The San Francisco call., 1895-12-01
Oakley Halls Entertaining Cos.
sip About Gotham
Bookstores.
NO SUCH ENTREPOTs ABROAD.
Police Census Shows That City
to Be Full of Western
Widows.

commencing on the eve of Thanksgiving
week finds its dying embers at New Years.
1t forms the season when gift books are
hunted after and library shelves are over
hauled for replenishing. Advertising col
umns then grow staccato with the rivalry
OF announcements by publishers, and
oven the terrapin dinners and pink
teas of society hush as topics beside those
affecting new hooks.
Brentano's literary exchange at upper
Union square is the notable rendezvous
for book-buyers. l have found no such
literary entrepot in London or Paris nor
IN any American city. There is not
published classic or volume of freshly
spawned current rhetoric that book
buyer cannot find on its shelves or coun-
tiers. From Gibbons Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire through all the
years, to DR.. Parkhurst's fall of the Croker
empire; from BoswelPs recollections of
Sam Johnson to those OF Senator Sher-
man, whose volumes TEEN with nests OF
waSps and hornets; from Fielding's Tom
Jones to the Dorian Gray of Oscar Wilde
novel that curiously and unconsciously
foretold his present hapless lot; from the
era of Hannah More and Maria Edgeworth
Amelie Rives Chanler-every known vol
ume not obsolete to fame is i'll the keeping
of the Brentano brothers. They sue
ceeded in business to their uncle, August
Brentano, now gone to join the literary
consolation of the other world, that are
felicitouslv described by the seer Sweden
borg. | recall August's Florentlne black
eyes, sparkling with interest ins all
things literary, as he stood on our
first meeting in the little basement
of his store on Broadway near Bleecker
street, presiding over modest collection
of newspapers, periodicals and ephemeral
publications of the day. l had modest
connection with his beginnings, for he
published an aggressive pamphlet that
wrote in 1858, entitled Horace Greeley
Decently Dissected," which, from its per-
sonalities, and certainly Gbelous footnotes,
attracted popular but ephemeral attention
and sent thousands of buyers to his base.
ment and made them acquainted with the
| first enterprise of the kind at collecting
current ephemeral literature. 1t was
| silly enterprise of pique on the young
authors part and made him resolve there
after never to have another personal AMI
| mostly or to engage in the dangerous COM
| bat with newspaper editor. Bren-
| tano was hustler. He had an
ancestral gift of economy and prac-
| ticed a maxim of the elder Lytton,
| to be found in "Caxtoniana": ANY
| man of ordinary talent is capable of max
ing money, but it requires a man of genius
to know how to keep 1t after 1t has been
made" He kept his savings and in few
years opened larger and famous empo-
rum in a fashionable location-still cling
ing to a basement-and became the only
noted bookseller in New York after George
W. Carleton quilted business. At his
death his several nephews, who had been
his aides, who inherited his hustling quail
ties and who had ardently studied the
pursuits of literature and art, took his
place, and are now as widely known as
literary purveyors as are Clafin, Hilton e.
| Stern in dry goods or Tiffany in Jewels
and bric-a-brac Brentano's is also a
| lounging place for authors and writer's.
| The serni-millionaire and crisp feuiIleton-
| ist, Brander Matthews; the banker-poet
| Stedman; the modern Sir William Jones,
| in that he is great as jurist or poet, Will
| liam A. Butler; the playwrights, Bronson
| Howard, Clyde Fitch and Messrs Gun
ther, Belasco and Potter; the literary
managers, Palmer and DAILY; actors, Mans
magazinists like Julian Ralph, Richard
Harding Davis, Montgomery Schuyler, as
| well as literary critics and editors by the
| score, number themselves as habitues of
| Brentano's. Not so much to buy as to ex-
anime and exchange notes; all meeting at
| times much as writers used to meet in Kit
| North's time at the publishing rooms of
| Constable or Black, or the senior cham
! bers; or in London at John Murray's in
Byron's time; or at Field & Osgood's s, In
Boston, when Whittier and Holmes were
| frequent callers. And at this coming
| holiday gift-time to me crowds oscillate
| between Tiffany ON one block and Bren-
tano's on an adjacent block.
| Publishers nowadays rarely retail their
1 hOnka nr fhnSQ h1,f Col
fishers. Dodd, Mead e. Co., the Scribners.
and the Macmillans, all on lower Fifth ave-
| nue., that is now almost surrendered tn
| publishers and piano makers, are the few
| exceptions; wherefore book buyers throne
| Brentano's.
The book of the literary season is pre-
eminently an edition of the comedies of
Shakespeare in four volumes, illustrated by
Edwin Abbey, who furnishes 13O photogra-
vure etchings. They are large octave vol
umes, and the price is $50. But there
are wealthy book-buyers in this metropo
lis. The first editions of the Sweet Viii
liam of the dramatic parterre which
were ever issued IN this country have
been from the Harper Press Half a CEN
tury ago they issued an edition, edited bv
Gulian @. Verplanck, compeer of WASH
ington Irving and Fenimore Cooper. pro-
fusely illustrated by engravers of the pe-
riod. Copies of it are now sold at book
auctions at heavy prices, because the plates
were destroyed in the great Harper fire.
But this new enterprise of the Harpars
will efface memories of their first venture in
Shakespearean direction.
Another recent Harper publication prom
inent in this literary season is entitled
"Dixie, or Southern Scenes and Sketches
by Julian Ralph, one of the most talked-of
Knickerbocker word painters of the period.
Also novel Of the revolutionary French
provinces, entitled "Red Cockade,'' bv
Stanley j. Weymap, who as historical
romance writer may be called the legiti
mate successor of the once noted and Still
admired G. P. r. James OF "Horseman on
the HilP' memory. / have found it as
stirring as was Dickens novel of the same
historical period-"Tale of Two Cities.'
Another stirring novel has been issued
by the Putnams-a publishing name coin
cioent as to venerable prestige with that
of Harper-wrltten by Grant Allen, who
has recently stirred the bile of British ma
irons with his audacious romance of the
"Woman Who Did," 1t has the queer title
of British Barbarians,' but nevertheless
does not touch upon Dunraven. They also
publish another audacious volume pre-
pared by Rose Porter, entitled, What
Women Have Said About Men," 1t is a
companion volume to her previous every-
day book entitled "What Men Have Said
hout Women - not Of mortar ic ,,e,,