Both before and during my “Guggenheim-ship” I worked as such a digger. Now, emancipated from teaching, I could give myself up completely to the shaping of another life, another career. Louisa Alcott presented far more hidden secrets and unsolved enigmas than Margaret Fuller. To trace the full course of her life, I searched out sources, found and followed clues. She had led many lives and presented many contradictions. She had transcended the New England that had spawned her. She had been a domestic servant in her youth; she had become, by self-appointment, family breadwinner. She had served as a nurse during the Civil War; she had taught and sewed and traveled. But especially she had written. And in writing she had revealed and masked many differing creative personalities. I knew I had to seek them all out, from the hints in her euphemistic narrative “How I Went Out to Service,” and from the lurid ingredients of “A Marble Woman,” whose heroine indulged in opium, from the malevolence of the vengeful Virginie Varens of “V.V.” to the family love of Little Women. Louisa Alcott was a far more complex personality than had been imagined.
Now I could stalk her, and this I did. At Columbia, where Navy cadets paraded and military commands reverberated, I searched the stacks for sources that would yield up the secrets. At the New York Public Library I tried to identify the employer who had pursued and overworked her when she had been his servant in Dedham, Massachusetts. At the New York Public Library’s warehouse on Twenty-fifth Street I delved through nineteenth-century Boston directories to trace the whereabouts and advertisements of her publishers. If she wrote about opium in “A Marble Woman,” had she tasted opium herself? How available had it been? I examined the pharmacopoeias of her day at the New York Academy of Medicine.
In Philadelphia I located the site of her birthplace, now a Masonic temple. In an interview with Frederika Wendte I learned much about her last years, for Ms. Wendte remembered Louisa when toward the end of her life she had lived in Louisburg Square. In a packet of letters sent to me by Percy Whiting Brown—letters written by Louisa to his grandmother Laura Hosmer, a physician—I found a mine of homey details about her later life.
From time to time Leona and I journeyed to Boston, tracing the Alcott homes from Beacon Street to Groton Street, from Cottage Place to Louisburg Square. At the Colonial Inn in Concord we interviewed an elderly woman who recalled that Louisa’s sister May had taught her drawing, but who warned me that anything else she recalled would be wrong. There too the charming Zoltan Haraszti, Keeper of Rare Books at the Boston Public Library, came to dinner, hoping to lure Leona to Boston to work with him, and discussing with me the tangled relationship of Hawthorne and the Alcotts.
In Concord I received my first sharp lesson in skepticism. At the Orchard House the curator pointed to a large copper teakettle that, she informed me with pride, was the teakettle Louisa had taken with her to Washington when she was a nurse in the Civil War. Later the same day I dropped in at the Concord Antiquarian Society, where I was shown a somewhat smaller teakettle that, the curator informed me with pride, Miss Alcott had taken with her to Washington when she was a nurse in the Civil War. When I objected, “But they showed me that teakettle at the Orchard House,” the curator replied with some annoyance, “Did they! We had an understanding that this year it was to be our teakettle!” If the identification of teakettles was questionable, how much more questionable would be the identification of anonymous and pseudonymous stories!
I was searching for clues to the persona of the author of “Behind a Mask,” who herself had masked certain phases of her life. It was an invigorating and absorbing, if often frustrating, occupation. But in the fullness of time her identity began to manifest itself—the identity of a professional writer, an experimenter in the many genres of writing, from fairy tale to domestic drama, from sensational to philosophical fiction. She had written more than anyone had imagined. And she had seldom repeated herself. I sought to track down the changing episodes of her life and the changing aspects of her work in a sequence of articles that were invariably read aloud to my perceptive mother and—usually over a table at Schrafft’s—to my perceptive friend.
My Guggenheim days were charmed indeed. At the end of the first year, my fellowship was renewed for six months, and I started writing my biography. In between there were performances of The Skin of Our Teeth and Tomorrow the World, a drama in which Skippy Homeier played a brutal Nazi child. There was no escaping the war, what with intermittent blackouts and sirens and fundraisers staged by the Anti-Nazi League or Russian War Relief. Details of what would later be called the Holocaust had begun to penetrate over here, although they were often received with disbelief. At the time, those who shared a German-Jewish heritage, as I did, could find nothing believable in what would be known to the future as “the final solution.” For the most part, I buried myself in a nineteenth-century life that engrossed and intrigued me. I knew that my return to teaching would cast a blight after my prolonged taste of freedom.
