Old Books, Rare Friends

by Madeline B. Stern

  The highlight of our Keswick stay, however, was not Sir Samuel’s communication but, rather, Butter mere Round. As we wrote home:

  Today will possibly be one of the dearest in our remembrance of this trip. We drove to Buttermere Round in a coach & four driven by 4 brown bays & a driver whose tophat was grey. We saw the Lake Country more closely than you can imagine. The speckled stones on the hills were really sheep; the little white dots, vicarages & homes; the variegation in greens & yellows, really farm land in strips. We circled round the hills & saw their scars of brown earth, the old stagecoach roads cut round them—& the sun on everything. The smell of burning charcoal, heather, rose blossoms, manure—& low-lying hills around Buttermere Lake & Derwentwater. We held tightly to our seats as the tallyho crunched down the steep Honnister Pass & we looked triumphant as people paused to snap us. Once in a while the driver let us hold the reins. Naturally the English could not do without their tea, and so the mugs were passed aloft as we neared Buttermere Lake. It was truly unforgettable.

  Wales, on the other hand, was quite forgettable. Why we went there we never really knew. It is true that Carnarvon Castle, with its crenelated walls and towers, the seat of the investiture of the Prince of Wales, was bedecked with royal emblems and pennants in honor of the King and Queen, who had just left. We immediately seated ourselves on the throne they had vacated, though in our ever-present glengarries we looked not exactly regal. Nor did the town, despite the flags and bunting for Coronation Year. At its cinema, Tarzan Escapes followed The Gorgeous Hussy, and Carnarvon seemed to us like an ill-smelling woman dressed in her Sunday best.

  To reach a place called Llandrindod Wells we took a long, roundabout train trip that included at least five changes. By the time we arrived at Ye Wells, we had absolutely no answer to the question why we had come. Llandrindod Wells was a spa where saline or chalybeate waters were dispensed for internal and external use in connection with liver complaints. Ye Wells was patronized almost exclusively by what seemed to us the British middle class in its senile stages. Canes were much in evidence. The dining room presented a mass of white heads and elaborate evening dresses. Fish and rice pudding were savored with languid enthusiasm. As for us, we appeared at dinner in our everyday suits with drooping skirts, cameras still slung about our necks. One evening as we departed the salle à manger we heard a brief conversation behind us:

  DOWAGER NO. 1: What do you suppose they are?

  DOWAGER NO. 2: Why, Americans of course—what could they be?

  Between our lack of diplomatic éclat and the worsening weather, we decided to abandon the land of chalybeate waters and head for London. Meanwhile, however, we had been very cautious and had actually booked reservations in advance. In what seemed like an inspired moment, I remembered a very nice hotel, the Belgravia, near Euston Station, where I had stayed as a child on my first trip abroad. Accordingly, I wrote a letter to the Belgravia’s proprietrix, and, to our amazement, a reply was almost immediately received. It was addressed to “Dear Miss Stern,” it recalled fond memories of “dear Miss Stern,” and it looked forward with eagerness to “dear Miss Stern’s” return with her “dear friend” Miss Rostenberg. The Belgravia response seemed a trifle peculiar to us on two grounds: it was surprisingly exuberant for such a communication, and it lacked any formal letterhead. However, who were we to question the ways of London hôteliers. We felt very reassured, having secured reservations in advance.

  When we entered a taxi at Euston at 9 P.M., I confidently imparted, “The Belgravia,” and the cabbie drove us off. He did not, however, stop at any nearby hostelry. Instead, he drove on and on and on, until I called to him, “The Belgravia I meant was right near the station. Where are you taking us?” “Oh,” he replied, “that Belgravia burned down about five years ago. But there’s another one with the same name, and I’m taking you there.”

