Old Books, Rare Friends

by Madeline B. Stern

  He announced it as a reconstruction of Alcott’s life “as she lived it, integrated with the period in which she lived,” and he also noted that it contained a bibliography of Alcott’s writings, “including the newly identified pseudonymous and anonymous stories.” Advance sales were gratifying; reviews were appreciative, many of them emphasizing the breakthrough on Louisa Alcott and her pseudonym. Perhaps the highest compliment was paid by the Book-of-the-Month Club News, which stated: “It is very nearly as absorbing to come upon this intimate, affectionate and detailed biography of Louisa May Alcott and her family as it was to read Little Women as a child.” A British edition was published, and a film made by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films. The voluminous correspondence evoked by the biography included one letter that I found especially heartening. It was from the son of Louisa’s young Concord friend Alf Whitman, to whom she had written that remarkable letter: “I intend to illuminate the Ledger with a blood & thunder tale as they are easy to ‘compoze’ & are better paid than moral & elaborate works of Shakespeare.” In it, John Pratt Whitman wrote to me, “You are the first biographer to recognize fairly my father’s part in the boy Laurie, and you have done it splendidly and convincingly. It is to be hoped an end has been made to a narrow kind of provincialism in Concord that grows irate at any suggestion that ‘Alf Whitman’ was the American half of the hero of Little Women.”And he ended his letter with the request: “I hesitate, knowing Louisa’s dread of autograph seekers, to ask you for yours to the son of Laurie, that I can paste in the fly leaf of this, my new and much prized book.”

  All this was sufficient to spur me on to my next biography and to apply the revelations of Finger-Spitzengefühl to yet another nineteenth-century American woman. As usual, one thing led to another: Louisa Alcott introduced me to Mrs. Frank Leslie, journalist, editor, publisher, and colorful combination of feminist and femme fatale. Mrs. Leslie may have inspired one of Louisa Alcott’s blood-and-thunders; actually, her second husband had accepted Alcott’s prize story “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” and it was his letter of acceptance that led me to the subject of my next biography.

  The woman who became Mrs. Frank Leslie was then named Miriam Squier. She was known by several names during her long lifetime, some but not all based upon her marriages, of which she had four. Her last husband was Oscar Wilde’s unstable brother Willie; her next to the last was the New York publishing magnate Frank Leslie, whose periodicals were nineteenth-century household words. His seductive wife became his irresistible widow, manager of his vast publishing empire, salon leader, woman of affairs public and private, feminist who bequeathed two million dollars to the cause of woman suffrage. Needless to say, such a woman prized public acclaim far above accuracy, especially in matters concerning her own life. If the arts of detection were recommended for the reanimation of Louisa May Alcott, they would be absolutely essential for that of Mrs. Frank Leslie.

  And so, in the preparation of that life, one challenge after another demanded whatever detective skills I had come to possess. Ferreting out one very private fact was particularly challenging. By 1878 my heroine, in her early forties, had weathered two marriages, and as the wife of Frank Leslie she was a decorative and useful adjunct to his publishing domain. She was also the author of a travel book, California: A Pleasure Trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate, in which she excoriated the Nevada mining town of Virginia City as the “god-forsaken” home of forty-nine gambling saloons with a population largely masculine, except for a few women “of the worst class.” Virginia City took exception to her remarks. Its newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise, headed by a fighting editor, devoted the first page of its July 14, 1878, issue to an anonymous article, “Our Female Slanderer,” including her “Life Drama of Crime and Licentiousness,” with “Startling Developments.”

  The house on the hill, the Bronx.

  “Our firstborn.”

  Bound for the hunt on the S.S. Veendam, 1947.

  Madeleine and Leona on the prowl, London, 1948.

  Two sleuths at work. Madeleine and Leona in the office, 1953.

  The spirit of the Renaissance, 1954.

  Madeleine and Leona at the National Library, Vienna, 1954. Old books and …

  … new wine. Leona and Madeleine at the Heuriger, Vienna, 1954.

  Leona’s first great find: A Pilgrim Press Book issued secretly by William Brewster, Leyden, 1619.

