Bookseller
William Reese stood with my wife and me in his private room / biblio-lair at
his shop at 409 Temple Street, New Haven, Connecticut. It was a beautiful fall day in 2015. The juxtaposition of large, blue exercise
ball upon a bed surrounded by bookcases of bibliographic delights was momentarily
disconcerting. Reese gave a hearty laugh
as we discussed the importance of keeping one’s back and “core” in good
shape. The tall, lanky Reese had been a long-distance
runner in his younger days and was no stranger to exercise. Today however it was all about the
sentimental library that surrounded us.
For he and I both shared a love for the history of book collecting, particularly
copies with interesting associations.
And this was his private stash.
And he had granted me unfettered access to browse at will. Nicole said later that it was the only time
she’d seen me star struck. And I was.
We all talked briefly, too briefly, Bill
pointing out a few things, then he excused himself for a doctor’s appointment. Stay as long as you want, he said, as he
exited. It was my first visit to his
shop and the last time I saw Bill Reese.
Unknown to us at the time, the
doctor’s visit was one of many in a long battle with cancer that would
eventually take his life last week on June 4th.
Few knew his condition or how sick he'd become.
I suspected, though. In the last couple of years, he wrote and
published a flurry of five bibliographic works and a collection of essays. He was running his last race and wanted to
make it a good one. These final publications
round out a career of rare bookselling matched by few in the long history of the
American book trade. Reese assumes his
place in the pantheon among Henry Stevens, A.S.W. Rosenbach, Lathrop Harper,
and the Eberstadts.
Reese specialized in Americana of all
periods, spanning the arrival of Columbus to the settling of the West and
beyond. He was a bookselling prodigy as a teen, beginning
his career while an undergraduate at Yale, and cutting his teeth in Texas
working briefly for bookseller Fred White, Jr, before venturing out on his own
in 1979. His friendly nature, wit, raw intelligence,
and acumen at buying and selling, let him command the Americana market for almost
forty years. The best material passed
through his hands both at auction and privately. The best collections bear his influential
stamp. But I’m not here to list his professional
accomplishments in detail. Others will
certainly do that. I want to share something more personal in my homage
to Bill Reese.
Bill given his stature in his field, could
have been arrogant, dismissive, pretentious, or unresponsive. But he was not. His interaction with yours
truly is certainly as good example as any.
While in graduate school, ca. 1990, I took Michael Winship’s
bibliography class. Winship noted my already
incubating interest in the history of the rare book world and loaned me a copy
of Bill Reese’s senior thesis, Winnowers
of the Past: The Americanist Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (1977). Reese details the history of 19th
century Americana collecting with a focus on the famous collectors and dealers
of the period. This still unpublished
thesis blew me away. I dove right in and
when I surfaced I was one inspired book hunter.
So, this serendipitous read is foundational to my own collecting and by extension
provided much of the related joy I’ve experienced over the years.
Bill Reese had gotten my attention,
although it would be awhile before I returned the favor. I worked for bookseller Dorothy Sloan who
knew Bill well. I was present when she
spoke with Bill on the phone – always an interesting exchange of book minutia,
trade talk, and occasional gossip. I recall talking to him directly, but it was punctual and of no great import. I had heard his voice though, exchanged
pleasantries and the connection was established. I also began reading the William Reese
catalogues, marveling at the material offered and descriptions within. Ironically, I purchased from the Reese
literary catalogues, not the Americana.
My impecunious budget (and interest) led me to the literary side managed
by Terry Halladay, a symbiotic bookselling match with Reese, the two working
together for four decades. I should note
here that Bill Reese was not confined to Americana. His personal collecting interests were wide: for example, he assembled over many years an impressive library of color plate books and what
is certainly the best collection of Herman Melville in private hands.
By the mid-1990s, I was a cataloguer and
then director of the rare book department at Butterfield’s & Butterfield’s (now
Bonham’s) auction house on the West Coast.
Bill Reese was an important buyer of Americana at our sales. I would send advance copies of our catalogues
and personal emails to market them. We
began to interact formally. He bid and
was highly successful. Sometimes he and
dealer Graham Arader, another major figure, would unwittingly butt heads via
phone bidding to the delight of our department.
If Bill lost an item, he was a gracious loser (unlike some others), although
it personally bothered me because by now I was a member of the Reese fan club.
I was fortunate to be present several
times when he bid in person at auction.
The most memorable was our Los Angeles sale of February 14, 1996 in
conjunction with the ABAA Book Fair. A
rare copy of Smith’s The Generall
Historie of Virginia (1632) with maps of New England and Virginia was being
offered. Reese entered the room and
soon had a big smile, shaking hands and talking with colleagues, towering over them
literally (at about 6’ 4”) and figuratively.
But then the action began, and he calmly, quietly and relentlessly bid
against E. Forbes Smiley III for the book.
Smiley was a big man, heavy set, sweating, and nervous as he raised his
paddle. They went back and forth tennis
match style until the book hammered at $41,400.
