When in NYC The Waldorf Astoria is my home. My real home, however, isn't a tenth as splendid as The Waldorf; the mere idea that the surrogate version of my two-bedroomed little house with a cracked drive and an overgrown, straggly garden lives on the other side of the Atlantic as a magnificent art-déco building with a legendary two-ton clock ticking away in the lobby and The Guerlain Spa a mere swoosh up the lifts is the stuff of an ironic, tragic trick of destiny. Why am I not the Steph from that parallel dimension, the one who lives at The Waldorf all the time and not just two weeks a year? Say, an intelligent version of Paris Hilton?
Still, I know exactly what happened and when for me to think of The Waldorf as my mothership. It was my first time there, in 2002, and I was taking my first spin around the shops (sorry, boutiques) scattered around the lobby. Amidst antiques and Fabergé eggs and costume jewelery and a WHSmith that sold silver and golf clubs and cashmere jumpers (obviously, a fluke WHSmith if you know the ones that infest the UK), one window stood out above all of them. With leather-bound books all around and an antique desk resplendent under the spotlights, I went through an out of body experience as my mouth started watering at sight of the chocolate-like spines ornated by gilded writing. This was my first time encounter with Bauman Rare Books.
When I told you last Wednesday that today I would speak of the greatest bookstore I ever visited, I felt that the definition itself was inadequate. Calling Bauman 'a bookstore' is not unlike describing a Jag as a lump of metal on wheels or Harrods as a giant supermarket or Cunard's Queen Elizabeth II as a boat.
When I think of Bauman I think of a museum, except it is better than a museum. Instead of drooling over stuff you cannot take home, which is what I do at the Met or the MoMA, you can actually leave Bauman with something worthy of an alarmed cabinet display at The British Library. When I asked about them at The Waldorf, they told me that I really ought to take a walk to the store on Madison Avenue which I promptly visited the day after.
At Bauman on Madison I met some of the most knowledgeable, professional and pleasant experts I've ever come across in the field of rare books. I recall walking in with purpose, despite the temporary dizzyness, you understand, and asking them whether they had a first edition of Lyrical Ballads, 'the one with the legendary preface'. This is a very rare volume indeed and one that I had had daydreams about ever since at university one of my professors was talking about it as if it were the Holy Grail of first editions.
Unsurprisingly, not even Bauman had a copy at the time, but we started talking about my interests and whether I was seeking anything else in particular. I don't know why exactly but I immediately blurted out, 'A first edition of Frankenstein would be lovely. I know they are unbelievably rare but I've been after it for ever. In fact, it would be amazing just to see it'.
This statement drew little thrilled gasps by the two experts who were talking to me; a first Frankenstein would cost in the region of $150,000, or so I thought at the time (they've got one now, $168,000), and it was evident that my enquiry immediately rang the bells of selling recognition: here is A Really Knowledgeable Buyer.
In truth, I never meant to string them along (I didn't have $150,000 to spend on the spot, neither do I now), and indeed I did not feel like I was doing so, but they both launched themselves into such a pleasant, enthusiastic conversation about Romanticism, and about the advantages of a personal library that boasts firsts of Frankenstein and Dracula, that it seemed inappropriate, if not downright idiotic, sheepishly to confess that I cannot afford a book that costs as much as a small house, but I do appreciate its worth above and beyond what my pocket allows.
They gave me a pair of cotton gloves and showed me some very fine bindings of Shelley's Poetical Works and Keats's Odes as I spoke of the first time I saw some of John Donne's postcards at The British Library. I may have gone slightly giddy at the mere remembrance of observing his penmanship close-up, and yet separated from my wonton fingers by cruel glass, but in truth, they both perfectly understood what I was getting at.
The small Bauman within The Waldorf has since closed down as a new, fully-fledged location has opened in Las Vegas in 2008. Their website is a glorious showcase of their books and offers magnificent downloadable catalogues to ogle over a cup of tea (I guess this qualifies as Book Porn). And not all of their books will require you to take out a mortgage; plenty of them retail at a mere few hundred bucks so if you cannot quite start your collection with Frankenstein, you can always get yourself a little something... Either way, pay them a visit if you're in NYC, Philadelphia or Las Vegas. They are extremely knowledgeable and extremely gracious to boot.
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