The Crow's Nest 5

5

            The status of the visits remained this way for at least a decade.  The only enhancements were being briefly left in the front parlor alone for some transaction related development usually involving being shown “something” that required the mother to scurry off into the home.  This left me ample opportunity to scan the piles in the front parlor and to walk the length of the front hall peering at the collection in a vague hope of seeing something that was “good”.  Nothing ever came of these efforts.  The front parlor’s gatherings never changed except to have annual Christmas holiday gifts and gift wrap doings floated on their top.  These disappeared after the holidays.  The front hall collection never had any alteration or addition.  The whole accumulation gathered more dust, lived in its half light darkness and grew drearier to my eye with each visit.  I did denote that to the right and left of the inside front door there were minor changes.  These represented recent acquisitions being processed.

            The outstanding example of this was in the corner, to the left of the door, where one stepped in.  There appeared an ebony wood cane with a gold top.  Stout, the gold cap was larger than usual.  It had initials and an 1884 date engraved on the very top.  I know this because I handled it without asking on the first visit that it appeared.  The mother said that it was “Dr. So & So’s” without denoting it was “not for sale”.  I had heard the mother mention this visiting doctor periodically and her reference to him as “that old PILL”.  Evidently this doctor, a small man by the mother’s standards, visited the area from the Boston area briefly each year when going (fly) “fishing in Weld”.  The cane remained there for half a decade and I never touched it again.  On a visit after that amount of time had passed, the mother rose from her business chair during one visit, went into the front hall and down to the front door returning with the cane.  “I want to sell this today too.” she said.  I paused for I knew the story.  “My grandfather was given this by an old doctor from Boston.  God knows who he was but his old initials are on the top here” she continued by pointing to the gold top.  “It’s gold you know.  HOW MUCH?”  Again I paused.  Her eyes flashed across mine showing a Yankee trader’s earnest support of her command.  “Twenty” I said defensively and without consideration.  “SOLD” she said and turned to mark it on her paper slip.  This tiny paper slip, in her own hand, always determined all transactions of any visit.  An inclusion on that day’s slip was a mark in stone meaning “SOLD”.

            The cane was not much beyond the obvious that some old Bostonian doctor had be screwed out of it by the Mother.  She had noted the accidental leaving… that was probably brought on by a glass too much of sherry.  The mother was perpetually given bottles of sherry by visitors which she used to great affect on ministers, professors and… old doctors from Boston).  She did nothing about this cane leaving… and… waited until enough time had passed to assure her that she had clear title and then… sold it.  This dexterity, I slowly determined, was a working method and process of acquisition for the mother.  I decided that even my own wallet was not safe from her roving eye.  I had already… and from the very start of the visits… made sure to “GET” my purchases “OUT” very… very promptly and to be sure they ALL got out.  The mother was skillful at NOT pointing out that a purchase of mine “was still there”.  Once that front door closed behind my back… that visits dealings, I determined… were done.  The front door closed tight.

           

The Crow's Nest 4

4

            The mother’s purpose of my call to the home was to purchase the “antiques” for “money” and leave.  My quick scan of the offerings would, with luck, show as many as three items out the usually ten to twelve selections as possible purchases.  The rest had to be rejected, one by one.  That ritual never ceased.  Disappointment and resistance was usual from the mother but I, as an antiques dealer, stuck from the very first visit to a “no mercy purchases” policy that… saved me from acquiring ANY of the mother’s unacceptable crud.  She, with her scanty antiquarian knowledge, self denotations of “old”, quest for cash and Yankee trader skills, was formidable.  “NO” and “NO MONEY” were the brutal praises I adopted and kept up from the very first.  Even the few “possible” items were usually marginal.  About every third visit a “something” did appear but that was not an informed discovery by the mother.  A “visit” came increasingly often as the mother determined I WOULD actually buy something.  Through three seasons they approached once a month.  During the summer season a visit was rare.

