A Cruise with the Carters

Here’s a lovely thing that just came in.

YACHTING JOURNALS OF THE WILLIAM CARTER FAMILY, ALLSTON, MASS - MONHEGAN ISLAND AND MAINE COAST, 1914 - 1915.

William and Isabelle Carter and their daughter Jamie lived in a comfortable but not over-the-top Victorian house in Allston, Mass.
They owned a comfortable but not over-the-top yacht (it looks to be about a 35 foot motor cruiser). In those days the Charles River was still open to traffic down as far as Allston, and they tied their boat Isabelle up at “Carter’s Landing” along the Charles in that city. In the summers of 1914, 1915, and possibly other years, the three of them made family trips in the Isabelle down east to Maine. If the Carters had been upper class people, these cruises would have involved yacht clubs, yachting costumes, and lots of socializing and drinking. But they were not. Their adventures centered on the natural beauty of places along the way, on humorous adventures and mishaps - they were avowed amateurs - and a few visits with friends. All this is recorded in five hand made journals measuring about 6 1/2 x 7 inches and bound in limp leather. The pages are good heavy watercolor paper, watermarked 1914. One of the voyages is recorded in mock epic style, two in rhyming couplets, one in straight narrative, one in blank verse. All have captions, sometimes humorous, to photos and drawings. Some of the drawings are elaborate double page spreads. Isabelle Carter was probably the artist responsible for these journals, though her husband may have contributed a narrative. Four of the journals are 64-76 pages in length. The fifth is 35 pages long. In total they contain 177 snapshot photographs of coastal scenes - from the lock in the Charles to Monhegan Island, passengers and the Isabelle, and 70 colored drawings (ink and watercolor) of descriptive, decorative and humorous subjects. An intimate and charming look at recreational yachting in the early 20th century $4500

As I read through the journal and enjoyed the adventures of this lively family, I marveled that these books, in their limp suede covers, had survived in such good condition for nearly a century… then I began to wonder if there had originally been more. This series obviously documents the end of an era for them – the last journal is titled “Last Voyage” – and undoubtedly the pressures of the Great War constrained their carefree days on the Isabelle. But until I, or you, do more research on William Carter and the motor yacht Isabelle, we won’t know how many years she was afloat, how many years Carter owned her, or how many other volumes there might have been in this series.

My thoughts run in this vein because I’m an aggressive, acquisitive book dealer, but also because I’m in the process of writing a talk that I am scheduled to give at the 2011 RBMS (Rare Book & Manuscript Librarians) pre-conference in Baton Rouge this June 22. The theme is “In the Hurricane’s Eye: Challenges of Collecting in the Twenty-first Century” and you can guess what the dominant topics will be. Where does paper fit in an increasingly digital world? Will there even be a significant role for collectors and purveyors of antiquarian paper?

You may have heard the news last month that British poet Wendy Cope (successor to Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate) just sold her archive to the British Library for thirty-two thousand pounds sterling. Only mild surprise there. The kicker was that the “archive” consisted of fifteen boxes of stuff and 40,000 emails. And you can bet it was the emails the British Library was after. Even as we digitize the world, we’re consuming (destroying or institutionalizing) most of its analog paper artifacts.

I’ve been buying and selling whaling logs for thirty-five years. These days, every time I find another one, I fear it will be my last. That’s the weather in the “Hurricane’s Eye” at RBMS.

For me, part of the answer to this challenging problem has to do with expanding the envelope. Are the Carter family’s journals whaling logs? No, but they do just as good as job at describing what life – and the world – were like for the Carters as some first mate’s log did at describing the Pacific in 1843.

Now let your belt out another notch.

One of my favorite art exhibits is the reconstruction of the London studio of the great twentieth century painter Francis Bacon. After Bacon died a team of archaeologists moved in to his place in London and spent two years compiling a 7000 item database that recorded and photographically documented every scrap of material in the studio, as well as its exact location. The studio was then removed from its original site at Reece Mews in South Kensington and put back together, full scale, in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Museum. (Bacon was Dublin born.) Looking down into that gorgeous mess of a room provides a kind of insight into the work of Francis Bacon that no book or monograph could ever deliver.

