Old Books, Rare Friends

by Madeline B. Stern

  I discussed my project with Monsieur Ritter who became extremely excited as I talked. “C’est magnifique,” he declared. “I shall be happy to assist you in the selection of books. It is an important project. As you know, our library has one of the greatest collections of incunabula and early sixteenth-century books. I will now take you to our reference room.” Here on the shelves were weighty volumes listing the library’s holdings in two main divisions, one marked Avant la Guerre and the other Après la Guerre. I was not certain whether the reference was to the Peasants’ War or the Great War. Monsieur Ritter, balancing himself, pulled down a hefty tome labeled ER—ET. “Voilà—le Grand Érasme.” He pulled out a call slip on which he indicated the call number, author, and title. “Big deal,” I thought. “We do this daily at the New York Public Library.” He then introduced me to the chief of the reference room, Herr Fischer, who sported a toothbrush mustache, a stiff cravat, and a white duster. He eyed me suspiciously, bowing stiffly. Monsieur Ritter at this point whispered to me, “You must tip him.” I looked at Ritter questioningly. “Tip him? Every time he brings me a book?” “Not every time” was the reply, “but frequently.”

  Soon my days began to fall into a routine. I worked in the library, searching for prefaces by early printers of texts by “le grand Érasme” and other humanists. In the afternoon I occasionally visited the library of the Protestant Seminary St. Guillaume, where the young seminarians regarded me as the great granddaughter of Frau Luther. Here were paraded volumes relating to the German Reformation, and their prefaces indicated the reform point of view of their printers.

  On a rainy morning during a consultation with François Ritter, there was a knock on the door. A tiny man, more like a pencil shaving with white hair and a white goatee, stood there. Monsieur Ritter jumped up. “Ach, mein freund, Herr Heitz.” He turned to me, saying, “This is Monsieur Paul Heitz, the famous authority on the early woodcut.” Monsieur Heitz greeted me: “Sie sind nach Strasbourg gekommen mich zu besuchen!” (You came to Strasbourg to visit me!). I smiled. “Natürlich.”

  Paul Heitz was indeed a celebrated scholar and a very kind old man. He took me around the city and showed me where, during the War of 1870, he had hidden. He took me to his office, where he displayed his great collection of woodcuts, sixteenth-century New Year’s cards, and a Roman fountain pen. He plied me with worm-eaten peaches brought from his garden and a quince “pour Madame votre mère.”

  A few weeks later Monsieur Heitz invited me to dine at his home. I was warmly received not only by Frau Heitz but by the bewigged family ancestors, who looked down from the walls. Père Heitz enthusiastically gurgled his soup while Madame, a short, rotund lady, attempted to put me at my ease by suggesting conversational topics of homey familiarity.

  “Tell me, Fraülein, how is everything now in Nicaragua?” Nicaragua, I repeated to myself. What is it? Confusing it with an avant-garde author and the leader of a local assembly district, I finally recalled its existence.

  “Everything is just great in Nicaragua. Nothing to worry about,” I assured her.

  As Madame, now satisfied, concentrated on her turbot, Père Heitz took up the “art de parler.” He delivered a lengthy peroration on fascism and the pro-German sentiment of many Alsatians.

  “My dear child, there is some German in every Alsatian. And if there is a war—and there will be a war—many in this city will welcome their German neighbors. There are many collaborateurs,” he concluded, waving his knife at me. “You have gangsters in your great country; we have collaborateurs.”

  Happily, upon my return to the pension, I found a letter from Madeleine about that “great country” of ours: “Everybody is election-conscious here, and talk is very political,” she wrote. I knew it would be her first presidential election, and we were both ardently hoping for a second Roosevelt term. Mady was teaching now, and she reported that a notice had appeared on the English bulletin board: “Political Topics. Please avoid all controversial matter. Use the same précis material for the entire class. Do not let them choose their own material.” In America, it seemed, the antagonism between the extreme right and the extreme left was intensifying. Mady herself mentioned that she and Bill had gone to a “rally in Madison Square Garden for the support of the Spanish leftists … Spain holds the center of attention.” And she added, “New York is upset by the prophecy, recorded in the Times, as well as New Masses, of a massacre of the Jews in September. The papers will really print anything.”

