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.”