            The mother was all business, a business woman true and a Yankee true too.  I quickly determined that her offerings where both residue chosen from the bowels of the home and… her recent acquisitions.  She purloined anything, some how got it to her barn, sorted it, hid her selected plunder in her… fence post… and contacted me.  Only the need of money brought forth anything.  Her fence post was the region in the older back section of the home that ascended off of her dining room and was called “up the back stairs”.  This true back stairs, distinguished from the front stairs that ascended off of the front parlor where I sat, led to a series of four small rooms “upstairs”.  Generally referred to as “back bedrooms”, these rooms had… excepting the one room furthest from the top of the stairs and toward the front of the home that the mother used as her bedroom…  become packed with the mother’s plunder that is better described as her rubbish.  I was never allowed into this region of the home until the mother was dead.  This fence post and it’s trail allowed the mother to gather, store and review her plunder obsessively and privately from when she arose at dawn to when she retired.  Choice morsels from this fence post would be selected for me to …purchase.

            I was able, in most cases, to denote what she offered as a “she found” or as an “old family” thing.  I could sense it, smell it and usually SEE it.  She either never detected this skill or simply Yankee tradered forward by never acknowledging it.  Probably the latter for she was skillful.  It was only the pitfall of her lack of professional antiquarian knowledge that occasionally left her…pasture gate open.  Sometimes I simply hopped over the gate with glee.

            What caused that was the few times when she actually found something good and …didn’t know it.  We must return to the location where we were seated to understand this well.  From the front door to my seat in the parlor, we passed up and turned right off of the “front hall”, this very concisely named.  Along each side of this hall was packed more of her antique clutter.  It would pass as a collection but as it was a mish-mosh and mounded assemblage with, in the end, no truly fine object gathered, her antique clutter best describes it.  All was “not for sale”.  All had a hideous tale of acquisition, tale of heritage, tale of value and tale of why it was “there” and “not for sale”.  For example, a mangy trunk full of “old papers” and tied with an old silk ribbon would be exacerbated orally as so & so’s Civil War trunk “he brought home” with the papers being “his papers” even though a briefest scan would show that they were nothing but 1890’s grocery receipts from the local country store and that WHOSE papers these papers were was doubtful while the trunk itself had been “cleaned” by the mother, was ugly and never saw any Civil War anywhere but was… NOT FOR SALE.  This directive found in object after object continued up both sides of the hall, included the wall hung iota, the “under the stair” in a darkened space and climaxed at the upper hall end by a wide and cheaply made wicker bookcase, circa WWI, that the mother had actually purchased “at the train station” to hold her extreme prizes.  These included a “Civil War” sword, numerous natural history items like a single mountain sheep horn and… old (“RARE”) books all… NOT FOR SALE.

            The back edge of this sharp saber of a collection was that, to a passing professional antiquarian, it showed concisely that “this lady has no idea what she’s doing”.  Therefore… and one day, I entered the front parlor and there in the middle of the room on the ratty Victorian carpet sat, among ten other objects, the most outstanding 1750’s crown & heart cut crest banister back arm chair with a beautiful and perfectly worn original black painted surface AND …beautiful and perfectly worn original woven splint seat AND… beautiful and perfect …original height.  I said, moved, touched, breathed, peeked and fumbled NOTHING.

            Within ten minutes I owned the chair for a modest $125.00, a coolly calculated purchase price based on a “she probably paid twenty” rock skip across the water of RISK ALL guessing merged with that “no idea what she’s doing” noted above.  WE moved right on to the next …little hand painted late Victorian HAIR RECIEVER that I HATE but actually BOUGHT during that aura of giddy that overcame me; a …mercy purchase.

