Old Books, Rare Friends

by Madeline B. Stern

  When I reached home I phoned my principal and my head of department, informing them of my decision. I mailed back my keys. When my mother came home, I greeted her with the explosive statement, “I’ve resigned from school.” She sat down quickly and then said, “Something terrible must have happened.” Her mind was filled with protective impulses. Through the long Depression and the course of the war she had taken comfort in the thought that, as a tenured teacher, I would forever be secure, financially independent, able if necessary to walk alone. She must have been devastated, though she refrained from further comment. She would be, as she had always been, as supremely supportive as she was loving.

  I often wonder what Leona’s reaction—and her family’s—was to my announcement. Now I think they may well have been as worried as my mother about the outcome. If they were, they did not show it. I polished my shoes, put on my red check suit, and on April 10, 1945, took the subway up to the large rambling house in the Bronx. I had been there thousands of times before. But this time it was not just the home of my closest friend, but a house of business with which I would be associated. And this time I found a WELCOME sign upon the door.

  The senior partner escorted the junior partner to the office. A bridge table had been set up with a card labeled: M. B. STERN, ASSOCIATE. I did not linger long at the table but scrutinized the stock, with which I was already familiar. Indeed, I had selected some of it. When I examined the stationery, I assured my partner, “You’re soon going to need more billheads.” At an executive meeting attended by both partners and wirehair Chimpie, we allocated departments to each other. Leona would specialize of course in early printed books; Mady, completing her biography of Alcott, would naturally head the literary and Americana sections, such as they were. Chivers’s poems were still on hand, along with Elizabeth Peabody’s Polish-American System of Chronology, and the Webster Speller. We would have to enlarge that Americana department to accommodate a department head. Barnard College was apparently unaware of the diminutive nature of our Americana section. A short time later the college’s alumnae magazine announced, to our amusement, that “Madeleine B. Stern is consultant and manager of the research department in Americana for the rare book firm of Leona Rostenberg, New York City.” As “manager of the research department in Americana” I took home for study the poems of Chivers and the System of Chronology of Elizabeth Peabody. My junior partnership had begun.

  It was interrupted two days later by the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We all wept for our idol and wondered whether America would ever be the same again. Roosevelt’s death and our formal partnership marked a milestone in our lives. FDR epitomized the continuous flow of the past; our partnership chartered the future in the antiquarian firm of Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books.

  Whatever doubts I may have had were soon dispelled. Leona’s mother and father both welcomed me warmly; my mother’s anxieties diminished; with every sale that was made their amazement grew. It took me a while to make my own first sale. Neither Webster nor Chivers nor Peabody seemed to attract the nation’s rare book librarians. I persevered, however, and was finally rewarded. My two-page single-spaced description of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s Polish-American System of Chronology at length found a buyer. Having described the physical details of the book, I elaborated on the life of Miss Peabody from her work in Bronson Alcott’s Temple School to her kindergartening. In between I discussed her acquaintance with the Polish exile General Joseph Bem and his curious system of historical charts. I concluded with the incontrovertible statement: “The volume is of great importance in any collection of pedagogical works.” And one institution—the University of Alabama—concurred. It purchased our Peabody, which had cost us a quarter in Maine, for $6.75. With the arrival of the small printed library order form requesting my offer, I reached a state of joyful hysteria, which was not diminished when other orders followed. Chivers’s Nacoochee, a work of “literary significance,” Poe’s stories in Baudelaire’s translation, the Poems of Phillis Wheatley, an eighteenth-century former slave—all passed through my eager hands before entering a research library. The excitements of cerebration brought us mutual joy. Despite a friend’s dire prediction that business and friendship do not blend, ours was the exception. Our blend would endure.

  Together we examined and assessed our stock. What remained on the shelves of the Encyclopaedia Britannica bookcase were primarily books selected by Leona for Catalogue One. It would present, she explained to me, a history of the book as a physical object and as a medium of expression. It would encompass the art of printing and the great printers; the collectors of books; the binders of books; the craftsmen of books; the lovers of books; even the forgers of books.

