told me his story. He was a civil engineer, and lost his wife and child
in the same year. Grief and disappointment turned him against his
profession. He inherited at this time something like twenty acres of
land in Chicago, which were in those days outside the city limits, but
are now the most valuable property in the city. He was waiting for a
final settlement of the estate, and used his idle hours looking about
the book-shops in Chicago. Soon he was well known and well liked by all
the book dealers. He purchased books and his knowledge of books was
astonishing. About twenty years ago Chicago was a great center for book
auctions. Ship loads of books from England were sold here, and Mr.
Doerner soon became a frequenter of the auction rooms. Early printed
books were his hobby. Once he could not resist and put in his bid of
several hundred dollars for a rare collection. The books went to him. He
could not pay, but gave as security a mortgage on his legacy. In
subsequent auctions he bought large lots, increasing the mortgage upon
his real estate. Then came the day when the auctioneers demanded
payment. They foreclosed the mortgage, bought Mr. Doerner’s property at
auction for a ridiculously small amount of money, at once quit the book
auction business, parceled out Mr. Doerner’s twenty acres of land into
building lots, and became--millionaires.
Mr. Doerner bore his misfortune with equanimity. He continued his
regular trips to the book dealers and one day a proposition was put
before him. A book-seller on Wells Street, one of the oldest in the
city, died suddenly, and his stock of books had to be catalogued in
order to be sold at public auction for the benefit of his estate:
“Would Mr. Doerner undertake to catalogue the stock and appraise it; the
estate would pay him three dollars per day for his services?” Mr.
Doerner accepted, and, to make the story short, at the end of six
months, the cataloguing and appraising were not yet finished, the
book-seller’s heirs were unwilling to pay Mr. Doerner’s fees, which
amounted to several hundred dollars, upon the dubious chance of
reimbursement by public auction:
“Would Mr. Doerner accept the books, themselves, in payment of his
claim?” He would.
And so he found himself the proprietor of a book shop.
Mr. Doerner has made discoveries during his career which were of the
utmost importance to American history. His collection of paintings,
especially of American paintings, would fill a private museum. He hates
commercialism, he loves weak humanity, and, strange to say, the
disreputable men and women of Wells Street love him, and he and his
possessions are safe in the most dangerous part of the city.
Or is it true, as he once answered in a rather pessimistic mood: “If
they suspected that I had only one thirty-second carat of a diamond in
my place, they would murder me and loot my shop in order to find it. But
books or paintings, who cares for them in America?”
Frank Morris and His Famous Shop
Chicago had a great literary period in the nineties. Eugene Field had
come to the Western metropolis and was in the early stage of his fame.
Stanley Waterloo had written his books, the White Chapel Club was in its
flower, Oppie Reed and Bill Nye carried the strangest legends of Chicago
throughout the United States on their more or less romantic “lecture”
tours. Ben King’s funeral had created a sensation all over the United
States. The World Fair brought a great influx of English poets and
writers to Chicago. Cowly Stapleton Brown had started his unforgetable
_Goose Quill_ in which he predicted twenty-four years ago that Kipling
had sung his swan song in “Plain Tales of the Hills,” that Hall Caine
would sink into oblivion after a few seasons of best-seller notoriety.
He paid in the _Goose Quill_ homage to the genius of Oscar Wilde, and to
the man who wrote the Elder Conklin stories. Kimball and Stone
established their _Chap Books_ in which America was given a chance to
get acquainted with Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsly, John Davidson,
Stephane Mallarme, Verlaine, Joseph Peledan, Villiers de L’Isle Adam,
Baudelaire here found their first translations, and until today the
_Chicago Chap Book_ remains the only source of information of the lives
and times of the French decadents. Bill Eaton then was the great
dramatic critic who had had his season in London and had come back as
the only American who in one year had acquired a perfect English accent.
Col. Bill Visscher, the famous Confederate editor and singer of the
Southern States had completed his eleven hundred and fifty-sixth
patriotic song and had issued his sentimental “In the Canoe.”
