leaves. There was nothing specially attractive about the book, but the
same intuition for which I never could account and that guided me
through my whole life as a bookseller, urged me to offer the owner
$2.00, which was readily accepted. Later, I found out that the book was
a copy of the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in New England,
Cambridge, 1640. Bishop Hurst bought the book for $1,000, and after his
death, it fetched $2,500 in the auction of his library. But I have also
met with great disappointments. The greatest one was on a visit to an
old Boston family residing on Beacon Hill. An elderly lady, the only
surviving member of this family, wished to dispose of her library, and I
found her seated between two piles of books busily engaged in tearing
out the fly leaves wherever they contained any inscriptions. Nothing
could induce her to stop this barbaric atrocity. I begged of her to let
me examine the fly leaves and titles before she threw them in the open
grate. I saw to my grief, John Hancock’s inscriptions, and George
Washington’s presentation to some lady contemporary, revolutionary
persons of the first importance. Another opportunity I missed was years
ago when Mr. James J. Blaine happened to drop in our shop, selecting a
copy of Count Grammont’s “Memoirs,” asking to have the volume laid aside
for him. He wrote his name on the title page and was to call and pay for
it on his return to the hotel. The incident must have slipped his
memory, for he never returned for the book, and I was foolish enough to
erase his signature from the fly leaf. Especially in our days, where
“_Association books_” were so very much in demand, Blaine’s name in the
“Memoirs” would have been a sought after curiosity.”
Lauriat’s
A sort of Brentano’s in Boston. The gathering place of society, of
students and of scholars. They carry everything from the rarest book to
some new Parisian magazine, whose first number appeared four weeks ago.
Mr. Weber, the head of the firm, looks like Napoleon III, and has the
most splendid contempt for everything new in book lore. Mr. Braithwaite
was in his shop during my visit and it was astonishing to hear the
anthologist of six volumes of new poetry talking a sensible everyday
language.
A New and Evil Spirit
Boylston street faces the big park, is a lively promenade, a good deal
of shopping is done in its neighborhood, a street always densely
populated. _The Garden Side Book Shop_ hung out its shingle here, which
consists of a huge garden gate.
Women have a good deal to do in public life in Boston, and women are
determined to be the intellectual guides of Boston book buyers, at least
of such as wish to be “modern” and “up-to-date.” _The Garden Side Book
Shop_ is conducted by women exclusively. I dare say women must also be
the chief buyers. The most marvelous and costly bindings on rows and
rows of shelves. Books of poetry, novels, anthologies that were never
heard of and what is still worse, will never be heard of, are
beautifully dressed like brainless women, who wear gowns of Worth or
Lady Duff-Gordon. Mrs. Bertha Beckford, one of the proprietors,
approached me with the charm of the reception lady in a fashionable
hairdressing establishment, and invited me to inspect “some darling
little books, the sweetest ever, just arrived from Paris.” I followed
her to a little salon done in pink and canary and viewed little
miniature books, bound in French crepe, a wallpaper effect. There were
French anthologies of bits of poetry and of war sentiment. Dowagers,
with grown-up granddaughters, and studded lorgnettes went into fits of
ecstacy over the “darling books,” and I shouldn’t be surprised if they
bought some and took them “as much appreciated gifts” to some home for
convalescent soldiers and sailors.
Book Shops for Boys and Girls
“Splendid,” I thought, seeing the sign next door. The shop where boys
and girls can come and choose their reading. It’s located on the fourth
floor of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union. It looks like a
pharmacy. There wasn’t a boy or girl in sight. A few old ladies, who
must have left the sewing circle on the third floor, were sitting about,
reading. I looked around the shelves and I wondered if all the Boston
boys and girls lack red blood and the gift of fancy and actually read
the books I saw. Miss Alma Howard, one of the dispensers of this shop,
told me that all books are being carefully censored and selected by one
Bertha E. Mahoney, the director of the Book Shop of the Union. Bertha
seemed to be the ruling spirit. She has forbidden such and such books,
she has placed others on the blacklist, but she also selected books that
ought to be read by boys and girls. I asked what literary qualifications
Miss Mahoney had to qualify her for the censoring. All I could gather
was the fact that Miss Mahoney is Miss Mahoney, a whilom superintendent
of the food shops of the union on the floor below. Needless to say, the
union is a highly aristocratic place, frequented exclusively by the
flower of Boston’s ultra fashionables. Why doesn’t someone start a real
book store for boys and girls? Accessible to everyone, where second-hand
books could be had for ten cents or a quarter?
