Sweaty Attention

China Trade Journal, 1845. (See below)

Another week spent in the 19th century.

This time accompanying a young man named P. R. Jarvis aboard a ship named the Akbar – one of the China Trade fleet built for Forbes and Cabot – on a journey from New Orleans, around the Cape of Good Hope, to China, then on to Calcutta and Mauritius. Although he stands watches and performs work aboard ship, Jarvis seems somehow removed from the rest of the men – he refers to them as “the crew” (he seems to get on with them perfectly well) – and is soon taken from the forecastle and given a berth with the carpenter. Perhaps this is due to his social standing, or perhaps to wealth.

As well as being a meticulous account of shipboard life and ports, people, and cities in China, India and Mauritius, this is also a coming-of-age story of sorts. Jarvis records all that he sees and learns, both about the ship and the men who sail it. He reaches his 21st birthday on the voyage, and his observations on the back end of his trip are markedly different in tenor than those of his first days aboard ship. Departure

Though inferior in language and literary style to Two Years Before the Mast there is a striking similarity between this record and that of Jarvis’ contemporary, Richard Henry Dana, both in the level of detail recorded and in the stance from which the recording is done. How many young men of some education and social standing sailed before the mast in the 19th century? Perhaps this accounted in some measure for its immediate success.

Whampoa!

Last week’s blog entry – the one about the 49er’s journal – elicited a message from a kindly reader who wanted to know “What would be entailed to make a digital copy of these documents and make them available for poor schlubs like me that can't afford thousands of dollars for the original documents but nevertheless have a genuine interest in the life and observations of folks long dead?”

A good question. I told him I’d answer in this week’s blog, so here goes…

Aside from the labor of scanning 150 pages, there is also potential damage to be considered. The bits I scan or photograph for this blog are on pages that open easily, or that present themselves for photographing without putting undue stress on the binding. Scanning every page could ruin the binding of a precious journal. So, let’s see… I scan a page every two minutes and hope the book doesn’t break. That’s five hours of my time. Then, of course the digital images need to be adjusted and arranged… more time. And what if I inadvertently ruin the book? I guess you know who will pay for the damage! Finally, at the question’s most basic level, does it make sense to give away something one is trying to sell? Ask the music industry about that one.

But suppose that, in an uncharacteristic fit of goodwill, I make a digital copy available on my website. I get hundreds of hits from people who, like my correspondent above, have a genuine interest in the life and observations of folks long dead. They thank me profusely, we talk at length about the 49er’s adventures and, all in all, have a wonderful time. More time, to add to the time spent copying and massaging digital text, but wonderful time nonetheless. I can actually see that happening.

Then suppose I offer the journal to the appropriate institution, only to get a letter from their acquisitions person informing me that they already own the Kessinger reprint of the text and thus do not need the original. In a panic I go online and discover that some verminous reprint company has discovered my manuscript and reproduced it, as a POD book, for $29.95. I can see that happening, too.

Another correspondent wrote, “I have a kind of ancillary question: How much of an item like this diary are you permitted to read prior to buying? And if it's different each time, are there logical reasons behind the differences?”

Well, I had all afternoon to read the 49er journal, and to satisfy myself that there was enough material about San Francisco, the gold fields, and Hawaii to justify its price. Jarvis’s China journal was a different matter. I’d just finished lunch in the final hours of a show and was dealing with last minute tire-kickers, paying bills, sending out invoices and figuring how to get my books out of there in some orderly manner, when the journal presented itself. I gave it five minutes of my sweaty, anxious attention, then went with my gut. The thing just felt right.

And boy, was it ever!

(Manuscript) P.R. Jarvis Log Book Feby 13 1845 Left New Orleans in Ship Akbar for China. (Cover title) 8vo, unpaginated (approximately 145 pp.) About 80,000 words. Bound in limp leather. Written in pencil, somewhat rubbed and faded in places but legible throughout. (First entry recorded upside down on last page of journal.)

Feb. 13 “New Orleans… laying alongside the levee made fast to the tow boat Mississippi I am in the ship Akbar the sailors are coming on board and gathering in clusters talking of the voyage the ship and the probable time it will take to get to our journeys end… there are two young men one like myself has never been to sea as a hand before the other has made one trip to China.”

Thus begins a garrulous and highly detailed journal of a young man’s first sea voyage, aboard a merchant ship carrying cotton to China and returning via Calcutta, and then on a different ship, the Grotius, from Calcutta to Mauritius, where the journal ends.