And all this time Frank Morris’ little book shop on West Madison Street
was the center of the very select among artists and literati. Frank
Morris was the friend of all of them. In his shop they used to assemble
and talk of future glories and the fame of the past. Everybody loved
Frank, and many were homeless after his shop had fallen victim to the
flames. But soon he was established again, on Adams Street. Those of his
old friends who were left followed him there, and now, after times of
storm, he is settled in new quarters in the Marshall Field Building.
There is no more genial man to talk to than Frank. He is not only a
seller of books, but is a part of the most important period of American
literature, of our famous nineties. Many poets have written poems to
Frank Morris. Here are two by Eugene Field.
TO FRANK MORRIS:
Believe me by all those endearing old charms
With which your quaint shop is provided,
I shall honor the trade by whose help I have made
A collection of freaks that’s derided.
And if you believe me--when then I’ve to ask
That, till fortune betimes readjusts me
With dollars and dimes for my yarns and my rhymes,
You still shall continue to trust me.
EUGENE FIELD.
October, 1889.
LINES WRITTEN UNDER PORTRAIT OF F. M. M.:
This is the robber, as sure as you’re born,
Against whose guile I fain would warn
The bibliomaniac, tattered and torn,
Who pauses to look at some second-hand book
That lies on the shelf all covered with dust
And is marked “four dollars for cash--no trust”
In a gloomy corner that smells of must
Down in the shop that Morris built!
EUGENE FIELD.
1888.
Powner’s Book Shop
No, there is no accident, no riot on the corner of Clark Street,
opposite the City Hall. The scrambling mass of people are simply book
lovers and book collectors, and Powner’s has got in a new consignment of
books. Such scenes occur every Saturday. The big stalls in front of the
shop are filled with all sorts of books, old Roman antiquities, books on
sports, old poetry, collected by someone who had disposed of his books,
or who had left his treasures behind him. Mr. Powner used to be a school
teacher in Greensburg, Indiana, and he started his book business about
twelve years ago with the thoroughness of a school master. Rare and
valuable books are his own special department, and he leaves modern
books entirely to his clerks.
His shop today is the center for the Chicago collectors. The human
interest he takes in his customers is that of a real antiquarian.
Everybody is at home in his shop. He doesn’t begrudge anyone finding a
gem on his “quarter counter.” Last week, for instance, some lucky chap
found a first edition of Rousseau’s “Emile” with Rousseau’s autograph
presentation inscription to the King and the royal coat of arms on the
binding, and bought the book for seventy-five cents. “Such things may
happen,” was Mr. Powner’s remark when he heard of the transaction. “I am
glad he got it.”
Saturday is the great book day. In the back room upon empty book boxes
men of all walks of life sit around, prosperous business men,
millionaires, who are just enjoying living, students, newspaper men from
the nearby newspaper offices, but they all are linked by a common love.
They are all ardent book collectors.
There are a good many other book shops in Chicago. There is Hill’s, who
caters to the extravagant wishes of Western millionaires. Then there is
McClurge’s, the Model Book Store, conducted like a modern department
store.
But then there is the unique product of the Chicago book market, the
peripatetic book-seller. Half collector, half merchant, these men are
constantly nosing about shops, picking up books in Powner’s, for
instance, for twenty-five cents and selling them at once for two dollars
and a half to Mr. Hill, who they know has an inquiry for that particular
copy. They love the uncertainty of their daily bread. Setting out in the
morning upon their rounds, they look forward to their finds of the day.
In a junk shop they, perhaps, will run across one of those scarce items
which are found once in a lifetime, and again they may find nothing but
worry about the needs of the day.
1916
Chicago Revisited
In Memoriam Julius Doerner
Julius Doerner is dead. He had been a book dealer after his own heart.
Living among his books was his delight. He bought constantly, sold
little and read much: a man who valued his books by their contents. He
was as simple as a girl of sixteen, a bad girl of sixteen.
