In Memoriam Julius Doerner
JULIUS DOERNER is dead. He had been a book dealer after his own heart. Living among his books was his delight. He bought constantly, sold little and read much: a man who valued his books by their contents. He was as simple as a girl of sixteen, a bad girl of sixteen.
He wore an alpaca coat and panama hat winter and summer, in snow and shine. Both were bought ten years ago at a Salvation Army store. Cats were Julius Doerner’s only companions; stray cats picked up on dark nights in alleys and doorways. They were named after the days of the week on which he found them. He never had more than fourteen. “Friday Afternoon” was a black tom-cat with six toes on each paw. It could talk. Doerner said so and he was very truthful. He hated women who were unwomanly, thought policemen incompetent, and lived on seven cents a day.
He loved his mother, who sent him a fried chicken every Christmas, half a turkey on each Thanksgiving day, and who brought him into this world fifty-seven years ago.
He loved her so much that he wanted to give her a gift which no money in the world could purchase—exclusive, unique. So, he bought an old Washington hand press, rusty and prehistoric type, and wrote a book for her; he set it up letter by letter, word by word, line by line, page by page; distributing the type after he had made only one impression. It took him three years to complete his book. It took him another year to illuminate it with rare wood cuts by Durer and Kranach, with miniatures taken from old hand-written cloister books. He bound it with his own hands, and tooled the leather of its covers with exquisite golden arabesques.
His old mother in Pennsylvania could not read a word of English, though born and brought up in America. She used Pennsylvania Dutch exclusively.
Julius Doerner never slept in a bed but was accustomed to sit up all night in a Morris chair in the back of his shop. His most exquisite pleasure, and only recreation was to play Bach, Mozart and Beethoven on an old spinet.
He wore the same celluloid collar for twelve years, and washed it every Monday morning with sapolio. The same cake and collar were purchased from a starving peddler on a very cold night, as an alternative to giving the peddler two bits for a night’s lodging.
Goethe and Franz Lieber were his favorites; Whitman, Poe and Wilde, his vaudeville stage.
He cooked vegetable soup in a big tin kettle each Tuesday, and drank it cold for the rest of the week, until the kettle was empty.