A is for Amtmann

I complain.

The narrow focus of this exercise – this casual exploration of our suppressed, ignored and forgotten – has prevented comment on the contemporary, the celebrated, and even the passing of friends. I made an exception once, when it didn't seem too personal. I'm doing so again in recommending The Pope's Bookbinder, a new memoir by antiquarian bookseller David Mason.

One might expect that such a book would find good company amongst Canada's ignored, but this has been far from the case. The National Post, The Toronto Star, Quill & Quire... attention has been paid. Here's the Washington Post review:

David Mason’s ‘Pope’s Bookbinder’ features lively recollections of a life filled with books

Buy it.

For someone like myself, a buyer not a seller, the book has provided an entertaining and informative look into a culture with which I have much to do, but of which I am not a part. I've come away with an even greater appreciation of those in the business... the honest ones, at least. It's proven to be my favourite read this summer.

Buy it.

One of the honest souls mentioned in the book is Bernard Amtmann, whom Mason describes as "the father of the Canadian antiquarian book trade". Thirty-four years after Amtmann's death, collectors chase his catalogues, so you'll understand my delight last month in coming across the nondescript items pictured at the top of this post: twenty-four catalogues dating mostly from 1961 and 1962, with a few more from the late 'sixties. Bound in black card stock, the two volumes set me back two dollars.

Always fun looking through old catalogues, imagining a time when, say, George Vancouver's A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World... (London: Robinson, 1798) was going for $650 (the equivalent of $5,080 today). A cursory look online reveals five copies on offer right now, beginning at US$58,500. The most expensive, yours for US$95,000, includes free shipping!

As they say – antiquarian booksellers, I mean – condition is everything, so it surprised me to discover that Amtmann's listings provide little in the way of description. This, from the earliest catalogue (#146), is typical:

CAMPBELL, Wilfred. Ian of the Orcades... New York [etc.] [n.d.] $3.00

The inside back cover of each catalogue features this blanket notice:

Books and other material listed may be assumed to be complete and in very good condition unless otherwise stated.

All this has me wondering about dust jackets. Not a one is mentioned in the twenty-four catalogues. Surely some were missing. Take Ian of the Orcades, which was published in 1906 – you don't see many dust jackets from that year. I turn to Mason, who in an anecdote from his earliest years in the trade writes that the dust jacket was once much less significant, "not yet having reached the ludicrous point it occupies today."

The Campbell is typical of the prices found in these catalogues. The vast majority of the items are priced between $2.00 and $5.00 (roughly $15.50 to $39.00 today). Here are a few of the items that caught my eye:

ALLEN, Grant. The British Barbarians, a Hill-top novel. London, 1895. 2d ed. Cf Watters, p.170.    $5.00
BARTON, Samuel. The battle of the swash, and The capture of Canada. New York, Dillingham [1888] 131 p. Not in Can.Arch. $7.50
BARTON, Samuel. same. with: [also a patriotic speech by Dr. W. George Beers, of Montreal, in reply to the toast of "professional annexation." Authorized Canadian edition.] Montreal, Robinson [1888] 137 p. Can.Arch.II, 1253.    $7.50
CHINIQUY. Why I left the Church of Rome. London: Protestant Truth Society [n.d.] 24 p. cover-title.    $2.50
GREGORY, Claudius. Valerie Hathaway. Toronto, 1933.    $5.00
RIEL. Poesies religieues et politiques, par Louis "David" Riel. Montreal, 1886. 51, [1] p.    $10.00

Bargains all, even when converted into 2013 dollars. That said, anyone thinking that books are a sure investment is advised consider this listing from catalogue #151 (1961):

DUMBRILLE, Dorothy. Stairway to the stars. Toronto: Allen [1946] vii, 72 p. (verse) Watters, p. 44.    $3.00

By coincidence, I purchased this very book as part of the very same haul that brought the catalogues. It cost a buck, less than 13¢ in 1961 dollars.

And it's signed.

I was a high school student when Bernard Amtmann died. The most valuable book I then owned was probably a first of Two Solitudes ($3.00 in catalogue #146). Though I'd inherited it from my father, back then I cared much more about Ian Hunter's Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star. My first encounter with Amtmann's name came years later when I first began researching John Glassco. The bookseller had several dealings with the poet/pornographer, selling various rare books and the odd letter. On three occasions, he handled collections of Glassco's papers. It was in this role, the Amtmann received the most revealing letter ever penned about Memoirs of Montparnasse:

Dear Mr Amtmann 

     Re: Documents in the Glassco Collection 

With regard to the first item (A. 1) of the list I supplied you last month, I would like to make it clear that these six scribblers of Memoirs of Montparnasse date, to the best of my recollection, from somewhere between 1960 and 1961, and not from 1931-2 as might be inferred from the Prefatory Note to the published book. They comprise of course the first, only and original manuscript of the book itself, and its only holograph record. 

