon in his shop. Quite a study for the observer of
human souls was the procession of visitors who came and went
continuously. They pay for autographs of men who never could even sell
their work during their lives. Mr. Madigan has sold more Poe material
during the last ten years than anybody else.
Poor Poe! During his entire literary career he hardly got in direct
returns as much money as this dealer in dead men’s letters receives for
one single epistle.
The Poet’s Income
A letter of Poe, dated New York, January 18, 1849, also in the
possession of Mr. Madigan, allows us to look behind the scenes of a
literary workshop of the early fifties. It is addressed to John R.
Thompson, the editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, one of the
most powerful literary magazines of the time. Poe offers his services as
a critic at the rate of two dollars a page, provided Mr. Thompson
obliges himself to take not less than five pages each month. The irony
of fate was never better exemplified. The manuscript which he offered at
two dollars a page is now worth four hundred and fifty dollars. The very
letter in which he offers to sell it at that sum was purchased a short
time ago for five hundred dollars.
“New York, Jan. 13, ’49.
“My Dear Sir:
“Accept my thanks for the two _Messengers_ containing Miss Talley’s
‘Genius.’ I am glad to see that Griswold, although imperfectly, has
done her justice in his late ‘Female Poets of America.’
“Enclosed I send you the opening chapter of an article called
‘Marginalia,’ published about three years ago in _The Democratic
Review_.... My object in writing you now is to propose that I
continue the papers in the _Messenger_, running them through the
year at the rate of five pages each month, commencing with the
March number. You might afford me, as before, I presume, $2 a
page.... If you think well of my proposal, I will send you the two
first numbers (10 pp.) immediately on receipt of a letter from you.
You can pay me at your convenience, as the papers are published or
otherwise....
“Very truly yours,
“EDGAR ALLAN POE.”
“Jno. R. Thompson, Esq.
“P. S.--I am about to bestir myself in the world of letters rather
more busily than I have done for three or four years past, and a
connection which I have established with two weekly papers may
enable me, now and then, to serve you in respect to The
_Messenger_.”
Our interview was interrupted by a handsome youth with a fashionable fur
coat and who used very broken English.
He desired to buy autographs of French “big people,” and of composers
and of musicians of all nations. Mr. Madigan brought out his royalty
portfolios. Louis XIV. and Marie Antoinette were the star pieces. The
youth did not hesitate long. He bought them and took about two dozen
letters of musical people. He ordered them all framed and sent up to his
studio. He offered English bank notes in payment of the bill (some four
hundred odd dollars), but Mr. Madigan insisted on receiving United
States currency, and so the man went to a nearby bank, returned shortly,
and paid.
“What does he want with them?” I asked, astonished.
The whole transaction had lasted less than fifteen minutes.
“He is a musician,” replied Mr. Madigan, “who will play the social game.
He will invite some very rich people to his studio, the walls will be
hung with the autographs he has just bought, and he’ll tell them about
his ‘dear’ relics of his ancestors and will also point familiarly to his
‘dear’ friends the musicians and composers.
“If he succeeds in his game, he will keep the autographs, but most
likely he will come back to me in six months or sooner, financially
embarrassed, and will beg of me to buy them back.”
A well-known poet came in. Mr. Madigan took him to the back of the
store. The poet wrote for a little while and then handed the sheet of
paper to Madigan. A short conversation in subdued tones, and the poet
left the shop. Madigan told me that the poet had written an
extemporaneous ode on Oscar Wilde. “He often comes in,” Mr. Madigan
continued, “for a chat and presents me quite frequently with a few lines
of his poetry. Once he had not left the shop more than half an hour. I
sold the poem he had just written to another friend of mine for ten
dollars.”
An old lady entered. She unwrapped a parcel that she had carried under
her arm. A lot of letters and photographs. I felt that she resented my
presence during the coming transaction. I turned my back. I listened to
a long lecture by Mr. Madigan about the cheapness and undesirability of
the autographs which she offered to him for sale. Finally he offered a
few dollars and the old lady, reluctantly, pocketed the money and left
her parcel.
A young woman entered next--an interior decorator doing Mrs. Van X’s
breakfast room. It had come into her head that Cardinal Richelieu’s
picture and signature in that charming Louis Quatorze frame would be
ideal between the lavender window hangings. She asked the price and had
it sent.