Although he stands watches and performs work aboard ship, Jarvis seems somehow removed from the rest of the men – he refers to them as “the crew” (though he seems to get on with them perfectly well) – and is soon taken from the forecastle and given a berth with the carpenter. Perhaps this is due to his social standing, or perhaps to wealth. He has some sort of prior relationship with Mr. Forbes, the American consul in Canton, and he purchases trunks and casks of souvenirs, shells, and coral, as well as clothing and supplies (these are listed in the final two pages of the journal), but only once is advanced a small sum by the captain. The mate tells Jarvis he’ll make a 2nd mate of him, and the Captain offers to have “young Cabot” teach him navigation. Jarvis mentions Mr. Delano, probably the Russell & Co. partner, and his companion aboard the ship, “young Cabot.” The Cabots and the Forbses were co-owners of the Akbar and it is possible Jarvis was known or related to them in some manner. Mr. Gilman, also from Russell & Co. visits Delano aboard the ship and interviews Jarvis at Russell & Co. $5000


Next Week - The Washington Book Fair.

The Gizmo and the Book

49er's Journal

I spent a good part of this past week on a 150 ton bark called the Quoddy Belle, sailing from Eastport Maine, around Cape Horn, to San Francisco and the gold fields, then on to the Sandwich Islands, 1849-1850.

Bed Bugs!

It is a little known fact that time travel is one of the great “value added” benefits of our trade. And I’m not talking about cheesy “back to the world of dinosaurs” time travel. I’m referring, instead, to the deep emotional and intellectual experience of being drawn into a bygone era via a manuscript that has survived the passage of time.

In this case, it’s that gold rush journal I wrote about last week, the one I bought in San Francisco. The journal consists of nearly one hundred pages of a young man’s account of his sea journey to the gold fields, his failure there, and his subsequent flight to Hawaii, which he found more to his liking, and where he settled down. The outline of this adventure is impressive enough, but it is the details, the directly observed bits of true life, written in this man’s own hand, that fire the imagination – to the point where I find myself sitting on his ship, peering over his shoulder

Beautiful Girl in Prison!

as he writes about the death of a fellow passenger, a poor tubercular man who wanted only to see California before he died, taking his last, longing look deep into the eyes of each person at his bedside before he expires. Then the phone rings and it takes a while haul myself back to the 21st century, to make sense of the noises coming out of the receiver. That’s real time travel!

Gold Plenty, Business Good

Back home in Feb. 19, 2012, I’ve been thinking some more about the ecology of the book trade, a subject I’ve been writing about in this blog since 2010.

Primarily, there’s the hierarchy of dealers that runs from the teeniest book organisms at the bottom of the food chain to the alpha predators at the top. The differences are obvious, but need not be humbling, because entities at each level are utterly dependent on those at every other level. The big fish would be lost without the small fry. And, conversely, Cliff Graubart, say, would be sunk without Natalie Bauman to buy his books at the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. This truth has been emphasized by no less than Bill Reese, a pretty big fish himself, when he spoke of the vital importance of small retail book shops as both training grounds and feeding sources for the trade.

Gambling Houses Run by Women!

Lately I’ve been thinking about how that hierarchical representation might extend in other dimensions.

As long as books and manuscripts have existed there’s been an aftermarket trade in them. I suspect used book dealers have been around since Gutenberg, and there’s no reason to think the business has changed much over those hundreds of years.

That is, until the introduction of computers and the Internet.

Computers made database management thousands of times more efficient, and the Internet gave an unparalleled transparency to the market. The most arcane knowledge became available to anyone, and the world became “flat” in the sense that data became equally accessible to all.

Now, suppose that our “eyes” in this business are formed by the material with which we first have contact -- early on in our careers when, like babies, all our receptors are wide open. The kind of material we encounter at this time will determine our taste and judgment forever after. The kinds of books we’re first exposed to will be the kinds of books we “see.”

Thus we geezers might have an instinctive understanding of brown (antiquarian) books, or “modern” firsts of a certain era, while our juniors might more readily relate to documents in the history of popular culture, or material of a more visual nature.

So, to the vertical, hierarchy of dealers, we might add a horizontal spread defined by the kinds of material for which people have “eyes.”

