to belong. But the number had to be limited. Lionel did the choosing and
he did the eliminating (eventually, in fact, he discarded all but one!)
He used people as a machine uses oil. When a person ceased to give what
he needed or showed signs of drying up, the search began for his
replacement. For Lionel required constant stimulation to avoid falling
into melancholy. The dinner parties and soirees to which he was addicted
were at once indispensable and boring to him, tonic and yet destructive.
The web of his character and his professional and social commitments was
so complex that it became virtually impossible for him to find a
situation of free and natural rapport or one with which he could deal in
any way except capriciously. Hence his total need for the “faithful.”
Hence, too, if one of the “faithful” became valueless, out he went. Then
began the cries and recriminations and the storm of hysteria reigned
supreme in the tea cup.
One could not remain a passive spectator in this little world. If you
can imagine a great hall with many rooms occupied by solitary persons
somehow bound to one another by invisible, inextricable longings, with
myself dashing, hopping, skipping, running from one room to another, you
may have a sense of the nightmare my life was becoming—a fantasy in
which some incomprehensible crisis was always arising or in which my
business or personal life might be interrupted at any hour of the day or
night by a call from Lionel and the despotism of his utter and absolute
need.
In my heart, I knew that my dream of being the Shelley of the book
business was rapidly disappearing. The act of dressing for an evening of
looking at the same well-cared-for, well-groomed, vacuous people, eating
the same tired hors d’oeuvres, hearing the same gossip, filled me with
almost uncontrollable rage. Yet I was still caught up in the excitement
of being part of this new-found pretentious world of middle-class
wealth.
The first time I was really shaken was at the Christmas party. Along
with others, I had helped trim the gigantic tree while Lionel sat and
amused us with tales and gossip. The decorating job was truly a work of
art and we were all quite pleased with ourselves when we left, the
members of the inner circle lingering for a few minutes after the others
were gone before offering their thanks and goodnights. We were saying
our goodbyes, when Lionel turned suddenly and looked at the pillows on
his huge couch.
“They haven’t been fluffed up!” he said, in a voice of command.
Immediately several young analysts left their wives in the hall, dropped
their coats, and rushed back to “fluff.”
The whole action was so unexpected and infantile that the blood rushed
to my head and for a moment I was dizzy and unable to focus. And I had
let myself in for this sort of thing! Jennie and I left without saying
goodnight.
“There is a time when one goes toward Lionel and another time when one
goes away from him,” an analyst who had once been part of the inner
circle remarked. This indeed seemed to be the case, but my inner
conflict remained unresolved. I was ashamed of living in a midnight of
fear. At the same time I felt privileged to know this gifted and, so
often, generous man, who understood the human soul as few others have. I
respected and loved him and wanted to befriend him in every way that was
not a violation of my own being.
As a group, I found analysts the most sensitive and intelligent to be
found in the professions. But there were those I could not tolerate, no
matter how much they spent at the shop; the shock artists who fed off
the agony and terror of the bewildered, and the culturally illiterate
who viewed anything dealing with the creative as their province. The
atmosphere would begin to sizzle at the Seven Stairs the moment any of
the latter started analyzing Mann, Gide, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Kafka,
Homer, anybody and everybody. I had read Freud’s essay on Leonardo Da
Vinci and Ernest Jones’ on Hamlet with great interest and decided that
the whole approach was one of intellectual gibberish, regardless of the
serious intent of these great men. But the young and unread analysts
were not even serious. When you cross-examined them, you found they had
never read the plays or books in question: they were merely quoting an
authority and taking his word for it. Of course, it is a nasty thing to
expose anyone and it is sacrilegious to do it to an analyst. The change
in my relations with some of the psychoanalysts became increasingly less
subtle.
To offset some of the business losses attendant on this turn of affairs,
I hit on the idea of giving a series of lectures in the store after
closing hours. I offered a course of five lectures on great men of
literature at a subscription price of ten dollars and was surprised to
find I was talking to standing room only. After a month’s respite, I
tried it again with similar success. Emmet Dedmon, then literary editor
of the _Chicago Sun-Times_ heard one of the sessions and was responsible
for recommending me as a replacement for the eminent Rabbi Solomon
Goldman, when he was taken sick before a lecture engagement. The success
of that one lecture was such that I was booked for thirteen more. It
seemed as though all was not lost.