  “But isn’t that terribly limited?” I asked. “There’s no literature, no history, no science, no art. Will there be enough interest in such a specialized subject?”

  Leona reassured me, “To librarians, booksellers, and collectors there is nothing limited in the subject of Books about Books.” And so we began.

  The concerns and problems associated with the production and publication of any catalogue are not completely dissimilar to the bearing and delivery of a child, and the first catalogue is surely comparable to a firstborn. In the case of our Catalogue One the period of gestation took longer. It was not until the end of 1945 that we had assembled the hundred books it would comprise. The former apprentice Leona Rostenberg could identify closely with nineteenth-century French verses on the misery of apprentice printers; the discoverer of the Alcott pseudonym would not be loath to include a seventeenth-century French volume on pseudonymity entitled Auteurs déguisez. Just so her interest in seventeenth-century printing was reflected in Clavel’s General Catalogue of Books printed in England since the dreadful Fire of London 1666. The first catalogue of American first editions, issued in 1885 by the mysterious Leon & Brother of New York, who turned out to be refugees from Poland, fascinated detective Stern, while other items, relating to a famous or infamous book thief named Libri and an erudite and outrageous forger named Thomas Wise, intrigued both of us. Censorship was represented in Catalogue One by an edict on prohibited books promulgated in 1570 by Philip II of Spain; and the answer to censorship was represented by the catalogue’s hundredth entry: the libel Trial of John Peter Zenger, whose acquittal marked the cornerstone of American liberty of the press.

  We studied and pored over our hundred books, not only their content but their appearance: their format and binding, their paper and typography—and we delighted in all of them. But would our potential customers share our delight? We were not sure.

  Before we could find out, we had to have our catalogue printed. Our funds were severely limited; we could not afford the posh Southworth-Anthoensen Press. The printer we selected—one Mr. Rapp—was a patient of Leona’s father and had his office on New York’s Hubert Street. When the galleys were ready, we rushed there, finding the area redolent with a delicious aroma from a nearby chocolate factory. The galleys, which had been carefully printed, were as sweet to us as the air, and as we corrected the few errors we breathed in the delicious fumes of Hubert Street.

  Our excitement mounted when Mr. Rapp telephoned to say that the two thousand copies would be delivered within the week. When they arrived, we gazed with rapture at our first-born: A Catalogue for the Easter Term containing divers matters relating to the History of the Book. Our pals from the local post office provided us with a dozen mailsacks. Weighed and stamped, our precious burdens were loaded into a taxi bound for the Forty-fifth Street Post Office. Once they were piled on the ramp—“Take good care of them!” we implored—we stood together on the loading platform and embraced each other hysterically. Our first collaboration was on its way. What would its future—our future—be?

  Almost immediately the future became the present. Within a week, more than half the catalogue had been sold, and many items could have been sold several times over. Item 42 was ordered by eight collectors, including Harvard and the Newberry Librar
y, at which Leona tore her hair out and her puzzled mother commented, “Darling, I don’t understand you. Why don’t you buy several copies of your books at once?”

  “Several copies” of Item 42 would indeed have been miraculous. Item 42 was an ephemeral article on “the Art of Paper War,” written for a periodical, the American Museum, in May 1787. The article was illustrated by different contemporary type specimens, and its author, Francis Hopkinson, had made the curious suggestion that the emotions of joy, passion, and earnestness could be expressed by various type sizes and type faces. “The Art of Paper War” attracted so much attention that we ardently wished we could have supplied eight copies. As it was, the copy we sold had cost Leona nothing. Late one evening she had studied a catalogue issued by a New York dealer and found the Hopkinson listed. Despite the lateness of the hour, she had telephoned for it, only to be admonished for having interrupted a weary and irate bookdealer trying to enjoy a concert on the radio. She never expected to receive the Hopkinson. Much to her amazement, he posted it to her minus an invoice but with apologies for his impatience.

  In ordering Item 42, along with four other items from Catalogue One, the distinguished Harvard librarian William A. Jackson wrote, “Congratulations on a very interesting catalogue—well written and with many unusual books in it … Keep up the good work.”