Leona too was finding her lengthy apprenticeship to a book-dealer intolerable. How often she confided in me her desire to become an antiquarian bookseller herself. Her family gave her no encouragement. Her father believed business was not meant for a woman, and her beautiful New Orleans mother declared, “My darling, no woman in our family has ever engaged in commerce.” No doubt such comments merely increased Leona’s desire. Although she was absolutely certain of her interest and her ambition, she constantly vacillated. In addition she had no capital, and in the rejection of her dissertation she had tasted failure and still feared it.
Yet had not Thoreau written in Walden: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”?
I decided that I had it in my power to end Leona’s ambivalence. I planned a gift that would at once excite and encourage her and—I was sure—advance her confidently in the direction of her dreams. As soon as the gift was delivered I would pack it in a large box and present it to her for Christmas.
LEONA ROSTENBERG
—RARE BOOKS
Leona “ ‘CHRISTMAS won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” Her unforgettable complaint rang up the curtain on Little Women. Christmas of 1943 was indeed Christmas for me, and it rang up the curtain on my future.
I spent the holiday with Mady and her wonderful mother, Lil. My parents had gone south and my brother, now married, lived in Washington. The Stern home had become my second home. For the occasion I lugged a lamp for Mady’s Guggenheim desk, and for Lil a copy of Marquand’s new best seller, So Little Time. Before she would unwrap her gifts Mady handed me a large wobbly package, and Lil remarked, “I want to see your expression when you open this.”
“It’s a puppy!” I shrieked.
“As if I would wrap up a puppy. Open it up,” Mady commanded.
As I unwrapped the package five boxes fell out. I opened them one by one, becoming fainter, more hysterical as I proceeded. Box Number One produced correspondence paper, typewriter size. Box Number Two produced half-size correspondence paper. Box Number Three produced a batch of shipping labels. In Box Number Four there was a pile of small business cards. All of them were gloriously engraved with the following staggering words:
LEONA ROSTENBERG—RARE BOOKS
152 East 179th Street
New York 53, N.Y.
Telephone TR. 8—2789
In the upper lefthand corner was embossed the picture of a Renaissance printer and his apprentice.
By this time I was so emotionally overcome that I could scarcely speak. The last box undid me completely. It contained one hundred billheads with the same magnificent letterhead and device. I threw myself on the couch, screaming and moaning, “But I’ll never have a hundred books!” Surrounded by these Christmas trophies, I experienced a mixture of emotions—excitement of course, gratitude, and, inevitably, fear. The die had been cast. I could not waste all this marvelously engraved paper.
Recovering my senses somewhat, I examined the stationery more carefully. The device of the printers had been taken from Jost Amman’s Book of Trades, but unlike the original sixteenth-century woodcut, it bore a twentieth-century inscription:
LEONA ROSTENBERG—–
RARE BOOKS
Leona Rostenberg had no choice. She had to go into business. And thirty years later, when Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books was interviewed by the Times, the article would be captioned: “How Stationery Started Two Women on a 30-Year Partnership.”
Despite Mady’s munificent gift, I was still Herbert Reichner’s apprentice, and, being Leona, I still lacked not only confidence but cash. Over further Schrafft’s lunches I still voiced my doubts at which Mady remarked: “Don’t be an ass. Try it. And after my Guggenheim we can become partners. I’ll lend you a thousand dollars.”
“But suppose I lose it.”
“You won’t, and if you do …”
“Then you think I might.”
“I don’t think you will. You really are a fool. What about dessert?”
It was not until late May 1944 that I actually burned my bridges. I informed Herbert Reichner that I would not return in the fall. “I am not surprised,” he replied, somewhat shaken. “I knew it would happen one day. You are of course going into business for yourself. But let me tell you that if you change your mind I will increase your salary. Remember, it is not easy. You must have what I call Finger-Spitzengefühl—you must have it in your fingertips, to know a rare book when you see one. Besides, the book business is not all pleasure; there are many problems with books and customers.”