“It’s a big world,” I assured myself, sitting alone in the shop before
the fire. “The sun does not rise and set with a handful of analysts.” It
was a cool October night. Business that day had been particularly good.
My debts were not pressing. I took heart.
In apparent response to this cheerful frame of mind, a smartly dressed
customer entered the shop, a man of medium build with blond hair parted
in the middle and a pair of the bluest eyes I had ever seen.
“I am looking for an out-of-print recording, the Variations on a Nursery
Theme by Dohnanyi,” he said. “Perhaps you may have it?” The accent was
unmistakably British.
It was obviously my day—I did have it! “I have something else, also
out-of-print, that might interest you,” I said. “It’s the Dohnanyi Trio,
played by Heifetz, Primrose, and Feurmann.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “I know that one. I played it.”
I hesitated, sensing some kind of ambiguity.
“I’m Primrose,” he said.
We chatted while I wrapped the records. He was charmed by the shop—it
had a really English flavor, he said. Before I knew it, I was telling
him the whole story of the Seven Stairs.
“Until what time do you stay open?” he asked. “It’s quite late.”
“I’m closing right now,” I said.
“If you have time, let’s have a drink,” he suggested. “I should like to
hear more.”
On a sudden inspiration, I asked first to make a phone call. While my
customer browsed among the books, I spoke with Lionel and asked if he
would like me to bring William Primrose over. He was ecstatic. At first
note, his voice had sounded forlorn, so empty of life that I guessed him
to be terribly sick. But mention of Primrose acted like a shot in the
arm.
“Hurry!” he cried.
I told Mr. Primrose that my friend had a wonderful bar and a devotion to
great music. But he had already heard of Dr. Blitzsten. “Isn’t that the
analyst?” he said. “My friends in the Budapest Quartet often used his
home for rehearsal.”
So off we went. Lionel was at his best—charming, informative, genuinely
interested in the small talk carried on by Mr. Primrose. I was delighted
really to have pleased him. When I left Primrose at his hotel that
night, the world seemed good again.
Yet on the way home, I began to have hot and cold flashes. Why had I
called Lionel and offered to bring Primrose? Why?
A pleasant period followed, warmed by ripening friendships. Jennie and I
attended the Primrose concert and dined with the great violist
afterward. In years to come, I was to see him frequently and even
present him in a memorable concert in my own shop.
While at Orchestra Hall to hear Primrose, we had also encountered Dr.
Harold Laufman and his wife, Marilyn, and through some instant rapport
agreed to see each other very soon. The result was an enduring
friendship, as well as one of the most pleasant parties ever held at the
Seven Stairs, a showing of Hal’s pictures which he had painted in North
Africa during the war. They were brilliant, highly individualistic
works.... “My impressions of disease,” he said.
The party was a delight, particularly because there was no question of
selling anything—the artist could not possibly have been persuaded to
part with any of his pictures. There was nothing to do but pass out the
drinks and enjoy the company, which included a lovely woman with reddish
gold hair out of a Titian portrait who wanted every book and record in
the shop—and who was later to deliver our first son. She was Dr.
Catherine Dobson, an obstetrician, an analysand of Dr. Blitzsten, and a
great and good friend.
The day after our son was born, I received a call from Lionel. “What are
you going to name the baby?” he asked.
“We’ve decided on David,” I said.
“David?” he said. “That’s too plain. Why not call him Travis? I just
love the name Travis.”
I admitted that Travis was fine, but perhaps a bit fancy. “After all,” I
said, “Jennie wants to call the boy David. What’s the difference?”
“A great deal of difference ... for the boy’s future,” he said. “I love
Travis. Suggest it to Jennie.”
I had to admit to Jennie that I was afraid to take a stand. But was it
too much ... to give just a little and to keep things working for us?
“Why are you letting this man ruin our lives?” she asked.
When I couldn’t answer she relented. David was named Travis David.
In the days following, I was afflicted with a recurrent rash and
sometimes by mysterious feelings of terror. I had gone wrong somewhere,
and a secret decision had to be made. I picked up the phone, dialed a
number, and made an appointment.