  Despite the nostalgia evoked by letters from home, the days passed and I began to relax in my Strasbourg existence. I became familiar with the city, its present and its past. I explored the magnificent cathedral, with its dazzling stained glass and its great nave and pulpit, from which my Reformers had thundered their messages centuries earlier. I wandered through Petite France, its narrow crooked streets and gabled houses with dormer windows. I walked past Zum Hasen 1579, glanced at a sturdy paneled doorway, dated 1618, and overheard remarks of the natives, gesticulating, calling out loudly—always in German. For all the Teutonic overtones, I was becoming intoxicated with Strasbourg, once called Argentoratum, the Silver City.

  Now, when I visited Ritter’s office, I noticed that he stood as close as possible to me, and at times his hands strayed. When I moved away, he moved after me. He finally said, “Liebchen, I have fallen in love with you. I cannot work anymore. I think of you night and day.” I looked at him as if he were mad and patted his hand. That night I wrote to Madeleine:

  Hold your seat, darling friend, wait till you hear. Ritter—the head librarian—has fallen in love with me. He is at least 50 years old, Mady, and a grandfather. What the hell I’m going to do I don’t know. He’s a nice enough guy but he smells of beer and garlic. I like him as the curator of books. Me—I’m the Strasbourg siren.

  Mady responded quickly to my confidences, asking detailed questions about what she called my inamorato and demanding immediate replies. She addressed me as “Miss Amorosa” and was not at all surprised that “the librarian professeur is enamored of you” and concluded that he “must have a lot to him if he has shown such excellent taste.” As for herself, despite outings with Bill and one or two D’Oyly Carte performances of Gilbert and Sullivan, her letter—all her letters—reflected a noticeable loneliness, describing her weekly visits to the Metropolitan Museum where she studied the catalogue as she viewed the masterpieces of Rembrandt and El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. “I get a very adolescent kick out of recognizing the painter of a work I’ve never seen, and find I take to this particular form of aesthetics far more rapidly than with music.”

  She listened to music nonetheless over radio or her Decca phonograph, but she listened alone. She read Freud’s autobiography and Arnold Bennett’s journal, but did not mention discussing the books with anyone but me. She was writing again—a play based upon her teaching observations—but only her mother “listened to it, and thought it ‘natural.’ ” Already Mady was thinking in terms of the next summer and perhaps a return to Europe: “Made a list of the paintings I want to see at the National Gallery & the Louvre.” Her aloneness filtered through her letters. And so did her love: “I am sure we shall be friends for always … We shall grow—but not apart.”

  As for me, I was hardly a “Miss Amorosa.” As I continued my work, with Ritter watching me in the library and Herr Fischer observing the two of us, I found myself in love not with François Ritter—dear old Ritter—but with the books selected from his shelves. I felt their great age, the wonderful printing, the beautiful paper, the wide margins, the aroma, the woodcuts, the early sixteenth century rising from their midst. I was in love with the bindings, many stamped pigskin with rolls depicting the heads of the Caesars, angels, or putti, others showing the likeness of Luther, Melanchthon, or other great reformers.

  In the pension I had grown friendly with a bewhiskered gentleman who occupied a fourth-floor room near mine. Georg Walther was intelligent, had a good sense of humor, no money, and sat in my room eating
my cookies and grapes. He occasionally asked me for a loan, which I did not give him. From time to time we went out together and one evening we visited the large sprawling café on the Place Kléber, the Taverne Kléber. A huge beefy waiter took our order: a cup of coffee and a glass of wine. After twenty minutes the waiter appeared and literally threw our orders across the table. As Georg began to protest, a great hulk of a man in a filthy apron loomed over me, screaming, “Heraus! You are no good woman. You are a verdammte Jew!” The surrounding tables took up the refrain in a violent chorus: “Stinkende Jüdin!” I could scarcely rise from my chair.

  Once outside, I leaned against the lamppost, my entire body shaken. Georg tried to comfort me. “There is much anti-Semitism. We are close to Germany.” I stayed in my room all the next day, Sunday. I was afraid to go out. The Silver City was much tarnished. When I reported the incident to Ritter; he looked somewhat surprised. “But, Liebchen, how could you have gone there with that Georg? Didn’t you know the Kléber is Nazi social headquarters in Strasbourg?”

