by David Mason
Advertising in the AB was therefore an act of considerable courage, and I awaited the mail thereafter with mixed feelings. But, in fact, things started off very well. I was not deluged by quotes, although a lot came in, but the majority were for books that I needed. Early on it became obvious that, after fulfilling the needs of the University of Toronto, I should buy any duplicates offered, since it was logical to assume that if the University of Toronto didn’t have a particular book other Canadian institutions would also need it. This assumption proved to be correct and my next few catalogues devoted to Canadian literature contained a large percentage of my surplus purchases. I had also received a good number of quotations for the planted authors. I was able to purchase many of the titles offered, so I was almost immediately supplementing my efforts for the university with unexpected sales. Another thing occurred which I hadn’t anticipated. Many quoters, no doubt grasping at straws, quoted me any book they had relating to Canada. I didn’t want most of them but the odd one proved worth buying, so I augmented my take that way as well.
As with all books turning up in faraway places, the occasional item appears that, for one reason or another (for example, a book that was privately printed by an ex-Canadian who no one even remembers as such), is not known by anyone. I have learned to look for such books especially in places like California, where a lot of Canadians seem to have migrated, some no doubt for climate, but others for more esoteric reasons, like joining a religious cult. I always check prefaces to see where they were signed and dated. Just a short while ago, I flashed the preface on a book about Tibet by a woman with a Dutch name and found that the preface was signed and dated at “Chatham, Ontario”—usually proof that the author was Canadian. When I checked Watters, I found that she was. Another winner. The word “Chatham” added $100.00 to the value of what otherwise would have been a $25.00 book. Charles Everitt, whose memoirs Adventures of a Treasure Hunter is to my mind one of the best books on bookselling, mentions somewhere that after a lifetime of flashing the pages of books, he became quite adept at spotting the word America in unlikely books. When this happens such a book becomes Americana and opportunities are opened for its sale in markets otherwise closed. I have also been doing this for many years and have found ‘Canada’ or Canadian place names in some very interesting places. Once, I bought and was cataloguing a Victorian triple-decker (a three-volume novel) when the words “New Brunswick” caught my eye. I discovered with a bit of investigation that the author, a British officer, had spent a couple of years serving with his regiment there. Examining the text, I discovered that the entire novel was set in eastern Canada and dealt with the Indians, always an interesting and sought-after subject here. I promptly doubled the price and called Richard Landon. “I have a novel you don’t have,” I informed him, which translated as “you must buy this book,” and he did. I then had the pleasure of boasting to my colleagues about how clever I was, but as it turned out Landon was even more clever than me, for he did his homework, properly checking all other sources and found no other copy anywhere. In other words, it was unrecorded and had I known that I probably could have asked not $300.00 but $1,000.00 or more. Even worse, Landon didn’t just boast to all our friends about the wonderful sleeper he had bought from me, he actually went so far as to put it in print in his annual report. I still get to hear about that regularly, and I guess I will till I die or until another copy turns up somewhere, because it, I believe, remains the only copy known. As a result of this humiliation I evolved a clever system. When I found obscure items that didn’t appear in the usual bibliographic sources, I phoned Jerry Sherlock. If Jerry said he had never seen it, then I knew I had a real rarity. In fact, I’ve continued to do that for the last forty years, for no reference book ever equals a good dealer’s experience. Even though I haven’t worked for Jerry for forty years, I still make use of his good nature. At least I can now return the favour, occasionally myself having some areas of expertise which I can share with him.
My greatest discovery using my new quoting method was a writer I had never heard of, and one that most readers will not have heard of either, although she was the bestselling Canadian author of her time. Her name was May Agnes Fleming, and she wrote perhaps a hundred books or more. (The exact number is difficult to establish because the titles were changed regularly, not just between England and America, but also between publishers—a new publisher, often a pirate, would change a title to make his edition appear to be a new title.) Watters lists sixty-one titles for Fleming but leaves out a lot. It does note some changed titles, in some cases with three different titles for the same book. Wright Fiction, which is the American equivalent of Watters, lists some thirty-nine titles for Fleming, apparently not aware that she was Canadian. These are not always the same titles as those listed in Watters, so it is confusing. I came to feel a special bond with Fleming, for I felt that I had discovered or at least rediscovered her. She is no longer in complete obscurity, as she is given space in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, as well as other reference works such as the Feminist Companion to Literature. May Agnes Fleming was born in New Brunswick in 1840. She began her writing career early and at age fifteen she had a short story published in the Mercury. She never looked back. A prolific writer, she wrote for four newspapers at one time and from 1868 on she wrote an average of three novels a year. Fleming eventually transferred to the New York Weekly, then the most widely circulated newspaper in the United States, while at the same time providing serials for the London Journal. She soon became a master of Gothic fiction, manipulating very complex and ingenious plots. Several of her works contain a “villainess of passion, initiative and determination” contrasted with a “virtuous and submissive heroine.” Fred Cogswell, in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, compares her plots to those of Wilkie Collins.