And suppose, also, that the same principle applies to the ways in which we process and market the materials with which we deal. Nearly everyone knows about databases and the Internet. But for all practical purposes, we of a certain generation might as well still be using typewriters and file cards. We understand the new technologies intellectually, but our imagination of them, hence our uses of them, tend to be rooted in an earlier time. Those who came later to our trade, and those who have taken up bookselling at a later time in their lives, may have a fundamentally different relationship with digital technology. The various social media platforms, with all their possibilities for networking and sales, come naturally. Phones, cameras, pads and apps seem exciting and fun rather than scary.

Thus we can add a third dimension to our ecological schema – so that the teeniest bookselling organism might deal only in paperbacks and yet be more technologically sophisticated than a purveyor of high end antiquities. This dimension is as fraught with class distinction as the other two. On one side there is the world of old books, seeped in learning and lore – a culture that can also be snooty, insular and forbidding. On the other side are the geeks who actually understand how to manage their devices. This group may or may not have eyes for different sorts of material, but at their worst, they’re ruled by the technology. The books, if not quite widgets, are an afterthought – “units” to be marketed and sold using exciting new technologies.

This, I believe, is representative of the way things stood about fifteen years ago, when modern technology first began making inroads in our trade. There were three axes to the schema, which might be represented roughly as - Big Fish vs. Little Fish, Brown Books vs. Dustjackets, and Bibliophiles vs. Technophiles.

The past decade has been one of the most exciting and dynamic in the history of our trade, primarily because it has seen the amalgamation of these three diverse aspects of bookselling. Where, once, they were at opposite (and oppositional) extremes, they have gradually drawn together.

I listened for hours last weekend as Joachim Koch, new president of IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers’ Association) articulated his vision of how this fledgling trade group can become “the go-to organization for knowledge and resources for bookselling on the Internet." Their palm card says, “IOBA – Where tradition meets technology” and I think that’s a valid hope. At the same time, I’ve seen discussions on the chat line of the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America) move from strictly bibliographical concerns to impassioned discussions of database management and new technologies for their implementation. It seems clear to me that the end game is not a merger, but an integration, of the functions of IOBA and ABAA.

Once the gizmo and the book truly get it on, the party begins. We’ll be twenty-first century booksellers at last.

Three Months in the Gold Fields

Manuscript. Journal of a Voyage from Eastport Main to California and the Sandwich Islands By Wilem H Mack. 1849-1850. Square 8vo, 7 ¾ x 6 ½ inches. 95 pp. manuscript entries in ink. About 17,000 words. Bound in sheep over marbled boards. Writing clean and legible.

The Quoddy Belle was a 150 ton brig built in 1847 in Whiting, Maine, just about fifteen miles southeast of Eastport. Her captain was a man named Fowler (both the ship’s and captain’s name are revealed in the text.) It is not stated if this was an organized Mining Company, but it seems from the way the passengers dispersed upon landing that they were simply a group bound for San Francisco. Mack was apparently a man of some means. He was able to live and travel in San Francisco, the gold fields, and Hawaii without the necessity of finding work. He speaks on a couple of occasions about his “business” but does not specify what that business might have been. He is a religious man, keeping the Sabbath and marking the passage of time by it, and an intelligent, if occasionally sentimental, observer. He confines himself to particulars aboard ship but when ashore seems to combine first hand observation with received wisdom – such as theories about the poor health in the gold fields and the motives of those working there. His observations in Rio, Callao, San Francisco, the gold fields, and Hawaii are quite detailed and obviously drawn from his own experience. The journal was undoubtedly kept in real time during his travels – there is a second “layer” of commentary and correction superimposed on this primary narrative in darker ink, in which he went back over his narrative at a later date (mostly to add titles to the San Francisco and Sandwich Island sections, and to summarize his travels at the end). In all, a wonderful contemporary account of a classic gold rush journey, certainly the best and most complete I have ever dealt with. $15,000

Next week – You will be tested on the above material

That Said...

Prison Ship Manuscript. (see below)

Maybe it’s something in the air down here, or maybe it’s the dark side of that laid back Southern California ethos. I can’t quite figure it out. But for some reason the retrieval of boxes and shipping crates at the end of SoCal Book Fairs has been a problem for decades.

Once, years ago, I waited more than an hour while Neanderthal union guys searched for my boxes in a distant storage facility. When I complained to the manager - I think his name was Hugh - he said, “It’s not my problem.” and walked away from me as fast as he could. A fellow in a shocking pink cashmere sweater and canary yellow tie thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. I was ready to knock his block off until I found out they’d lost his boxes, too. That was how I met John Windle, and it was the beginning of a friendship that’s lasted all these years. Funny how things happen.

