Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms. Guido Bruno
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Preface
THESE sketches appeared originally in Pearson’s Magazine, Bruno’s Weekly and the Book Hunter, and I make grateful acknowledgment for permission to reprint.
On reading the proofs, I feel I have not done justice to my bookselling friends. I wandered into their shops, I browsed among their books, I listened to their talk and wrote it down … pictures not studies, impressions not descriptions. Some of my friends have since passed on to a better world and in these pages will be found perhaps the only record of their useful and laborious lives. This, I believe, is one excuse for the existence of my little book.
In the April issue, 1917, of Pearson’s appeared an article of mine telling about that wonderstore of Brentano’s in New York about the late Deutschberger and about other old-time booksellers of Fourth Avenue and Union Square. I was unable to procure a copy of this magazine and therefore had to omit this important story in this compilation.
While in Detroit recently I met the charming Mr. Higgins, dean of Michigan’s booksellers, and he objected to my statement in one of my articles: “Detroit has not one second-hand Book Shop.” I gladly take it back. Mr. Higgins has a whole houseful of gems and 27 packing boxes filled with rare first editions and scarce Americana. His three shops would make our metropolitan friends justly envious. When I wrote years ago about Detroit’s bookshops I had not met Walter MacKee, who holds open house in Sheehan’s and is not only a good bookman but also a talented comedian. I had not signed my name in Mr. La Belle’s guestbook in MacCaully Brothers’ store where authors passing Detroit are made welcome. I had not visited Mr. Dennen’s Book Shop, where jeweled prayer books, rare Shakespeare editions, can be had as well as the newest novels and books on golf. I had not then visited Mr. Proctor’s Clarion Shop in Orchestra Hall, the gayest little place, thanks to Mr. Knopf’s love of vivid colors. Mrs. Morris, in the Hudson Department Store, created a delightful nook for her book department. Finally, Mr. Gordon came to Detroit as standard-bearer of the Powner’s Book Interests, who acquired recently the Reyerson Book Shop. Allister Crowley’s beautiful Equinox had something to do with the bankruptcy of this old firm, I am told. Mrs. Gordon, who was Miss Powner before her marriage, is taking an active interest and perpetuating the traditions of a family of booklovers.
And there is Mr. Shaffat’s book store on Hastings Street, with its framed letter by the late Roosevelt who purchased here an important book on Africa during the last months of his presidency.
Now I have made amends for my hasty statement. I hope Mr. Higgins will read these lines and accept my humble apologies.
GUIDO BRUNO.
November, 1922.
The Romance of Buying and Selling Old Things
OLD things of all description may lose their value and desirability to their temporary owners, but never to the world. Nothing disappears completely. The smallest piece of tissue paper that has served as a wrapper for an orange and is swept along the sidewalk by a stray wind will ultimately be gathered by some one and again put to some use.
Objects which find their way through the back door of a Fifth Avenue mansion into a rubbish wagon and are carried away will re-appear in some flat of a tenement house as a new and welcome addition to somebody’s comfort.
Articles discarded in tenement house dwellings and sold for a few pennies to a ragman are triumphantly brought into the reception room of a patrician mansion, treasured by the new owners, and admired by his friends.
Curious and extraordinary are the fortunes of old objects on their way to a new proprietor with whom they will stay for a while, and their wanderings are eternal.
Old things in New York are sold in magnificent establishments on Fifth Avenue, and they are sold in dungeons on the Bowery. Some people are so poor that they have to buy “second-hand things” to furnish their homes and clothe their bodies. Others are so rich that they are compelled to buy antiques in order to possess something unique.
But the men who deal in old things, whose chosen calling it is to buy and to sell antiques and second-hand wares are the true adventurers among the business men of New York. No matter whether their finger nails and manners are polished and they entertain prospective buyers in luxurious display rooms, or, whether they walk in tenement house districts from door to door, ready to buy anything and everything, or whether they wait for customers in their stuffy shops on Park Row or Baxter Street; they all possess the hope that some day they will make the find, and buy for a song something they will be able to sell for a large amount. Not money but the game of hunting after the unexpected, and the thrill in finding it, constitute the lure that attracts the seeker after old things.
The Poor Man’s Hunting Ground
There are many people on the streets of New York taken for granted without further question. Have you ever seen early in the morning when people sit around the breakfast table, a cleanly dressed man, with wrapping paper and cord under his arms, walking in the roadway, looking up at the windows of private houses and ejaculating every five or ten paces some inarticulate noises?
If you lean out of the window and watch him you will see him disappear into some of the houses, and if you wait for his reappearance you will notice that his wrapping paper has now become a bundle.
“Cash-Clothes! Cash-Clothes!” Untiringly he cries out these two words at the people who dwell in the houses he passes. Servants frequently answer the call of “cash-clothes” and let the man in through the back door as a welcome buyer of discarded wearing apparel of their masters and mistresses.
What does he do with his purchases?
Once I beckoned to a kindly-looking old man whose wrapping paper was still neatly folded under his arm, to come up to my room. How he ever found my dwelling place among all the other doors of the studio building, is a riddle to me. I answered his knock. He remained quietly standing at the door, his hat in his hand:
“What have you got to sell?” he asked very business-like, taking in the appearance of the room with one glance.
“I have nothing for sale,” I told him. “But I would like to know more about your business. I wish you would tell me what sort of things you buy and what you do with them after you have purchased them?”
“Of