Dealers in Literary Property
LETTERS of celebrated men and women, dead and alive, can today be purchased in the open market. The more private they are and the more they incorporate of the writer’s soul, the higher the price.
There is no atmosphere of romance in these transactions. The autograph dealers sell because they wish to make money. The purchasers buy because they desire to possess something unique and because they know that the letters and autographs of celebrities are an excellent investment. Let us put aside untimely sentiment and assume that it is perfectly proper to sell at auction Shelley’s love letters, or that a letter of Poe’s grocer demanding in rude terms immediate payment of two dollars and fifty cents for food supplied, is a fitting library ornament if expensively framed together with the poet’s portrait, and let us visit a few of the important dealers in such literary property in New York.
Mr. Benjamin’s office is situated on the third floor of the Brunswick building facing Madison Square. This building occupies the site of the old Brunswick Hotel, once famous as New York’s resting place for the literati who visited the United States.
The walls of this place of business are lined with enormous safes, a solitary typewriter clicks solemnly; the dignity of a broker’s office prevails, such dignity as obtains where deeds are executed involving the transfer of millions.
Behind an enormous table Mr. Benjamin is seated. Nothing here reminds one of an antiquarian’s cabinet or of a collector’s museum. It is the working table of a bank president, whose chief motto is “efficiency.”
“No, there is mighty little romance in this business,” Mr. Benjamin began, and there seemed no reason to doubt his statement.
“I purchase autographs, manuscripts, signed portraits and all kinds of literary property in order to sell again. There is an art in buying and a greater art in selling; it requires knowledge and a certain instinct or ability to associate events and people so that the value of the materials increases while in my possession.
“I deal exclusively in gilt-edged autographs of those men who have made history, literature and music. Our great statesmen are my specialty.
“No museum or library in the world has at present more authentic original material relating to our War of Independence and the Civil War than you can see in these safes of mine.
“Framed portraits with short letters by men of note are the side lines of book and art dealers. You cannot find them here.
“I am the only exclusive dealer in autographs in the United States. I have been thirty years at the game and I have made a quarter of a million dollars. Oh! Yes! I have about twice that amount invested in autographs.”
“How does one become a dealer in literary property? How does one buy and sell?” were my next questions.
“I can tell you how I did it, but as for the others—I would refuse to guarantee results—unlike the detective correspondence schools.
“I did not want to be a dealer in autographs as a young man, but about forty odd years ago I had dreams that some day my own autographs would be valuable, or that at least I should be able to sell some of them to publishers and editors. My father, Park Benjamin, had been a literary man and a poet of note. He successfully edited big daily papers in New York. I graduated from Union College, served my apprenticeship on country magazines and was at the age of nineteen, editor of the Schenectady Daily Union.
“I made good and went to New York. I worked for eleven years as reporter for the Sun, several years directly under the great Dana.
“Interviews with big men were my specialty and some day I shall write my reminiscences, which will, I think, make interesting reading. I inherited the poetical vein from my father. A book of my poems appears this month. In the book store of my brother, who sold once in a while an autograph of a celebrity, I met several collectors and studied their hobbies. I saw wide possibilities in the field if the business were handled scientifically, and I devoted myself to it exclusively.
“In September, 1887, I started a monthly paper, The Collector, and I have published it ever since. It reaches not only my customers and people to whom I might be able to sell, but librarians and historians as well, and it is largely quoted in biographies as I reprint unique letters and documents which otherwise would not be accessible to the public.
“So you see I am an editor and my paper is the oldest trade paper in the United States—if you can call it a trade to sell literary property.
“An autograph collector graduates from the ranks of book collectors.
“He usually begins by buying letters of his favorite authors to insert in their works, or to frame with their portraits. Bit by bit he becomes a regular collector. He finds that autograph letters take up little space compared with books, and that they are far less liable to injury by worms or decay. A well-selected collection of autographs will nearly always prove profitable at an auction sale. The sale draws in wealthy buyers whom the dealers never reach and their competition ensures high prices.
“Genuine autograph collecting has nothing to do with autograph fiends and their collecting of signatures. A large collection of signatures well arranged and illustrated with portraits and clippings, is a good thing—but albums of miscellaneous signatures with no system, and begged from annoyed celebrities, are little better than trash. When I buy such a collection I break it up at once. Notes responding to requests for autographs are no better than signatures. They are out of place in a good collection. A letter should contain some of the original thought of the writer, and, if possible refer to incidents of his life or to his writings.
“My regular customers, people who buy constantly whenever I have something to offer them in their special line, are not the movie millionaires you can meet in the art shops and book shops on Fifth Avenue. They are usually retired business men, and physicians, well-to-do or of moderate means, university professors who have to save in order to be able to buy autographs. Every one of them has made a study of some literary or political celebrity, or is interested in some period of our own history. All documents or letters needed to complete their collections are welcome. But I also count among my patrons of long standing, poor men whose only property in this world are their collections of autographs, and they actually often suffer privations rather than part with their treasures.