A newspaper man was the next visitor. He wanted a picture of Stephen
Crane, the poet, to illustrate a Sunday story. Mr. Madigan fished out a
portrait from many others, card indexed and filed away in a specially
constructed cabinet.
And so it goes on continuously, the whole day, buying and selling.
Schulte’s Book Store
Scattered about the throbbing city are a few quiet nooks and corners
that seem especially made for the lover of antiques. They are not
numerous, but full of a certain charm. Book stores, with big boxes in
front of the doors, where you can choose for your pennies, tomes in
old-fashioned binding and printing. Inside are shelves laden with books
in delightful disorder left by the book-hunter who looked through them
before you. The narrow passageway becomes narrower on each visit you pay
to the shop because of newly-arrived books and pamphlets.
A long vista of boxes and cases well filled with a delightful miscellany
of books marks the front of Mr. Schulte’s book store on the southwest
corner of 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Don’t cast suspicious looks
at the nice girls in immaculate white blouses who loiter about the
aisles. They won’t interfere with you. They won’t ask you any questions.
You will soon feel at home after you have glanced at the titles of the
books on any shelf, and if you meet Mr. Schulte he won’t be a stranger
to you. There is such a deep-founded relationship between the man and
his books and customers. He is the appreciative, sympathetic
co-collector and, after you have gained his confidence, if the
friendship is mutual, he will spread out his gems before you: a first
edition with a rare imprint, or some unknown etching by Whistler or
Haden or Zorn.
George D. Smith, Speculator in Literary Property
A new type of bookseller has developed since books and literary property
have become commercial and subject to corners created by shrewd buyers
and holders, and to fluctuations caused by selling _en masse_. Mr.
George D. Smith, the king of rare books and great dealer in literary
property, operates on the largest scale.
Mr. Smith buys carloads of books for millions of dollars and sells again
by the carload to millionaires who build palaces in California and who
order their libraries complete. Mr. Smith is the leading figure in our
auction houses where he buys, excluding all competition, by paying an
exorbitant price for anything he desires to possess. He is a millionaire
and the chief counsellor of our _nouveaux riches_ when they furnish
their homes with rare autographs and valuable books.
Mr. Cadigan of Brentano’s
After you have passed the stairway in Brentano’s leading to the basement
and properly admired the framed autographs and signed portraits which
cover the walls, you will pass the gate that leads into the kingdom of
Mr. Cadigan, another dealer in literary property but of quite a
different type. Mr. Cadigan is the head of Brentano’s periodical
department. He knows the development of the American magazine better
than anybody else living. For a score of years he has watched successes
and failures, but nearest to his heart are the magazines of those men
who have had the courage to stand up for their own ideas and their own
conception of the world.
Some of the most pathetic figures in American letters have founded
magazines of their own; they would not follow the example of their
contemporaries or submit to the wishes of their publishers and to the
presumed desires of the reading public. Mr. Cadigan knows them all. He
recommends them if he thinks them commendable. While the gigantic trusts
of our American news companies afford them very little or no chances for
circulation, Mr. Cadigan adopts them and presents them for sale on his
tables next to the full-fledged products of the capitalistic press.
I get more satisfaction and pleasure out of Brentano’s basement devoted
to periodicals than out of all the periodical reading rooms of all our
public libraries combined, with the Carnegie institutions thrown in. To
be able to look over the current issues of magazines and to take home
just the interesting ones carries with it an intimate satisfaction.
1917
Young Madigan
Everybody calls him young Madigan to distinguish him from his father,
“old” Madigan, the dean of the autograph craft in the United States. Tom
Madigan is young in years; about twenty-five; but he was bred among
autographs. There is a lot of romance and excitement in finding
autographs. It stirred the imagination of the boy. While his schoolmates
indulged in Indian stories and enthused themselves with the mysteries of
Sherlock Holmes, Tom Madigan went about searching for autographs. Old
country houses, dilapidated and deserted mansions, garrets even were his
hunting grounds. He had a wonderful scent. He found old trunks with
letters and manuscripts, boxes with documents and deeds, and his father
taught him to separate the chaff from the wheat.