Many of her books have wonderful Victorian titles, and I must ask indulgence because I cannot resist quoting some of them. For instance Erminie, or, The Gipsy’s Vow: A Tale of Love and Vengeance. (We don’t get titles like that anymore, do we?) Another: The Twin Sisters; or, The Wronged Wife’s Hate. Curiously, Watters notes that this was later published as The Rival Brothers or the Wronged Wife’s Hate. You will notice that she changed the focus from the sisters to the brothers, but she still leaves in the wronged wife. Here’s another one: The Midnight Queen: A Tale of Illusion, Delusion and Mystery. Now this strikes me as one of the greatest titles for a book, one so good that, as was said about the first sentences of Johnson’s Rasselas, there is no need to read any further. Could there be a more perfect description of marriage than the subtitle A Tale of Illusion, Delusion and Mystery? Her last novel was something of a groundbreaker, as her heroine faces psychologically complex problems and demonstrates initiative only previously attributed to her villains. (Perhaps this is why she qualified for inclusion in The Feminist Companion.) It includes a perceptive portrait of a woman who has the courage to escape from a horrible marriage and forge an independent life. Obviously it was based in part on her own experience. For although she did marry and have four children, by all accounts her husband was some sort of drunken wastrel, and she relied on fiction to support herself and her children. That her husband permanently embittered her is indicated by some of her other titles; for instance, A Mad Marriage, and an intriguing combination of two titles published in a double volume—the first, Fated to Marry, followed by A Night of Terror. Other titles include Wedded for Pique, The Wife’s Tragedy, A Wronged Wife, and perhaps the most evocative of the lot, The Unseen Bridegroom: or, Wedded for a Week. Her situation was so grave that she took legal action to ensure that her husband could not get his hands on any of her money, which given her success as a novelist was substantial. From 1870 on she earned about $15,000.00 per year—no paltry sum at the time. Fleming was one of the most successful and popular novelists of her day and was Canada’s first bestselling novelist, even if no one knows of her any longer. Her popularity was such that publishers tried to ride the coattails of he
r commercial success after her death by putting her name on hackwork written by others.
I got quite a few quotations for Fleming, mostly pretty cheap, and I bought everything offered. I listed them in my next Canadian Literature catalogue and was deluged with orders. It seemed no library in Canada had any May Agnes Fleming, and I ended up with many back orders for them all. I put special ads in the AB just for her and for the next two or three years I ran a mini-specialty in May Agnes Fleming. Naturally, other dealers caught on and started searching as well, but my headstart ensured that I had all the contacts and I supplied an enormous number of books until, inevitably, the sources dried up and the prices rose dramatically. I still see the odd Fleming title, always with a tinge of affection for that strange woman. She died in 1880, at the age of forty, worn out from all the writing or, more likely, from raising children, writing all night and holding her drunken husband at bay. It seems to me that there is material for an interesting PhD dissertation somewhere in all of this, and when the scholar appears who takes it on they ought to thank Miss Blackstock and me for making it all possible. They won’t, of course; they won’t even know about us. But we don’t care; we did our jobs and the books are where they should be, waiting for future generations to make use of them.
I believe it was through Fleming that I came in contact with a quoter who will serve as an example of the sort of eccentricity I mentioned earlier. One of my earliest quotations was from a man named Clyde King. He had sent a long quotation and I had responded in the usual manner I used with all new quoters—encouraging them by buying as much as possible. He became my largest supplier of May Agnes Fleming and some others, but soon human nature reared its ugly head and prices started to rise. It seemed that the more I bought, the higher the prices were on the next quotation, until finally his prices exceeded what I felt I could ask my clients. I couldn’t come right out and tell him: “Clyde you are getting too greedy. Smarten up if you want me to buy books,” so I instead stopped buying certain books, at first stating I didn’t need them all, but also subtly hinting that some were getting a bit more expensive than I could afford. But subtlety didn’t work with Clyde King and he started to become cranky, so I started turning down lots of them, and finally large lists of books, none of which I felt I could buy without gouging my clients. In the end, I stopped answering his quotations.