He wore an alpaca coat and panama hat winter and summer, in snow and
shine. Both were bought ten years ago at a Salvation Army store. Cats
were Julius Doerner’s only companions; stray cats picked up on dark
nights in alleys and doorways. They were named after the days of the
week on which he found them. He never had more than fourteen. “Friday
Afternoon” was a black tom-cat with six toes on each paw. It could talk.
Doerner said so and he was very truthful. He hated women who were
unwomanly, thought policemen incompetent, and lived on seven cents a
day.
He loved his mother, who sent him a fried chicken every Christmas, half
a turkey on each Thanksgiving day, and who brought him into this world
fifty-seven years ago.
He loved her so much that he wanted to give her a gift which no money in
the world could purchase--exclusive, unique. So, he bought an old
Washington hand press, rusty and prehistoric type, and wrote a book for
her; he set it up letter by letter, word by word, line by line, page by
page; distributing the type after he had made only one impression. It
took him three years to complete his book. It took him another year to
illuminate it with rare wood cuts by Durer and Kranach, with miniatures
taken from old hand-written cloister books. He bound it with his own
hands, and tooled the leather of its covers with exquisite golden
arabesques.
His old mother in Pennsylvania could not read a word of English, though
born and brought up in America. She used Pennsylvania Dutch exclusively.
Julius Doerner never slept in a bed but was accustomed to sit up all
night in a Morris chair in the back of his shop. His most exquisite
pleasure, and only recreation was to play Bach, Mozart and Beethoven on
an old spinet.
He wore the same celluloid collar for twelve years, and washed it every
Monday morning with sapolio. The same cake and collar were purchased
from a starving peddler on a very cold night, as an alternative to
giving the peddler two bits for a night’s lodging.
Goethe and Franz Lieber were his favorites; Whitman, Poe and Wilde, his
vaudeville stage.
He cooked vegetable soup in a big tin kettle each Tuesday, and drank it
cold for the rest of the week, until the kettle was empty.
He knew what was great and beautiful in art, letters and life. To him
Jesus was the greatest of men, and Rockefeller the meanest. Money was as
unreal as people who buy books according to auction catalogues and
bindings.
He died in his Morris chair with a book on his knees. There he was
found, rigid and cold, several days afterwards by the grocer, who came
to dun him for last month’s bill, which amounted to one dollar and
eighty-five cents.
Julius Doerner had a big heart, a fine mind, was a Spartan by nature,
German in sentimentality, a Yankee in shrewdness, a lover of truth, an
enemy of hypocrisy and idleness; a friend of outcasts.
He knew books and men, and therefore could not make a success in selling
books to men.
Chicagoans who met him on the street saw his long hair, his alpaca coat
and his straw hat, and called him a freak; others who had met him
thought him a queer one; the chosen few to whom he gave his friendship,
loved him.
He was five feet, eight inches tall, wore locks and a beard that hadn’t
been touched by shears for twenty-five years, didn’t give a damn for
conventions and appearances, lived his own life, subservient to no one,
lording over no one.
The world thought him poor. He was rich.
Requiescat in pace!
* * * * *
Kroch’s International Book Store on Michigan Boulevard is to the West
what Brentano’s is to the East. Shopkeepers have become teachers and
publicity agents. Their clients don’t know what they wish to purchase.
They are too tired or too ignorant to read literary reviews. They let
Mr. Kroch tell them what to read.
Mr. Kroch is an interesting little man. He wears a toupee and a broad
kindly smile. He has the demeanor of a man who has risen from the ranks
and is proud of it. He has kept pace with his success. Money has not
turned his head. He knows that he owes gratitude to the authors whom he
sells. The quainter his find, the more exclusive seems his taste, the
more he pleases his clients, the greater will be his cash receipts. And
so he has an open eye for authors who are not popular.
What greater boast for a book salesman in Chicago than to have disposed
of more than two hundred copies of Oscar Wilde’s Life and Confessions by
Frank Harris? To have induced more than one hundred people to buy each
month _Pearson’s Magazine_? And his clients are the very rich; he
doesn’t tire showing them the other side of life.