“Some people are greatly interested in minor literary men of bygone days, whose autographs were never thought worth saving. I have a search department for such cases, and I am often curiously successful.
“You would be surprised to find how almost anything you may want can be found if you do not tire in looking for it and if you know how and where to advertise.
“I advertise everywhere, and constantly. The smallest country paper sometimes means more to my business than the big city paper.
“I have bought many trunks of valuable documents and letters in the garrets of old homesteads in towns whose names you have never heard of—called there by some heir, who read my advertisement in the paper and who preferred to sell the literary remains of his grandfather to me rather than to the ragman!
“And here is the secret of success in this business: constant and wise advertising.
“Of course the autographs of our best writers are in constant demand. They have a market price, a price, however, which fluctuates almost from day to day.
“For instance, if a man dies, his value goes up instantly, if his fame has not been an overnight popularity. On the other hand, the signature of the favorite actress will lose all value at her death and will be forgotten by the public as well as by the autograph dealer.
“On the very day that James Whitcomb Riley was prostrated by a paralytic stroke and it became known that he would never be able to use his right hand again, the prices of his manuscripts and letters almost doubled.
“Living English authors, like Kipling or Wells or Chesterton, fetch higher prices here than in England. Kipling especially brings almost five times as much here as he does in his own country.
“Of course we buy at auctions. The Anderson Galleries are noted in New York for their sales and so is the American Art Association. Both appeal to the collector rather than to the dealer and prices are often prohibitive.
“Values are being created there and it very often happens that some collector pays five hundred dollars for something that he refused to pay fifty for to the dealer.
“One of the hobbies of American collectors is a page with the unbroken lines of all the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Another favorite object is the signatures of the presidents of the United States. I pay a good deal of attention to the latter, having collected them myself. Do you want to hear my opinion of the handwritings of our various presidents and some natural conclusions reached as to their character?
“Most of them wrote a good clear hand. At seventeen years of age Washington wrote a clear, round hand, upright with a tendency to ornamentation of the capital letters. In 1760 he wrote a smooth, running hand, and during the war of the Revolution this changed to the large beautiful round hand, the finest specimen of writing of which I have any knowledge. This persisted to his death.
“John Adams wrote an up-and-down, round hand, rather small, early in life, and gradually growing larger until the individual letters were bigger than those made by any other president. At the end, when his sight failed, his writing became an irregular scrawl—on and off the line.
“Thomas Jefferson started with a fluent running hand, and this characteristic his signature retained throughout his life. Shortly before the Revolution his hand changed to a round, upright form and so continued.
“James Monroe wrote a very running hand, crowding his letters together and often going off the line. He fancied a heavy writing pen.
“John Quincy Adams wrote a plain, perpendicular hand with no ornamentation, almost a backhand. In late years it showed much trembling in the letters, but remained clear.
“James Buchanan wrote a round, running hand, sometimes large and sometimes small, with each letter well formed. His writing continued the same all his life.
“Abraham Lincoln wrote at first a plain running hand with letters well made and words well spaced. As years passed it became more upright until at the end it was straight up and down.
“Ulysses S. Grant wrote an unformed school-boy hand when he left West Point. This improved and became firm, but was never a good hand. Of late years it was a running hand, with letters incomplete and other marks of haste. On the whole, one of the poorest hands of the lot.
“James A. Garfield wrote a handsome running hand when a general in the army. The letters were well formed and the words well separated. Altogether a fine, clerkly hand. Later it became irregular and tended towards the upright, and lost its beauty.
“Grover Cleveland began with a large, angular, running hand, and gradually changed to a small, lady-like hand of great regularity. At first it was like Madison’s.
“William McKinley wrote a fine plain running hand, with letters well formed and a tendency not to lift the pen between words.
“Theodore Roosevelt has written the worst hand of any of the Presidents. The letters are badly formed, the lines in poor alignment and altogether they have a very scratchy appearance. They bear marks of haste, of a mind outrunning the pen.
“William H. Taft has a fine, handsome, regular, large running hand. Altogether a handsome letter.
“Woodrow Wilson writes a very handsome hand, with letters well made, freely running in straight lines—altogether of the copperplate order. His letters seem to be written with deliberation and care.
“Washington and Polk wrote the handsomest letters, and Roosevelt and Grant the scratchiest.”
Mr. Benjamin is the great pioneer in his chosen field, the prince of the autograph-dealers. The money he makes in autographs he invests in real estate. He owns a magnificent summer home, and all because he knows how to buy and how to sell letters of dead and living celebrities.