  At long last we confronted what looked like a private residence in an advanced stage of dilapidation—a shabby, scruffy rooming house. Simultaneously we began to have qualms, and requested the cabbie to leave our luggage on the street while we went inside. A frowsy red-haired woman greeted “dear Miss Stern” and “dear Miss Rostenberg” and led the way up five flights of steep stairs. En route we glanced about us, heard a few peculiar sounds, saw a few men scurrying about, and passed a number of closed doors. Although we had specialized in medieval history and English literature, we had a fairly good idea of the nature of this particular Belgravia. By the time we saw the moth-eaten divan and the Murphy bed in the room we had so carefully booked ahead, we were certain of it. “Dear Miss Stern” and “dear Miss Rostenberg” would not enroll for advanced courses at the Belgravia. “We think there’s been some mistake,” we muttered. We were no longer “dears” as we fled downstairs and slammed the door behind us. We retrieved our luggage and, finally, with the aid of a bobby, located another cab and sought refuge in London’s American asylum, the Strand Palace. Once in our immaculate room, we embraced each other and laughed aloud. “We could have made some money instead of spending it, for a change.”

  We had each seen London before, but now for the first time we were discovering it together. And because we were together, the city was transformed. We wandered its mews and lanes and courtyards; we breathed its mingled scent of fish and roses; we rejoiced in its surprises; London became for the two of us a feast for devouring.

  Together we explored its art treasures—the Soane Museum, where, we were told, the Queen Mother Mary often sat for hours. We sat there, too, transported by Hogarth to the eighteenth century and corruptions that were still familiar in our time. We bused to Chiswick to see the Hogarth House and to Holborn to see the Dickens House. At the Tate we inspected the Blakes and more Hogarths, and we walked forever—through Whitehall and Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross to the Strand, to Regent Street and Oxford Circus. We walked along Victoria Embankment under a full moon and saw Big Ben shining in its light. Together we fell in love with a city so various and now so new to us.

  Being American tourists, we chose for our first all-day excursion a visit to Stratford. The memorabilia of the Bard’s home, consisting mostly of land deeds, litigation suits, and indentures, did not interest us particularly, but the timbered Elizabethan dwellings carried the flavor of Shakespeare to us, and we were entranced by a performance of The Winter’s Tale at the Memorial Theatre. We topped the day with high tea at the Judith Shakespeare Inn, and on the bus back to London we dreamed happily of the seven stages of man and of woman.

  One of our happiest days in London was a day that now in retrospect pointed the way our lives would go. We spent the morning at Foyle’s and the afternoon at the British Museum. At the former we bought, “with 3 shillings & delight,” as we wrote home, a copy of Conway’s Flemish Artists for reference when we crossed the Channel. At the latter we were transported not only into the past but, had we realized it, into our own future. Leona wrote to her parents:

  I weakened before the manuscript Psalters and Books of Hours—Flemish, French, Plantagenet—incunable editions of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Caxtons, the Gutenberg Bible—the traveling library of Sir Julius Caesar. Then in the Print Room we called for the Leonardo cartoons and sketches and actually touched the paper he had worked on. Before we left we saw the Elgin Marbles and the life pulsing beneath the sculptured drapery. The beauty of the East pediment frieze of the Parthenon came to life before us. We were overcome, bewildered, suffering from mental indigestion and fallen arches, but high tea at Fuller’s restored us.

  Our journal entries for July 26 record our reactions to “one of those great perfect days to be talked about in years hence”—our first trip together to Oxford: “We rambled about the quads inhaling Amores Academici, snooping about Oriel, Magdalen, Merton, Brasenose, their gardens and cloisters. However, the greatest thrill for us was the Bodleian Library. It is so rich in age & history that it all seemed incredible & we couldn’t realize that we were standing before Magna Carta, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Chanson de
Roland, the First Folio of Shakespeare.” We left the Bodleian hand in hand, mindful of all we had studied and were still studying. I wrote at the end of my journal entry: “L is the best person with whom to go on an exploration of this kind. She treads the old pavements in the same way that she handles incunabula—breathing in with respectful appreciation the musk of centuries past.”

  A day at Liberty’s and Harrod’s brought us back to earth. We exchanged a couple of pounds for gloves and hankies, scarves and what we learned to call scent, to give as gifts. (When we asked for toilet water, we were directed to the ladies’ room.) Before our departure from London, the Snewings, whom I had met when I was abroad with my mother, invited us to Simpson’s. Over the succulent roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Mrs. Snewing regaled us with acerbic comments about the woman who had ensnared the Duke of Windsor and caused the recent abdication. “We just don’t talk about them if we can avoid it,” she said. “If she hadn’t been a prostitute it would have been very nice.”