            I got that chair out of there and it remains to this day the “best” notch on my antiquarian stick for the “BEST BANNISTER BACK ARMCHAIR” I “found” “ever”.  HOW she got it… to the center of the parlor upon that rug… from the first seemed a… must be an eternal darkness.  I did suspect right away that somehow, somewhere in her travels… locally… she “FOUND” that chair, an obvious “escape” from a southern coastal New England colonial SOMEWHERE …that had been carried by ox cart up into middle-of-no-where-Maine during that colonial era, become outdated and put away and… stayed that way for a century or TWO until THIS WOMAN somehow got it before her and… bought it.  This last is crucial.  As she had, I guessed with my rock skip, actually paid money for it, the chair became indiscriminately “FOR SALE” due to this capital outlay.  It MUST BE SOLD to get back that outlay so even though understood to be a “good” “old” “chair”.  The dollars spent stopped there until my rock skipped one hundred dollar clear “PROFIT” relieved this… crisis situation.

The Crow's Nest 3

3

            My thirty year visit ritual was always the same.  I would follow the mother into the front parlor.  She would approach and seat herself at an opened Empire style fall front desk that was against the front wall of the parlor between the two front windows.  She would gesture for me to sit in a large Victorian Renaissance Revival walnut armchair that had been drawn forward from it’s permanent position to the right of the desk.  She always sat in the same older Greek Revival Empire arm chair in front of the desk. 

            Beginning with the first visit and continuing ever after, these were the fix positions of our business meetings.  The meetings were… for me to be offered, review and …presumably… purchase a scanty selection of items brought forth from within the home as “antiques” that I “would want”.  As the Mother had only a vague notion of “antiques” based primarily on what she herself determined was antique, this moment of the meeting always had a potential impasse.  The impasse was that my roving eye very quickly determined that the items brought forth for a meeting… did not make the antiquarian cut.

            The whole of the front parlor room had been the exact same for six generations of the family’s residence:  The exact same from the first day of it’s finished decoration.  The exact same until all of the family was dead and I sold all of the items from their fixed positions… in about ten minutes.  The left wall had a large and traditionally formed Empire “sofa” placed between two built-in bookcases with a very large 1830’s oversize gilt gold framed …portrait… of a free standing resurrected Jesus having his wounds inspected as he showed himself beneath his halo glow.  “Copied from one in the Lourve” was the standard and unchanging explanation of this “not for sale” “masterpiece”.  Well painted, perfectly framed, gigantic and flush with it’s palette of Empire tone opaque reds, greens and grays, the painting was most probably a Portland - Portsmouth – Boston (!) knock off job painting done for EXACTLY what, when and where this… “masterpiece” stood.  This painting, facing me and behind the mother as we transacted, loomed overall, forever.

            Behind me was a smaller transitional Victorian …horsehair covered “sofa” that was positioned forward of a long, long unused Empire Greek Revival fireplace.  I define the style to note that this was NOT a colonial hearth but, in fact, a rural Maine specimen of a bombastic white-gilt gold painted grand decorative inclusion with a black portal at it’s bottom for “a fire” and the top mantel crested with a …tipped slightly forward… oversize robust split turned gilt gold “MIRROR” (Empire looking glass) above… that did have... when after thirty years I did remove it from the wall… a Portland, Maine “maker’s” (read “vendor’s”) label.  It came to Portland by train and PROBABLY came to the home by TRAIN too.

            The mother, due to the exaggerated tipped angle of the looking glass could see herself and… the back top of my head… in the “MIRROR” “IT”S NOT FOR SALE” as we transacted.  To either side of the fireplace were… built in and painted in their original touch-of-gray off-white (that was the color of the whole of the woodwork and trim of the “front parlor”)…. bookcases.  Before these were a gathering of Empire and Victorian chairs and rocking chairs.  Upon the bookcases were …old books.  Upon and before these bookcases; on the tops of them, on the floor, to the sides extending into the corners of the room and… continuing off behind the Jesus painting sofa on the other side was…mounds of boxed, bagged, piled and…DUMPED… PERMENANTLY STORED for …over a century… “stuff” …heaped in just such a manor that an antiques dealer would FOREVER eye it “in hopes” that a treasure would be “seen”.

