Guido Bruno

“ Right near Park Avenue, next to a livery stable in the cellar of an old-fashioned brownstone house, is his picturesque shop. Large bookstalls with hundreds of books invite you to rummage about, quaint paintings and drawings will arrest your attention and make you stop even if you are in a hurry. Firearms of all descriptions, swords and shining armor add a war touch that seems quite appropriate in our time. If you look closer you see a pale face with keen black eyes behind the show window. ”

“ He has the demeanor of a man who has risen from the ranks and is proud of it. He has kept pace with his success. Money has not turned his head. He knows that he owes gratitude to the authors whom he sells. The quainter his find, the more exclusive seems his taste, the more he pleases his clients, the greater will be his cash receipts. And so he has an open eye for authors who are not popular.
What greater boast for a book salesman in Chicago than to have disposed of more than two hundred copies of Oscar Wilde’s Life and Confessions by Frank Harris? ”

“ But if you are poor or your circumstances permit you to expend only a certain amount of money for your clothes and for your books and you despise the department store atmosphere with its alluring bargains{63} that persecute you ever after you were weak enough to buy them, like spooks of murdered souls, then adventures galore are in store for you, especially if you live in New York. Because one day surely you will run across “that marvelous dressmaker” who charges only a couple of dollars a day, follows your ideas, creates dreams of garments, and makes dressing a pleasure for you. ”

“ Daniel’s Gallery is never complete without a primal man walking around. This man is invariably an artist with long hair and a primitive neck. The charming shepherd of the hills is his ambition. Every modern gallery must have long-haired men with big Adam’s apples and short-haired women with long necks and pale faces standing around in interesting groups or gazing at a picture in a remote corner in solitary confinement. ”

“ It is the dream of every antique dealer once in his life to enter one of those coveted garrets where treasures of six generations are stored in boxes, in cases and trunks. To enter this garret at the invitation of some real estate owner or lawyer who represents an estate anxious to sell the house and to clear out the ‘rubbish’; to buy the contents of such a garret for a few dollars and to find a painting by Rubens or Tintoretto or Martha Washington’s wedding slippers or a suite of magnificent Colonial furniture ... ”

“ Especially out-of-the-way magazines, edited by out-of-the-way people, were his hobby. A small man, pale and slender, with the eyes of a philosopher, what strange desire must have taken possession of him to wish to till the soil? He installed an assistant in his shop, surely not a lucrative job, but this man told me: “I like it here. I can read all day and can save the money that I used to spend for books.” That’s the stuff most of those little book dealers are made of. They don’t aspire to commercial success. If they make a living and can read, can read constantly, that’s their reward in life. ”

“ I like to dream about the love, hatred, contempt, affection, about all the hopes and all the despair mutely witnessed by some old-fashioned writing cabinet with secret drawers and dozens of pigeon-holes, where once letters reposed that meant so much to the writers and recipients. I like to think of the soft, well-cared-for hands of some Prince of the church, who wore the beautiful Bishop’s ring hundreds of years old that will adorn perhaps tomorrow the jewel-case of an American millionairess. ”

“ The Layton Gallery, next door, is a noble opposite to the Art Institute. Bequeathed to the city by the late Layton, millionaire packer, his hobby during his lifetime, it is a real temple of art. In an imposing purely Greek structure, wonderful masterpieces, collected from all over the globe, almost every known name well represented. Its curator, Mr. George Raab, an artist of fame himself, has never permitted commercialism or provincial small tradesman ambition to enter into his sanctuary. Mr. Raab, who himself selected the greater part of the collection, has the rare sense of the antiquarian. ”

“ If you look into the narrow shop you will see a man sitting in a very small space, surrounded by heaps of books, smoking a long cigar, reading. His store remains closed in the day time and I don’t imagine that the people who spend their nights in Mr. Healey’s Cabaret buy books before they go home, or to some other place, but he doesn’t seem to mind and is perfectly happy with his books, which grow all around him and make the space in which he can move freely smaller from day to day. ”

“ Our Age of Electricity and rapid transportation facilities does not permit us to acquire the placid habits of book collectors and of book lovers. Sure enough we read books, because we want to know what their authors have to say. But the author remains a stranger to us, the book once read is done with forever. We speak about automobiles, we look forward to owning a machine, we are building garages with the same enthusiasm that our fathers used to expend on their libraries and their books.
New York is different. But New York is not an American city. ”

“ Women have a good deal to do in public life in Boston, and women are determined to be the intellectual guides of Boston book buyers, at least of such as wish to be “modern” and “up-to-date.” The Garden Side Book Shop is conducted by women exclusively. I dare say women must also be the chief buyers. The most marvelous and costly bindings on rows and rows of shelves. Books of poetry, novels, anthologies that were never heard of and what is still worse, will never be heard of, are beautifully dressed like brainless women, who wear gowns of Worth or Lady Duff-Gordon. ”

