It looked as though things were opening up for me, as though I might be on the way toward proving my point. And perhaps something was proved. Much later when in a state of great depression I wrote a gloomy letter to Hardwick Moseley, sales manager of Houghton Mifflin, he responded by saying, “Never will I permit you to leave the book business. If we had fifty more like you in the United States we might have a business!” But for so many reasons, some of which I have just dwelt on, the odds against fifty such enterprises flowering—or any of them flourishing—are very, very great.
Meantime, however, several colorful years of the Seven Stairs lay ahead, and, beyond that, an unimagined range of encounter in the diverse realms of art and letters, psychiatry, commerce, and, that monster of the age, television.
4
Building the Seven Stairs
You’d be surprised how humiliating it can be to wrap books in cramped quarters.
As business grew, Saturday afternoon became a great but soul-shattering time for me. The shop was filled with people, music, conversation. There was the delicious thrill of selling, tarnished still by the dubious proposition of taking money, and followed finally by the utter physical subjugation of package wrapping. One moment I was riding a wave of spiritual exhilaration; the next moment I was the contorted victim of some degrading seizure as I grappled with paper and twine while people pressed about me. The shop was too small!
Ben Kartman had constantly encouraged me to expand. But expand where? Well, there was a back room occupied by a dancer who had given up his career because of a psychotic fear of travel. It was a fine, big room, and it too had a fireplace. He was very friendly and I had helped him find a bit of solace through Havelock Ellis’ The Dance of Life. The only course now seemed to be to persuade him to move into one of the vacant studios upstairs. This proved not difficult to do so far as he was concerned, but what of our landlord?
So again I was calling my landlord, and with his voice dripping with its usual sweetness he invited me to come right over.
It was all just the same, the little patent leather shoes, the pin striped trousers, the pearl grey vest, the stickpin in the tie, the waxed moustache, the mincing steps across the thick rugs of the rich, imperious, and somewhat decayed quarters. There was the same circuitous conversation with a thousand extraneous asides, but somehow it resulted in my signing a two-year lease for the doubled space. And this time I didn’t even need a co-signer. My landlord felt sure my success was as good as made.
I firmly believed I was on my way, too. I had suffered and nearly broken more than once, but the dream was working. I was building a store with love in it. I wasn’t merely selling books—I was teaching. And in my awesome love for books, every package of fresh, new volumes, cold and virginal to the touch, shining with invitation, returned my devotion with a sensuous thrill. In discovering this world, I felt I had discovered myself. I had been tested, and the future was open before me.
Of course, I had no money. But I was young, my nervous system could take endless punishment, my stomach could digest anything, and I could sleep on a rock. Beholden to no one, I hit upon a principle: If an idea is psychologically sound, it must be economically feasible.