Old Books, Rare Friends

by Madeline B. Stern

  Now, in August 1944, I had the chance to acquire one. I had come to item 188 in the McLeish catalogue where I read: “Perth Assembly. 1619.”

  All the bracketed designations, including “Pilgrim Press,” had been omitted. The McLeish firm was not aware that it was offering an excessively rare book that had issued from the secret press of the Pilgrim Fathers in Leyden. It did not know that it had listed a prize, and had priced the book at one pound fifteen shillings, or eight dollars.

  Now, the real challenge was: Would I ever get hold of this book? My waterfall of explanation, excitement, and concern poured over Mady and ended in a deluge. “It’s one of the twenty books printed by the Pilgrims at their secret press in Leyden before they came to America! It’s worth a fortune! But how will I get it?—how, how, how? I’m an unknown—surely a good London dealer will grab it!”

  Mady was more controlled. She left Louisa Alcott at 2 Piazza Barberini in Rome and announced, “We’ll take immediate action. We’ll drive to the Ogunquit Western Union office and send a cable to McLeish.” Deviously, I cloaked my discovery when I ordered item 188 by adding a few other items, and my cable was sent to 22 Little Russell Street, London. In days when international telephone calls were almost as rare as Calderwoods, all I could do was wait in alternating hope and despair, in constant suspense, for the outcome. Would I launch Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books with a great, great find or not?

  Meanwhile, I performed the final task in my preparations. I formulated the announcement that would bring the existence of a brave new firm to the attention of a breathless book-buying public:

  LEONA ROSTENBERG

  takes pleasure in announcing

  that she will engage in the sale of Rare Books

  at

  152 East 179th Street

  New York 53, N.Y.

  Tremont 8—2789

  At a slight extra charge the Portland printer included my stationery device in the upper left corner. I had two thousand copies printed. We mailed them all and, after donating the now brooding Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy to our landlord, we departed the lovely house facing the sea in early September.

  My business filled one requisite for the antiquarian book trade: it was located on the East Side. It was a bit high up, however: 152 East 179th Street, the Bronx. There, in the three-story house where I had grown up, I converted my brother’s abandoned bedroom into my office. There I installed my magnificent stationery, my full sheets, my half sheets, my cards, my labels, my one hundred billheads. As for my stock of antiquarian books, it fitted easily into a small bookcase that originally housed the Encyclopaedia Britannica, acquired by my parents when their son entered high school. My flattop desk—once my father’s—was placed in a recess facing the window. On it reposed my typewriter—my junior typewriter, which had never been equipped with a backspacer. My walls were adorned with reproductions of fifteenth-century woodcuts purchased in Strasbourg. My wirehair, Chimpie, curled up on the rug. My telephone sat waiting on a ledge. Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books was poised to begin.

  A letter dated September 14, 1944, helped break ground. In response to one of my two thousand announcements, the noted columnist for Publishers Weekly, Jake Blanck, wrote:

  Dear Leona Rostenberg—

  All good wishes! I know that with your expert knowledge you’ll make a great success of bookselling.

  How about writing 3 or 400 words on what you plan to do? Your specialties, etc.? A list of your writings etc., etc.? I’ll run it in PW.

  And don’t be modest!

  Yrs—

  Jake Blanck

  A month later Publishers Weekly reported to the book world the launching of a new antiquarian book business:

  LEONA ROSTENBERG, who has been connected for five years with Herbert Reichner, rare book dealer in New York, has opened her own shop at 152 East 179th Street, New York 53, N.Y. Miss Rostenberg tells us that though her interests are not confined to any one period, she will specialize in literature of the Renaissance and the Reformation and the history of printing.

  Miss Rostenberg received her M.A. from Columbia University in 1933 and then spent the following five years doing graduate work in mediaeval and modern European history, specializing in early 16th century printing. She lived for some time in Strasbourg where she studied incunabula and 16th century Strasbourg editions. Miss Rostenberg has written many articles on the subject of printing, among them “The Printers of Strasbourg and Humanism,” “The Libraries of Three Nuremberg Patricians.”

  Miss Rostenberg was gratified by the public recognition of “her own shop.” Miss Rostenberg, however, had still to make her first offer, had still to hear the telephone ring with her first order. The majority of books in the Encyclopaedia Britannica bookcase were being saved for what I hoped would be my Catalogue One. To expand my meager stock and activate the process of supply and demand, I returned to Morningside Heights.