  Others, even those who did not order books, responded with praise and enthusiasm. Dr. R.W.G. Vail, Director of the New-York Historical Society, softened the blow of not ordering with a generous sprinkling of praise for a “very charming catalogue,” its “valuable collection of material on the history of book making through the ages,” and its “historical notes.” Congratulations came from Leona’s old friend John Fall of the New York Public Library and from the head of the John Crerar Library, who singled out for comment “the excellence of your cataloguing, your descriptive notes and your evaluation of the books presented. You deserve the best of success.” Perhaps the most exciting letter came from the great type designer Bruce Rogers: “I have read your Catalogue … with great pleasure and profit. It throws many interesting, and to me, new, sidelights on bookmen that have long been familiar and others whom I had never heard of before … I congratulate you on issuing one of the most interesting catalogues I have ever seen.”

  We had savored the sweet taste of success. We had more than doubled our investment. But, more important, Catalogue One had earned for us the best of possible audiences for a bookseller—appreciative collectors, both institutions and individuals. Catalogue One also earned for us—shaped for us—our Catalogue Two.

  One of the very few unsold items in our first catalogue was number 29, the 1674 stocklist of the House of Elzevier, a family firm of Dutch publishers who dominated the book production of seventeenth-century Europe. Our unsold stocklist cited twenty thousand items, from extravagant folios to small neat pocket editions of the classics and histories of European “republics.” Our Catalogue Two would include 165 Elzevier publications that reflected political, historical, and literary aspects of the seventeenth century—the Age of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and the attitude of the Dutch against his aggression and conquest.

  To obtain those books we expanded our sources of supply. We bought not only from foreign catalogues but from American auctions, notably the Freeman Sale in Philadelphia. In 1946 we made two trips to the City of Brotherly Love, the first to inspect several lots of Elzeviers to be auctioned by the firm of Samuel Freeman, the second to buy.

  Item 29 in our Catalogue One now became item 45 in our Catalogue Two. Once again we studied our wares, sent our descriptions to Hubert Street for printing, and sent our catalogues forth upon the world. Within a week of distributing Catalogue One we had sold half the items. Within three weeks of distributing Catalogue Two we had not even a single telephone order. What was wrong? Had we lost our touch? Had the seventeenth century no impact upon the twentieth? Or had something unforeseen happened? After a few phone calls to faithful customers, we learned that The House of Elzevier had never been delivered. We made our way once again to the Post Office at Forty-fifth Street and Lexington Avenue, where our catalogues had been deposited. The postal chief led us to a dark third floor and pointed to a pile of sacks in a particularly dark corner. “Yours?” he queried. We looked into the sacks. There, in utter and complete repose, lay The House of Elzevier, for reasons unknown completely overlooked by the United States Post Office. Our carefully prepared catalogues had all been given a long and unanticipated Poste Restante. Finally, they were distributed. When Catalogue Two reached its divers destinations, the phone began to ring again, telegrams and letters arrived, and life for Leona Rostenberg—Rare Books was up and running.

  With the renewal of activity—the shipping of many packages to customers, the arrival of a few packages from foreign booksellers—we realized that our shelves were beginning to show too many empty spaces. When I entered the firm I had said, “You’re going to need more billheads.” The consensus now was that we were going to need more books as well.

  The English catalogues from which we had bought whetted our appetites for early printed books. At the same time, many of the foreign booksellers with whom we had dealt during the last three years now sent “warm personal regards.” We wondered about them. Had the time come for us to give them our regards in person? It is true that the newspapers painted a sorry picture of postwar England, with its food shortages, torn-up streets, lack of amenities. Very few if any American dealers had ventured abroad to buy books. Were we two spoiled Americans prepared for the grim reminders of war, the rationed food, the rationed comfort? The foreign catalogues we studied outweighed the newspapers we scanned.

  We had both gone abroad several times before, separately; together we had worn glengarries and carried alpenstocks. Now, despite parental concern, we decided to embark upon what would be our first professional trip abroad. In April 1947 we visited the Holland-America Line on lower Broadway and purchased two tickets on the S.S. Veendam—destination Southampton.