            The windows and the open and wide entry to this “front parlor” completed the time capsule by having GIGANTIC floor to TWELVE FOOT ceiling high heavy thick massive faded dust soiled for a century dark forest green and ochre earth toned yellow… “drapes” that were, had, and forever after remained “never touched” ever including their original and permanently poised Empire ties tied… .  When the home was sold, “THEY” went with it.

            The wall, aside from Jesus, had perfectly positioned “old framed prints” upon a scanty and subdued patterned, faded …but original… 1830 Empire style …rural-cheap… “wallpaper”.  Originally a bosomy rouge pink, it was now a pink-gray-brown water stained and pealing at the ceiling molding… yuck.

            In the center of the room, on the floor and upon the “cat destroyed” cheap Victorian carpet were, at each meeting, the items “for sale”.  Beginning with the first visit and continuing ever after, once seated there then began a three hour session of …Yankee dickering.

The Crow's Nest 2

The Crow's Nest

2

            I began in the home with a telephone call from the mother.  Their telephone was a wall mounted crank telephone then.  A local operator assisted the call and the conversation.  As the era of the crank had vanished except in interior Maine, the operator had a singular relationship when contacting the outer world from the village especially with elderly people. 

            The wall mounted telephone was just past the door that lead to the “front part” of the house.  This position excluded the telephone from the living area of the home and defined it’s usage to the formal front business section of the home.  This formal front faced the street.  The door by the telephone marked the boundary of the house that defined the mother and the daughter’s usage within the whole.  Simply, they lived in the back and did their business in the front.

            This “front part” (their words) must be understood well.  The “living” part of the home was the older and original sections of the home dating from the 1780’s.  To this original home was added, in the 1820’s, a full, classic and New England grade perfect Greek Revival “addition” that was, in fact, a whole home… of the latest and most fashionable style.  So perfect and so formal was this abutment that it never was fully assimilated by the family as being part of the original homestead.  The… always closed… door from the older home into the newer addition forever represented a border line to the “front part”. 

            From the street, the front part began with the front door and it’s perfect Greek Revival Doric pillared porch.  This porch reach toward the main street of the village.  It was abutted by a full grown sugar maple tree on it’s left and a full grown American Horse Chestnut tree on it’s right.  Visitors such as myself were received at this front door… only.  Local visitors and family friends were received at the kitchen door.  These visitors walked past the front door, back into the yard and through the shed door open between the barn and the house to the concealed from view kitchen door at the rear side of the home… only.

            I would walk up a flat stone path to a single step onto the front porch.  I would walk two more steps to the front door.  I would push a primitive electric door bell button that would set off a loud buzzer while I faced… and never used… a beautiful cast iron Grecian door knock that had obviously been “there” “since it (the addition) was made”.  To my right were the perfectly poised requisite three New England style slat back “porch rockers” and a small companion table… all painted in an old and deep forest green paint.  Before them stood a row of large earthenware flower pots with their just modestly tended Geraniums.  Stylistically flawless, the whole porch was “just modestly tended” JUST PERFECTLY so as to assure that “these people are real local Mainers” who have lived “here” “forever” and not someone who moved here “from away” (out of state).

            The door bell would be answered very slowly.  I would hear the mother begin her expedition from her kitchen through the “living” house to the “front part” door.  I would hear this door open… and close.  I would hear her continuing up the “front hall” to the front door, hear her turn the key she kept in the door lock and this door lock unlock.  Then I would hear her turn the ancient door knob (that I would watch turn on my side), hear her pull upon the… slightly stuck at bottom… perfect large Greek Revival door… painted in old whitewash.  The opening door would pop and then very gradually recede to reveal her face peeking through a crack to assure it was me.  Then she would swing the door fully open.

            “Come in come in thank you for coming so promptly” was always said as one sentence and then IN I was following behind her “up” the “front hall” a mere twelve feet to turn right into a most… stunningly untouched circa 1825 Maine full Empire style decorated and never ever altered ever… front parlor.