I started my analysis because I was in trouble. I needed expert help and
I went out and got it. Later it dawned upon me that this is really the
significant thing: not that there are so many people in today’s world
who need help, but the miraculous urge on the part of the individual
himself to get well. The fact that people on the whole don’t want to be
sick, don’t want to be haunted by nameless difficulties, convinces me
that at the very bottom of one’s being is the urge to be good, to the
good. This is more important than any description of the experience of
analysis, which, although it may be invaluable to the person who suffers
through it, is but a process of living ... nothing more. After all, it
was Freud who said that life is two things: Work and Love.
As I came to tentative grips with my fears of rejection—and the
self-rejections these fears imposed—I began more and more to act like
myself, like the man who started the Seven Stairs. If Hamlet’s problem
lay in his fear of confusing reality and appearance, so, too, was mine.
Only I was not Hamlet and my task was not the avenging of a father’s
murder. My task was even more basic. I had to just keep on giving birth
to myself.
It was a long time before I perceived that Lionel Blitzsten was less a
cause of my problem than a factor in its treatment. Who was this strange
and often solitary genius, who died leaving such a rich legacy of
interpretative techniques to his profession, who lived like an ancient
potentate, offering to a crowd of sycophants whatever satisfactions are
to be gained from basking in reflected glory?
My relationship with him revealed things which I was slow in admitting
to my analyst. I shall never forget the energy I expended telling my
analyst how “good” I was. Fortunately I wasn’t in the hands of a
charlatan. He interrupted me—one of those rare interruptions—and told me
that we both knew how good I was, so quit wasting time and money on
_that_.
Lionel was like life itself: an amalgam of selfishness, egoism, cruelty;
of goodness, gentleness, compassion. He offered it all in almost cosmic
profusion, and with cosmic capriciousness. Once he remarked: “The world
owes me nothing. When I die, I will not be sorry. I had joy, still do; I
had love, still have it; I had friends, still have them. I had all and
felt all and saw all and ... believed all. I had everything and I had
nothing. I had what I think life, in its total meaning, is: I had the
dream, the ‘chulum mensch.’”
This I believe is what he was—a “chulum mensch.” It contained everything
a dream could and should, good and bad. And much of it was glorious. No
one who shared this part could thank him enough for the privilege of
being admitted.
7
Farewell to the Seven Stairs
I had to break it to them gently ... and to myself, as well. It took a
long time to compose the letter to go to all my clients. “Sometime
between June 30th and July 20th,” the letter said, “the Seven Stairs
will end its stand on Rush Street and move to 670 North Michigan Avenue,
where it will resume life as Stuart Brent: Books and Records.
“Everything that the Seven Stairs has come to stand for will continue.
The place will be lovely and cozy and warm—the conversations easily as
crazy and possibly more inspired. More than that—all of the wonderful
possibilities that we have been developing over the past five years can
now bear fruit.”
I reviewed the history of the shop, trying to set down some of the
memorable landmarks in its growth. “... and so it has gone,” I wrote
blithely, “always fresh and magical, punctuated by famous and admired
visitors—Joseph Szigeti, Katharine Cornell, Elliot Paul, Ernest
Hemingway, Arthur Koestler, Frieda Fromm Reichmann, Nelson Algren, Gore
Vidal, Carol Brice, many others—wonderful talk—parties—exhibits. You
have been a part of it with us.
“But physically, the Seven Stairs could never meet our needs fully. It
was too small. Congestion forced us to give up those author cocktail
parties for launching good new books. It kept us from promoting lectures
and exhibits. It put a definite limit to the size of our stock. And even
if we could have made more space, we couldn’t have afforded it without
an increase in street trade which Rush Street couldn’t provide.
“However, for all the crowding, the worn appearance, the careless
bookkeeping, the hopeless methods of keeping our stock of books and
records in proper order—the Seven Stairs set the tone we dreamed of.
“That tone—with all the ease and informality—will go with it to Michigan
Avenue. Probably nothing like it has ever happened to the Avenue. It’s
about time it did.”
My message to the faithful was heartfelt, but more than a little
disingenuous. It mentioned the economics of bookselling only in passing.