  BOOKS

  AFTER THE BLITZ

  Leona and Madeleine DESPITE THE excitements of the midnight sailing on July 29, 1947—the crowds of well-wishers, the cries of bon voyage, the band playing, the foghorn booming—our voyage aboard the S.S. Veendam was no luxury cruise. We were aware of this as soon as “All ashore that’s going ashore” signaled the departure of our parents and friends. Our cabin on D deck was not only an inside one far below water level; it had no facilities. To reach the john, we had to climb a ladder to C deck. We also discovered that we were sharing the cabin with a third occupant, who turned out to be the friend of a friend, a woman who embodied for us the disruptions wrought by the war. Valerie Kunreuther was a refugee from Nuremberg. The daughter of wealthy German Jews, friends of Bismarck, she had been brought up by a governess. To escape the Nazi terror she and her husband had fled aboard the ill-fated Navimar, which was forced to land in Cuba. By the time she reached the States she had lost her husband and was compelled to earn her living by domestic service and catering. Now she was on her way to visit her daughter, who had settled in England and whom she had not seen in eight years. She made the war and its aftermath very real to both of us.

  The effects of the war were reflected everywhere on board ship. There were no tourists or teachers but rather refugees returning to locate Holocaust survivors. Queues formed everywhere for everything, from deck chairs to writing paper. The food was atrocious and we spoiled Americans disposed of much of it through a porthole. Cream was available, but only in first class.

  All this became insignificant when, after ten days, the Veendam anchored off Southampton. A tender carried us to Southampton Docks, now a temporary shelter that replaced the bombed original and set the stage for what was to follow. The port’s gaping holes, shells of buildings, and glassless windows stunned us. On the train to London we read the slogans designed for the war-weary: “Work or Want”; “DON’T GROUSE!/When you miss your ‘Roasts & Gravies’/ Give thanks for the Ro
yal and Merchant Navies.”

  The capital of the British Empire was a dilapidated, bomb-stricken city, a city in decay that formed the architectural backdrop of our first professional quest for books. The boat train took us to Waterloo Station, and from our corner room at the Cumberland Hotel we looked out on the Marble Arch and Hyde Park. Southampton Docks had given us a foretaste of physical London. Our first breakfast at the Cumberland gave us a foretaste of the trials of postwar dining. In between the moldy cereal and the tea all the waiters, clad in their fraying tailcoats, abandoned their tables, striking for higher wages than their ten shillings (two dollars) a week. Actually, they had practically nothing to serve. We learned immediately that only three courses were allowed, and a roll constituted a course. We were not permitted to spend more than five shillings plus house charge for a meal. English weekly rations included one ounce of lard, two of butter, and one rasher of bacon. Milk, except for children, was not pasteurized. Horsemeat and whalemeat were served instead of British beef. Fish was available, but we learned to eye it with suspicion once we saw it in the markets—an iceless host for hungry flies. The natives, threatened constantly with meatless days, lived on their specialty: “bits and pieces.”

  In between the meals of postwar London, we wandered its sorry streets in pursuit of our booksellers. In a letter home Leona characterized those highways: “There is not a spot in this great battered city that has not been hit in the poorest section & in the best—just gaunt walls to recall the Teutonic fury—and the buildings that do stand are grey, splintered, ill kept.” On our way to Charing Cross Road, London’s Booksellers’ Row, we walked into a bombed-out home and looked at its hanging rafters, singed boards, the plaster and glass littering the ground. We saw with horror a bathtub hanging precariously on a third-story floorboard. At 118 Seymour Street near the Cumberland we saw a walled-in garbage dump that had once been a palatial home, and on the ground there was a single square of old black-and-white tile still intact. “We entered a blitzed building,” Mady wrote to her mother, “finding broken glass and rubble and gaping holes everywhere. In many places there is nothing but emptiness, except for the red weed that grows up to cover the emptiness.” For us they became three almost obscene indicators: the bathtub in midair, the bit of black-and-white tile, the red weed encroaching.