Kern Collection
Jerome David Kern, composer of Who, Kalua, Old Man River, etc. etc., and publisher of many another lip-to-lip tune, is a wealthy man who lives comfortably in Bronxville, N. Y. But not until last week was he a free man. Mr. Kern's 44th birthday fell last week.
But that was not what freed him. He made his "escape" by selling his collection of rare books, worth more than $1,000,000, a notable trove of the printer's and publisher's art. While the sale was in progress, Mr. Kern explained: "As my collection has grown, books have not only fascinated me, they have enslaved me. As rare books became rarer I battled for them, treasured them, and so became a collector. . . . Somehow I could not think of my books ever being sold by anyone else, even after my death, and in a flash I saw an escape from my slavery." At book auctions, a finger of light points silently to the item up for sale.
There are genteel murmurs, Jewish gestures. The murmurs ask: "How much is this book worth?" The gestures tell how much it is worth to famed Abraham S. Wolf Rosenbach, Harry Marks, Gabriel Wells or some other gentleman who collects books for profit or passion. Dr. Rosenbach (Alice In Wonderland inan) raised his hand vertically many times at the Kern sale* but three times he kept it in his pocket. Three times he refused to go on with the bidding, lost a coveted book to a braver bibliophile. Some top prices brought by Kern-collected editions and manuscripts: Shelley's Queen Mob, $68,000; Lamb's contribution to Hone's Table Book, $48,000; Pope's Essay on Man, $29,000; Edgar Allan Poe's letter to Mrs. B., $19,500; Swift's Gulliver's Travels, $17,000. Let no brisk, efficient young housewife entirely disregard a grandparent's plea not to throw away old books. In Manhattan last week it was discovered that a pile of old books hastily sold (or, perhaps, cunningly bought) contained a first-edition copy of Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders of the Rue Morgue--the third such copy known to exist. An anonymous collector, presumably Tycoon Owen D. Young, immediately snatched the find for $25,000.