Condition Isn't Everything

 

A Rough and Ready Copy of Burton's THE BOOK-HUNTER (1863)

 Books are tough.  Raging fire or lengthy submersion in water can do them in, but otherwise they often survive hard use, neglect, inquisitive children, pets, lack of climate control, insects, and with a little luck, many natural disasters.  These rough and ready reading copies are found almost everywhere.  But they are rarely encountered on the shelves of fastidious collectors or in special collections libraries.  Unless you collect association copies, then you must take a book’s condition as it comes.
            This thought struck me as I held a book with a Titanic connection.  The book is Luther Livingston’s First Editions of George Meredith. . . Offered for Sale by Dodd & Livingston, New York [1912].  It is inscribed to English book collector Clement K. Shorter.  Tipped-in is an excellent autograph letter from Livingston to Shorter, discussing, among other things, an upcoming visit by fellow bibliophile Harry Widener to Shorter.  Widener is the famous young American collector who perished on the Titanic along with his father, only a few days after seeing Shorter.  His mother survived and built the Widener Library at Harvard in his honor.  She then placed her twenty-seven-year-old son’s already impressive book collection within.  Bookseller and bibliographer Luther Livingston was close to Harry Widener. He was selected as the first librarian of the Widener Library, but he died tragically of a rare bone disease before he could assume the post.  His ongoing illness is also mentioned in the letter to Shorter.  So, there is a lot to unpack with this association copy and the appeal to me was irresistible, condition be damned. 
            Bookseller Howard Mather of Wykeham Books knows my interests and offered it to me.  His condition description was accurate, but I hoped it might be better than advertised. Nope.  The book literally looks as if it had gone down on the Titanic and later swept ashore.  I passed this feedback onto Mather giving him a good laugh.  Perhaps Shorter was reading it in the bathtub and let it slip.  Maybe it was fire-hosed during the London Blitz of World War II.  Whatever the case, it is thoroughly dried out now, a little wavy, somewhat crinkly, certainly stained, but a survivor.  A relic.

McMurtry, Pass By

Larry McMurtry & Kurt Zimmerman in 2012

Larry McMurtry died recently, and both the writing world and the antiquarian book trade mourn his passing.  McMurtry thought of himself as a bookseller as much as a writer, although that is not how he will generally be remembered.  For he was a good and prolific author of fiction; a natural storyteller that also ventured successfully into history, screenplays, and insightful essays which covered many topics.  I enjoy his essays the most.  But I still a have a tough time forgiving him for killing off Gus McCrae’s pigs at the end of Lonesome Dove.
        McMurtry scouted and sold used and rare books since his college days.  These scouting adventures were loosely drawn upon for example in his novel Cadillac Jack about a rodeo cowboy turned antiques hunter.  McMurtry had a predilection for buying whole book collections rather than straining out the rarities and leaving the rest.  He told me in 2012 he’d purchased the stock of twenty-six used / rare bookstores and over 200 private collections.  So, he dealt mainly in quantities of better used books rather than focusing on rare ones, although he sold plenty of the latter over a long bookselling career.  He would go on to establish used bookstores in Houston, Washington, D.C., and his hometown of Archer City, Texas.  He eventually closed the Houston and Washington, D.C. stores and doubled down on the Archer City location.  Here he filled a number of buildings he owned on the town square with over 300,000 books in all subjects.  He may have had an American vision of Hay-on-Wye in mind.  That didn’t quite happen, but he did attract a steady stream of book hunters to the tiny north Texas town far from big city amenities. 
I made my first book buying pilgrimage to Archer City in 2001.  I arrived on a toasty August day, stopped at the Dairy Queen for an Oreo blizzard, and got situated in my room at the Lonesome Dove Inn.  The Inn was owned by friends of McMurtry.  They were used to having a variety of book hunters come through – in fact, I think book people were their primary guests.  I still have my Lonesome Dove Inn t-shirt.