Tom read a good deal. History and biography mostly. He became his
father’s walking encyclopedia. There is a good deal of the born reporter
in Tom, and at a tender age, he discovered his literary inclinations.
His autographs furnished his material, dead letters became alive in his
hands, magazines and journals were glad to print his rambles and
discoveries. We thank him for a good many sidelights upon the private
life of illustrious personages. One day Tom disappeared. The fact is he
got married and started a shop of his own. Knowledge was his only
capital, and today at the age of twenty-five he ranks among the first
autograph dealers in America.
“Yes, we have to get high prices for autographs,” Madigan said,
smilingly, while opening his enormous safe to show me some specimens. “I
believe this is in some respects the finest tribute the present
generation pays to genius and greatness. These prices are suggestive of
reflection, however, in view of the now almost universal practice of
typewriting letters and manuscripts.
“The written word, as it flows from the pen, has much of the
inspiration, the mental process and the ideals of the writer; the
typewritten word tells nothing.
“President McKinley, to give one instance, was an early user of the
typewriter, and therefore, manuscript letters by his hand are
exceedingly scarce, scarcer and more expensive than long letters by
President Adams, Jefferson, Madison or Jackson. And I dare say that
these will be far easier to procure in coming years than like specimens
by Roosevelt, Taft or Wilson.
“Here, look at this letter written by John Adams. Isn’t it a delicious
bit of intimate history that unrolls itself before our eyes? Adams, de
jure leader of the Federalist party while Alexander Hamilton has the
actual power, is peeved about ‘too much intrigue in this business both
in General Washington and me.’ ‘_If I shall ultimately be the dupe of
it, I am much mistaken in myself._’ And now read this memorable line:
‘_If I could resign him the office of President, I would do it
immediately and with the highest pleasure; but I never said I would hold
the office and be responsible for its exercise while he should execute
it_.’
“Look at this letter by Henry Clay, ‘_Although I am not a member of any
Christian Church, I have a profound sense of the inappreciable value of
our religion, which has increased and strengthened as I have advanced in
years_.’
“Read this note of Robert Fulton’s, the celebrated inventor, to his
lawyer referring to a Mr. Church, his partner, in an ‘enterprise of
small canals.’ ‘_By becoming a partner he took a chance of profit or
loss, but was bound to pay me the purchase money. He failed in his
second payment. I consequently stayed in Europe, not regarding a man who
had no regard for his engagements._”
“Look at this distinguished handwriting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Can
you read between the lines?
“‘_I lent you by mistake a copy of my book, which contains corrections
which I, therefore, need in preparing the next edition._’
“Can you imagine the poet hunting for his corrected book, the printer
waiting until he discovers that some friend has carried it away? And
here is a suave note of John S. Sargent, the American portrait painter,
asking some society woman in words of utmost politeness to come to his
studio for a sitting. One almost can see the $5,000 check paid for the
painting.
“Here read the fuming indignation of an American poet. A letter by
Bayard Taylor, whose London publishers had refused to publish his
‘Masque of the Gods.’ He writes about English prudery to James R.
Osgood, his American publisher. ‘_I return the two London letters. What
prigs the publishers there must be. It is very evident they are afraid,
though why I can’t see for the life of me. If there is reason for it,
then you are the boldest of the bold.... If you see any unusually spicy
or stupid attacks, I should be greatly obliged if you would send them._’
“Lucy Larcon is an American poetess, who is not very well known, but I
think this little poem, evidently never published before, is not bad:
“I said it in the meadow-path;
I say it on the mountain stairs;
The best things any mortal hath
Are those that every mortal shares.”
1918
The Romance of a Chicago Book Dealer
Wells Street, between the river and East Chicago Avenue, is the Bowery
of Chicago. Once a residential section, now the old mansions and frame
cottages, hastily erected after the fire, are dilapidated and are used
as lodging houses and factories of the inferior sort. Here and there a
modern structure, a storage house or an industrial plant. Dan Martin’s
Mission is here, several rescue halls, a Salvation Army citadel, the
famous coffee wagons on the corners of side streets, where unfortunates
are given a cup of coffee, a loaf of bread and advice that should lead
to salvation. The Moody church is the aristocrat of the quarter. Drunken
men and women line the sidewalks day and night; gruesome phonographs are
continually heard in rum shops. Policemen patrol in pairs, and this beat
is considered the most dangerous in the whole city.