Frank Morris is still on deck, issuing catalogues, selling rare books,
delighting his many friends and clients with the charm of his
personality. The man with a literary past is a most amiable companion,
presuming that his heart is filled with love, and that his compassion
overlooks the faults of men. Frank Morris played an important part, if
not a central one, in that lurid period of the early nineties, when
Chicago was the literary Mecca of America.
Powner’s Book Store is the gathering place of book hunters and
collectors.
“Gems can be found here,” seems the unwritten motto that attracts
antiquarians, as a lighted candle attract moths. Young Mr. Powner is in
the Service, somewhere-in-France. Mr. Powner, Sr., had to leave once
more his ranch in Arizona, and assume the responsibilities of a Chicago
shopkeeper.
And then there is Janski, the old assistant of Frank Morris in his late
Adams Street shop, established in a store of his own, selling books as
ever, happy and contented to contribute his part toward the elevation of
Chicago’s literary taste.
On Van Buren Street, near the Boulevard, is also a new and important
book store. Mr. Chandler, for more than thirty years of McClurge’s
Publishing house, has set up his establishment there. Very few books are
in his place, but each is a jewel. He is a sort of a George D. Smith of
Chicago, but minus gambling inclinations. Books for him are not objects
for speculation, but gilt-edged values.
And, of course, I paid a visit to my friend, George Engelke. He is a
great occultist, who has not eaten meat for thirty years. He believes in
the powers of Hanish of lamented memory and is a sincere follower of his
cult. Engelke is like Alfred Stieglitz of 291 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. His
soul seems to walk three steps ahead of his body, or three steps behind
his body. His life is an eternally undecided race, between soul and
body.
The Radical Book Shop is right around the corner. It is a co-operative
store with a large stock of ultra-radical pamphlets and magazines, the
meeting place for all sorts of Bolsheviki, pleasant Bolsheviki, who want
to intoxicate themselves with words rather than with deeds, who are more
eager to have a good time under present conditions than to be martyrs
for a new and better world. And when they want to amuse themselves, and
be real radicals, they go around the block, to the Dillpickle. Mr.
Johns, who is one of the co-operatives of the bookshop, is also one of
the proprietors of the Dillpickle, a sort of restaurant, public forum,
dance hall, and at present “the slum of Chicago,” because some of its
hangers-on were arrested as supposed bomb manufacturers during the
recent I. W. W. trial.
It is a sort of debating club, _a la_ Greenwich Village, with
automobiles in front of it after ten p. m. when the rich come to see the
poor, the law-abiding want to have a peek at the lawless, the properly
married to see the free-lovers.... Chicago is very young, you know! It
is in its bootees. All these “new ideas” are here in flower of
springtime.
I once said, “Were there no Greenwich Village, one would have to be
invented.” Chicago invented its own. The Dillpickle will have many
competitors soon, under the signs of flowers, vegetables and animals. In
a couple of years they will become stale canned goods. And then the
empty cans will be consigned to the ash can. Greenwich Village all over
again!
1919
In Boston
Book stores are the intellectual barometers of our cities. Show me where
people buy their books and I will tell you what sort of life they lead.
Book stores always were and are mirrors of the habits and intellectual
preferences of men and women.
The private library has ceased to be the pride of the home. Homes have
given way to apartments and flats with only little space to spare for
book shelves. The garage has taken the place of the library. We see our
friends in hotels and clubs, we spend our evenings only rarely at home.
Our Age of Electricity and rapid transportation facilities does not
permit us to acquire the placid habits of book collectors and of book
lovers. Sure enough we read books, because we want to know what their
authors have to say. But the author remains a stranger to us, the book
once read is done with forever. We speak about automobiles, we look
forward to owning a machine, we are building garages with the same
enthusiasm that our fathers used to expend on their libraries and their
books.
New York is different. But New York is not an American city. It’s so
near to Europe and its population so distinctly foreign that the change
of the last 50 years is hardly noticeable yet in its book shops.