  I decided I had to get away. I left for Paris, where I had a distant relative who treated me as his little Yankee cousin. Albert had a charming apartment in the Parc Monceau district, where he cooked omelets in a frying pan that bore the remains of many preceding lunches. “But, Albert, don’t you ever wash your utensils?” “It gives a better flavor, ducky.” With Albert I visited the top of the Eiffel Tower, French cafés, and the Opéra Comique. Alone, I scoured the bookstalls and hesitated over the purchase of a history of French printing by Audin. Ritter had suggested that I visit the eminent bookseller Leo Baer, and I did so. He showed me his collection of early printed books and I consulted him about the purchase of the Audin, which I was still considering. He strongly encouraged me, and the four-volume set became mine. A bookseller’s reference library had begun. I returned to Strasbourg with renewed enthusiasm to complete my work.

  Ritter greeted me with open arms. He came to my room and cried, “How I love you. You are my Bettina.” I eluded his passionate embrace by looking steadfastly out the window at U. CLOT ÉPICERIE and A. DRIZEHN TABAC. François Ritter’s growing sadness contrasted with my increasing exuberance. We both knew that soon I would be going home.

  A recent letter from Mady had announced, “I am planning a European trip next summer. Please … let it be for both of us. Next month I’m going to make inquiries. First to Russia, probably in a collective unit … Then, biking in England.” I had little desire to visit Russia in a collective or individual unit, nor was I keen on cycling in England. But I would, of course, love to show Mady all my old haunts in Strasbourg and in Paris, and I replied that I would be thrilled to go abroad with her, but at the same time I warned her that Europe was changing rapidly. “I have observed so much,” I wrote to her, “including the approaching end of old Europe as Strasbourg is old world. Fascism is spreading throughout Europe. Here I am in Strasbourg—supposedly a French city—and everything about it is German. There are swastikas right across the Rhine and there have been episodes which I have not mentioned. Everything seems to be teetering and ending. Nonetheless,” I added, “this stay stamps my future. Some aspect of printing will be my overall interest. I know my life work now and I hope I can pursue it. See you at the pier, ducky!”

  GLENGARRY AND ALPENSTOCK

  Madeleine BETWEEN the French Line’s pier, where the Lafayette disembarked in November 1936, and the pier of the Anchor Line, where the S.S. California set forth in July 1937, months of work and months of companionship intervened. I taught, not too contentedly, worked on an article about propagandist literature, and confided my difficulties and satisfactions to Leona. Leona reviewed the notes she had taken in Strasbourg, tried to substantiate her premise that the printer did exert an influence on the books he circulated, and shaped and reshaped her thesis. Her confidences were punctuated now and then with her doubts—doubts not about her point of view but about Mr. Thorndike’s. But with the prospect of our first trip abroad together coming nearer and nearer, doubts were dismissed, difficulties forgotten, and together we rejoiced, sometimes uncontrollably, at what lay ahead. We were in our twenties, America was looking up, and the world was our oyster.

  We prepared for the carefree journey. Carefree but bookish. We obtained a copy of a Guide to European Hotels, 1937 issue, and studied it with the utmost diligence, noting names and prices only a bit more seriously than we noted accommodations. After all, who cared about accommodations? We cared about euphonious names, romantic locations, and low prices, and on those grounds we made our selections. We then proceeded—not to write for reservations—but simply to check the hotels in the book and tell our parents to direct their letters to the hostelries indicated. That was the preparation—the background—for our first trip abroad together, “our hearts were young and gay trip” of 1937, and indeed that was the reason for some of the adventures that lay ahead.

  Our arrival in Scotland set the tone for most of the journey: it was not only carefree; it was hilarious. The California anchored in Glasgow at five of a misty morning. We immediately decided that it would be a waste of time to go directly to Edinburgh. Why not get all those lochs and trossachs en route? And so we joined a bus tour through the land of Sir Walter Scott. As we rumbled through the lochs—Loch Vennacher, Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond—we became sleepier and sleepier, dozing through much of the Rob Roy country, the glens redolent of the Lady of the Lake and Bonny Prince Charles.

