"Can" B. Worth - Part Eleven

"Can" B. Worth

Part Eleven

            “Pretty cavalier” I’m told to “don’t look at or take …anything”.  Why?  And why NOT?  Why is because I am, at that moment, a little too involved, sweaty, dirty, discombobulated and …frazzled… to be messing with “obvious treasure”.  Why not is because… whose in a hurry?

            I worked for a dealer… who was a hoarder… too… in high school who …drove home, literally… that “if you can get it to your property it’s yours”.  Taking that youthful mantra into estate cleanouts for forty plus years teaches… that BEYOND the abstract of possession in the trading of antiques and rare books… “things move very slowly”… especially in ‘rare books’.

            NOTHING HAPPENS to fifty year collector’s accumulated gatherings stored in boxes in a storage unit AT ALL excepting the monthly debit of “rent” “due”.  A decade in a box… for a rare book that has already been two-three-four decades in that same box… no one is going to notice… in the ENTIRE rare book world.  “Yep.” and there was only one person with a key, one person who knew about it, one person who “could”… and I, being that one, SAID “maybe not today”.

            But there must have been SOMETHING …when we “cleaned out”:  “Something FOUND”.  Of course there was.  Dead Can, as I sensed from the inspection, was “all over the place” so logically his STUFF was all over the place and… my click-bang eye-spy… “did see” a “that”.  Or a “this”.  And I kept my mouth shut.

            To no avail.  FOR …down along the bookcases on the office side walls…. being exposed as the stacked boxes were peeled away… I couldn’t “get there fast enough” and… Mr. Big Truck helper… bent over to pick up a box… and stopped …with his puffy face looking at a spine end… on a shelf … before him.  Gilt gold lettering upon “polished calf” read “FROM MANASSAS TO APPOMATTOX” with “LONGSTREET” below.

            HE:  Pause with facial squint.  Hands come off of the box he’s about to pick up.  Hand reaches to spine top.  Arm pulls the book from shelf as whole human form rises erect.  Then a stupefied look at the front cover.  A glance at me.  He title pages it.  Pause.  Closes cover.  Pause.  Tilts spine up to view it.  Glances at me.  His arm sets book down sideways on top of the book shelf.  He glances at me.  He bends down and picks up box and puts it on top of the current dolly load.  He wheels the loaded dolly out of the office to the truck.  I look over at the book.  I leave it there.  It stays there.  And stays there.  TWO and a half hours later he says to me “There’s a good Civil War book over there”.

            He wants it.  He doesn’t want it … because he “KNOWS” “it’s valuable”.  He doesn’t actually know that but “THINKS” (a dangerous form of quicksand) he KNOWS “it is”.  So he “wants it”.  But he also “thinks” he “knows” that BECAUSE “it’s valuable” he DOESN’T want it because… I’d “dock” his “pay” “a lot” IF he “wants it”.  A quandary that is enhanced by my “leave it there” …in plain sight.  HE KNOWS I know TOO… after about twenty minutes of “shelf time”.  He never says anything more about it.  After THREE hours I put the book on the top of a box I’m packing up, tape it closed and… it’s dollied away.

            Meanwhile, on another front of this rare book wilderness frontier… and after I DID back pat myself on the Longstreet for it being a “better” “handsome copy” of an equally NOT RARE book compared to the Bryant’s set in the History Office… (and I’ll take it thank you)… I discerned a member of employed helper team two …endeavoring to find their OWN “rare book”.

            This took place up at the front and over to the… behind the opening-in office door… to the seated-at-desk LEFT of Dead Can’s academic office poise.  That region of boxed wilderness we’d “gone past” due to the cramped quarters.  Now having opened space “below” that front corner… behind which I could see… a closet… with its door so piled with boxes it had been “shut forever”… I had ordered that area “cleared”.  Two thirds of the boxes had been moved and the problem of there being a lot of loose iota in and upon these boxes… due to the “just stuff it there” proximity of this area to the desk… had become apparent with me having to double time up there TOO for boxing that stuff up…:  So I was scrambling a bit to stay on top of this “it”.

            This left my employed “them” “alone” “up there” and I could see “slow downs” as they “discovered” LOOSE items “of interest”.  At THIS moment of estate cleanout peril I saw one of them see… a thick plain green cloth bound ‘old book’.  Retrieving it by hand-fishing-it-out… from upon a box with an equalizing stack of old papers… UP into the LIGHT OF DAY it came… after… oh let me say …a quarter century of BURIAL.

            I couldn’t see what the book was but …big, thick, plain, green cloth with no glittered embellishment visible (?) …did not seem to “be a problem”.  BUT young Mr. Holding It In His Hand… seemed TOO curious and captivated and NOT PUTTING IT anywhere and:  HE STARTED LOOKING AT COLORED PLATES… I …saw.  “WHAT ARE THOSE IOTA DABBLED COLOR PLATES?” my mind requested as my eyeballs STRAINED into the cluttered dusty distant darkness of that …frontal frontier.