                    Yours sincerely 

                                    John Glassco

Dated 28 September 1973, the letter is just one of 147 found within The Heart Accepts It All, the forthcoming collection of correspondence edited by yours truly.

Buy it.

Enough about me. In his book, David Mason writes that much is owed Bernard Amtmann, "not just by the Canadian book trade but by the whole country." He then adds some words of caution:

Bernard did himself enormous damage by his unceasing attack on the institutions who ignored or denigrated Canada's cultural heritage. He died broke in the honourable tradition of the trade but his influence is still felt amongst those who care about Canada's heritage.

Oh dear.

Author and Publisher as Forgotten Men

Forgotten Men

Claudius Gregory

Hamilton: Davis-Lisson, 1933

For Labour Day, a Depression-era story of strife, struggle and messianic fantasy. Christopher Ward is a young man of wealth and privilege. The son of a steel mill owner, he lives life adrift until happening upon an impromptu meeting of unemployed men in a public park. Wonderment is reawakened. He devotes his life to some hazy idea called 'the Cause', becomes close friends with the unemployed Peter Bronte, is mentored by holy man Reverend John, and meets a prostitute named Mary. 'Mary. That is my mother's name, too', Christopher says when introduced. Well before he amasses his group of twelve, known as the Society of Forgotten Men, the reader senses that things will end quite badly. It comes as no surprise when he's betrayed by Society member Jude Braithwaite and is arrested while having that one last supper in a modest eatery.

That said, the reader is left wondering at the charge: sedition. Christopher is long on describing the suffering of the working man, short on its causes and silent as to the solution. This is not to say that the messianic figure hasn't been proposing something, but that Gregory, for all his verbiage, chooses not to reveal the goal of the Society of Forgotten Men. Christopher's thoughts only hint at the answer:

Beginning. 'In the beginning.' But, of course, everything must have a beginning. It was plain now, quite plain, the task he must undertake, the part he must play. Millions of forgotten men were depending upon them, men whose very souls had ben exploited because they did not understand what was theirs by right. Yes, there was a thought in that. One should say, by birthright. There it was again. A man's birthright: something which came to him in the beginning. There were millions of men who would be powerful enough, once they understood, to select leaders among themselves to govern, to select men incapable of being influenced by the taint of party politics. He had no socialistic ideas; that was not the thought.

No, but if that is not the thought, what is? The answer is invariably cloaked. In this passage, for example, we see it in the next to last sentence with Christopher's dreams of leaders untainted by party politics. To put it more plainly, the publisher's next book was Is Fascism the Answer?, a work praising Benito Mussolini, penned by Brampton police magistrate and corporal punishment advocate S. Alfred Jones.

Gregory dedicated Forgotten Men to its publisher, Thomas Dyson Lisson, adding a dense three-page Acknowlegement devoted to 'the man whose collaboration gave the story.' Here Gregory tells us something of the novel's failure by revealing that the plot was woven around Lisson's 'outstanding thoughts', as expressed in self-published brochures, such as 'Did You Ever Look at it This Way?' (1931) and the more ominous 'Eventually You Will Look at it This Way' (1933).

Forgotten Men was the first book for both Gregory, a transplanted Brit, and Lisson, co-owner of a successful Hamilton printing business. Despite their friendship, the author's next two novels, Valerie Hathaway (1933) and Solomon Levi (1935), were published by other houses. All were reviewed in the pages of the the New York Times, yet Gregory's life, literary career and death (1944) were ignored by the dailies in his adopted city of Toronto. Lisson, on the other hand, received some notice. During the Great War, it was reported that he may have thwarted a dastardly German plot to poison the good citizens of Hamilton.

The Globe, 13 September 1918

Then, in 1932, Lisson's printing plant was damaged in a fire so spectacular that it was front page news in Toronto – 'Exploding Celluloid Showers Hot Glass Upon Firefighters', reads the headline. Three year later, he returned to the front page as co-founder of the short-lived Reconstruction Party, lead by difficult once and future Tory H. H. Stevens.

The Globe, 12 July 1935

Lisson, seated across from the other leaders of the fledgling Reconstruction Party, Thomas M. Bell, H.H. Stevens and Warren K. Cook.

Lisson's own writing attracted little attention, though the arguments set forth in his 1937 pamphlet, 'Gold', were considered and dismissed by the mining editor of the Globe. Sadly, my search for his self-published titles hasn't borne fruit. Just as well – having read the ideas put forth in Forgotten Men, I can't imagine 'Birth Control and Scrap Labor-Saving Devices' is nearly as interesting as the title suggests.

Object and Access: A heavy, well-bound book, it's found in academic libraries across the country, but only two of our public libraries (predictably, Hamilton and Toronto) have copies. Library and Archives Canada fails us, yet again. Online booksellers describe the book as 'scarce', 'uncommon' and a 'hard find'. Don't you believe it. Very Good copies go for as little as US$15, while signed copies can be found in the US$20 range. I purchased mine – with damaged dust jacket – a couple of weeks ago from my local used bookstore for C$15.