Old Books, Rare Friends

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by Madeline B. Stern


  I proceeded at that point to do what most other writers of master’s essays did: I brought mine to the secretary of the English Department for retyping. This was standard practice at the time. One evening I received a telephone call inquiring: “Miss Stern, do you have a copy of your master’s thesis?”

  “No,” I replied. I had no copy. The original was the one and only, and that was safely deposited in the English Department office. Then I heard from the other end of the line: “I’m afraid that two thirds of your paper has disappeared from this office. We have the first third—that’s been retyped.”

  My mother and I dashed to Columbia immediately. We spent part of the evening going through Columbia rubbish bins. Two thirds of Mary Magdalene had simply disappeared. Her role in literature between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries had evaporated. So, perhaps, had my master’s degree. It was not until considerable weighty consultation had taken place that the Columbia powers-that-be decided to accept the first third of Mary Magdalene in lieu of the whole and grant me a master’s.

  The Magdalene experience had two important effects. It encouraged me to pursue research well beyond any limits I might have originally set. After all, if my thesis had not been so long, I would not have received a degree. At the same time, the incident discouraged me from going on with graduate work. I was tired of listening to lectures. But I was agog to pursue independent research. I was also eager to earn some money even in Depression times. I had already taken the extensive examinations, written and oral, offered to candidates for teaching positions in New York City high schools. It would be months before the results were announced. Meanwhile, I would have at least one free semester—six months in which to write what I pleased, think as I pleased, do as I pleased. As it developed, the year 1933 had brought me more than freedom. It had brought me the reunion with my fellow teacher in Sabbath School with whom I would begin to share much of my life.

  Now I shared with her, in exchange for her thoughts about Arabic astrologers and intellectual history, my cogitations about what would become my first published article. Entitled “Hungry Ghosts,” from a line by Conrad Aiken—“We are the hungry ghosts of the selves we knew”—and subtitled “Flux of Identity in Contemporary Literature,” the study centered on a subject and a field I had never academically pursued. Now I was pursued by the dualism of human nature, and as I had followed Mary Magdalene through the ages, I searched for the core of identity in Strindberg and Dostoevsky, in Proust, Eugene O’Neill, and T. S. Eliot. I ended the article, which appeared in 1935 in the Sewanee Review, with the remark, “The writer thinks it about time she took the infinity of her selves for an airing.”

  With Leona I aired my infinity of selves and discussed plans for a follow-up article in the Sewanee Review that would concern flux of time in literature. With Leona I discussed the entry into my life of a young man named Alter Fischof, who had read something I published and wanted to meet me. My mother, thinking he might be a killer, objected, and I was forced to meet with him initially chaperoned by two tall friends. The second time Alter and I met he noted, “I see you came without your cohorts.” Actually, he was no killer. He was, strangely enough, a rabbi, though without a congregation, and a very brilliant man. Although he took pains to introduce me to his mother, our relationship did not last. I seemed to enjoy talking about it all to Leona far more than experiencing it.

  At no time did I ever feel any parental pressure to marry. I am sure that my mother would have liked to see me married—but married to the “right” person, who would be a companion in an understanding and permanent relationship. Marriage for the sake of marriage meant nothing to her, any more than any of the “shows” of life did. I too would have relished such a marriage. But none of the men I dated really shared my personal passions for writing and for books, and hence never had a true share of me. Leona did. In this respect our friendship was both uncommon and intense, though always in a platonic way. Helen’s husband, Raymond, appreciated this and eventually said, “Mady and Leona are the most perfect couple in our circle.” For the most part, Leona and I were too busy confiding in each other and enjoying our confidences to analyze our friendship.

  In 1934 I became a teacher-in-training in English at Theodore Roosevelt High School. I was expected to act as a kind of secretary to the head of department, to teach a little, and to observe much. Besides, Theodore Roosevelt High School was in the Bronx, not too far from Leona’s home. On Friday nights I usually bused to her house from school and we digested the week that had passed with the wonderful dinners prepared by Babette. My salary as teacher-in-training was $22.50 a week. Although I was earnest about the work and eager to please my superiors, I did not find the act of teaching fulfilling in any way. I went through the motions, but I did not rejoice in them. The pay was tempting, though, and, living at home as I did, I could put money aside.