“ Of course, there are book buyers today who expend thousands and thousands of dollars for rare books, but whom we would not class with the enthusiastic broker who wished to be rich in order to be able to follow his hobby. Rich men often buy their books as investments. They have their brokers who attend auctions for them, and one day we read that Mr. So-and-So bought such-and-such a book for a staggering sum of money, and six months later we receive a catalogue from an auction house telling us that the very same “book lover” will dispose of “duplicates” from his library at auction. ”

“ The Boston of today, with all its laws of restriction and of censorship, is proud of its ancient rebels. How paradoxical! In talking about laws, a new one has just been enacted. The police apply to the sale of second-hand books the same rule as to the sale and buying of second-hand clothing. A dealer, purchasing books from anyone, has to report the purchase to the police, describe the article purchased and has to wait thirty days before he can sell it. The law requires that each book dealer must pay five dollars for a license. ”

“ To smoke a cigar is not much more than a hobby. The cigarette is a passion, a vice.
The cigarette is intoxicating. If one inhales the aromatic smoke, draws it deep into one’s lungs, into blood and nerves, one feels that this narcotic wonder-poison liberates the soul from a profane pressure, and one’s spirit is lured to lighter and brighter regions. Intoxication is the sweet magic of the cigarette, and, therefore, the cigarette is inseparable from all extravagant enjoyments. The cigarette is in the gambling den. It can be found always where they drink champagne. ”

“ Antique shops along Fifth Avenue and the main streets are conducted as up-to-date business places, and up-to-date business has a romance of its own, a twentieth century romance that has little to do with the individual and less with sacred time-honored traditions that touch the heart. Most antique dealers kill the charm their curios and works of art awaken in us. ”

“ It is a co-operative store with a large stock of ultra-radical pamphlets and magazines, the meeting place for all sorts of Bolsheviki, pleasant Bolsheviki, who want to intoxicate themselves with words rather than with deeds, who are more eager to have a good time under present conditions than to be martyrs for a new and better world. And when they want to amuse themselves, and be real radicals, they go around the block, to the Dillpickle. ”

“ The Strange Discovery and Disappearance of Stuart’s Washington ANTIQUE shops are isles of romance and mystery in the commonplace everyday life of New York, but if you wish to enter into the real thrill of adventure, you must forget the fashionable shop, where antiques have found a temporary resting place and you must not talk to the shop-keeper. ”

“ Stammer, both of whom have moved to Fourth Avenue since, and many other less important sellers of books who have dispersed in all directions during these latter years. He loves Twenty-third Street and intends to stick there till the last house is transformed into a factory. You almost fall into his shop from the street, so steep are the stairs and tread-worn. He has the instinct of the born second-hand book dealer to find out-of-the-way books on out-of-the-way subjects. There is always something unusual in his shop and his prizes are within the reach of the poor man’s purse. ”

“ And the books! Rows of wonderful bindings and old yellowish tomes with broken backs. Rich and poor have an equal chance; and money does not always acquire the most precious, the most coveted prize. Money usually searches for outward beauty; real value is left unobserved in a shabby garment. This is the consolation of the bookworm, but dealers spoil his chances now-a-days. They have learned that it pays to put beautiful clothes on valuable books.
Would you like to see an actor of the old type? Drop in on Mr. Hartmann, in the Fifth Avenue Auction Rooms on Fourth Avenue. ”

“ There were some magnificent pictures in one corner and really good books right next to trashy novels. “That’s the other side of my book business,” answered Lawson. “Dealers come in from all parts of the country and I have the whole day to myself to attend auctions, to visit collectors. A good many gems have drifted in here. Doesn’t it look like a junk shop? And I dare to say that very few dealers in New York have such valuable books, autographs, prints, paintings and etchings as I have at times right here among all this junk.” ”

“ The scrambling mass of people are simply book lovers and book collectors, and Powner’s has got in a new consignment of books. Such scenes occur every Saturday. The big stalls in front of the shop are filled with all sorts of books, old Roman antiquities, books on sports, old poetry, collected by someone who had disposed of his books, or who had left his treasures behind him. ”

“ If one keeps a bookshop something unusual happens almost every day. It is the uncertainty of the book business that always attracts me. Of course every book dealer who wants to make a decent living must have a specialty of his own. Mine is architectural books. I have a large clientele of architects and decorators; I know these books well, and they were the backbone of my business. Chance and good luck are the great factors in the book dealer’s life. Let me tell you a few instances:
“A few months after I opened my shop at the time of the big auction sales, I felt very gloomy. ”

“ You have heard a good deal of the Salvation Army, and so you don’t hesitate to turn over some things you cannot use to the wagon. The elderly gentleman in Salvation uniform takes everything he can get hold of. You, of course, think that the magazines are sent to hospitals to be read by the poor lonesome patients, that the clothes are distributed among the needy, and the furniture given to some wretched families who have no beds to sleep on or to others whose hardhearted landlord deprived them of chairs and tables. ”