Every other old building in Boston, and many churches bear honor
tablets, telling us that here assembled revolutionists of 1776. The
Boston of today, with all its laws of restriction and of censorship, is
proud of its ancient rebels. How paradoxical! In talking about laws, a
new one has just been enacted. The police apply to the sale of
second-hand books the same rule as to the sale and buying of second-hand
clothing. A dealer, purchasing books from anyone, has to report the
purchase to the police, describe the article purchased and has to wait
thirty days before he can sell it. The law requires that each book
dealer must pay five dollars for a license. A similar law had been
enacted 60 years ago, as a civil war protective measure. Oh, Athens of
America! Selling books with a second-hand clothes dealer’s license!
Books in Ice Box
Opposite the Copley-Plaza, in a fashionable little building of its own,
is the Dorado of America’s rejected poets and poetesses, essayists,
novelists, free verse artists and of everybody else Amy Lowell and Ezra
Pound would press to their bosom. Here is the book shop of the Four Seas
Publishing Company, and never was there a greater collection of literary
atrocities in one room than in this airy, inviting “Hall of Fame.” The
soul of Amy Lowell greets one uncannily articulate from the page of each
book.
A very ambitious clerk praised the authors of the books higher than
genius has ever been praised in America. “We have bought 81 titles from
the Badger Publishing Company only recently and have not spared any
expense to print the most attractive title and jackets for this new
addition to our stock.” Everybody knows the Badger books. The Badger
Publishing Company gladly accommodates authors of novels and extends to
them the privileges of their printing establishment, provided they are
willing to pay for publication.
I descended to the basement to see the enormous stock of books the Four
Seas Company had acquired. The store must have been occupied by a
wholesale florist previously, and the most tremendous ice box I ever saw
in my life filled the whole basement. The Badger books, thousands of
them, were neatly piled up in the ice box. They were in the proper
place, indeed.
The Mysterious Book Shop
On Washington Street is a very attractive book store, conducted by a
blind couple. Man and wife about thirty years of age, both totally
blind. The shop is scrupulously clean. If you ask for a book, the
proprietor will find it in a miraculous way, provided it is on the
shelves. If you are browsing about, picking up a book here or there, he
will ask you to read off to him the title, and then tell you the price.
Both look happy, contented, and seem prosperous.
I wondered how it had happened that they started in the book business,
that both of them were blind; had they been blind before they married
or had misfortune overtaken them after their marriage? They’re in a
strange and mysterious place, but peaceful and harmonious.
1918
Small Town Stuff
What is the mysterious power directing the fates of small town
inhabitants? Who is it who sells them the same style of clothes, induces
them to furnish their homes so that they resemble one the other like one
egg resembles another egg? Who is it who makes the people talk and think
alike? Never permitting an individual thought, or an expression of
individual opinion?
Everything and everybody seem to be cut after the same pattern.
Unessentials are the important things in their lives, and they miss the
joy of living. They have not learned to be their real selves. They have
not been given a chance. Someone told me once: “America is a young
nation. We are about a hundred years behind Europe. Our people have not
developed yet the sense for beauty and art.” It is not so. America of
the fifties of the last century knew the best in life, letters and art.
But with the first great fortunes made during the early railroad boom
some mysterious powers perverted the minds of America systematically;
created in them the lust for sensation, for things of the minute. And
today people are being fed with theatres and newspapers and libraries
and music and styles, that they really do not want.
They are not given a chance. They must take what these mysterious powers
somewhere on Wall Street think good for them, or they can stay at home,
lose prestige among their fellow-townsmen, suffer in business and be
decried ultimately as “bolsheviks,” or “reds.”
A few weeks in Milwaukee or any other town of its size will open your
eyes. Milwaukee has grown incredibly since 1914, produced several
hundreds of war-millionaires and has the aspects of a most thriving,
prosperous city.
The people crave for good entertainment, good reading, a glimpse of art.