The point here is that as time goes on and archives of necessity become more diverse, it will take more of a trained eye, a certain connoisseurship, and definitely more imagination to find virtue in what seems to be junk.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the “future” for archives – at least from the supply side. What kinds of assemblages - what sorts of material - are at the farthest limits of my imagination? How can I unlock the virtue in an attic full of trash? What new ways can I find to sift a narrative from chaos, history from stuff?

The Rapture

J.P. Jones Plugs Lt. Grubb. (Details below.)



What a difference a year makes! This Saturday morning, as I pulled up at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center to shop the second annual Philadelphia Book and Paper Expo,the parking lot was full. And so was the hall.Oh, wait a minute. That was the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church (“Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.”) being held in the space adjacent to the book fair. The fair looked more like this.In short, the usual lackluster event, populated by the usual dealers, attended by the usual suspects, competently organized, as usual, by Flamingo Eventz, but just about flatlined as far as energy, imagination, or creativity were concerned. Super Scout Bill Hutchison put it best:“The Rapture came early. This is hell.”

I stole the line to use as a tweet. (Yeah, it’s true. “Follow” me, will you? For that matter, “like” Ten Pound Island on Facebook. I got kids to feed.) But then I got to thinking what a perfectly Twilight Zone-ish kind of hell the Philly book fair could be – the last place you’d expect to spend your life in eternal damnation, but hellish for exactly that reason. In such a hell, as Hutch put it, “The books would keep getting worse.”

So how come the Methodists got such a big crowd? They’re only selling one book.

Ah, well. I got more than one book, but jest barely. Here’s the math of it.

I was on the road for four days, a little over 1000 miles. At an average cost of about $1 per mile on such trips, and figuring to double on anything I bought, I’d have to spend $1000 just to break even on expenses, and cover my cost of goods. Cash flow is the name of the game, friends. My total purchases came to $1220.

I guess I could have stayed home. But then I would have missed my first two days in various Vermont locations including the Rauner Library at Dartmouth, researching John Ledyard’s famous canoe trip, which I hope will be the core of my next book.

After I finished my research I hit the book trail in semi-earnest, stopping at a couple of places in New York, including Fred Rosselot’s house.Fred is a lovely guy, one of the true characters in the business, who’s made a long and successful career out of lumping antiques, house cleanouts, and dumpster diving.Then down to see Bob Langmuir, subject of my book, Hubert’s Freaks. Turned out Bob had sold the Arbus archive, and is now living the life of a country squire in Chadd’s Ford, PA. So happy endings are possible, I guess.








The funnest thing I bought in Philly was a collection of 32 nineteenth century lithos and engravings collected by someone interested in old printing. (Kindly scouted up for me by Dan Gaetta of John Bale Book Co.) This group contained a wonderful image of John Paul Jones shooting Lt. Grubb - a famous episode about which I blogged a few months ago (It has been the subject of many images, but it never actually happened.) - and an even more famous event, the yacht America’s victory in the first America’s Cup race, with a contemporary colored image and an article from Hunt’s Yachting Magazine, 1861. As well as 30 other engravings of George III, John Calhoun, Benedict Arnold, the Constitution defeating the Guerriere, etc., etc… $200 for the lot.

Well, it's been rapturous visiting with you. Next week a piece on archives, then a report on the venerable New Hampshire Book Fair.

Ferdinandea

Along with pirate treasure, white whales, female marines and flying Dutchmen, one of the most interesting byways of maritime lore has to do with disappearing islands.

Atlantis comes first to mind - home of our greatest lost civilization and enough crackpot theories to populate several islands. Then probably Avalon, where King Arthur went for R&R after his dustup with Mordred, and Lyonesse, where Tristan lived before he met Iseult and got into opera.