I savored the moment. Many years
later, the competing bidder would be found guilty of stealing millions of dollars’
worth of maps from libraries and sent to prison.
When I left the trade and assumed “collector
only” status, our contact was intermittent.
I began to gather material related directly to Reese—books written by
him, special catalogues, inscribed material, ephemera. I would see him at the
ABAA Book Fairs and visit him briefly at his booth. But he was in work mode and
typically didn’t have time to chat much.
My friend and fellow collector, Douglas
Adams, knowing my admiration for Bill, prodded me to have more interaction with
him. Look at this, he said, and showed
me his copy of The Immense and Distinguished
Half-Title Collection Formed by John H. Jenkins III, Esq. of Austin, Texas, Now
Elucidated (1980), an elaborate spoof played on Johnny Jenkins in which
Reese played a primary role. Only ca. 25 copies were produced. Douglas had sent his copy to Bill for
examination and comment. Bill wrote a
full-page inscription in the book outlining the story and his role.
I listened. And when I acquired a batch of material from
Texas bookseller Ray Walton’s personal library I sent a special item to Reese
to peruse. Reese had known Walton well. Walton was a colorful cohort of Johnny Jenkins
in the Texas bookselling scene of the 1970s and 80s. The item was Walton’s heavily annotated copy
of Reese’s first book Six Score: The 120
Best Books on the Range Cattle Industry (1976). Reese not only inscribed it to me but went
through the book, writing comments on Walton’s earlier notes both negatively
and positively. This was well beyond
the call of duty and I was thrilled. Another
catalyst in our burgeoning friendship was Jeff Dykes, the noted collector and
bookseller of Western Americana. I had an
8 x 10 glossy of Dykes dated from the 1960s inscribed to Ray Walton. A scan of this amused Bill and he recalled
his early encounters with Dykes. Walton
had what I can only describe as a book dealer photo fetish and other photos of
bookmen inscribed to him found their way into my collection, including ones to Jenkins
and Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, a prominent collector. I sent scans of these to Bill, too. One of my regrets is not printing up an 8x10
of Reese and having him inscribe it to me
as an amusing aside.
We were having a little fun now. And I must thank my wife Nicole for her role
in a memorable chat with Reese at a book fair a few years ago that also broke
the ice. I’d said hello to Reese earlier
in the day but played my usual role of hanging back, not wanting to bother
him. Nicole thought this all rather
silly. In a quiet moment on a Sunday
afternoon of the fair she linked arms with me and literally dragged me to his
booth. Fortified by her presence, I relaxed and had an
entertaining talk with Bill and Terry Halladay.
It wasn’t a lengthy conversation, but it was informal and for the first
time I felt that Bill fully recognized me as a kindred spirit with our shared
biblio interests.
Momentum built. The visit to his shop in 2015. And in July of 2016 I wrote a blog essay
about another copy of Bill Reese’s Six
Score with a sentimental inscription.
I had acquired the book years earlier and only of late discovered the
importance of the association. I
surprised Bill with the essay and he much enjoyed it. I added his commentary as postscript and we
corresponded further. And I knew it was
time. Time to share with him the full
extent of my biblio-collection. He would
not find it overwhelming.
I realized a personal visit to my home was
remote, or at best in the future, so I printed out a copy of my private library
catalogue—some 800 pages in 9-point type—bound it in old school stiff red covers
and metal clasps (the same as his senior thesis was issued forty years before)
and sent it on. No word for a little
while. Not unexpected, he was a busy
man, and sicker than most of us knew, and I’d just dropped a phone book-sized
catalogue on him unsolicited. Then it came.
Dear Kurt,
Yesterday we had a nice blizzard here in New Haven, and as everybody was
exhausted from the Book Fair we just closed for the day, and I spent a pleasant
day at home catching up on reading. This gave me a chance to really spend some
quality time with your catalogue, which I had not previously been able to do
with back-to-back fairs and much going on business-wise. Nothing like a snow
day! In any case, I want to congratulate you both on the accomplishment of
putting the collection together and on your excellent annotations, which open
up a vast trove of bibliographical and bibliopolical lore. I very much enjoyed
running across many old friends, both ones I knew personally and ones I had
encountered in book history. Also, I'm impressed by your willingness to have
multiple copies of the same book! All best, Bill Reese
Writing this has become hard now. The memories have me deeply saddened and I’m
lamenting the fact there will be no further interactions. There was so much I wanted to tell him and
so much more I wanted to hear. We were
both big admirers of Charles Everitt’s Adventures
of a Treasure Hunter (1951), one of the best bookseller memoirs. I prodded Bill to write his own memoirs and
he said he was, but I don’t think it happened—fleeting time, illness, and life cruelly
short. It would have been the best of
them all. I know it. But I’m grateful for what he did write and gave
to the book world and while he was busy building important collections, buying
and selling great books, and becoming one of the finest antiquarian booksellers
of all, he took time to be my friend.
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| Capturing the moment in the biblio-lair. |