  But I knew that teaching left something to be desired. I had a tendency to simplify too much even for below-average students. One such class had been assigned Old Testament stories, and in order to explain as lucidly as possible the dual responsibility of the Judge of Ancient Israel—active leader of the host in war and sedentary justice passing sentence on crime—I clarified a bit too graphically: “The Judge of Ancient Israel,” I informed my pupils, “had two duties to perform. One of these he performed standing up, and the other sitting down.” The class’s literal interpretation of my metaphor triggered much unintended hilarity.

  By the summer of 1934 I felt I had put aside enough money to go abroad. Leona could not come with me; by then she was too deeply involved in preparation for her Ph.D. My mother agreed to accompany me, and on July 4 we boarded the S.S. Washington, for what would be my literary trip to France and England. Throughout, I recorded my reactions in letters to Leona and my other friends as well as to a five-year-diary, practically all of which was consumed with indexed details of the two-month journey. From Chartres to St. Germain-en-Laye, from Dinard to Dinan, from the Bibliothèque Nationale to the Musée Rodin, I wandered and wrote and wrote and wandered. I stopped long enough at the Paris quais to make my first purchases of rare books, noting that the books were

  kept in grey tin boxes unlocked to show the public. Some American foreign books in paper covers & some 16—18th century French & Latin. I bought a 17th-century Ovid for 40 francs and an Erasmus L’Éloge de Folie with Holbein drawings 17th-century, for 140 francs … [and a Baudelaire translation of Poe for 3 francs]. Different owner of every few stalls—some women in heavy black petticoats who are eager to unlock the precious wares and a few men with carroty mustaches who knew something about books.

  Years later, when Leona and I were partners in the rare book business, we would sell that seventeenth-century Ovid and the Baudelaire translation of Poe, as well as the French Erasmus with Holbein illustrations. Indeed, the Praise of Folly would be the focus of a book we would one day co-author under the title Quest Book—Guest Book: A Biblio-Folly. The Quest Book of the title would be Erasmus’s masterpiece.

  In England the literature I had studied came alive for me. At the Bodleian I saw the guitar Shelley had given to Jane. In Salisbury I saw Florence Nightingale’s bed, owned by her dear friend Arthur Hugh Clough. My mother and I sat in a tent in Regent’s Park during a drenching rain to see John Drinkwater play Prospero in The Tempest. Wherever there were bookstores I was lured, from a second-hand shop in Bath to D. M. Beach’s in Salisbury to Foyle’s in London.

  Prospero had drowned his book in The Tempest. I was getting more and more eager to open mine. I was quite sure that, though I would have to teach, teaching was not my “book.” It would have to be the background to what I really wanted to do—write. When we returned home from “My Literary Trip Abroad,” I went back to teaching and to researching unpaid articles for scholarly periodicals.

  I went back too to Leona, but now our friendship was given another dimension. Her brother Adolph—A. Jr.—had begun to play a role in my life. Chaucer, having put him on the road t
o Canterbury, would have called him a very “sudden” man. Now, reincarnated in the twentieth century, a young physician, he was still a very “sudden” man, brilliant but condescending, a man who went after what he wanted with single-minded determination. No, the twentieth century would not have called him “sudden”; it would have called him “macho.” Yet he was often fascinating to be with, and our association had ups as well as downs. His medical practice never deterred him from his innumerable hobbies; stamp collecting gave way to tropical fish, botany to mathematics. For a time I was probably one of his hobbies. Curiously, he never called me Mady, just Stern; and I never called him Rusty, just A. In the end we realized that there was basically little love between us. He wanted to be married and selected me for the post of wife. I went on to another nonsuitor.