In the midst of one of the worst blocks is a large show window. A
pawnbroker would be most appropriate in these surroundings. But it is
not a pawnbroker’s display; there are paintings and, if you choose to
step nearer to examine them, you will scarcely believe your own eyes: a
couple of portraits by Benjamin West, signed; a magnificent etching by
Whistler, with the familiar butterfly in the left hand corner; high up
near the ceiling, between mischievous gargoyles, a large canvas which
one recognizes as a magnificent work of an Italian master. A few Duerers
are pinned to the wall, rows of old books, not dusted for a long while,
are on shelves in the center.
“If these things are genuine,” I thought, “they are priceless treasures;
of course they cannot be.” I entered the shop. There was just enough
space to open the door, to squeeze in: piles of books from the floor to
the very high ceiling, drawings, paintings, carvings, leaned against the
dusty backgrounds of old tomes. It was the most extraordinary place I
had ever entered. There seemed to be some order in this most
astonishing disorder. A little bell sounded somewhere in the faraway
background. It was a very long room. I heard approaching footsteps, very
energetic footsteps. I was astonished that a person could worm his way
through an almost invisible passage between the heaped-up stacks of
volumes--an old gentleman with hair hanging to his shoulders, a long
beard, wonderful eyes which seemed to sparkle in the dim light of the
strange place. I liked him at once; his quiet melodious voice, his
dreaming faraway look and the decision of his manner. I told him frankly
that the strangeness of the place, in such strange surroundings, had
attracted me. I came again and again. And I treasure the hours I spent
in Mr. Doerner’s “book-shop” as among the most pleasant of my life. I
never grew tired of standing up there. There was no space for a chair,
and I doubt if there was a chair in the place.
I think it a sacrilege to call Julius Doerner a book seller or antique
dealer. He is a collector and an antiquarian. He knows his books, and
has more than half a million of them. He treasures his works of art,
delights in showing them to you, but selling? that is another question.
There is not a phase of American history he could not lecture on with
more thoroughness than any American University professor. His collection
of pamphlets, of the earliest newspapers and periodicals, his gift of
finding important contemporary notices relating to American history, in
foreign journals, books and chronicles, is remarkable. I thought him an
eccentric gentleman of means, who after extensive travel round the
world, had decided to lead the life of a hermit among his treasures. He
had, in fact, traveled very little; collecting had been his passion from
earliest youth; he had denied himself for almost three decades the
comforts and good things of this world; and he had found a very
efficient way of beating our high cost of living.
“It is not the high cost of living,” he used to say, “it is the cost of
high living that troubles the world. For years I have expended seven
cents a day for my living expenses, and you can see, yourself, that I am
strong and healthy.”
He is an excellent musician. Beneath thousands of pounds of books an
old-fashioned piano is buried in his shop. He called the pile of
material, that had to be removed before he could open the instrument,
his time clock. Every once in a while he would forget his work (which
consisted mostly of reading and compiling) and would devote himself with
all the fervor of an enthusiast to Beethoven, Bach or Mozart.
Very few customers come to his place of business. If some curiosity
seeker, like myself, attempts to break into his sanctum, they find in
him a courteous but not inviting or solicitous shop keeper. “What do you
want?” is his curt question. If a book is asked for, he will fish it out
from among his five hundred thousand books with an almost miraculous
quickness, name the price, and then it is up to the customer to say
“Yes” or “No,” and the interview is ended. His treasures are all
“finds.” He discovered them in junk shops, in garrets of old mansions,
in unpromising trunks of storage houses. There is, for instance, a most
magnificent soft-shell cameo, a biblical scene, marvelous workmanship of
some exquisite artist of the early Italian renaissance. He bought it
from a pawnbroker for five dollars. He refused a staggering sum from
Tiffany’s and resisted the very tempting price which Mrs. Potter-Palmer
was willing to pay for it, not because he did not need the money or was
holding out for a larger profit (the sum offered him was two thousand
dollars, I believe), but because he preferred to have the cameo himself.
Quite a Romance