In times modern enough to attract the interest of geographers, there’s Drake’s Elizabeth Island, discovered by him in 1578 off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, and missing ever since. Also Isle Phelypeaux and Isle Ponchartrain first mapped in Lake Superior in the 17th century, and disappeared soon thereafter. Dozens of islands, and even continents, made their appearances on early maps, only to be effaced in subsequent editions.

Even more recently, there’s Ferdinandea, a little bump coughed up by a volcano off the coast of Sicily in 1831. A passing Spanish merchant ship may have discovered it initially. The French called it Julia and sent a geologist and an artist to document it. Ferdinand, the King of the Two Sicilies, thought it was his and named it after himself. The British, who were convinced they owned everything, named it Graham’s Island, after a Grand Poobah in the Admiralty.


The island rose to about 200 feet above sea level. It was ideally situated to be of strategic importance to the countries that claimed it. It even had two small lakes and a beach, which made it the hottest tourist attraction in the area. Everything seemed lined up for a nasty four-way international property dispute when, in 1832, Ferdinandea sank back below the sea, leaving nothing but a gaggle of frustrated diplomats.

Oh, and a few printed and manuscript accounts of its existence.

Last fall I purchased a journal kept by a man named Henry Dean, who was on the navy ship that took American Ambassador John Randolph to his post in Russia. Just for some context, here’s how historian Henry Adams describes Randolph’s posting. “In September, 1829, he [Randolph] was offered and accepted a special mission to Russia; he sailed in June, 1830; remained ten days at his post; then passed near a year in England; and, returning home in October, 1831, drew $21,407 from the government, with which he paid off his old British debt. This act of Roman virtue, worthy of the satire of Juvenal, still stands as the most flagrant bit of diplomatic jobbery in the annals of the United States government.”

After delivering Randolph Dean’s ship joined several others from the Atlantic Squadron, and cruised the Mediterranean. So, what I had was a interesting account of a US naval ship hauling a scoundrel around.

I put it on the shelf and forgot about it until a few months ago, when a colleague sold me a drawing and description of the eruption and formation of Ferdinandea. The event rang a bell with me, and after a few weeks of scrabbling around I came upon Dean’s journal, toward the end of which I found his entry describing the strange little island. Furthermore – I had not noticed these in my initial perusal of the manuscript – Dean copied several pages describing the formation of the island, transcribed from contemporary printed reports. The wording of one of these accounts was almost an exact match for wording on the drawing. Suddenly, much to my delight, I was the owner of a previously unknown chart and drawing of the formation of Ferdinandea, along with a lengthy manuscript account of the event. (You can be, too. For only $3500. I’ll pay the shipping.)

In my case, this concurrence was just dumb luck. But it put me in mind of some of the great finds of recent years, and of the great book scouts who made them. In almost every case these exciting discoveries involved the discoverer making a hitherto unknown connection, of seeing something in a way others did not see it.

About thirty years ago legendary book scout Scott Nason found a first edition Tamerlane in a box of seed catalogs – a happy launch for what has been an exemplary career. Since then I’ve talked to half a dozen scouts and dealers who told me they’d been to the shop where Scott had made his find, and probably had looked through that same box of catalogs, without seeing what Scott saw.

Then there was the rumor last year that a well attended book fair yielded an early copy of the Articles of Confederation. According to the story, the piece had been sitting on a dealer’s table, priced at a few hundred dollars. The dealer had no idea what it was, nor did the dozens of people who picked it up and put it down that morning – until at last someone with the eyes to see it examined it closely.

You probably know someone who seems to have that gift – a preternatural ability to pull the right book off the shelf, even when none of the spine titles are legible. It’s an ability akin to second sight.

On the other hand, as my pal John Thomson points out, it may simply be the result of experience. Perhaps the dealer who found that copy of the Articles of Confederation had seen, or even sold a copy before.

This is the reason Thomson rarely passes up an opportunity to look at a library, even if he knows he doesn’t stand a chance of buying the books. At home his kitchen table is piled high with other dealers’ catalogs. His bookcases groan with reference books. At the end of a long bookfair setup, when the rest of us head for the bar, he’s likely to still be on the bookfair floor, squinting at title pages spread out in dusty glass cases. “You have to know the material,” he says. “You have to educate yourself.”