  Bill was far less “sudden” and “macho” than A. A lawyer in the immigration office, he was also an amateur violinist, and I frequently played the role of audience for the quartets he assembled. He had an interesting and original mind, but he was certainly not ready for marriage or for any permanent relationship. In addition, he had a vulgar streak that he manifested upon occasion. I recall a performance of Tristan that he classified unhesitatingly as “shit.” At the time, he succeeded in shocking me.

  I am not sure just how Leona reacted to all my confidences. All I remember is that the imparting of those confidences gave me considerably more pleasure than the experience that triggered them. And this told me quite definitely that I should not marry her brother A or his successor Bill, and perhaps I should not marry anyone.

  This feeling did not make it any easier for me to watch on the sidelines the pairing off of friends. Shirley had married and had a baby. Helen would marry Raymond as soon as they had put a little money aside. Besides discussing all this with Leona, I did what came most naturally to me: I put my observations into prose.

  I had begun my novel in college, but now it took on more precise focus. I called it We Are Taken, from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Buck in the Snow:

  This is my testament: that we are taken;

  Our colours are as clouds before the wind;

  Yet for a moment stood the foe forsaken,

  Eyeing love’s favour to our helmet pinned;

  Death is our master,—but his seat is shaken;

  He rides victorious,—but his ranks are thinned.

  It was not death that was master in my We Are Taken, but rather love and the conventions in which my lovers sought security. I based my novel upon the progressions of the nursery rhyme “The Farmer in the Dell”: “Heighho the Derry-oh, the Farmer in the Dell”; “The Farmer Takes a Wife”; “The Wife Takes the Child”; “The Child Takes the Nurse.” Inevitably, as in the rhyme, the Farmer runs away, the Wife runs away, the Child runs away. But the Cheese stands alone. And as the Cheese that stood alone, I dominated my novel, observing the taking and the running away, and, in the end, being left. It was a simple enough conceit for a first novel, but it took off from a pretentious prelude and did not quite succeed in making its point.

  I dedicated We Are Taken to my mother, who had listened with what seemed like appreciation to my readings from it. In 1935 the novel was published by a small firm, the Galleon Press, with offices in New York’s Flatiron Building, at 175 Fifth Avenue. My mother had seen in a New York newspaper the press’s announcement that it was looking for manuscripts, especially novels. A few prior attempts at placing We Are Taken had been unsuccessful, so when my mother suggested I try Galleon, I did. Its two heads, Gerta Aison and Kenneth Houston, were both enthusiastic about my submission. They were also enthusiastic about their press, which they described as “publishers of fine editions and books of distinction.” My elation at seeing my creation between boards was tempered by some reservation. Perhaps I should have waited longer and tried more distinguished houses with wider distribution. But at twenty-three I could easily wave such a thought aside when I rode downtown to the Flatiron Building on top of a double-decker, hugging the thought that I was on my way to “my publisher.” Actually, though the publication gave me a great feeling of satisfaction, accomplishment, and sophistication, there was not much “of distinction” in We Are Taken. My friends, of course, read it with undisguised curiosity; to them it had the appeal of a roman à clef. A review in the September 15, 1935, New York Times was not too sanguine. The novel, the critic conceded, has “lusty lungs, sensitiveness, a desire to probe and an unabashedness at its own nakedness … But it bites off more than it can well chew.” A provincial paper, the Blackwell Daily Journal, of Wewoka, Oklahoma, thought more highly of We Are Taken, which it described as a “unique book … a succession of narratives concerning the problems of young girls. Their hopes and disappointments, their loves and hatreds, their racial and religious differences—all are depicted with a sympathetic understanding.” As for the heroine, she was, in the reviewer’s estimation, “unusual,” with “an ultra-modern mind … forever seeking for solutions to troublesome mysteries … an intriguing personality who evolves at length into worthwhile womanhood.”

  The Blackwell Daily Journal was not only kind but optimistic. At the time I did not feel that I had in any way evolved into “worthwhile womanhood.” I felt just like the Cheese, still standing alone. Thanks to the publication of my novel, I now had an ambition to see in print anything and everything I might write. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure just what it was I wanted to write. Before long I would be truly and literally bereft. The confidante to whom I had unburdened heart and mind would soon be off on her own search and her own adventure. Leona would be living her own life among old books and new people in a city three thousand miles away. And I, having come this far, seemed at a standstill.

