The Cookbook Collector

Book of Household Management was so thick that most copies ended up in three pieces because their bindings didn’t hold. This copy was a good little brick with its red leather binding still intact. The second volume the seller brought was much older. The long title began: The whole duty of a woman, or a guide to the female sex from sixteen to sixty … and included a promise to provide choice receipts in physick and chirugery with the whole art of cookery, preserving, candying, beautifying, etc. The book had been published in London in 1735 and would have been valuable, except that it was so badly worn. The cover was falling off and the pages warped and spotted. The title page was torn.

The Beeton was the sort of book listed in catalogs as a “wonderful gift” for the everyday book lover. It would not tempt a serious collector. George could sell Mrs. Beeton for four or five hundred dollars. He was doubtful about The whole duty.

“This one’s in rough shape.” He showed the volume’s wear to the seller, even as he noted hers. She was about his age, but she looked shattered, as though she had never recovered from some early loss. Gray-eyed, sharp-featured, she was tall and pear-shaped. Her long gray hair fell straight past her narrow shoulders to her waist. She might have been a teacher once, or a social worker, but more likely she was a perpetual student, and a case study all her own. Her name was Sandra McClintock, and she wore faded clothes and cowboy boots, and she walked everywhere. She told George she’d only brought him two books because she didn’t want to carry any more. He did not believe her. “The cover is ripped,” he said. “The pages here are stained….” He turned the leaves deliberately.

Were there others like these? Better? And how were they acquired? He tried to look diffident as he wrote a check, one hundred dollars for the pair.

“Are they all cookbooks?” George asked the seller, but she didn’t want to discuss the matter. “Are you interested in an appraisal?”

“Maybe. I might be.” She didn’t object to the evaluation, but she looked disappointed as she took the check. Clearly she had hoped for more.

George fretted after she left that she would not come back. What if Sandra had something really valuable? He waited three days for her to call, and when she didn’t, he phoned, and asked to see her. She did not want him to come to her, and so he invited her to bring more books to the store. Had she contacted another dealer? He knew all the dealers in the area. He would have heard. Was she setting up an auction? He didn’t ask.

He wanted Jess to hurry up and fly home for Thanksgiving. He was afraid Sandra might arrive while he was out and leave books with Jess, or even allow Jess to open them and ooh and ahh and say, “Those must be worth a fortune!” This scenario seemed unlikely, given Sandra’s cautious approach, but Jess had a way of bounding in at the worst moments. She had asked once, in front of college students with a box of books to sell, why George paid so little for contemporary novels.

“Because they’re ephemera,” he said.

“All of them? Even Thomas Pynchon?” Jess held up a battered paperback copy of V. “Even Saul Bellow? Humboldt’s Gift for a dollar?”

After he’d bought a stack of novels and chucked the rest and said good-bye to the students, he clapped his hand on Jess’s shoulder. “Do you think I want a running commentary on prices? When I want your analysis of the book-buying business, I’ll ask you. In the meantime, let’s treat this as a store, not a seminar.”

She didn’t look in the least contrite. “I was talking about literature, not analyzing the book-buying business. And if I were, I wouldn’t confuse a seminar with a store. And I wouldn’t confuse a store with a folly.”

“A folly,” he echoed, incredulous, offended.

“A folly like an expensive hobby,” she said, assuming he didn’t know the term. “A folly like a little miniature ruined castle in a garden.”

“‘Little miniature’ is redundant,” he pointed out.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like my folly to be a little less expensive, which is why I want you to stop theorizing about my prices in front of customers.”

“All right, fine.”

Tuesdays and Thursdays were peaceful. George’s other assistant, Colm, was discreet, spectacled, a tenth- year graduate student writing on Victorian commonplace books and the art of quotation. Far better for Sandra to meet Colm. He was judgmental too, but indirect.

However, as George feared, Sandra dropped in on a Monday.

“Hello,” said Jess. “May I help you?”

Sandra hesitated. “I’m here with a book for George.”

“We don’t buy books on Mondays,” Jess informed her.

“Sandra,” cried George, rushing from the back room, “come with me.” There was no door between the store’s two rooms. Bookcases simply poured through the open passageway. “Watch your step,” George warned. The back room was a full step down.

“I was thinking,” Jess said, following them, “we should install a ramp here.”

George gestured her away.

“We could get one made of plywood, and then if we straightened out the front entrance, we’d be almost wheelchair and stroller accessible.”

“Jessamine,” said George, and she understood and backed off.

“I have one more book to show you,” Sandra told him. “But this is the last one.”

“The last one you have?”

“The last one I’ll show.”

Why is that? George thought with sudden dread. Is she saving the rest for someone else? But he said, “Let’s have a look.”

She unwrapped a pristine copy of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. “It’s the first British edition—with the recipe.” Sandra turned to the page with the title “Toklas’ Haschich Fudge.”

The original hashish brownies. Peppercorns, nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds, peanuts, … A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverized. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts … it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient….

“True,” said George.

“What do you think?” Sandra asked at last.

“It’s not perfect.” He pointed to the tiniest of tears on the dust jacket, the spots freckling the title page.

“You don’t want it?” She needed money.

“I want it.” The book was charming. It was very good. Of course he wanted it. But what he really wanted was to see the rest. What sort of trove was this? The whole duty and Alice B. Toklas cohabiting on the shelves? “I’d be happy to appraise your whole collection,” he said once again. “If the other books are in this kind of condition …”

Sandra looked grave.

“Even if they’re not …”

He heard the shop door. He felt a gust, a moment of traffic and chilly winter; heard Jess’s voice. “Hey!” A man’s voice, a rustling as the door closed again. Sandra and George stood together as before, examining the book, but subtly the climate in the store had changed. Jess was talking to a friend in the other room. He guessed Noah from Save the Trees. Jess had introduced the kid to George several weeks ago, calling him Director of Trees or VP of Tree-Saving, almost as though she were practicing for her parents, as if to say, This young man is not only idealistic, but management material as well. Yes, there he was leaning against a table stacked with books. Tall, wiry Noah with the frayed jeans, holes in the back pockets. He of the long arms and wide brown boyish eyes. Noah who was always touching everything. George tried not to notice. In fact, he refused to look.

“Really? You’re so lucky!” Jess trilled to Noah in the other room. “I want to go there.”

“You should come with us,” Noah said.

George couldn’t help imagining Jess sailing away with Noah. Surely they’d sail across the sea on Noah’s nonprofit ark. He hoped they would.