            At this moment it must be denoted that two spaces need description; the “front hall” and “front parlor”.  This is not a tedious exercise.  This is part of the tale.  Way up above and at the very top of this “front part” of the home was the crow’s nest.  WAY, WAY up above the front door was a …perfectly proportioned, centered and matching Greek Revival window that looks out over all of the main street of the village.  Behind this window was … the crow’s nest.  It is the scale… and it’s perfectly preserved time capsule state… that must be conveyed to understand this home, the “front part”, the first floor spaces, the stairs ascending, the upstairs rooms, the stairs to the attic, the attic and, finally, the crow’s nest.

            We will wind our way there with description and tale merged.

The Crow's Nest

The Crow’s Nest

1

             At the top of the attic stairs; at the very top of the home, there was a room.  This room was called “The Crow’s Nest”.  There was a homemade hand painted sign on the closed door that said “The Crow’s Nest”.  Several painted crows surrounded this title.  This painted sign had been made on an old stiff paper shirt board.  It was now warped and chipped from dangling from it’s single tack.  Eventually I removed the sign and sold it.  That was after a thirty year association with the sign and the room.

            The name; “The Crow’s Nest’s” came from the woman whose room this was.  She derived the “crow’s nest” from her mother who had once had a pet crow.  The pet crow’s name was Simon.  That name came from “Simple Simon”, the poem.  The Mother had named the crow when she was thirteen.  She had captured the baby crow, raised it and… exhibited it at a local northern Maine fair.  She exhibited Simon annually for over a half decade.

            Simon, although a docile and loyal pet, ranged free from the Mother’s family farm in northern Maine.  Coming and going as he chose, he excelled in one single passion; the gathering of small shiny objects.  No quality valuation contributed to Simon’s collecting passion.  Only shiny and size.  He had to be able to carry his discovery off and be able to hide it in his plunder trove.

            The plunder trove was the rotten hollow that formed a deep dish at the top of a large and tall corner fence post at the upper end of the back pasture near the gate.  From her childhood bedroom in the farm house the mother could see Simon tending and guarding his plunder trove.

            The varied objects Simon found and hid in the fence post top were a continuing saga and intrigue.  Most were rudimentary and unsatisfying such as a shiny new tack, a copper wire piece or a bottle cap.  Other objects were very intriguing and down right …evil.  Simon purloined a sterling silver thimble with someone’s initials on it.  One day a silver plated woman’s wristwatch appeared.  A silver bead necklace suggested that Simon hopped in the open widow of a home and hunted on a woman’s dressing table.  A silver watch chain and a tiny silver cigar clipper, it too with engraved initials, suggested Simon had no gender sensitivity in his collecting.  These finer items never ceased to entertain the mother when she inspected Simon’s fence post but also… they bothered.  It was obvious to the mother that Simon had stolen these items and that could only lead to trouble if he were found out  That consideration lead to a very ridged policy of the Mother never ever disturbing Simon’s fence post and that… was just fine by Simon.

            Simon met his end by purloining a small silver match case covering a box of matches.  He open the match box with his beak, pecked the matches and they blew up in his face, instantly blinding him, causing him to fall of the fence post and be found dead at it’s base by the mother.  She buried Simon at the base of his fence post, did not disturb his plunder and waited.  For the rest of her girlhood she would periodically check Simon’s plunder.  It was always the same.  Even after she’d grown, moved away, married, had growing children of her own and only rarely returned to home, she always would slip away and check Simon’s plunder.  On one visit home, the fence post top was empty.  Simon’s plunder was gone.

James Hutton's Goblets

“A very dull old gentleman,” he thought.
“I wonder what his goblets may be worth.”

(Stevenson, Robert Lewis: “A Lodging For The Night”. 1877. The last line of the story.)

