Hats Off, Ed!

You can’t be in the trade too long before you start bumping into books you once owned. You sell an inscribed copy of “How to Light a Water Heater” to an advanced collector who sooner or later ghosts you, because that’s what most collectors do if you give them time enough. It’s rarely mean spirited. Usually, they just become interested in other things, or they die. In any event, “How to Light a Water Heater” goes back into the trade. Then, some years later, you’re attending a desperate little book fair in Boxborough, or Concord, or Georgetown, or Whereversville, and you see a copy of “How to Light a Water Heater.” Something about it calls out to you. You pick it off the shelf, look at the title page, and then you remember the book. Yes! The copy I had was inscribed. You flip back to the front blank, and there’s the author’s fulsome inscription along with your price code and the new dealer’s asking price, which is often, in this crazy market, less than you paid for it the first time.

The years roll on. Not only do you find your own books a second time, but you also begin to spot books that had been sold by colleagues because, having spent the better part of your life book scouting, you recognize their price codes as well.

That very thing happened to me yesterday morning, as I was working on the next rare maritime list. I was cataloging a copy of a book called “Naval Battles, from 1744 to the Peace in 1814, Critically Reviewed and Illustrated” by Charles Ekins. One of the standards, and a book I’d owned several times already. However, this one had an interesting presentation from one US Navy officer to another.

I could read the recipient’s name well enough, and all the rest of the inscription, but I could not, for the life of me, figure out the name of the giver. Then I noticed a familiar mark on the front blank. It was the price code of my old friend, mentor, and sometime business partner, Ed Lefkowicz.

Ed retired from the trade years ago, and many of the things that were so important to him as a bookseller had no place in his new career as a professional photographer. One of these was his card catalog, on which he’d recorded each title he’d owned, its price history, research notes, and the names of the people (often more than one) to whom he’d sold copies.

In case you’ve never thought about it, that was how we did things back then. My mailing list was kept in a small 3 x 5 card file, and my inventory history was kept on 3 x 5 cards in a bigger card file. This was seen as a tremendous labor saving device. If you were clever enough to keep copies of your catalog entries in a manner that allowed them to be easily accessed, next time you found a copy, all you had to do was re-type the info you’d typed on the 3 x 5 card. Brilliant!  But my card file was nothing like Ed’s, which was top-notch professional in every respect. He was about to toss it, and I asked him if I could have it – I thought those thousands of typed-up cards with later pencil annotations were a brilliant record of a career in the trade, and that Ed’s files should ultimately wind up in the Grolier Club. So I took them, three boxes worth, and kept them on a shelf in my office.

But back to that copy of “Naval Battles, from 1744 to the Peace in 1814, Critically Reviewed and Illustrated” by Charles Ekins. I squinted, and magnified, and shone light from all angles, but I could not, for the life of me, make that signature out.

Then I was struck with a happy inspiration. I pulled down the Lefkowicz box containing the files for the Ekins book and, sure enough, there was the man’s name, translated decades ago by a brilliant bookseller. Hats off, Ed!

I don’t really know why this happy coincidence pleases me so much. It probably has something to do with legacy. That, and the fact that those thousands of typewritten cards, and the tens of thousands of hours that went into creating them, still have a use in this digital world.

***

Ekins, Charles. Naval Battles, from 1744 to the Peace in 1814, Critically Reviewed and Illustrated. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1824. 27 cm. xxix, errata (Corrigenda), 425, (2 subscribers) pp. b/w charts, plates, some folding. Ills. in text. First edition.

Primarily concerned with naval action in the Revolutionary War, also Napoleonic wars, with battles of St. Vincent, the Nile, Trafalgar and others reviewed and charted. Constant reference is made to Clerk’s work, but this book and its 79 engraved plates goes into a deeper analysis of specific battles. The plates themselves are detailed battle plans. Also contains an interesting illustrated appendix on positioning of guns in rounded sterns of vessels.

This copy bears the gift inscription, “Given to Captain B. Page for one he presented from his private library for the US Ship Falmouth / Tunis Craven… US Navy Yard NY. 29 March 1842.” Benjamin Page made midshipman in 1810, and captain in 1841. He died in 1858. Craven made Lieutenant in 1841. He later surveyed the proposed canal route through the Isthmus of Darien, and was lost aboard “USS Tecumseh,” a union monitor which was sunk by a rebel torpedo in Mobile Bay in August 1864. The sloop of war “USS Falmouth” was launched in 1827. At the time of this presentation, she was part of the recently organized Home Squadron, assigned to protect coastal commerce, aid ships in distress, suppress piracy and the slave trade, make coastal surveys, and train ships to relieve others on distant stations.

See Smith I, 489. Sabin 22091. NMM Cat V, 1108. Not in Neeser or Harbeck. Bound in old full calf with raised bands. Leather spine label renewed. Gold stamp at base of spine, “US Navy.” Call numbers in black ink above this. Scattered light foxing throughout, tape repair at gutter margin of one folding chart. All the others are in good condition. $850