  The Aldine device of the anchor and dolphin on the title page of Castiglione’s Courtier, 1528—now the Doubleday colophon.

  Dressed for dinner. An English Association party at Quaglino’s, London, 1965.

  Leona and Madeleine “on tenterhooks” with a $25,000 bid, Streeter sale, 1968.

  Leona sits for her portrait as ABAA president, 1973.

  Madeleine sits for her portrait for the New York Times, 1973.

  “Dr. Leona Rostenberg: Columbia U reverses itself,” annus mirabilis 1973.

  As the New York Times saw us, 1974.

  1564–1616: Our 1980 catalogue honoring the bard.

  At our booth at the first Bryn Mawr College Library bookfair, May 1976.

  Old and Rare with dachshund Bettina, East Hampton, 1993.

  Among those “Developments” was the following revelation about Miriam at age twenty-one: “About this time a Congressman from Tennessee put in an appearance … A house was bought in Seventh Street, in New York … and put upon the record in her name.” This was a tempting allegation for Miriam Leslie’s biographer, and I felt impelled to identify the congressman in question. Unfortunately for my purpose, Tennessee sent eleven representatives and two senators to Congress, and the task of identifying Miriam’s particular congressman seemed hopeless.

  The one distinguishing fact about the congressman was that he had purchased a house—not, to be sure, in his own name, but in Miriam’s. Detection must center, then, on the conveyances of the Seventh Street property deposited in New York City’s Hall of Records. Sure enough, I found an indenture dated April 29, 1857, indicating that one Miriam F. Follin (her maiden name) had paid $9000 for the ground and dwelling at 37 Seventh Street. I was probably the only living person who realized that, since Miriam Follin had been impecunious in 1857, the statement had to be spurious. My Tennessee congressman was definitely in hiding. I had to search for further relevant conveyances of the property.

  The next indenture was of interest mainly for its date: September 15, 1857. Miriam had obviously not held “her” Seventh Street residence for long. On that day, I learned, she had sold it for $9000 to a merchant, one Perez D. Gates. The Tennessee congressman was laundering his property. He did not come out of hiding till I found a third indenture. On December 2, 1857, the house of assignation was sold by Perez D. Gates to William M. Churchwell of Tennessee. Mr. Churchwell turned out to be not only a citizen of but a congressman from Tennessee. The conveyances in New York’s Hall of Records had turned into gossipy disclosures, giving me a biographical tidbit in the mosaic of an intriguing life.

  My biography of Mrs. Frank Leslie, entitled Purple Passage, appeared over the University of Oklahoma Press imprint in 1953 and aroused the attention her fascinating career deserved. Although the book was finished and published, my pursuit of Mrs. Frank Leslie had not ended. It soon appeared that the art of detection was still needed in connection with one particular copy, which I learned about in another biography, a work about Max Beerbohm, the caricaturist and wit, by the playwright S. N. Behrman. To my astonishment I read that, knowing of Beerbohm’s association with Oscar and Willie Wilde, Behrman had lent him “a book about Mrs. Frank Leslie” who had married Willie Wilde. According to Portrait of Max, Beerbohm “picked up the book and a pencil and, on the inside of the back cover, rapidly sketched Oscar and Willie for me. These are probably the last drawings Max ever did … they are quite remarkable.” Max then proceeded to give “the now illustrated book” to Behrman.

  Just as I had had to identify the congressman from Tennessee, so I had to possess this book. I opened
a correspondence with Mr. Behrman, who informed me that he intended to leave the copy to Harvard’s Houghton Library. Behrman’s return address was 40 East Eighty-eighth Street—a detail that would take on some significance years later, when Leona and I moved to that very address. Meanwhile, I let some time pass before I returned to the pursuit and once again plied Mr. Behrman for permission, if not to purchase the copy, at least to view it. This time I was informed that the “deal” with Houghton Library had not materialized and the book had disappeared. Now the detective in me had to start sleuthing. I reminded Mr. Behrman that his Portrait of Max had been published by Random House, which had reprinted the “two marvelous caricatures” of the Wildes in the book. They must have had the copy at one time. Perhaps they still did.