James Hutton is a different sort of picker than (the previously blog posted) Baxter or Lane Cooper. The latter two physically charge old New England homesteads and barns. Hutton visits them. I, as a picker, visit them too but my picking is methodical compared to Hutton. Hutton wishes to be served well prepared tea while he purchases, most nominally, the tea table it is served on. To him, purchasing the content of a garret and removing that same, is tedious. He prefers a solid silver teapot, purchased as plate. Excepting these differences, we all, as New England pickers, join together in opposition to the generic pickers that now have recognition through television programming. We seek fine New England decorative arts from …fine New England homes.
James is only fine New England decorative arts, while I am an "every bedroom, every bedroom dresser, every bedroom dresser drawer" "empty". I arch to the archeology of the Fine New England Home. James stays with "the decorative art only".
At the time of Baxter's pickle bottle find… that I then sold to Peggy (Abbott)… where upon she sold me her Connecticut ladder back chair that …was her mothers… and …had always been in the family… I: Knew that the chair should not have been sold by Peggy, that her mother would find out and that I would be called upon. The only gap was that… only I saw the chair. Baxter did not. BUT he did hear from Peggy that she had sold me "that old chair". Right away he visited me with no purpose… once. Then again. Both times he nosed around but mentioned nothing. I knew he was looking for the chair. He paused his visits and then appeared twice more without purpose. Evidently he did not see the chair… for sale. After this fourth visit, James Hutton arrived for a visit. Baxter had told him about "a chair" and Hutton, also familiar with Peggy's estate, knew exactly what chair it was. He seated himself at the barn door in an old Boston rocker and rocked slowly in it while looking at me.
"Where is Peggy's chair?" he asked.
"Chair?" I said
"That chair. Her mother's. The ladder back. The good one."
I stood up and stepped three steps to the far side of the barn, reached behind a stack of old lumber and… behind a bench covered with old Staffordshire china that was covered with an old table cloth and… lifted Peggy's chair from darkness into light.
"That chair." Said Hutton.
"My chair." I said.
"HER MOTHER will kill her WHEN she finds out". Pronounced Hutton knowing full well that I was already aware of this.
"How will she?" I said.
"OH!"
"Yes? YOU go tattling?"
"OH!" (pause) "How much is it?"
"Not for sale yet. Cooling off."
"How much THEN?"
"What do you want that for?"
"I collect things from that family. You know that."
"So do I".
Hutton looked around the barn, rocked back and forth, looked at the chair then looked at me. "This isn't the first time she's done this you know."
"Probably not." I said "I know I've come close before; things the mother gave her that she didn't want either. But. I believe this is my first no-no.
"The KEEP THIS UNTIL YOU DIE!" stated Hutton. Then he laughed.
I smiled. We both know this border line well. It is a fine border as long as the object is "no good". It is painfully difficult when the object is "good". The "painfully difficult" usually ends VERY promptly after "YOU DIE": A family tussle. Cash. Ends. It may end in the dealer's favor if they are… still alive.
"Your not going to keep that until YOU die are you?"
"No. Just wait it out. Your telling Mother?"
"I only tell Mother what I want to buy from her. She still has quite a bit you know".