And these economic factors had at last caught up with me. I might ignore
my accountant, but when Jennie and I were invited among the well-fed and
well-cared-for, we were distinctly surrounded by the aura of the “poor
relation.” I might congratulate myself upon having accomplished, against
absurd odds, so much of what I had initially dreamed about, but I was no
longer responsible only to this dream: I had a growing family—and I
wasn’t unhappy about this, either. It seemed to me, in spite of all the
evidence the modern world has to present to the contrary, that the
fullness of life (in which the feeding, clothing, and housing of a
family traditionally figure) ought not, as a matter of principle, stand
irrevocably opposed to personal fulfillment or spiritual realization.
There wasn’t room in the Seven Stairs, it is true—for books and records,
for parties, for anything else. But room is not the great necessity—it
can always be made, if the spirit is willing. The plain fact of the
matter was that my situation was economically self-limiting in its scope
and its momentum. Only a certain number of people could be drawn into
its sphere, and time and the accidents of time would take their toll.
Some of the parties did not draw. Some of the clientele who dropped out
or who were alienated through the vagaries of my personal relations were
not replaced. I was either going to have to regress toward my beginnings
or advance toward something which would suggest, at least, the
possibility of greater scope.
Did this possibility exist along a well-traveled market place (the
Chicago version of Fifth Avenue, although pictorially more impressive
than its Manhattan counterpart), which lay only a block away from the
questionable Rush Street area?
The opportunity to confront this question came about, again, through one
of the apparent accidents of life, which I identify under the rather
occult heading of “attractiveness.”
Without Jack Pritzker there could have been no move to Michigan Avenue.
Jack and his wife, Rhoda, came into our lives at a cocktail party and
became close friends. Rhoda is English by birth and wears her charm and
dignity like a delicate mystery. She has a gift for seeing and has
written wonderful articles as a correspondent for British newspapers.
Jack, also, has the effortless manner that stems from a quality of mind.
He is as unlike me as any man can be: impassive, almost secretive, yet I
have never known a more comfortable man to be with. He is a lawyer with
large interests in real estate and a quiet passion for being a mover
behind the success of others. He will not forsake you when the going is
rough, but in his relations he holds to a fine line between friendship
and duty—and holds you to this line also. I had already experienced the
danger of the kind of benefactor who tends to take over your life for
you but with Jack Pritzker there is never this danger. He prefers to see
you make it on your own. If you are beset by circumstances which you
cannot control, he is there; but if you are merely waiting for something
to happen, you can expect nothing but the criticism you deserve.
This gentle, quiet man, tough yet sentimental, absorbed in his business,
yet somehow viewing it as an experiment with life rather than a
livelihood, devoted to concrete matters and the hard world of finance
and power, yet in conversation concerned only with the breadth of life
and the humanness of experience, provided a scarcely felt polarity that
gave direction to my often chaotic forces.
When I heard that Jack had a financial interest in a medical office
building under construction on Michigan Avenue, I asked to rent one of
the street level stores. It was not a matter of seeking financial
assistance—it was entirely enough to be accepted as the kind of
“prestige tenant” normally sought for such a location. But when Hy
Abrams, my lawyer, went to see about the lease, he reported that Jack
remarked, “If you think I’m letting Stuart in this store to see him
fail, you are mistaken. I have no intention of standing by and watching
him and his family tenting out in Grant Park.”
But even though someone might be keeping a weather eye on my survival, I
had to face up to my own money problems. It is madness to go into
business without a bankroll under the mattress. I thought I could see my
way to making it on the Avenue, but where was the cash outlay coming
from for fixtures, additional stock, everything? Not even my reformed
accountant could prepare a financial statement that would qualify me for
additional bank loans.
There was a way, however, and it was opened to me by a client who, as a
vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago, was about the last
person I thought of approaching with my difficulties. I knew about banks
by now, although I had somewhat revised my opinions about the personal
limitations of all bankers. In fact, it was always a source of genuine
pleasure to me when this particular banker, a tall, handsome man with
greying hair and a fine pair of grey eyes to match, came into the shop.
When I told him of my projected move, it was natural for him to ask how
I was financing it. I told him I didn’t know, but I was certainly going
to have to find a way.
“May I offer a suggestion?” he said.