  STRASBOURG ON THE RHINE

  Leona THERE IS A wide gulf between travel abroad in 1936 and today. Travel to France aboard the S.S. Aquitania took six days. Life aboard ship was pleasant enough; most of the passengers were English or American; their language and customs were mine; and so the ship was almost an extension of America. But watching couples do their mileage around the deck was often painful for me. Envious of their closeness, I longed for Madeleine’s companionship. In addition, as a woman sailing overseas alone sixty years ago, I lacked the hail-fellow-well-met freedom of later decades.

  Aboard the Aquitania I did meet a young woman with whom I developed a casual friendship. She was bound for Vienna to see her father, and we arranged to spend the first night in Paris together, each departing the next day for her respective destination. When the boat reached Le Havre, my shipboard acquaintance discovered she could make immediate connections to Vienna, so I found myself suddenly and completely alone in Paris.

  I registered at the Terminus, a small station hotel near the Gare de l’Est, checked my trunk through for the next day’s trip to Strasbourg, and took the Métro to the Louvre. With little enthusiasm I gazed at the Winged Victory, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, and the other masterpieces in the Grande Salle. I walked through the Tuileries Gardens, kicking the pebbles, yearning for the familiar. I walked on the rue de Rivoli, on to the Champs Élysées, seeing little, and close to the Arc de Triomphe stopped at a café for brioche and coffee. The endless day finally ended back at the Terminus, where I immediately wrote letters to my parents and Mady.

  The following morning, my courage and animation renewed, I took the train for Strasbourg. Here I was met by an acquaintance of my brother, Freddy Gall, whose welcome was dutiful but unenthusiastic. “Jesus, you have a trunk! That’ll detain me no end.” “You don’t have to wait,” I replied. He waited, accompanied me with trunk to the Pension Elisa, 3 rue Goethe. “See ya!” he cried as he hopped out of the cab and departed.

  I was escorted by a Madame Betzner, propriétaire, to the fourth floor. The room assigned me—number 19—resembled a discarded operating room. The bed was white, the washstand white, the armoire white. Madame Betzner took me to the window to gaze across the street at the signs U. CLOT ÉPICERIE and A. DRIZEHN TABAC. I did not see the signs
but rather the large porch surrounding the house in the Bronx, my dog Chimpie jumping into a chair, Babette in the kitchen, my mother playing bridge with my aunts, my father giving me a bear hug, meeting Mady, walking arm in arm, laughing and giggling, going to a double feature, and later devouring a fudge sundae. Madame Betzner roused me from my revery and told me that supper was at seven.

  At seven I entered the dining room, although I believed I could not eat. There, I was seated alone at a small table. The large center table was occupied by retired French military and their spouses. I saw no one under fifty. I ate my meal much in the manner of a Trappist monk and retired to my room. On the table was a letter. It was from Madeleine. She wrote: “… I’ve been feeling a great respect for you—your courage—and your determination to follow the path you’ve set for yourself … You’re doing something so fine and important for yourself.” At the moment I had neither courage nor determination. I began to wonder why I had come.

  My reasons for coming to Strasbourg were made evident only the following morning, when I took myself and my umbrella to the university library and went to the office of the director, Monsieur le Docteur Ernst Wickersheimer, who rose politely when I introduced myself and said, “Ah, Madame, I am just writing to Professeur Thorndike. We are both interested in early science.” I felt this was a bad omen. Monsieur le Directeur continued, “He has written to me about your project and I will take you directly to Monsieur le Curateur des Livres Anciens.” I followed him down the hall to an office marked F. RITTER. When we entered, Monsieur Ritter, a rather tall mail with a receding hairline, stood up, shaking strands of tobacco from his duster, and extended his hand. Monsieur le Directeur made a few introductory remarks and departed.

 

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