As things developed, Herbert Reichner would indeed have many problems. In the year that followed, he would endure a succession of seven secretaries. As for me, I set the stage for Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books.
The initial steps were taken in Sunnybank, the Maine house we rented during the summer of 1944. Unlike our primitive pagoda, this was a civilized dwelling with all the amenities, pine-paneled walls, and a view of the ocean. It also boasted four additional incumbents, named Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. These were a quartet of Rhode Island Reds, laying chickens that Mady had for some unknown and incomprehensible reason desired as a birthday gift.
I had tried to purchase them at Macy’s, which at that time devoted its ninth floor to “Barnyard,” where livestock could be purchased. My conversation with the knowledgeable salesperson was fruitless but quotable:
LEONA: I’d like to purchase four chickens.
SALESPERSON: Do you have a house?
LEONA: Of course I have a house.
SALESPERSON: Does it have electricity?
LEONA (fuming): Of course it has electricity. It has five rooms and a porch …
SALESPERSON (interrupting): I don’t think you should have chickens.
When it finally dawned on me that the “Barnyard” expert had been referring to a chicken coop while I had been thinking of the lovely cottage we rented, I decided to order my livestock through our landlord. The result was interesting, but, unlike their namesakes of Little Women, our New Englanders proved troublesome denizens. The squawking from Mady’s roost, not to mention four Reds flying the coop, frequently interrupted my attempts to get Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books rolling.
During my years with Herbert I had accumulated his discarded catalogues from foreign dealers. Now I began requesting them on my own, studying them and ordering a few sixteenth- and seventeenth-century items. At the same time, realizing that I would need customers for my stock, I assiduously copied the names of collector-members of such distinguished societies as the Grolier Club and the Bibliographical Society of America. These I supplemented with names of curators of Rare Book Departments in American libraries. While my three-by-five index card file began to mount, Mady devoted herself to the namesakes of our Rhode Island Reds, working on the chapter entitled “Little Women.”
Since we could not prowl or book hunt along Piccadilly or Charing Cross Road, we prowled in the neighboring villages of Maine. Between Portland in the north and Portsmouth in the south, we drove, Mady at the wheel of her Plymouth, Chimpie sniffing the scents of summer, all of us keen for adventure. Would we find what the trade called a “sleeper,” a book whose glories were unknown to the seller but old hat to us, the buyers? And so, from time to time, we ventured to Berwick and Biddeford, Kennebunk and Kittery, Sanford and Salmon Falls—to the House of the Thousand Chairs and the Old Grange, the Crow’s Nest and Grandma’s Attic, exploring jumble and dust, mustiness and broken crockery, armless dolls—and books.
Among the piles of old incomplete periodicals and copies of books without covers—the Language of Flowers, the Girl of the Limberlost—we pulled out a few possibilities to add to the meager stock of the future Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books. From the debris Mady extracted a folio volume compiled by Elizabeth Peabody, friend of Margaret Fuller, teacher in Bronson Alcott’s school, hence well known to biographer Stern. Peabody’s Polish-American System of Chronology was ours for twenty-five cents. Jackson’s Second Report of the Geology of the State of Maine, published in 1838, bound in its original wrappers, and also priced at twenty-five cents, seemed to me an appropriate purchase. Although I preferred sixteenth-century European imprints, the firm of Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books would always find room for interesting American rarities. One such rarity, also tagged with the popular price of a quarter, was snatched up by Mady—the poems of Thomas Holley Chivers in first edition, entitled Nacoochee; or, the Beautiful Star, a work that had strongly influenced his friend Edgar Allan Poe. We would return to Sunnybank from our explorations with an early Webster Speller, a Pitman Phonography, a Christy Melodies—and with high hopes for the future of my budding business.