  At Wembley Stadium, where the Snewings invited us to view a water sports contest between Germany and England, we saw other, more ominous signs of the times. As we reported in our diaries, it was “a bit nauseating to see the swastikas flying above us. The Germans took the races and water polo contest very seriously, played carefully and fiercely for their Führer, and much to our disgust won practically everything. The English were more light-hearted & seemed to realize they were playing games … As the Fräuleins dashed leagues ahead, we could not help thinking of England, that ‘royal throne of kings,’ that ‘sceptred isle,’—you are so small, so brave, so chivalrous—but you will be helpless … a small island that has been proud for a long time. We wonder how much longer.”

  We left the small island for the continent with high anticipation, the journey entailing the train to Dover, a three-and-a-half-hour wind-swept sail aboard the Côte d’Argent to Ostend, and then another train trip to Bruges. There, we fell in love with this city of Bruges, this city of canals where swans floated and every time our boat passed beneath a bridge we had to duck. After the hurly-burly of London we were enchanted by the red-tiled rooftops, the shrines in niches, the cobblestone walks. At the Hôpital de Saint Jean we saw the Memlings and Van Eycks, and at the Panier d’Or in the Grand’ Place we ate our omelettes fines herbes facing the Belfry of Bruges, which chimed a tune every quarter hour. There too we heard a carillon concert, and Leona wrote in her diary: “It’s almost impossible to write of the beauty of this night with the towers of the belfry cutting the sky & supported by two tremendous shadows looming upwards—lights flooding the Square & the chimes carilloning forth and there we sat. Something rare that will never happen again—two people who are dear friends before the Belfry of Bruges.”

  The past took over from the present in Bruges. On the Langestraat we found ourselves in the midst of a medieval procession honoring either Saint Anne or Satan—we were not sure at first—but then voices were clearly raised in the prayer “Anna, ora pro nobis.”

  The nearer, more ghastly past came alive for us at the cemeteries of World War I—Passchendaele and Tyne Cot—where British mothers and sisters and friends came to visit their dead. After Hill 60, where we were shown a trench—a so-called luxury trench—used in World War I, and where the British lost fifty-eight thousand men defending Ypres, Leona meditated in her journal: “I thought I had realized some horror of the war in the educational propaganda at home, but this, the real thing, and a ‘luxury trench’ … made me realize I knew naught of war. Down in the earth, black, foul-smelling, damp … then water knee-high—soldiers slept & had their wounds tended—after these quarters they were expected to go over the top or up Hill 60. It’s incredible & it’s hell.” At Ghistelles the sight of a Krupp cannon—the Big Gun—inspired her to speculate: “One wonders what would have happened if the Germans had won, or what might happen or will happen should fascism link & play with Krupp cannonry.”

  A conventional honeymoon. Lillie Mack Stern and Moses R. Stern at Niagara Falls, June 1902.

  “My very lovely mother” Louisa Dreyfus Rostenberg, 1914.

  My elegantly attired father Adolph Rostenberg, 1914.

  Madeleine contemplating the news, ca. 1915.

  Leona chuckling at world events, ca. 1910.

  Madeleine in a goat cart. Harlem, 1918.

  Leona with her brother Adolph Jr., Peck’s Bad Boy, 1914.

  Madeleine with her big brother Leonard Mack Stern, ca. 1919.

  Leona, Bachelor of Arts, NYU, 1930—farewell to the “factory.”

  The contemplative scholar: Madeleine, Hunter College High School graduate, December 1928.

  Madeleine with the captain of the S.S. Stockholm during the “wondrous” trip abroad, 1925.

  Leona in Strasbourg-am-Rhein, August 1936.

  “Scots wha hae” Leona and Madeleine with Glengarries, London, 1937.

  “Nonpareil of booksellers” E. P. Goldschmidt of London.

  Our “five-doored pagoda,” Ogunquit, Maine, 1938.

  Leona in dory no. 3 with Chimpie and Glengarry, 1938.

  Madeleine with her chicks “Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy,” 1944.

  “A brave new firm,” 1944.