  At Loch Katrine we had to change buses, and a bit of melodrama was added to our trip. A porter climbed down with the luggage and asked Leona, “Miss, is this the ’andle of your grip?” Leona screamed as she saw her new valise with a gaping hole through which most of her undergarments were seeping. “Don’t worry, lady, I’ll tie it up.”

  The crippled grip was flung onto the top of bus number 2, which carried us to Stirling. There we and all our impedimenta from America had to board a local bus for Edinburgh. It was rush hour in Stirling, so the two intrepid travelers from New York had to stand all the way to St. Andrews Square. Before we arrived, I thought it might be wise to consult the bus driver about the Beech wood Hotel, which we had selected from the Hotel Guide. To my amazement, he had no knowledge of that hostelry. But being an optimist, I assured Leona that the Beechwood was probably so elegant that a bus driver would never have heard of it. And so our uninformed bus driver dumped his passengers and their luggage at Edinburgh’s St. Andrews Square.

  Each of us promptly and successfully summoned a cab. As we entered the first, the rejected driver yelled at us, “I hope you both git killed today.” With this parting shot, we drove off and airily announced, “The Beechwood Hotel.”

  “Never heard of it” was the cabbie’s response. We were beginning to lose faith in the European Hotel Guide, not that it made too much difference, since we had not booked any reservations. Exhausted and somewhat desperate, we implored the driver to find us accommodations.

  “You know the King and Queen have just been here and there’s scarce a vacancy in all of Edinburgh.”

  “Oh, take us anyplace,” we begged him.

  We were finally deposited at the Bruntsfield Private, one of a series of residences with rooms for tourists, where the paucity of soap was compensated for by the quantity of oatmeal for breakfast. The next morning the rains fell, but we began our explorations of Edinburgh: Castle Hill, the Royal Mile and the Tolbooth, Holyrood and the desolate sodden Cannongate Churchyard. The cemetery flaunted a large placard of its “specialties,” including the grave of the celebrated musicologist Dr. Charles Burney, which I was inexplicably inspired to visit. The curator led us over the wet gravel paths to a monument. “ ’Tis Dr. Baron,” he announced. “But I wanted Dr. Burney,” I insisted. “Oh, what’s the difference?” Leona, ever practical. “This will do.”

  We traveled by motor coach to the pseudo-Gothic “castle” in Abbotsford-on-Tweed, where, as the guide reverently proclaimed, “Sir Walter Scott penned his beautiful works.” I mused in my diary: “Sco
tt must have had fun wandering about the country, drawing up his horse to breathe inspiration from the Horsebend—a marvelous stretch of hill country plaided with farm—collecting relics of Mary of Scots and Rob Roy—& then proceeding to write about them & receiving more relics from admirers such as George IV.”

  Inspired by the glories of Scotland, we each purchased a glengarry, the Highland headgear for men, and wore it for the rest of the trip. So accoutered, we sought the whereabouts of the “elegant” Beech wood, the hotel of our original choice. After a morning’s journey we found it; it was a pub on the outskirts of the city. Sure enough, our mail was waiting for us. So too was the dawning realization that the European Hotel Guide had betrayed us, and that we had better make a few reservations down the road.

  Actually, at our next port of call we did not need to book rooms in advance. At Keswick we found our Skiddaw Hotel immediately and were given a room in the attic overlooking the hills around Derwentwater. The English Lake Country brought the Romantic poets alive for both of us but especially for me. In the garden of Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in Grasmere we snapped pictures of each other in our glengarries, and then walked up Langdale Hill, filled with the scents of sweet grass, honeysuckle, and roses.

  Leona was aware that a descendant of one of her Strasbourg printers had emigrated to the English Lake District. He had Anglicized his name from Schott to Scott and been rewarded for good deeds with a baronetcy. He was now Sir Samuel Haslam Scott. She wrote to him, informing him that she was at the Skiddaw and asking for an interview. He replied on a postal card addressed to Leona at the hotel and adorned with his name, his title, and his armorial crest. She read his message, regretting his inability to meet with her because of an arranged garden party, but, despite her disappointment, she preened her feathers at hearing from a milord. She immediately replaced the postal card on the letter rack where she had found it so that others would be apprised of her place in the social world. The proprietrix at the Skiddaw was not impressed, and after a couple of days she remarked to Leona, “I am certain that everyone has by now read your card and I suggest you remove it.”