Having a book scout’s second sight, ala Nason or Matty Needle is all well and good. A little luck, as in my dance with Ferdinandea, doesn’t hurt either. But to really make a go at this trade, to keep turning up the goods day in and day out, Thomson’s right.

You have to educate yourself.

Tune in next week for a review of the Philadelphia Book & Ephemera Fair as well as other hijinx yet to be discovered.

Hold the Onions

One day in the late 1970s I was in Ernie Starr’s shop in Boston talking books with Ernie’s son Norm when a squatty little wise guy broke into our conversation and told me I should think about joining a new association of booksellers called MARIAB – Massachusetts and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers. I made some smart reply about not being a joiner and the little guy just shook his head. “You don’t get it.”

The little guy’s name was Peter Stern and, over the years, he became a good friend and trusted colleague. Over that same period MARIAB (which Stern and Starr were instrumental in founding) morphed into one of the largest and strongest regional trade organizations in the country for old and used book sellers. What I “didn’t get” was that MARIAB was not a fraternal organization. Along with promoting member firms their major function is sponsoring book fairs. And they’ve been doing that with considerable success for 35 years.

For a while, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the venue for the spring MARIAB show was the Shriner’s Auditorium in Wilmington, Mass.The show was a real gas. The Shriners, in their fezzes and fancy jackets, worked as our porters and security staff. To help raise money to support their worthy Hospitals for Children program they sold big bags of fresh vidalia onions, imported direct from Vidalia, Georgia. What could be better than spring weather, guys in fezzes, old books, and vidalia onions?

This year the MARIAB bookfair and the Shriner’s Auditorium were reunited. The fair was run by promoter Marvin Getman, of New England Antique Shows and, I must say, this was a brilliant choice by the MARIAB book fair committee. Getman, who comes with years of experience and networking in the antique world, is far and away the most imaginative, organized, and energetic book fair promoter in the northeast. His production at the Shriner’s Auditorium this year did not disappoint.


The guys with fezzes were there, just as in days of old.So was the famous Shriners camel.
More importantly Getman had coaxed more than 90 dealers out of hiding and created a vibrant mix of book, photo, and ephemera dealers. It was the biggest, strongest, and liveliest non-ABAA bookfair these parts have seen in years. Getman’s five-figure advertising campaign drew a crowd that was so eager they had to be restrained by crime scene tape.(This photo was taken an hour before opening. I’m told some of the customers had camped there all night).

Best of all, the material on offer seemed fresh, interesting and, in general, reasonably priced. It was almost like bookfairs in the old days - lots of exhibitors, good books, healthy crowds. There was only one problem. This year, for whatever reason, there were no vidalia onions.

As an addendum to this rave review, I should report that boothmate John Waite and I were standing in our booth talking to Marvin Getman about promoting shows, and the wisdom of a big, easy to reach, relatively inexpensive venue like the Shriner’s, versus a classier downtown Boston location. A lady who was shopping in our booth overheard us and told us that she was there because she’d learned about the fair from one of Marvin’s ads. She and her husband lived in Needham, she said, but he would not drive into Boston. The clincher for them was that parking at the Shriner’s Auditorium was plentiful and free. Ain’t gonna get that in Big City, no way.

My prize catch is pictured above. It is the work of a whaleman named John Williams. In June 1846, cruising the line off the Galapagos Islands, Williams found himself with some time on his hands. He got hold of Taber’s New Bedford and Fairhaven Signal Book, probably not hard to find aboard a whaleship, and copied its contents into a small (4 x 6 inch) blank book in ink and watercolor. Not satisfied with that accomplishment, he then copied flags of maritime nations (source unknown, but probably also from a book, with some creative additions by Williams).

The result, though it may not add anything to our knowledge of flags, is a stunning little piece of folk art, done aboard a whaleship. One hundred five pages of color illustrations, with captions. $2500