  Behrman’s response was swift: “Your letter … threatens to bring Purple Passage back to me.” A search disclosed it in the Random House safe. Behrman concluded his note: “When this book arrives I will at once telephone you.”

  A lengthy silence followed, broken by my doggerel reminder:

  Dear Mr. Behrman, S. N.

  Let me hear from you once again.

  Alas, as Max Beerbohm had followed the Wildes to the grave, so S. N. Behrman followed Max. The widow Behrman called upon a colleague of ours to appraise her late husband’s library, and I made a generous offer for the Beerbohm-illustrated copy of Purple Passage. That was a long time ago. I have not only been unable to purchase the copy; I have never seen it.

  No—not all detection is fruitful, and not all sleuthing is successful. Despite our many exciting finds, we have suffered keen disappointments. In Cambridge, England, one year we visited the shop of R. C. Pearson, M.A., located on Hobson Street. His stock on the whole was indifferent, but just before our departure Leona suddenly entered an advanced state of agitation. She was looking at a quarto volume by one Elias Herckmans, printed in Dutch in 1634 and profusely illustrated. Its title, Der Zeevaertlof, or Praise of a Sea Voyage, rang a bell. Either from her years with Reichner or from one of the thousands of catalogues she had studied, she knew there was something unique about that book. One of its seventeen illustrations, she was certain, was by Rembrandt. How much higher could a bookseller aspire? Afraid to draw the attention of R. C. Pearson, M.A., to her find, she did not dare to hunt for the prestigious plate by the great artist, but simply added the volume to the small pile we had selected and told Mr. Pearson to send them on.

  We returned to London in a state of unsubdued excitement. On a visit to E. P. Goldschmidt we discussed our find, and the great E.P. was duly impressed. He destroyed any doubt we may have had. That single plate by Rembrandt made the book one of the most desirable illustrated works of the seventeenth century. The Zeevaertlof would more than pay for our Zeevaert.

  Back home, with irrepressible anticipation, we opened the package from Hobson Street, Cambridge, England. Tremulously we began leafing through the illustrated quarto. It must have seventeen plates. We began to count them. Something was wrong. We counted again. We saw a telltale stub from which a print had been cut away. Our copy of the Zeevaertlof had only sixteen plates. Rembrandt van Rijn was in absentia. Sometime after 1634 an ardent print collector or ruthless printseller had extracted the engraving from the book and destroyed its stature. Sadder and wiser, we sent it back to England on what was probably its final Zeevaert.

  The disappointments were always hard to take, especially when they concerned the truly great figures in art—like Rembrandt—or in literature—like John Milton. By the early 1950s we felt a close affinity with the author of Paradise Lost. Had not Leona unearthed his association with a Parliamentary Scriptum of 1652, and had not Madeleine spent much of her English Honors course at Barnard reading his soaring iambics? And so, we were ever on the prowl for John Milton.

  Once again I believed I had found him at a bookshop in London’s St. John’s Wood during our annual buying trip. I quickly descended a ladder, a small calfbound volume in my hand, my eyes round with wonder, the book open to the title page. “Look at this!” I whispered dramatically to Leona. The sight that had stopped my breath was an ownership inscription inked on the margin of the title page: “Jn Milton.” Could this, by the remotest possibility, have been a book touched, and read, and owned by John Milton? To us at the moment there was every likelihood that he had indeed written his name on the title page of Giovanni Marliani’s Vrbis Romae Topographia (Topography of the City of Rome). The book we held in our hands had been published in Venice in 1588 and was a guidebook, a kind of Baedeker, to the marvels of the Eternal City. It had been designed for the Roman tourist, and in the late 1630s Milton had been a tourist in Rome. What more likely than that he had purchased a guidebook during his visit and placed his name on its title page? We could not hesitate. It was true that the name John Milton was not uncommon, but if it was the John Milton, then we would have ascended so high into the empyrean that someday we might even find a volume that had belonged to another bard—from Avon.