There is an Art Institute heavily subsidized by the city. Its permanent
exhibition is not worth while talking of. Any third-rate dealer in New
York can produce such masterpieces from his stockroom. They are hung on
the staircases and kept in boxes in the cellar of this Art Institute.
The traveling exhibitions are displayed on walls that need cleaning.
There is not the atmosphere of appreciation in this building. The main
space is occupied by a sort of “rummage exhibit” consisting of all sorts
of souvenirs lent by Milwaukeeans, who became members of the Institute.
Articles that can be purchased often in ten-cent stores are here on
exhibition with a card of the proprietor.
The Layton Gallery, next door, is a noble opposite to the Art Institute.
Bequeathed to the city by the late Layton, millionaire packer, his hobby
during his lifetime, it is a real temple of art. In an imposing purely
Greek structure, wonderful masterpieces, collected from all over the
globe, almost every known name well represented. Its curator, Mr. George
Raab, an artist of fame himself, has never permitted commercialism or
provincial small tradesman ambition to enter into his sanctuary. Mr.
Raab, who himself selected the greater part of the collection, has the
rare sense of the antiquarian. His lectures have aroused a good deal of
comment and, incidentally, interest for his gallery. He wishes to make
the artist live again in his work. He has given up hope to convert the
present generation. His hope is the coming generation. In children and
students he tries to arouse a love of beauty and sense of harmony and
color.
There is only one bookstore in the real sense of the word in Milwaukee,
Des Forges’. Its owner is a bookman of the old type, knows values and
authors, has studied his profession in England and France and caters to
the collectors and lovers of the printed word.
“The young people don’t care for books,” he told me. “They do not wish
to accumulate libraries. The women-folk come in and ask for ‘something
nice to read,’ and take my word for it. And on occasion they buy nicely
bound books for gift purposes.” Again here, the mysterious powers behind
the throne. The books that are featured in movie theatres, in
installment novels, and in daily papers are the best sellers.
The New Era Shop, that had recently unpleasant introductions to the
police department, endeavors to sell radical literature only. Its
proprietors are young and therefore hopeful. They may gain, in the
course of years, knowledge of books and then select the right sort of
stock. It is not radical to lend out George Moore’s “A Story Teller’s
Holyday” for $5 for a reading, because ... well radical does not mean
immoral or lascivious. The New Era Shop could inaugurate a new Era for
Milwaukee book readers if its proprietors would inform themselves about
the sort of books worth while introducing to the public. But even to
this shop thanks are due. It may lead to something bigger and better.
The department stores advertise their book departments extensively. Here
is the great hunting ground for the Chambers and Chesters and Nick
Carters and psalm and hymn books. Rosaries are also carried in these
book departments.
The public is not given a chance. David Graham Philips and Susan Lenox
have just reached Milwaukee and everybody is excitedly discussing the
fall and rise of Susan. Several societies for the uplift of poor working
girls have been organized as the direct result of the book.
The theatre buildings are magnificent. Modern, airy buildings with
comfortable seats and all new improvements that make the sojourn in a
showhouse delightful. But the moving pictures shown are again on the
level of newspaper fiction stories, of church sermons and of
best-selling novels. The millionaire, who is a villain and becomes an
honest working man, the poor woman who marries a millionaire, despite
his upstart mother’s protests, the cowboy who “cleans up” a mining camp
and kills a dozen rowdies in order to sink exhausted in the arms of his
boyhood sweetheart whom he had deserted years ago ... and men, women and
children sit through all this.
To have dinners by the light of orange-colored candles while sitting on
the floor or on the pillows gracefully grouped about an anaemic poet,
who reads ephemeral languid stanzas, belongs to the good taste required
in the best circles of Milwaukee.
Smocks and bobbed hair have just made their appearance, and an Art
Magazine will soon add the final touches of estheticism.
Small gift shops have been opened by enterprising dealers from Chicago,
and there will be food for amusement for years in Milwaukee.
But who will come to this one and to hundreds of other towns and give
these good helpless people what they want?
Good books, good plays, good movies and a chance to express their
individualities in a healthy, pleasant way?
1919
New York Book Magnates
“If I were rich,” said a well-to-do broker to me recently, “I’d spend a
few hours every day in one of those book dens on Fifth Avenue. Their
proprietors are delightful people; the surroundings are as comfortable
as a club library. Only it is so intimate there, and they always seem to
have the very things that one wants--and they are so darned expensive.