  The balcony shelves of the Columbia University Bookstore were lined with dull cloth-bound sets of forgotten English literary lights. A calfbound volume caught my eye until its missing title page replaced hope with disappointment. Surely there must be some duplicate—even some discard—not wanted by Columbia but ardently desired by another university library. And then I spied it. It was a quarto, beautifully bound in polished calf, and its glitter was enhanced by a gilt-impressed crest on the covers. I took it carefully off the shelf, and when I looked at the title page I nearly fell off the balcony. I had seen another copy of the very same book at Herbert Reichner’s: A Six Weeks Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales by Arthur Young. Herbert had raved on about its importance; it was a treasury of information about eighteenth-century English economy, from soil cultivation to labor prices, from farming to the working poor. Herbert had had it in first edition of 1768, and this too was a first edition, but an even better copy than his; this one had come from a great library, the Camperdown, and had its arms embossed on the covers. Why Columbia had discarded it was a conundrum to me, but I had more important things to do than worry about that. I had to check the book to make sure it was complete, and then I had to avail myself of the facilities of my alma mater’s library and check references. I spent some time looking up the catalogue of Harvard’s Kress Library of Business and Economics, and reassured myself that that great library boasted only the second edition of the work. This was not only the first, but the Camperdown copy. Its price was three dollars. I quickly took my find to the cashier and exchanged it for three singles. Young’s Six Weeks Tour was the handsomest book in my small stock. In addition, it was rare, and, to cap it all, it was in English and so would appeal even to librarians without Latin and Greek. It would be the first formal book offer of Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books.

  For this purpose I selected not a half sheet but a full sheet of my splendid stationery. The description I wrote almost rivaled the book in length. It elaborated every detail of the six weeks’ tour and ended with the encomium: “It is both an economic and social survey of a good portion of England during the second half of the eighteenth century. Rare First Edition.” In days that boasted no Xerox, I made eleven copies of my offer and circulated it among eleven libraries.

  I reported my results to Mady: “My Arthur Young is taking his first American tour. What do you think?” Mady, trying to forestall any possible disappointment, cautioned me, “Try to be patient. It could be that you might not have an order before Christmas.”

  Dejected, I returned home to find a household uproarious with excitement. In my absence, my telephone had rung. It had been answered by my father’s receptionist, Miss Kerry, who had jotted the message down on a prescription pad. What a prescription! “Please send the Young on approval. John Fall, Acquisitions Department, New York Public Library.”

  Arthur Young had traveled a good deal. He had crossed the Channel several times. Now, well packed in numerous layers of tissue and corrugated paper, he crossed less turbulent waters—the East River—transported to Manhattan by his temporary owne
r. John Fall greeted both of us with amusement.

  “He’s sure well wrapped.”

  “He had quite a trip,” I replied.

  “A nice copy,” he commented after disgorging the smothered Mr. Young from his many-layered wrappings. “We’ll let you know.”

  It was my first sale. Moreover it was followed two days later by my first duplicate order from the Kress Library of Business and Economics, Harvard University. My mother was so overwhelmed that she made a long-distance call to her sisters in Cedarhurst, Long Island. Business had begun.

  To the amazement of my family, and indeed to my own, business continued. From foreign catalogues I selected books of earlier centuries that seemed to have some bearing on ours, and librarians apparently agreed with me, for they were purchased: Rousseau’s Treatise on the Social Compact, which had had some influence upon our Constitution; the Correspondence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, an early feminist who had introduced to the West the practice of inoculation against smallpox. A slim English catalogue, delivered shortly after our return from Maine, introduced me to what were designated as “petites histoires,” published in the seventeenth century, brief histories of great events and great people. I delighted in those little calfbound volumes—a history of Dunkirk, still timely; a life of Christina of Denmark; a violent invective against an earlier dictator, Louis XIV. These unimposing mementoes of another age crystallized for me the bits and pieces of seventeenth-century fact and fancy. Individually they might be unimportant, but together they reflected a time gone by. For me they offered multum in parvo, and again the curators of university libraries agreed. The “petites histoires” departed 179th Street almost as soon as they came in.

  Not all my purchases had such a halcyon fate. An atypical purchase for me was a volume by Arthur Conan Doyle. Having killed off Sherlock Holmes at the end of 1893, the author had experimented with stories unrelated to the great detective, and in 1894 Doyle published Round the Red Lamp, consisting of narratives recalling his medical practice. This I described at length, beginning my offer with an account of the author’s medical education and ending with a critical analysis. Naturally I sent my voluminous offer to the Sherlockian expert Christopher Morley. His reply was disheartening: “Many thanks, but I have it already—am sending on your memo to another connoisseur.” This was cold comfort, since I never heard from the other “connoisseur.”

  Around the same time, I decided to offer to another expert Jackson’s Second Report of the Geology of the State of Maine which I had found at the House of the Thousand Chairs in Salmon Falls. The description of Jackson’s Report was even more voluminous than the description of Doyle’s Round the Red Lamp. It began with Jackson’s background, proceeded to his appointment as state geologist, and recounted the contents of Parts 1, 2, and 3 of his Report. In 1944, the most popular novelist associated with the State of Maine was Kenneth Roberts, author of Oliver Wiswell, and a familiar of its rocky coast. To Mr. Roberts of Kennebunkport, therefore, I dispatched my Jackson offer. His reply, like Christopher Morley’s, was disheartening:

  Thank you very much for your letter … and the kind things you say.

  I’m a little doubtful as to whether Jackson’s book would be of much help to me in writing novels—Cap Huff only needed to distinguish between two sorts of rocks: the sort he could pick up and throw, and the sort big enough to fall down on.