  Holmes and Watson donned their deerstalkers as soon as they returned home. The multivolume Columbia Edition of Milton on the New York Public Library’s open shelves contained a chapter on John Milton’s library. The books traceable to the poet’s collection were listed. The list included, as a possibility, the Marliani—our Marliani—and the ownership inscription reproduced was identical with ours. According to the Columbia Milton, the volume so signed had been sold at a London auction in the 1920s and after that seemed to have vanished.

  “We own a book that Milton owned!” To that refrain we awoke each day; to that refrain we retired each night. It had been, my dear Watson/my dear Holmes, elementary. Too elementary. We reminded ourselves once again that nothing is elementary. Although the book bore the signature “Jn Milton,” and although it had been mentioned in the Columbia Milton, we still had no firm proof that the signature was that of the poet and that the book had actually been his property. Milton’s signature changed almost yearly. Our attempt to compare our example with the various facsimiles of those known to have been his was fruitless. We must seek out a Milton expert to verify our hope.

  We found the expert, the late Professor Harris Fletcher, of the University of Illinois, who was skeptical: “Just send me a copy of the title page.” We waited while our daily and nightly refrain underwent a slight change: “Do we own a book that Milton owned?” A telephone call from Illinois soon answered the query. “This is Robert Downs, Director of the University of Illinois Libraries.” Holmes and Watson exchanged triumphant glances. “It’s about that Milton signature.” Holmes and Watson began respective calculations in mental arithmetic. “Professor Fletcher wants me to tell you it’s an eighteenth-century forgery.”

  Leona and Madeleine AFTER CONSIDERABLE correspondence with the Curator of Cornell’s Department of Rare Books, we followed his suggestion and took our first selling trip to Ithaca, New York. Felix Reichmann was a charmer; now middle-aged, he had been a refugee from Vienna and still exuded continental bonhomie. We took to each other immediately. He selected many books from our satchel and we heard much gossip about European prewar booksellers, including of course Leona’s irascible Herbert Reichner. We also heard the fascinating story of another, earlier political refugee from Europe and of a sensational book he had written.

  “In 1822,” Reichmann began, “a young Moravian monk named Karl Anton Postl disappeared from a monastery in Prague. He was fleeing,” Reichmann continued, “from the dictatorial rule of Metternich, and after one year had passed Postl turned up in the city of New Orleans with a new identity and a new name—Charles Sealsfield.” As Sealsfield he would write many books before his death in 1864, but the one that Felix Reichmann lusted after was entitled Austria As It Is. Published anonymously in 1828, it was a vitriolic denunciation of the kind of Austrian misrule that had made refugees of both the author and the Cornell curator. Austria As It Is had been banned as libelous by the Teutonic authorities. Today it was scarce indeed. Felix Reichmann craved a copy. And we determined we would
find one for him.

  A few years later, during a book hunt abroad, we visited a dealer new to us, a nondescript gentleman named Burke, whose shop in the outskirts of London seemed at the end of the Underground. Our letters home recorded the event:

  L made a splendid find yesterday. Here’s the story: At a small dealer’s, Burke’s … in an area smelling of bubble and squeak, she spied—on his Travel shelves—Austria As It Is. It’s really not a travel book at all, but an anonymous satire that was banned, & it has a fascinating history. Ever since we were alerted to it we’ve been hoping to find it. L grabbed it & only her unusual loquaciousness & pleasantries would have warned a dealer who knew her that something out of the ordinary had happened. It’s a splendid copy but Burke knew nothing about it and priced it at 10 bob—$1.40.

  Like its author, Austria As It Is took up a new life in America; Felix Reichmann was overjoyed; and we two thanked our serendipitous stars that we had heard its story and taken a long ride in the Underground.

  The Prince of Serendip was more attentive to us in Paris than in London. As Felix Reichmann had alerted us to an intriguing political excoriation, a French colleague alerted us to a Utopian political manifesto. Michel Bernstein was a survivor of the war; he and his wife had been members of the Resistance, printing counterfeit stamps to foil the Germans. As a rare bookdealer he appropriately specialized in political ideology, of which he was a master. We were introduced to him—one had to be formally introduced before he would take one on as a new customer—and we became among his elect.