Windle, his wife Chris Loker (a topnotch dealer in her own right), and I had an excellent dinner at Roxolana, a Ukranian Restaurant in Pasadena on Thursday night, and we agreed that the book fair venue was close to ideal. Pasadena Convention Center is a new facility, and it has been intelligently designed to accommodate events such as ours.

The move-in couldn’t have gone any smoother. We had wide aisles, good lighting, easy parking, and proximity to an abundance of retail outlets. The hotel was literally next door to the book fair. It all seemed pretty wonderful, though I should add that the extraordinary Polish vodka martinis at Roxolana may have added to our positive assessment of the day’s proceedings.

I’d always thought of Pasadena as a city of blue hairs and Reagan republicans. In fact, it’s a pretty groovy place. Generous, wide streets and pleasant downtown architecture house a wealth of boutique adventures, pocket gyms, jazz clubs, and the like.

I couldn’t find the Senior Center for my evening Bingo, but I did make my way, each morning, with John Thomson of Bartleby’s Books to the foothills of the Angeles National Forest for some spectacular hill walks.



Back at the venue during setup, things proceeded pretty much as expected. I’d seen two thirds of the exhibitors at San Francisco the week before, so both buying and selling Thursday and Friday morning were slow for me. The gates opened to a substantial and serious crowd, thanks in large measure to extensive advertizing and LA Times sponsorship – both the result of extra effort by the book fair committee.


The crowd continued strong on Saturday. In fact one committee member told me that Saturday attendance alone exceeded the total attendance of the mordant 2010 Century City LA Book Fair.

That said (Ever notice how the phrase “that said” has caught on? It’s made great progress in the language, despite the fact that it’s nowhere near as interestingly malign as the equally popular “with all due respect” which, of course means, “with no respect at all.”), much of the Saturday crowd were what I call “molecules.” Molecules are attendees who bump around the floor in a sort of random Brownian motion, occasionally bonding to a low valence book. Some molecules also form new compounds by bonding with free catalogs or other molecules. Also, there was some minor complaining – no, maybe “observing” would be a better term – that West Siders, those legendarily affluent Angelinos for whom Pasadena is a schlep, tended to stay home.

This observation was countered by the majesterial Don Heald, who snorted, “Anyone who lives within an hour of a major event such as is one and can’t get it together to attend is a… a…”

“Molecule?” I ventured.

He regarded me charitably. “With all due respect, Greg…”

Having said that, a little later the equally majesterial Ben Weinstein told me, “Every old customer I ever had who doesn’t buy my books anymore stopped by my booth.” Including several folks from the West side.

I managed to sell about $4000 to people who hadn’t been to my stall last week, and bought about $8,000 worth of reasonably interesting pirate books, shipwrecks, sailors’ narratives and the like. Retail sales amounted to only a few hundred additional dollars. So, by the Weinstein method of tabulating book fair results I had a $12,400 weekend. Which, I suppose, does not qualify as a great book fair. However I did meet some new potential customers – if Hong Kong Harry comes through, I should be good for an extra five figures a year – and am expecting another $15,000-$20,000 in residual orders and after-show business. Anyway, the venue was so excellent, the crowds so steady, the staff so helpful, and the weather so splendid, I really had to struggle to find anything to be grouchy about.

They were out of coffee in the dealers’ lounge on Sunday morning. I’m pissed! (There. That’s done.)



Michael Thompson and his colleagues on the book fair committee took a risk escaping from the familiar but mordant Century City location and, to their credit, they met all the naysayers and nervous nellies head on. They believed the new Pasadena venue would work, and they stuck to their guns. I think what surprised everyone was how right the book fair committee was. By any measure of success dependent on matters under our control, this event was a success. Even those of us who didn’t have particularly great fairs seemed to have delightful weekends. And the perennially gnarly box situation got straightened out by the hard working floor staff in relatively short order. The place was just about empty within three hours. Those escaping by red-eye made their flights, and the rest of us enjoyed quiet, drowsy dinners, and an early bedtime.

Now, I think, it will be important to build on this success. We’ll need a credible non-ABAA event here next year, and another strong ABAA fair here in two years. As time goes on, this show should get traction and may attain its true potential. Just imagine what would happen if all those West Siders showed up.