  Such disappointments were, I knew, part of being in business. Moreover, they were completely eclipsed by the arrival of a small package from Little Russell Street, London. When I saw the label of McLeish & Sons, I almost feared to open it. Would the package contain just those few items I had ordered to cloak the Pilgrim Press prize, or would the great rarity be there? I conquered my hesitation, tore off the wrappers, dislodged the corrugated paper, and with pounding heart found two books. One was an eighteenth-century work on Spanish painters. The other was an octavo bound in sheepskin. I opened to the title page: Perth Assembly. 1619. In my hands was one of the twenty titles published by the Pilgrim Father, the Elder Brewster, at his secret press in Leyden before he boarded the Mayflower. “Petites histoires” were all very well, and so too were Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. But now I owned a monument, a landmark in printing history.

  Tempering my excitement, I placed my Calderwood exactly where it belonged in my Encyclopaedia Britannica bookcase, right before a volume by Gasparo Contarini. I had bought the latter, The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, from another English dealer—the English translation of a Venetian history published in 1599 that William Shakespeare may have studied before writing Othello. Certainly there were details in the Contarini that punctuate the tragedy of the Moor of Venice.

  During the next few weeks I exulted in my acquisitions: a Shakespeare source placed next to an American incunable. Having reveled especially in my prize showpiece, my Calderwood, I decided to do what all good booksellers must do, sell my wares. I wrote up both works and offered them together to my old friend John Fall, Chief of Acquisitions, New York Public Library. This time when I informed Mady what I had done, she did not caution me to wait till Christmas for a decision. Once again I carried my books wrapped in their protective layers to Forty-second Street, and once again John Fall admired their packaging. This time, however, he warned me that it would take some time for a decision, since the Calderwood would be no ordinary purchase. And once again I waited in suspense for the outcome.

  A week later the Chief of Acquisitions telephoned. “I have good news and bad news.”

  I stopped breathing.

  “We have the Contarini. But we are buying the Calderwood—delighted to acquire it.”

  Who cared about Othello? I had made my first really big coup. Another call was made to Cedarhurst, and this time I magnanimously permitted my awestruck mother to use my phone.

  From time to time I noticed empty spaces on my bookshelf. For a beginning bookseller this was a situation that had to be remedied. The balcony of the Columbia University Bookstore where I had found my Arthur Young might yield more finds. Browsing through the shelves, whistling softly to myself in hopeful anticipation, I pulled out and replaced, contemplated and discarded, until I noticed a stout octavo volume. I opened it and saw an indifferent-looking title page: Orationes IV. The author of Orationes IV had an equally unenticing name: Johann Balthasar Schupp. Lackadaisically I leafed through his outpourings of 1704. Mynheer Schupp was apparently tireless. His Orationes IV was followed by another title page in Latin, a Dissertation on Opinion, penned in 1703. These verbose meanderings of nearly two and a half centuries ago would not command more than fifteen or twenty dollars. But something—perhaps FingerSpitzengefühl, perhaps ESP, perhaps simply serendipity—lured me on. I turned the pages of Schupp on Opinion rapidly. And then I hit upon a third title page. My lack of interest was replaced by excitement, and my excitement by palpitations. Bound with Mynheer Schupp was another Latin work published more than fifty years before his bombast. It had been written by no Dutch orator but by the eminent French skeptic René Descartes. Moreover, it was his greatest contribution to the field of psychology. Tucked away at the end of two completely nondescript works was the first Latin edition of the supremely important Passions of the Soul. The volume was priced at five dollars. Here my profit would be enormous. The Descartes could fetch as much as two hundred dollars. (Today it would bring a minimum of ten times that.) Before making the purchase I naturally availed myself of the Columbia Reference Library, where I confirmed my belief that Columbia University had discarded a rarity. Now it was mine.

  Descartes would go to the Sterling Library of Yale University, where it would introduce me to the extraordinary librarian Donald Wing, who would become a lasting friend. In a way, the second or duplicate order for the Descartes was even more interesting. It was incredible. It came from the Accessions Department, Columbia University Library.

  As for the two boring compositions by Mynheer Schupp, I would place them in alphabetical order in my Encyclopae
dia Britannica bookcase and try to forget them. Forgetting them, however, would prove impossible. Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books was about to be enlarged by admission of a partner who would enter the two indifferent volumes in an inventory, estimate their costs as zero, and, in time, proceed to sell them at what can only be described as total profit. On April 9, 1945, Madeleine phoned to me and said, “You have a junior partner. I’ll be up tomorrow.”

  Madeleine THAT PHONE CALL WAS THE culmination of all my preceding life, but it was initiated by more immediate events. After my Guggenheim had ended, teaching was more repugnant to me than ever. On April 9 I was told that the teacher of a special class of below-average students had had a nervous breakdown and that I was to be her replacement. At that point I envisioned my own nervous breakdown. I rode the subway back from school, my inner turmoil gradually turning to decisive calm. I had long ago planned to join Leona in the fall; I would simply do so now, in the spring. I would burn my bridge to security as a tenured teacher and add my name to Leona’s magnificent correspondence paper: Madeleine B. Stern, Associate.