In between our field trips we combined swimming with desk work. Mady continued writing and rewriting her biography of Alcott while I continued shaping my business plans. We interrupted our sedentary labors to attend a local auction. When we learned that all the contents of a house and barn would be offered at public sale, we immediately made a preliminary tour of inspection. We wandered through rooms filled with piled-up mattresses and bedsprings, an array of chamber pots and flatirons, lampshades and antimacassars, and at last came to a dark corner of the barn, where we spied some books. We found an early Bible, a few hymnals, some indifferent novels, and then the Finger-Spitzengefühl kicked in. Scattered about the area I saw a number of what looked like pamphlets in printed wrappers. I picked one up. I had in my hands an installment of Charles Dickens’s novel, Master Humphrey’s Clock. We knew that Dickens’s novels had been published in parts, or installments, before they were published in book form, and I knew that a Dickens in parts was of far greater value than a Dickens bound in hard covers. But were all the parts there? We scurried around, picking them up one after the other—a literary mouse had nibbled away part of the title page of one installment—but, sure enough, all twenty parts of Master Humphrey’s Clock were spread around the barn. We gathered them together, made a bundle of them, threw in the Bible, and sought out the auctioneer. Would he kindly offer the lot at the upcoming auction?
He not only offered it at auction time; he waxed eloquent about it. After he had disposed of the mattresses and lamps, the chamber pots and cooking utensils, he held up the bundle we had put together. “And now, folks, we come to some mighty elegant literature. It ain’t by no American, folks. It’s by an English gent named Dickens. You all heard of Mr. Dickens. Now what will you offer for Mr. Dickens?”
The audience was unimpressed by what looked like a bunch of unbound papers. After I waited a moment breathlessly, I called out, “Fifty cents!” to which the auctioneer responded, “The lady with the glasses says fifty cents. Ain’t I got no higher bid for Mr. Dickens? Can’t let him go on one bid, ladies and gentlemen.”
I poked Mady in the ribs and she quickly shouted, “Sixty cents!”
“The other lady with the glasses bids sixty cents. Sixty cents, folks. Mr. Dickens goin’, goin’, gone to
the other lady with the glasses. Sixty cents!”
I had found my first sleeper. Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books would be able to offer not only some unusual Americana, but a true nineteenth-century English literary rarity—a Charles Dickens in the original parts.
My Finger-Spitzengefühl had only just begun. It operated especially well one day when I was studying a catalogue just received from the English firm of McLeish & Sons, located on London’s Little Russell Street. Mady was deep into Louisa Alcott’s grand tour abroad in 1870; Chimpie was dozing on the front porch; I was turning the pages of the McLeish catalogue, which had just been forwarded to me by my temporary secretary, my mother. I had been uninterested in most of the items listed until my eye lighted upon number 188. Then the Finger-Spitzengefühl became an electrical conductor. My scalp pricked. And I shrieked aloud.
All those signs and symptoms had been activated by something that had taken place several months before. While still working for Reichner, I had studied one of his cast-off catalogues, a posh production listing superb antiquarian rarities sent by the firm of Lionel and Philip Robinson, Pall Mall, London. There I had read a glowing description of a volume to be lusted after: [CALDERWOOD (David),] Perth Assembly. [Leyden: Pilgrim Press,] 1619. At first glance, the work meant nothing to me. I had never heard of Calderwood or his Perth Assembly, and I knew enough from my association with Reichner to realize that Leyden had been a beehive of publishing activity in the early seventeenth century and that very few items issuing from that place and period were especially valuable. But it was the bracketed words “Pilgrim Press” that made the item a prize, and I learned why from the Robinson description.
The Pilgrim Press—so called by later historians—had been founded clandestinely and operated in Leyden between 1617 and 1619 by William Brewster. Brewster would issue only twenty titles from his secret press before he and his fellow Pilgrims immigrated to New England aboard the Mayflower. They were all not only evidence of the group’s fervent anti-English-establishment attitude, but, in a sense, the earliest printed Americana. They reflected the background of our Pilgrim Fathers and hence they were the earliest printed records of our country—American incunables, so to speak. Calderwood’s work, printed in secret by the Elder Brewster, was really a sample of pre-Colonial printing. As such, it might be regarded as almost priceless. It had a price, however. The Robinsons had tagged it at sixty pounds. Sixty pounds in 1944 was the equivalent of three hundred dollars, enough to live on in New York City for several months. Surely no matter how roseate my future, I would never be able to afford that amount for a single volume and I would never, never own a Pilgrim Press book.
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