Great job, book fair committee and Winslow Associates. Thanks!

Dring, Thomas. (edited by Albert Greene) RECOLLECTIONS OF THE JERSEY PRISON SHIP. WITH GREENE MANUSCRIPT OF THE BOOK. Providence, RI. 1829. b/w folding frontis. 167 pp. Dring was mate on the Chance, an American privateer, which was captured in 1782 by H.M.S. Belisarius. He was imprisoned, with other Americans, on the Jersey prison ship anchored off Long Island. This is the narrative of his experiences, with an 1888 newspaper article tipped onto back blanks. A scarce account. The folding plate shows a view of the ship and plans of 2 decks. Harbeck p. 29. Howes D 303. Greene’s account of Dring’s narrative is accompanied by Greene’s manuscript of the book, and by the first edition of the book itself. Both $1750

Feeding the Machine

New South Wales Almanac, 1836. One of the "not stupid" purchases.

You can imagine how good it feels to leave a bleak New England winter for sunny California. They’ve had a drought out here, and we feel bad for them, but we’ll take that string of sunny days with temperatures in the 60s and 70s.

My wife and I have been doing this since the 1980s, and even though it’s old hat the elation of stepping off the plane into blue skies and warm sun is still there. This lasts a day or two before we have to set up for the first fair. We used to spend those days scouting books. Now, I’m sorry to say, we are reduced to visiting friends. Dear old friends. It’s great, actually. Restful. And, God knows, we need rest.

Because as soon as we start lugging boxes into our booth we realize how cramped and squalid the space is,

and we wonder, for the nth time, why we brought so many damned books?

At home, doing the mock-up for the booth, our stock seemed so interesting and fresh. When it’s on the floor competing with 100,000 other books, the material loses a little of its sheen. Vacation is over. We’re back at work.

We slog through the process – setting a few books up, scouting a little, chatting with colleagues we haven’t seen since the last California fair, fussing with the booth some more.

Inevitably, scouting through the fair, I find something really terrific. Yeah, I pay too much for it (“I left my wallet in San Francisco.”), but if I didn’t pay, I’d never have gotten it. And I’ll make money on it.

1849 Journal of a Sea Voyage from Maine to San Francisco to Hawaii

Equally inevitably, every one excellent buy is offset by three or four stupid purchases. Well, not really stupid, just a little forced.

I spent my walk back to the hotel last night wondering why this was so, and decided that it arises from the fact that I run a catalog operation and that I feel a constant pressure to obtain new material. To feed the machine. If I restricted my buys just to home runs, it’d take me six months to accumulate enough material for a catalog. Since I’m on a six week cycle, that just won’t do. And anyway, there’s no sure fire way to predict what will sell. Some of those “bad” buys jump off the shelf. Some of the home runs hang around for far too long.

Next day several colleagues confirmed my theory. It seems to boil down to a matter of habit or training. We need to buy to survive, we need to feed the machine. And, because of the way we're conditioned, we will buy to the level of the material. If we’re only seeing junk, we wind up buying junk. Once it gets wired into us, it’s a difficult habit to break.

OK. Now down to the nuts and bolts. Nancy Johnson

bought this fair from Walter Larsen last year, and this was her first attempt at promoting it. In the months leading up to this event there was considerable whining on the ABAA chat line – “I sent my check two months ago and have yet to hear from her!” – And similar complaints. Her answering machine frequently played a reply that went something like, “I’m traveling in the mountains and am out of cell phone range.” It began to seem as if she was spending an awful lot of time in those mountains, out of cell phone range. Would there even be a San Francisco Fair? Would it be a giant mess?

Well, the answers are yes and no. Somehow everyone got their info kits on time. Setup went smoothly – Walter even put in an appearance – and the gates opened Saturday morning to one of the biggest and most enthusiastic crowds I’ve seen at that fair in recent years.

And they kept coming until the middle of the afternoon. Yes, there were minor glitches. But remember the year Walter lost the showcases?

I like the mix of material at this show, and the democratic way auctioneers, book clubs, decorators, binders, and trade groups like IOBA share floor space with exhibitors. I think it adds to the energy of the event. The more rigidly controlled ABAA fairs can be rather ghettoized in that regard.

So, the machine has been fed. Spent about $15K getting that done. Now we're off to the Pasadena ABAA show to see what happens in that high end ghetto.

Whatever it is, you'll be the first to know.