  For one dollar in 1937 one could take a rail trip through all of Belgium. We availed ourselves of this gift and spent a day at Ghent. There, we hailed a carriage whose enthusiastic but not entirely accurate driver described the sights. Everything, he assured us, was “très ancien.” The Maison des Bateliers was “onzième siècle”; the Château des Comtes de Flandres “dixième—très, très ancien”; the Maison de Van Artevelde even “plus ancien—neuvième siècle”; and the oldest of all—over there—was built in the “huitième siècle.”

  Brussels was ultra-modern by contrast. We varied our sight-seeing there with repeated visits to the Musée des Beaux Arts. We concentrated on the Breughels, Elder, Younger, and Third—so vivid and realistic that, as Leona put it in a letter home, “his people are alive, coarse, their spittle is seen, their belches heard.” At the end of the day we relaxed in the Café des Boulevards, dining al fresco on luscious fillet, a dame blanche with café drippé, topped by a gold-tipped cigarette and an anise pastille. Truly this was Europe, the sophisticated continent of Europe. Truly this was the life.

  We saw yet another Flemish version of life in Antwerp, when we visited the Plantin Museum. In that building the printing office of Christophe Plantin, who left France and settled in Antwerp in 1548, was restored and his records preserved. Had we known that one day we two would be buying and studying and selling the books he printed, we might possibly have been even more exhilarated by the museum than we were. But as it was, I was sufficiently thrilled to write in my journal:

  This morning a feast of Plantin imprints at his sign of the Golden Compasses near the Rue Nationale. The house is almost intact as it was in 1575. There are 36 rooms most of which are filled with vellum-bound books; the walls are of oak, the ceilings beamed, grisaille & stained glass windows. The presses, metal impression plates and wood blocks are on exhibition & it doesn’t need much of an imagination to hear the machinery humming, to see the proofreaders examining copy, the servants on the rough stone kitchen floor, a man lighting the fires between rows of Delft tile, & Mme Plantin sitting for her portrait by Rubens. The house is built on the quadrangle style with an open court of greens.

  Somehow, after the Plantin Museum in Antwerp, it seemed appropriate for us to move on to Strasbourg, where Leona had studied the work of other sixteenth-century printers. Now she would show her tarnished Silver City to her friend, and her excitement upon her return was such that she nearly collapsed when she said “rue Goethe” to the cab driver. From then on her déjà vu came to life for me.

  “I saw L’s room at the Pension Elisa and ate the marvelous food she had here last year. I saw the letterbox where she mailed her letters & the benches where she wrote them. We wandered down the Quai des Pěcheurs to the Place Corbeau and her excitement became mine. I know how she feels, and
how strange it seems to her to be here again, unlocking the pension door, walking up the old steps and thru the same streets.”

  At the library I met Ritter, who seemed “stunned with happiness. He lovingly fetched books for his inamorata and angled for opportunities to be alone with her.” He showed us around the library where Leona had worked, and guided us through its stacks and domed reading room onto the roof, from which we could see the spire of the cathedral. Later Papa Heitz took us for a vegetarian lunch at the Pythagore and showed us his printing relics, his woodblocks, rare books, and incunabula leaves.

  Everywhere I retraced Leona’s footsteps with her through this German city that is supposedly French, to the Petit Rhine, where swastikas wave, to the city archives and the Taverne Kléber, still Nazi social headquarters. Now I could better understand those months when Leona had worked on her own in a remote and foreign city. It was obvious that Ritter still loved her, though she felt toward him much as she had before. It was clear too that, despite his love, she had been very lonely working in Strasbourg, scratching away at her desk, doing things alone—always really alone. But she was alone no longer. We were together, sharing the past, creating a future.

  We shared so much, from family background to what has euphemistically been called single blessedness. Although we had dated several men, neither of us had ever really been committed to any one of them. We shared our sense of humor and our love of adventure. Above all, we shared a growing passion for books and the printed word. We lived together in the life of the mind. There we stood on common ground. We loved each other, asexually, platonically, to be sure. The fact that we were two women instead of man and woman did not seem to have much bearing upon our relationship as far as we were concerned. Already we were beginning to identify with each other, to end each other’s sentences, to divine each other’s thoughts.