They seem to be in touch with the whole world, and the mere fact that
they always have new things whenever I drop in is sufficient proof that
the genus of book-worms is not on the dying-out list, and that people
buy costly books even in our times of so many other lures.”
Of course, there are book buyers today who expend thousands and
thousands of dollars for rare books, but whom we would not class with
the enthusiastic broker who wished to be rich in order to be able to
follow his hobby. Rich men often buy their books as investments. They
have their brokers who attend auctions for them, and one day we read
that Mr. So-and-So bought such-and-such a book for a staggering sum of
money, and six months later we receive a catalogue from an auction house
telling us that the very same “book lover” will dispose of “duplicates”
from his library at auction. And, lo! we find the very same
much-advertised rare book in this catalogue. If we compare the price he
receives with the price he paid several months ago; we will invariably
understand why a stock gambler was induced to become a book-lover.
But, as I said, we still have antiquarians of the old school with us,
and we also have book-sellers who have preserved Ben Johnson’s spirit in
the book dealers’ guild.
Gabriel Wells
It is not so very long ago that Mr. Wells did not occupy his palatial
suite on Fifth Avenue, and the enthusiasm he then had for his books and
for their authors is his today. Fine sets of well-known authors and
also of the minor lights, are his specialties. Printed on beautiful
papers, wonderfully bound, marvelously extra-illustrated, inscribed by
their authors, they are there on his shelves. They seem alive, they seem
to talk to you, they seem to smile to you a welcome--if Mr. Wells feels
you a friend, a brother lover of books. The whole world knows about Mr.
Wells’ beautiful sets of books, and whoever wants a rare, unusual
edition comes to Mr. Wells, or writes to him, or wires to him, or cables
to him, dealers as well as private buyers. And if he has time, he may
ask you to view the original manuscript of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “New
Arabian Nights,” or of Victor Hugo’s “Ninety Three.” Or he will show you
a bundle of letters written by Thomas Payne, the draft of a speech in
Lincoln’s own hand ... he could fill a museum with the material wrapped
up in his safe. And the most delightful thing is the free air of
hospitality in his den. I don’t know another place where one can lounge
around more comfortably ... and not to forget his assistant, Mr. Royce,
the Balzac enthusiast, who compiled the only Balzac bibliography in
existence.
Mr. Drake
Opposite the library in a white stucco house with a narrow stairway and
gothic arched windows is the sanctum of Mr. James F. Drake. He is a
jovial old gentleman who knows more about the first editions of English
and American authors than any other book dealer. It is his pride to be
the first in New York to specialize in first editions, and he is as well
known in London as on this side of the ocean. First editions inscribed
by the authors line the book cases along the walls, and rare prints and
pamphlets nod and invite you behind their shining glass cases.
Mitchell Kennerley
Some day (I hope in the near future) some one will write a true
appreciation of Mitchell Kennerley, the great Pathfinder in the
American publishing field. He has done more for us here than any other
English book dealer ever anywhere, with the exception perhaps of
Heineman in London. In America, Mitchell Kennerley remains unique.
Endless is the list of English and American authors he introduced to his
readers for the first time. We know, for instance, that Dutton’s sold in
one month the complete first edition of Leonard Merrick’s collected
works, and thousands of copies of his books since. But Mitchell
Kennerley introduced him to us twelve years ago, when no one knew his
name. Or _Hergesheimer_, a best seller ever since the _Saturday Evening
Post_ placed him among its regular contributors, but Mitchell Kennerley
published his best seller of today many years ago. He gave us the tragic
poets Middleton and Davidson, and no one has printed them since. The
first part of his catalogue is a roll of honor of the English nineties.
He always kept a sharp eye for American contemporary authors, and
usually got the best of the work they had done and, I am sorry to say,
ever will do. There is Harry Kemp, for instance. He didn’t beat his
first book yet, published by Kennerley a half dozen years ago. Horace
Traubel found his life’s dream materialized when Mitchell Kennerley
published his diaries With Walt Whitman in Camden. Not to forget
Alexander Harvey’s masterful short stories. One of them (The Toe) is
worth a whole bookshelf of short stories. And dear Michael Monahan,
whose charming books he published, whose magazine, _The Papyrus_, he
gave a temporary home.