Previously King had offered me some children’s books which I didn’t want but which seemed interesting, so I sent him on to my friend Yvonne Knight of St. Nicholas Books, who specialized in children’s books. She bought them and he began quoting books for her regularly as well. Later, when I had resorted to the ultimate defense of not answering King’s letters, I had a call from Yvonne. “Clyde King is asking me what happened to you,” she said. “He says you don’t answer his letters.” I told her why and inquired how she was doing with him. “Well, he gets a bit querulous when I don’t buy everything,” she replied. “Just wait,” said I, smiling to myself smugly. Then I started getting calls from Yvonne weekly—“Clyde says you don’t like him anymore.” “Clyde says he sold you wonderful books for nothing and now you don’t even reply. He says you made a fortune off him, and now he simply wants his fair share of the huge profits you cut him off from. He called you an ingrate. Clyde says he bought a huge pile of May Agnes Fleming just for you and now he will be stuck with them. He says to tell you he is not sure if he will be able to stay in business.” The next week: “Clyde is ill with worry. Can’t you do something? If you would buy just a few, he might be able to survive.” By this time Clyde’s relationship with Yvonne had started to deteriorate too, and his complaints were turning into diatribes. “You are a traitor and a weasel this week,” reported Yvonne. Then it became nationalistic: “What’s the matter with you Canadians? Don’t you understand anything about loyalty or decency?” Finally, one week Yvonne called to tell me that Clyde wanted the address of the President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada. “He’s going to have you expelled from the association.” “For not answering quotes?” I asked. “Well, he calls it ‘unprofessional foreign relations’,” she informed me. I recognized Clyde’s distinctive prose style. Poor Clyde, he was doomed to further frustration, for as chance would have it I had just been elected to the Board of Directors of the Association. Yvonne’s next call conveyed yet another whine: “Don’t any Canadians answer letters? Are you all ingrates?” By this time Yvonne was sick of being the go-between and wanted to be rid of Clyde, but was much too nice to be as curt with him as I had been. Then one day, I thought we had been saved. The newspaper sports section announced that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, had once again fired Billy Martin and named a new manager by the name of Clyde King. I immediately phoned Yvonne. “We’ve been saved; we’re saved. Clyde King is the new manager of the New York Yankees. Boy, is Steinbrenner ever going to get it. If he thought Billy Martin was bad he hasn’t seen anything yet. By the time Clyde gets through with him the Yankees will be finished for decades.” Unfortunately my euphoria was short-lived because it was, of course, a different Clyde King who became manager of the Yankees, although I believe our Clyde would have been perfect for Steinbrenner.
The accusations kept coming through Yvonne, more and more scurrilous, but the amusing thing was that every few months I would receive another letter directly from Clyde. “Dear Mr. Mason, It’s been a while since we were last in touch. I think of you often and I hope you are well. I just got some wonderful May Agnes Fleming books and I wanted to offer them to you first because of old times.” I guess Clyde was from the carrot-and-stick school of quoting, but I was smart enough not to start the cycle again and I never answered. I still occasionally wonder who Clyde King is persecuting these days.
All in all, the experiment worked very well. But one day, after four or five years, it became apparent to me that I was no longer supplying very much to the University of Toronto. Most of my sources had been depleted and my business had grown. The university’s collection was now only one project among several and I couldn’t give it my full attention. I was no longer hungry enough to be as fully effective as this sort of project necessitates. I called Cicely Blackstock and told her that while I was prepared to continue on the project indefinitely, I thought it time we passed things on to a more hungry newcomer who wanted an opportunity to prove himself. She agreed, and the project was given to another dealer. I was very pleased with how things had transpired, for the University of Toronto had become a valued client and I had gotten to know a lot of the librarians, some of whom I am still working with forty years later.
The Fisher Library is the greatest library in Canada, in every sense of the word, and probably one of the top half-dozen in this hemisphere, and that is so, in my view, because it includes all the aspects that a great library must: good professional librarians, interested alumni and students, serious non-academic users and, equally importantly, an interested group of collectors and readers who understand and appreciate that a great library is really a great museum and must be supported in the same manner. My bias is obvious; something for which I don’t apologize. Indeed, it is nice to be partisan when the party deserves it.
Chapter 12
On the Buying of Books
My father, the banker, despised the book business, as he believed that it operated contrary to all the principles on which all real businesses needed to be conducted.
“Why do you guys always only talk about buying books; why don’t you try and sell a book once in a while?” was his favourite complaint whenever he was in the company of a bookseller. “It’s a good thing no bookseller ever came to me to borrow money when I was working. I wouldn’t loan a penny to a bookseller.”
In fact, I didn’t meet a banker who would until I was ten years in business. It wasn’t that my father was a complete fool, he just didn’t understand the book business.
When I applied for my first loan ever, I was already in business. My first catalog
ue had been issued successfully, leaving me with an accounts receivable of some $800.00. And, more important, I had a job too, working for Joseph Patrick Books. I was therefore astounded when my bank manager refused to loan me the $300.00 I had asked for.
“Mr. Mason,” he said, “you have a job, so I can loan you $3,000.00 if you want to buy a car or something else personal, but I can’t loan you anything for your business. You have no assets.”
“I have books,” I replied, astounded at his inability to understand the importance of books.
“What would I do with those books, Mr. Mason, if you defaulted? Who would I sell them to?” he said.
In the end, my father came down and they had a banker’s talk which resulted in my father giving him $3,000.00 of Bell Canada shares to secure a $3,000.00 loan.