Detroit, the old French settlement, which only ten years ago was a tenth
of its present size, has no second-hand book shops at all. The Detroit
book dealers mete out light summer fiction which fits into people’s
lunch baskets in the summer and sentimental Christmas carols in the
winter. Technical books, automobile literature are their specialties.
This is only natural. Ninety per cent of the people are building motor
cars in order to make a living; they are the buyers of the technical
books. The minority live in order to buy cars and make motor trips, and
therefore they need light fiction.
The character of Albany is most truthfully portrayed in its book stores.
Our legislators have so much time on their hands that they actually
read historical books, books about Dutch New York, about the Wars of the
Revolution, law books, old state records. It is considered good form to
collect a historical library after being elected to office and residing
in Albany. But curiously enough in these same serious book stores loads
of that sort of fiction can be found which smuthounds of the Vice
Society are eternally trying to banish from earth. Philadelphia, of
course, specializes in Quaker literature; Buffalo, infected by the
spirit of near East Aurora, is swamped with the things Elbert Hubbard
used to love. Chicago discloses the peculiar love for art, literature
and philosophy that its great percentage of German workmen brought over
from their fatherland and left as inheritance to the second and third
generation. It is almost incredible, yet true, that laborers, coming
home from work in the stock yards, stop at the book stalls and buy an
add volume of Kant, or Heines’ “Ballads and Poems.” Chicago always had
the finest German books in the country, most likely brought over by the
immigrants.
San Francisco has a touch of the East. Books on mysticism, have the
honor place. Curious books of all kinds are bought eagerly. Indeed, the
book stores here tell you the story of California’s strange cults, of
its mystics, its prophets and its thousands and one seekers after the
hidden truths of the universe.
The last ten years have wrought an astonishing change in the book stores
all over the country, but nowhere a sadder and more lamentable one than
in Boston, Mass.
Old Cornhill
This oldest street of Boston, the Cheapside of New England, once an
important center of city trade, gave Boston its literary charm. In the
dilapidated old-time queer buildings, half a dozen book stores invited
the lovers of literature. Here was the favorite haunt of the men who
gave Boston a literary reputation. It was here in Cornhill that Thomas
Burnham founded the first second-hand book shop in the United States in
1825. Young Burnham went from here day after day, with a basket of
books on his arm, to the wharves to trade with sea-faring people. Almost
one hundred years have elapsed and the shop is still there. Oliver
Wendell Holmes had his chair and desk in “_The Old Corner Book Shop_,”
and in _Colesworthy’s_ was a hidden nook where Whittier used to hide for
an hour or two, reading newly arrived books, but only rarely buying.
“_Littlefield’s_” was next door, where Lowell, Longfellow and Emerson
used to congregate, talk and occasionally buy additions to their
libraries.
But alas! Boston is no more the Athens of America. The book stores on
Cornhill have shrunk to the number of four. New buildings have invited
modern business to invade the neighborhood. The remaining book dealers,
still following the traditions of half a century, are very old men.
Their days are counted and soon Cornhill will be remembered as one of
the landmarks that have been swept away by the modern spirit and are
gone forever.
Burnham’s Antique Book Store
Richard C. Lichtenstein, fifty-five years ago an apprentice to old Mr.
Burnham, is now the proprietor of the shop. He has many memories of
great book days in Boston.
“The most interesting of all my ‘finds’ since I entered the second-hand
book trade in the late sixties,” he said (he’s a good and entertaining
talker), “was the copy of Poe’s ‘Tamerlaine,’ which created a great
sensation among collectors. This small pamphlet of forty pages,
published by Collin F. Thomas in Boston in 1827, had escaped the
searches of the keenest of book collectors. I usually spent my noon hour
in other second-hand stores, and one day I found this small pamphlet
which I purchased for 25 cents. I had a good many opportunities to
dispose of it, but didn’t sell it before 1892, in auction. It was
knocked down to Dodd, Meade & Co. for $1,850. ‘Tamerlaine’ has remained
unique among all the books, being today the most costly American book
known. I understand a New York bookseller is holding a copy at $15,000.