Mitchell Kennerley also claims the honor of having introduced Frank
Harris to America.
Possessor of 60,000 Original Drawings
A new type of bookseller has developed during the last twenty-five
years--a man who combines part of the knowledge of the antiquarian of
yore with the qualities the modern collector and book buyer will request
from his agent. Books and literary property have become commercial
values equal to stocks which are listed upon the stock exchange; subject
to corners created by shrewd buyers and holders, to fluctuations caused
by selling en masse. The successful rare-book dealer of today must
operate with his wares like a stock broker. The banker who starts his
business with a limited capital and operates on a legal interest basis
has very little chance to become rich. But if he succeeds in acquiring
with his limited capital the entire stock of a mine which proves a
success after he acquired it has equal chances to make money as the
rare-book dealer who has had the good fortune to buy for a farthing the
entire literary property of a man who proves a celebrity after his death
and whose manuscripts are worth a hundred times their weight in gold.
Harry Stone is a book dealer of the new type. He acquired his knowledge
here and there. The desire to wander from his earliest youth made him
pass the entrance exam into the university of hard knocks. He always
loved books. He was always buying books. Eagerly he absorbed books on
books, articles about books and authors and ... Auction Prices Current.
After he had acquired a collection of curious books which would fill the
shelves of a good-sized store, he started his shop on Fourth Avenue,
that avenue that once led to the Astor Library and that was lined with
bookshops on both sides.
He not only appreciated the commercial value of books, but he read them.
Especially those that were scarce and more valued than other works by
the same authors. And he learned to respect the men who wrote these
books. His shop became the gathering-place of literature. Wrecked hopes
of authors and publishers found in Stone’s shop a safe harbor. He paid a
fair price for everything of value offered him and soon he was known as
the dealer in quaint and curious books and pamphlets.
Good fortune knocked on his door. One rich find came after another. He
was able to supply collectors and other book dealers with
long-sought-after items.
Recently he acquired the most complete collection of American drawings
by magazine illustrators that was ever gathered under one roof. Sixty
thousand specimens of American and foreign artists whose works have
appeared in American illustrated magazines he bought from the files of
leading publishers.
In an astonishingly short time he made himself acquainted with his new
field. He became a walking encyclopaedia of American illustrators. He
searched libraries and other resources for biographical data of
lesser-known artists whose works are included in his collection. He
studied the different periods of art development in America and again he
made his shop not only the gathering-place of his customers but an
interesting meeting-place of artists and of connoisseurs.
He is very young--not thirty yet--a bright young fellow with a keen
sense of appreciation; because he knows that only the good will stand
the proof of time and will last and will eventually become a good
investment. He knows the border-line between artist and businessman; he
never transgresses into foreign territory, and therefore one can call
him justly an idealist, at times--when he talks about art.
1919
Snapshots in Art Galleries on Fifth Avenue
Daniel’s Gallery
Mr. Hartpence seems to be the moving spirit of Daniel’s Gallery. He is a
poet and close associate of Alfred (Mushroom) Kreymborg. He is
tenacious, he has convictions of his own and he is silent. “What’s the
use of convincing others? It is sufficient labor to keep one’s own self
convinced.”
It is a red letter day in the Daniel gallery. Hartpence is behaving
nicely to Mr. and Mrs. Davies. The great master is trying to give every
man a show. He is studying attentively the electric bells, wires, flags,
etc., etc., picturesquely stocked on the canvases. Hartpence points
timidly to a canvas apparently depicting five extensions of a town pump
done in many colors.
“This is his wife,” whispers Hartpence, pointing to a prune-colored
pump.... “This is his friend,” pointing to an olive green one.
“There is considerable realism, I see,” sighs Davies, quite unconscious
of being funny. Mrs. Davies is murmuring something behind her catalogue
and trying to live up to her husband’s reputation.
Daniel’s Gallery is never complete without a primal man walking around.
This man is invariably an artist with long hair and a primitive neck.
The charming shepherd of the hills is his ambition. Every modern gallery
must have long-haired men with big Adam’s apples and short-haired women
with long necks and pale faces standing around in interesting groups or
gazing at a picture in a remote corner in solitary confinement.
At Coady’s Gallery