We sat down by the fire, and he told me first what I already knew: that
normally when a business man needs extra money, especially for a
cyclical business dependent on certain seasons, he will go to the bank
for a short-term loan, say for ninety days. But in New York, he told me,
there is a large department store that finances its own improvement and
expansion programs. Instead of going to the bank, the store goes to its
customers. My friend suggested that I do the same.
“Here’s how it works,” he said. “Write a letter to your hundred best
accounts explaining what you hope to do. Ask them to help by sending you
one hundred dollars in advance payment against future purchases. In
return, you will offer them a twenty percent discount on all merchandise
purchased under this plan. And of course they may take as long a time as
they wish in using up the amount they have advanced.”
Even as he spoke, he pulled out his pen and began composing the letter.
We worked on it for an hour, and the next day we met at lunch to draft
the final copy. I sent the approved message to one hundred and
twenty-five people, and I received one hundred and twenty-five
replies—each with a hundred dollar check!
There remained little else to do in the way of arrangements except to
break my present lease. It was not easy, but it was a pleasure. Now that
I planned to move, my landlord’s attitude was something to behold. He
danced the length of the shop on his tiny feet, his cane twirling madly,
alternating between cries of “Excellent! Your future is assured!” and
“But of course you’ll pay the rent here, too!” He did not know, he said,
what “the corporation” would think of any proposal for subletting the
premises. Finally he doffed his black hat, waved goodbye, and skipped
out of the store.
A week later I heard from him. The answer on subleasing was a qualified
yes. If I could get a tenant as responsible and dignified as myself and
with equally brilliant prospects for success, they would consider it.
I advertised for weeks and no such madman responded. Then one day the
answer walked in the door, a huge man with the general physique of the
late Sidney Greenstreet, hooded eyes, and a great beard. He looked
around, blinked like an owl, and said he’d take it. It was as simple as
that. I realized, with a slight sinking feeling, that I was now
perfectly free to move to the Avenue.
My formidable successor to the home of the Seven Stairs turned out to
indeed be a man of brilliant prospects. He opened a Thought Factory,
evidenced by a sign to this effect and bulletin boards covered with
slips of paper bearing thoughts. Needless to say, he was in the public
relations and advertising business. I have always felt grateful to him,
but I never got up courage to cross that once adored threshold and see
Mr. Sperry making thoughts.
When the Columbia Record people approached me concerning the possibility
of a party in connection with the release of a record by the jazz
pianist, Max Miller, it struck me this might be just the thing as a
rousing, and possibly rowdy, farewell to the Seven Stairs.
Somehow, when I phoned our original fellows in literature, the gaiety of
my announcement did not come off. I called Bob Parrish, who had once
turned an autographing party into a magic show, and was greeted by an
awesome silence, followed by a lame, “We’ll be there.” There was similar
response from others on the list, but they _did_ come, all of them ...
even Samuel Putnam, who journeyed all the way from Connecticut.
We had rented a piano and managed to get it in through the back of the
building by breaking through a wall. The bricks were terribly loose
anyway, and it wasn’t much work to put them back and replaster when it
was all over. Max Miller had promised to bring along a good side man,
and he did: Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was immediately comfortable in
the shop. “This is a wise man,” he said. He didn’t know I was giving up
the ghost at the Seven Stairs.
Perhaps the end of the Stairs was a symbol for more than the demise of a
personal book store. During the period in which I had set up shop, the
old _Chicago Sun_ had launched the first literary Sunday supplement
devoted entirely to books to be published by a newspaper outside of New
York City. At least one issue of this supplement, called “Book Week,”
had carried more book advertising than either the _New York Times_ “Book
Review” or the _Herald Tribune_ “Magazine of Books.” The _Chicago
Tribune_ had followed suit with a book supplement and, together with the
_Sun_, offered a platform for people like Butcher, Babcock, North,
Apple, Frederick, Kogan, Wendt, Spectorsky, and others who were not only
distinguished critics and authors, but who truly loved the world of
books. Their efforts had certainly contributed to the climate that made
the Seven Stairs possible. The diminution of this influence (today only
the _Tribune_ carries a full-scale book supplement) was in direct
relationship to the decline of my own enterprise.