            I couldn’t tell.  BUT Junior Jenius COULD and was enthralled.  I stopped MY pack-up actions… creating a silence from MY zone that enhanced the stopped work silence from HIS ZONE so… he glanced at me.  Then looked down at the book.  Then back at me while CLOSING THE BOOK and… then turned away from me and set it near the middle of the…had been moved out of the direct way… top had been completely cleared off… desk.  Where it stayed.  For an hour.

            I did nothing for an hour.  I said nothing at all, ever.  During a round robin rotation of the dollies going in and out I went forward to the desk and checked this book.  Instant gratification came to me for it was… the very well known… classically rock solid… forever considered a “good” ‘old book’ … Mary Orvis Marbury “FAMOUS FLIES AND THEIR HISTORIES” (Houghton, Boston, 1892).  Note the “Orvis” in the name AND the THIRTY-TWO … “landmark showcasing” chromolithographic plates of “FAMOUS FLIES” within to behold an “American angling icon” that crosses beyond that due to the intensive apex color depiction plates’ frontal quality …to ANY eye.  I title paged it, plated a couple and… closed the book WITHOUT bothering to “First edition?  First printing?”.  It was easier to ASSUME it was a “second printing”, of five hundred after a “first printing” of five hundred.  They usually are, when found on the loose.  The gone immediately” first printing went to an exclusive group that still “has mine” in their “library” (read; rich people).  This doesn’t matter much… for it’s about the plates.  NOT THAT the little fly fishing stories by a who’s who in American pioneer fly fishing… are not “good” “too”.  Again, “I’ll take it thank you” and I did by waiting until Junior Jenius returned and could actually see me box it up WITHOUT COMMENT so …HE could say something about it… should he choose to.  He didn’t choose to.

            Quick money “can be worth” on these two books?  The Longstreet $150.  FAMOUS FLIES $350..  Don’t worry; there are plenty of copies of either “for sale” at higher prices.  Pushing the penciled “offered at” price to $600 and $1250 respectively completes this “can be worth” by using the “some things can be done as well as others” … rare book pricing moral.

            When that closet door was opened everyone expected to gasp at the gold inside but … it was frontally full with a half century ago collection of Dead Can’s winter coats.  (Eventually I did check ALL the pockets).  There were some more boxes IN THERE TOO but the… closet had fallen into its time capsule sealed state early on so escaped Dead Can’s piggy middle hoarding period of his all of everything stewpot gumbo method of ‘putting away’.  THAT; the scrutiny of this hoarder’s hoard …truly WAS taking my breath away as my morning probed deeper into this…bibliotaphe.  BUT:  IN the front left corner there was promptly discovered… the classic Maine estate old closet find of the (mystery of) the “old rolled up wall map”.

            It… seems to me that NO old Maine estate is complete without at least one “OLD WALL MAP… rolled up… and stuffed… in a closet.  Most of them are “no good” meaning they are of no historic cartographic interest, of little or no cash value and are… often times “absolutely will not sell THAT!” KEPT by the owners of the estate because THEY “THINK” (quicksand again) IT’S VALUABLE.  HERE our discovery did not wrangle with this last.

            It did embrace the “rolled up and stuffed” and the being an “OLD WALL MAP”.  This map was promptly acknowledged by my team “to be good”.  They “think”.  “Unroll it.” I said.  They did.  They view it.  It is “THE STATE OF MAINE”.  I view it.  I don’t think.  I know.  I bend at the waist to see “THIRD EDITION” …. “1844”.  THEY DO TOO.  With creasing, age toning, darkened varnish surface and ratty here & there, it looks, lying on a bed of trash kick toward the front of the office… like a big brown blothed paper NOTHING.  That is what it IS except for the …I’d spied… “By MOSES GREENLEAF” printed below the title.  THIS name means HERE WE BEHOLD the fourth state actual fourth and final edition of his (“GREENLEAF’S”) Maine map, the first to show Maine as it is today.  NOT particularly “rare” but a “the landmark” of Maine mapping, one must tip hat and WALLET to this map …even in this last edition.

            Earlier editions will wrench the wallet from the hands.  This edition can be found… and is.  My quick glance saw an undisturbed state and a “good enough” condition status.  What does that mean it… “Can B. Worth”:   A real quick “four to five hundred” onward and upward to “$2450.” and these days… that’s getting pushed along by steady hands.  I said noting.  I waited until Jenius et al finished deep contemplation and then said “roll it up”.  Then “put it in my truck”.

            There is a book about Greenleaf and his maps… now.  There never used to be one and the maps were still “good” then:  Walter M. MacDougall, SETTLING THE MAINE WILDERNESS  MOSES GREENLEAF , HIS MAPS…., Portland, 2006.  The biggest biblio – commercial sand with lines drawn in it is “Part 3, Maine Maps”, about 100 pages, in “the Thompson sale catalogue”:  Edward V. Thompson, IMPORTANT MAINE MAPS, BOOKS, PRINTS AND EPHEMERA, Orono, Maine, 2003.  The first book will background one on Greenleaf… fully.  The Thompson catalog not only marks the old Maine map sand with “Can B. Worth” but, I add, one will not go far in Maine rare books “without it”.  Both demonstrate why I said noting to the “think it’s valuable” except “put it in my truck”.  It will “be a while” before they discover AND READ either of these reference books.