"I'm sure she does. They always do. Most of it never unpacked no doubt. The old family teapot… up attic in a box. Down basement in a crate. The box unopened since packed. Professionally. By the movers. Now two decades ago. EVEN THOUGH she still regularly mentions JUST THAT TEAPOT as if it were in the dining room waiting for tea. A nightmare. Actually a classic New England estate nightmare these days."
"She DOES unpack a box every now & then. That's when I go by. I see her. She mentions a platter or "crockery" as she calls it; English Rockingham. She has a ton of that. I go over. I always buy something. She knows her stuff too. Always the best is set aside displayed. Or going to Peggy. "Peggy will want that" she says.
"Peggy doesn't know what that is I'd say".
"That does no good. Just let her give it to her. Then SHE'LL sell it. As we've have here". Hutton turned to the chair. "Mother had that painted. You can tell. New seat too. Professionally painted. She'd never do that herself. It's really quite well done. Cost a fortune these days."
"Cost a fortune then. It's awkward to sit in" I said.
"Who cares. It looks great. Very proper."
"I'll price it, but not yet. It will not be cheap".
"Neither are mine." Hutton replied and catching eye contact.
"Chairs? Like this?" I said.
"No. Goblets." He replied. He got up from the rocker, walked to his car, took a small box out of the trunk, returned to the rocker, sat the box on the barn floor in front of his foot and then pushed it across the floor toward me.
I bent from my chair, pulled the box over, opened it, removed a paper wrapped ball, unwrapped it and held up… a single heavy, vigorous, free blown and cut lead glass goblet with a cut thumbprint style pattern covering the exterior, a cut fluted stem below and a wide flair ground pontiled base. Holding this base I struck the rim of the goblet to release it's characteristic bell tone ring. The goblet was perfect, probably "English", circa 1815. "Nice" I said.
"There's four. One's broken. But that's why I own them." Hutton said. I looked up and he continued. "Mother gave her those and told her NEVER SELL THEM. And never use them. And never break them. She obeyed. The cleaning lady broke one. She called me about repairing it. I told her the best, fastest, cheapest way to repair it was to sell all four to me and be rid of them. She did that but not without hysterics, a promise to never tell and …still ALWAYS mentioning… do-you-still-have-them."
"How much?" I asked and unwrapped the rest including the broken one. They were still as packaged by Peggy. Hutton had done nothing with them. Even the little flakes from the broken one were carefully wrapped.
"I don't mind selling them to you because I will tell her I did and then she may pester you about them for eternity. Or you can return them to the mother. You may have to do that." Hutton said. He paused and rocked then said "I want ninety dollars each for the perfect ones. You can have the broken one. English, right?"
Ninety dollars each, from Hutton, was a big price with a little professional (read: intimidation) discount: He figures one hundred each but discounts to me at ninety. He probably paid fifty for the whole box. He expects resistance and, probably, no sale. That is fine with him for he'll spar with me for months.
"Ok." I said.
Hutton paused then said "English right?".
"Probably Irish actually" I said.
"That's a lot" he said.
"In general yes. But these"
"THESE WHAT!"
"Are seriously fine. Look at the form. The heft. These were for -at table-. These were used. With that base they'd never tip over. What did she do: Bust it with the vacuum cleaner? Smacked it off the sideboard? Feel the glass! As for the pattern; you can't fail. You can drink anything out of them."
"That's it?"
"Two twenty-five each".
"NO!"
"Oh please. You should never have sold them."

