Monday, October 03, 2011

Degrees of Gratification

Finally, my cold is pretty much gone, so the weekend proved to be both fun and gratifying. Eric was supposed to have been in Maryland, but due to weather reports from the area decided not to spend the entire last week selling books in a tent. As it turns out, Saturday brought in local customers to the store who had gone to the show and returned with horror stories about cars stuck in the mud and people not being able to get to Merchant’s Row. I had been totally bummed because it was also the weekend of the first Cleveland Antiquarian Book & Paper Fair sponsored by NOBS. But as “luck” would have it it turned out to be a blessing in disguise that I didn’t take a booth after all. I would have been hard-pressed to fill it, as I don’t even have most of what I took to Akron in April, much less enough that’s new and noteworthy. However, that may be about to change.

Over the weekend we saw a collection that I would very much like to have. It’s going to be expensive if we get it, but it’s entirely antiquarian with a range of titles, primarily history and fishing. We submitted a bid this morning and now must wait and see what happens. I’m not sure if other dealers are looking at it too, but I got the impression we were the only ones – at least at this point. Again though, I will only be buying a section of it with Eric taking the majority for the store. I bid $500 for two boxes, though Eric said there are two additional boxes that had not been offered initially and we could maybe get them too. But of course there are no guarantees of anything yet..

Meanwhile I did buy some books at an estate sale in Akron Saturday morning. The rain poured so steadily that everyone, even the most loquacious, huddled in their cars until they passed out numbers. We took ours and repaired to Panera for coffee ( it was FREEZING) and returned about fifteen minutes before show time. The house, a massive Tudor (usually my favorite, but this one had a weird floor plan), had been owned by an antiques dealer, so was filled with all kinds of goodies for his former competition. The books were more of an after-thought, but I did get a few very minor titles (see representative photo above), so all was not lost. I just wonder when, or if, I am ever going to go to a sale where we actually get a decent pay-off. I’d say we’re due, so if the book gods are listening here’s the deal. While I’m very, very grateful for what we get, however less than dazzling it may be, I do think, if I maybe so bold, that we deserve a smidgen better – especially after what happened when we left the sale.

Steady rain had given way to high winds and the forty-day flood. Here’s the visual. Eric lopes down the street, books protected by his jacket while I fly past him hanging onto an enormous pile of tissue paper (think gift wrap and gift baskets) all of which was still encased in its original plastic. Down the street and around the corner I run like a banshee in the watery gloom, packages slip-sliding around like an armload of eels. By the time I get to the car a tissue paper trail worthy of Hansel and Gretel lies in my wake. Four packages hit the drink and somehow got soaked even with the plastic. But I picked them up, took them home and festooned the floor with the soggy sheets until they dried to a crinkly texture that’s great for collage. So I ended up with four packages of art paper and a dozen for gift wrap.

Saturday night Nancy and I drowned any sorrows we had at Santosusso’s, a nice Italian place right up the main road from my house. We had a glass of wine, a great dinner, lots of laughs and a fashion parade. It turned out to be Homecoming night so we saw it all – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the OMG-honey- what-were-you-THINKING-when-you –bought-that dress?! This led to hilarious tales of our own dances of the past – the dresses we loved and the boys we did not. We also noted that girls seem to go in dateless packs to formal events these days. A dozen such young women shared a huge table, all dressed beautifully and clearly having a blast. The interesting thing was that most of them were more attractive than the ones hanging off the arms of the boys!

And now for the best part of the whole weekend.  Late Saturday afternoon I got an email from the buyer of the Chinese autograph book. Just when I thought it was perfect, it gets even BETTER. He had told me initially that he had in his collection a carte-de-visite of a young Chinese boy who, though unnamed, was clearly part of the Chinese Educational Mission. The clue was the photographer’s name and location which matched one of the participating towns. Well, he opens the book I sent and there inside is a cheaper identical photo identified in the boy’s own hand, not only with his name and the date, but his home city in China. He also discovered that this young fellow was the book’s owner! The reason the mysterious album started out in America and wound up in China only to wind up back in America is that its owner left the U.S. in 1881 with the rest of the kids, but then snuck back into the U.S. in 1884 where, with the help of a Protestant minister, he went to college and became an engineer. After graduation he married a young American girl he’d met in high school and they moved to New Jersey where he worked as an engineer and fathered two sons. The sad part is he died in 1909 at around age 43 assuming he was eighteen when he began college.

My buyer also told me that he’d called his friend, Dr. Eric J. M. Rhoads, a professor who is the leading authority on the Chinese Educational Mission and has written a book about it. Of course nothing will do but for me to buy the book, Stepping Forth Into the World: The Chinese Educational Mission to the United States, 1872-81, published this year by Hong Kong University Press. I cannot express how honored I am to have played a small part in the  documentation of this event, or how truly gratified I am to have noticed value in what appeared to be nothing more than a teenage kid's friendship book.

This –THIS -- is why I do this work. And why I wish I could do it forever.

4 comments:

Saturday Evening Post said...

Good for you, Tess! Well done.

tess said...

Thank you! I think you are referring to the part about the Chinese autograph book. It's a story I bet I will tell forever -- the flipside to the story of my monumental blunder with Golf Clubs As Bird Sanctuaries!

Saturday Evening Post said...

Yes - Sorry to be ambiguous. I well remember how diligent you and Moira were in tracking down the story of the Chinese students.

tess said...

We did do a fair amount of research, but of course it was Moira who made the connection with the Chinese Educational Mission. Both of us like researching stuff -- her because of her history degree and me because of the old journalism days.