Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction RoomsBruno, Guido
General
Adventures in American Bookshops, Antique Stores and Auction Rooms
Bruno, Guido
Antiquarian booksellers -- United States; Booksellers and bookselling -- United States
“I am a German,” said Mr. Weyhe. “I can’t do anything about it. I simply
have to make the best of it in these times of war. I always have been a
bookseller. I was an apprentice to a bookseller in Germany, and I
learned the trade in the old German way. I worked from six o’clock in
the morning until ten o’clock at night for three long years. I loved to
travel and was employed in shops in Germany, Italy, and finally I
settled in London. There I opened a shop. Unfortunately for me the war
broke out. I had to close up and the next best thing to do was to come
over here. The British Government most courteously gave me permit to
leave, and I will never forget the kind words of the policeman who took
me to the steamer. ‘I hope you will soon come back and not stay in
America’.”
Mr. Weyhe caters to moneyed collectors exclusively. People who buy books
on laces for $250.00, or a history of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ work for
$350.00, people who want rare things and to whom money is no object. He
is a friend of the artist and writer, who are welcome in his shop, to
whom he lends books on chance acquaintance, because he believes in human
honesty and has unbounded faith in his fellow-men.
“People trust me. Why shouldn’t I trust them,” was his simple remark. It
seems quite wonderful to think that Mr. Weyhe came to America four years
ago as a refugee and without funds, and owns today a choice stock of the
rarest books, the confidence of his clients and credit wherever he
desires it.
Mr. Gerhardt’s Den
Opposite the library on Forty-second Street, high up in a medium sized
sky-scraper, is Mr. Gerhardt’s den. Christian Gerhardt is a specialist
in out-of-the-way books by out-of-the-way authors. He issues catalogues
every month, and these catalogues are indexes of curiosities of
literature. Pamphlets by well known authors, perhaps their first
literary products, books by fanatics, and by poets whose songs were
never known by the world. Individualistic magazines of whose existence
you have never heard, fill long rows of his book shelves. But whenever I
think of Mr. Gerhardt I remember that unhappy singer of our East Side,
of Zoe Anderson, who called herself the “Queen of Bohemia,” who founded
the Ragged Edge Club, and presided for years at its unique sessions in
the “old Maria.” Miss Anderson struggled for years with printers, paper
dealers, and news companies in order to give us her little magazine.
_The East Side_, a fearless free-lance sheet, in which she attacked
everyone and everything. The champion of the outcasts and sweatshop
workers of the East Side, living among them, writing about them with
greater understanding than any contemporary writer, poor Zoe ended her
own life as cheerfully as she had lived after telling all about it in
the then current and last issue of her magazine. Zoe Anderson had been a
well known newspaper woman on the staffs of many metropolitan papers,
including the _New York Times_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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