Tale of the Kennebec, a Rare Maine Book

Lurking behind the lurid front wrapper cover graphics, alluded to by only one word on the title page and further hidden from a knowing eye by a “DIME NOVEL” pedigree is a… remarkably scarce and obscure Kennebec River, Maine, 1756 set, Seven Years War (Colonial French and Indian War 1754-1763) “ten cent novel” that is generally unknown to Maine rare book enthusiasts…but should be.
THE DARING BACKWOODSMAN, MUNRO’S TEN CENT NOVELS, No. 67, George Munro & Co., New York, 1865-1866, may be easily traced to Mr. Munro’s partnership and independent break with his former employer/partners, the Beadles, to become, with them. the top producers of the “dime novel” …genre. Genre it be for today, a century after collector attention was first remunerated and 150 years after the publishing style’s innovation, the WHOLE block of dime novels languishes within a… closed door collector-only… advanced collector valuation critique (cash and literary, in that order) with …an occasional scholar discovering “one” “of particular interest” to THEIR… particular interest. We are a close ratio to that here except that the Maine rare book interest reaches well beyond the state border AND… Maine is in very short supply of actual old rare books that touch the subject of Maine and the colonial wars… particularly in a NON-scholarly way. Here we find that critter.
CHEAP writing printed on CHEAP paper making a CHEAP production of a pamphlet “throw away” style book that is called a “novel” but is more accurately a story with a highly stylized frontiersman woodcut on the outer front wrapper and again appearing as a frontis to tempt the ten cent BUYER who will READ… this “trash”. Dismissed as trash… such writing cannot be accepted in… accepted… literary circles and must be read in… secret. This sort of book was read in secret over and over and over again until pamphlet fell apart. Why? Because readers liked the trashy story.
But… that cheap hack writing… when critiqued TODAY will be discovered to be just worded historically correct enough to catch a Maine rare book collector’s attention AND suggest very strongly that the author; “J. Springer” was very familiar and informed in Maine history himself at the 1865 date. Who the author was we do not know. THAT the book has “KENNEBEC” in it’s “THE DARING BACKWOODSMAN. A TALE OF THE KENNEBEC” title grabs the Maine history sleuth’s eye. That single word is very promptly followed by three opening pages setting the scene as… on the river below Fort Halifax and above Fort Western, “in the summer of 1756” with pioneer farmers, fur traders and Norridgewocks Indians AND… having that setting salt & peppered with Maine history words like “Father Rasle. Woolrich, Cushnoc and even “Bishop Burgess” from Gardener.
The story is in the shadow of James Fenimore Cooper and close to the Green Mountain writer D. P. Thompson… and all the better for it. The author wraps his Indian raid - pioneer cabin burning plausibility with name drop style historical fact. JUST enough name drop allusion to create the illusion that “this really happened”. A little check-it-out will find no identical Indian raid there-then BUT it will find numerous there-then at the 1750’s dates with the same number of Indians raiding the same sort of pioneer farms including the details of cabin burning and… even Indian ambushes at the prominent point on the river between the two forts. Although the story is a spun yarn, the spun of that yarn …has it’s history well tended.
The devil is NOT in the detail but just the opposite. The supreme specimen of this type of Americana gone to full glory is the 1830’s DAVY CROCKETT ALMANCS, wherein lurid woodcuts and spun yarn reign supreme and …historical facts must be hunted like kernels of dried Indian corn on a forest floor. THAT rare book is Grolier 100 Americana (#39) and THIS rare books is Maine's own match to it. To Cooper. To Thompson. To the …true portrayal… of Maine’s Seven Years War.
Sappy details that must be noted include: A romance that is… pleasingly… forced to cut to the chase because the book … is not very long. A horse-in-the-Maine-woods usage issue that the author repeatedly addresses. A pioneer hiding hole under the cabin that equals and emulates the hiding secrets used by the other pioneer writers we have named. Abundant boy - man - Indian loyalty, language and fighting …to the death …that includes a single mercy shot to “finish off’ and a pretty descriptive & nasty knife fight. Before the reader knows it the story is over. It is painless to read and is put-a-smile-on… tidy.
The throwaway pamphlet novel… is, again, a MAINE …French and Indian War… historical saga… found in a splendid ephemeral format designed to be read by Maine farm boys in their Maine farm bedroom when “no one knows”. But it does, effortlessly, include Maine historical clarity. Even the woodcut holds to …Maine historical clarity. Look at the backwoodsman's weapon. It’s an early French and Indian War period halberd… the type that makes one quiver to see when shown in historical excavation reports and …similar to museum specimens "found in Maine".
In the photographs I have included I show the two copies we have in stock. The reason for this duplication is to show-off… but not clarify… edition variants. This sort of printed production often has a very varied printing history making it very hard to determine a "true first" edition (first edition, first printing). Conservatively, I cannot say that either of the photographed specimens are "first editions". What I do denote and show in the images is that… one copy (the one WITH the rear wrapper present) is printed in NY, vended by a Boston publisher, has an inner front wrapper advertisement for the very next (#68) dime novel BUT has an "1866" copyright. The second copy is printed in NY and from a NY vendor but with a later #87 very next dime novel (suggesting it's a later printing than our first) BUT has an… "1865" copyright. The two offerings become… the classic rare bookman's enigma of "what is a true first"… with a classic "go figure" answer. One would need to have a dozen copies side by side to try to sort out a "true first" …sappy detail. This first edition detail we deem "sappy" for… a true LAST detail removes all the sappy and leaves just one aspect: Try to find a copy… any copy …of this rare Maine book.